Muse Breaks

Ya know what, I've read all over the interwebs that it's impossible to hybridize tomatoes and peppers by pollination, but I promise you, our cherry tomatoes grown overlapping our red chili peppers were spicier than your average tomato.  I wish I'd saved that plant so I could see how the tomatoes taste when NOT intertwined with a pepper plant, but alas, in our recent flood (our place flooded in the middle of the night, and pretty much destroyed a lot of stuff...) I lost my lil tomato plant.  Of course, the REAL reason not to grow peppers and tomatoes near each other isn't for hybridization, it's for preventing transmission of disease between the two...


Ah well, good news!

With the flooding of our apartment came the early release from our lease with them, which yielded an early signature to rent a house from the same friends who found our little Penny!   It's a 3 bedroom on half an acre of land, outside the city limits.  Meeeaaannning...we get to garden, let the dogs run around, and even get some chickens!  Well...the chickens are gonna have to come a LITTLE bit later...but still.  It's a big project, too, and you can read my opinion of it here.


All the hasty packing meant I lost a lot of craft supplies amongst the boxes, if they didn't get soaked and ruined, and a ton of my food was lost, too.  The leak happened in the kitchen...yipes.


BUT...I have been spinning up a storm lately (you can see it all on Ravelry - my name there is 13Wednesdays, same as my twitter), and am currently working on my fiance's turkish spindle, making some superwash bfl.  I JUST got some really awesome Blacklight-reactive fiber blend in the mail and am waiting for a gorgeous top whorl spindle in the mail.


I must not give my entire savings to Etsy.
I must not give my entire savings to Etsy.
I must not give my entire savings to Etsy.


Ooh, plus my birthday was here recently, and my friend who shares my spinning addiction got me surprise fiber, and is bringing it down this weekend!  Yaaayy!


Yeah...if you guys don't mind, I have a feeling this blog is going to be largely dominated by spinning in the near future, though I promise to share awesome gardening, other craftiness, and cookingness as it comes up!  Hopefully once we unpack and finish fixing up the place, domestic awesomeness shall abound.  :)




Ooh, and look!  I made a video on 3-plying (also called chain-plying or Navajo plying):


Enjoy, and see you guys soon!
-MM

A friend of mine came into town yesterday and we raided the local wool shop!  We both had a little trouble buying only what we could afford...

I got allll this:

Top left and clockwise:  2 oz baby camel and tussah silk (my indulgence!), 4 oz kid mohair, 16 oz bamboo silk, 2 oz superfine merino and angora, 4 oz milk fiber.  Oh, and a new bottom-whorl spindle!  We named it "Bobo."

I started out spinning the milk fiber and I freaking LOVE it.  It has a weird crimp to it, a very small one, that makes the resulting yarn look textured and already plied, despite being a single.  I'm not sure if all milk fiber is this way or not, but you won't hear me complaining, it's cool!  I think it makes it a little stronger, too, than the bamboo I've been spinning that has a tendency to slip apart while spinining.

I'm also spinning the milk on Bobo, which is weird to me.  I've never been able to DROP a drop spindle before because I've only ever worked on a Turkish spindle:

It was always too heavy, and the bamboo too slippery, to drop and spin.  I would put the pointed end on the ground and spin it, adding tension as I gained twist, then moving the twist up the fiber separately.  Spinning on Bobo is a whole new world to me!

I like it, though, and it's lightweight enough that I can focus more on other aspects of the spinning and consistency rather than on how likely I am to break the yarn.

My fiance and the girl I went with also got fiber - she got some wool and had a blast learning how to spin it up on her own Turkish spindle.  My fiance got two silk caps, which are WEIRD.  I don't even know how he spun them.  The staple is SO VERY LONG.  He wound up making silk rope out of them, and proved that you don't need a fancy spindle to spin:

That stuff. is. strong.



Remind me to post our Chicken Parmigiana recipe later when I have access to it, ya?  It was the most amazing part of Christmas.  If I could only eat one thing for the rest of my life, it would be that.

-MM

I've really dived (dove?) headfirst into this spinning stuff.  I turned my 4 ounces of undyed kid mohair into a chunky single and crocheted it into half a hat.  Sooner or later I'll get around to picking up some more and finishing it, heh.

Then I wound my very first skein with, oh I have no idea, 2 or 3?  ounces of 2-ply bamboo silk that was my fiance's fiber...but he wasn't using it anyways.  It came out a little wavey thanks to not quite getting it perfectly even (at all), but it looks gorgeous:

Then I soaked it and set it aside to set, and because I didn't want to make mittens for my fiance out of it just yet.  It's about 76 or so yards if I calculated it right.  More on that in a sec.

Now I'm working on making thinner, more consistent yarn out of the same bamboo silk.  Right now it looks like thread, but I'm not sure if I'll ply it or not.  It takes so much twist to make it that thin and still hold together that I might ply it simply to keep it from tangling too much to use.  We'll see.  I have a ton of it so far but no good pictures because...well, because I don't want to go take one right now.

It's great to make it so thin because it takes me longer to work my way through the fiber.  I'm really getting faster at spinning, though, which is awesome!



Okay, so about plying, the internet REALLY had to help me out with this one.  I had one length of yarn because I couldn't wrap my brain (punny) around how to get two equal lengths of yarn in order to ply them without wasting any.  I found this video on youtube that really helped me out a TON:



I first wound it off the spindle into a ball.  No, not a center-pull ball (still haven't looked up how to do that), just around my fingers a few times then around itself over and over in a ballish fashion:

It looks adorable as a ball.  Ripe for kitten-torture.

Then I did as the video commanded and made myself an Andean bracelet:

When I had my two-ply length of yarn on my spindle all pretty and twisted (don't even talk to me about plying consistently, I got nothin', but it seems easier to do on an insanely expensive spinning wheel than on a spindle) I made myself a skein.  It took me a zillion tries.  I don't have a niddy noddy (a ridiculously simple-looking contraption that makes wrapping easier than what I'm about to confess), so I first wrapped it around a book.  Too small.  Then a box.  Still too small.  My skein looked laughably short and didn't have enough to fold on itself once twisted.

Finally I wrapped my skein around a BIGGER box.  Then I tied little strips of sheer ribbon I had on hand loosely around it in several places, pulled it off the box, twisted it and folded it into a skein.  I guessed that the length around the box to be about 4 feet, so I counted up the number of circles of yarn I had created and multiplied it by 4 - much easier than laying the yarn down the street and walking down it with a ruler.  MUCH.

I'm waaaay looking forward to heading to the fiber shop tomorrow with my new paycheck and trying out a couple of different types of fibers.  I'm ashamed to admit I'm already hooked on luxury fibers - mohair, angora, cashmere, milk top (SO FREAKIN' COOL), bamboo rayon, blah blah blah.  So.  Pretty.  One of these days I'd like to have enough yarn spun up that I can convince myself I won't use all of it and can start selling skeins on Etsy.  Wouldn't that be nice?  Looks like the average going price is around 10 cents a yard.  It'd be nice to have a little pocket cash to fund...the purchasing of even more fiber.  Yay for self-sustainable hobbies?  :)

I haven't dyed any yarns yet but I am SUPER excited about trying it out eventually.  Sure the nice dyes at the shop are dreamy, but what I'm really excited about is Kool Aid.

Yah.  That's right.  Kool Aid.

Awesome, no?

I'm also looking wayyy forward to the fiber festival in mid-April.  I don't have any idea if I'll have the money to go to it or to buy anything, but can you imagine being able to touch, feel, and mess with fiber, yarn, and spindles from some 20 or 30 LOCAL producers and artisans?

So excited!

I promise one day I'll have a normal house again, and then I can come back to talk to you about something besides spinning and yarn crafts.  Like home making, art, gardening, cooking, e-t-c.  In the meantime it's just about the only hobby I have the time for, sorry guys!

-MM

No, you don't need a spinning wheel.  Those things are expensive!

You can start out spinning your own yarn very inexpensively and quickly, actually.  How do I know this?  I totally just made some today.  Let me tell you - it's insanely addictive!  Now I have to brag about it show you how, too!

I started out with four valuable tools:

Some fiber (free-$10 or more)
A drop spindle (more on this in a sec)
A book on spinning (check your library)
Youtube!

Let's start with the fiber.
Because I'm interested in keeping goats, I started with mohair.  I recommend starting with any kind of wool, from sheep or goat, so long as it's been carded/combed or whatever it is they do to it to form it into big ropes.  It will be easiest to begin on something where the fibers are already going the same direction, rather than beginning with something raw or locks.  Definitely ask the fiber/yarn store person - they'll be able to help you find a good beginner yarn!  Fibers that are longer will be easier to draft, so stay away from short fibers like dog hair in your first project.

The spindle.
The spindle does NOT have to be fancy.  You can buy a simple one for about $5-7, or you can make one out of a wooden dowel and something round like an old cd.  Google instructions to make your own, or start with one like this or this.  I'm actually not learning on the one my book recommends and I haven't seen it used before, so that just goes to show that spinning is NOT that hard, and you can pick it up no matter what your resources may be.  Get creative!

A book on spinning.
The book I used was Spin It: Making Yarn from Scratch by Lee Raven.  You don't have to buy one, though, go ask your public library if they have any books already!  In fact, even if they don't, many libraries nowadays share books among networks of other libraries, and might be able to request one for you to rent.  In fact, you can skip the book completely if you're good at finding what you need on the internet!

Youtube.
Youtube and other video services have some tutorials by skilled fiber artists to show beginners like us just how to use the tools available to us to make yarn from raw fiber.  Just go search for spinning tutorials!  :)


I wish I could give a full run-down on how spinning works, but I'm definitely not skilled enough yet to share anything of much use, heh.  What I can do, however, is point you in the right direction if you're interested in spinning and give you some of the bare basics.

There are several sources for fibers, both synthetic and natural.  Animal fibers include those from sheep, goats, rabbits, dogs, alpaca, llamas, etc.  There are also fibers from silk, cotton, bamboo, and of course, blends of anything you can think of!  You probably already know about synthetic fibers, but I'll be skipping over these since they seem to be unfavored in yarn shops.

Once you have fiber that is ready to be spun, that is, at least facing the same direction, the first thing to do is separate the fibers out as evenly as you can.  Slide a small amount out from the group of fibers (this is called drafting) and spin them between your fingers - pay attention to the direction you spin, as this is the same direction you'll be spinning the rest of the yarn.  VOILA!  You have yarn.  Pull on the twisted portion, separating it from the bulk of the fiber as though you were going to pull it right out, but stop when you have enough fibers separated to about match what you began with, and - you guessed it - twist!  You're going to continue this until you have about 8 inches or so, then attach it to whatever weapon you decide to use.

The rest depends on the tool you're using, but long story short, you use the tool/spindle/stick to do the twisting for you.  In my case I twisted what was coming off the spindle tightly, stopped, then drafted out one small portion at a time, letting the twist work itself into the drafted section until I ran out of twist to carry up.  Then, I'd spin the spindle again, stop it, draft out some more fiber and release my hand from the first section of yarn, letting it twist up the drafted part.

I'll try and get a video of that up soon, as it's WAY easier to show someone than to explain it (but my book does a pretty darned good job!), but in the meantime I recommend checking out online videos to figure it out based on the tool you have available to you.

Here's my before-and-after:

4 ounces was PLENTY for me to learn on!

This is the only picture I have so far, but 4 ounces makes TONS more than this!  Isn't it pretty?  Itzopretty!

If you get the chance, I highly recommend a spinning class.  Some can get pretty expensive, but look around!  There's one this weekend nearby for $30 I'm hoping to get into if I can afford it.  I'll report back if I can!  :)

-MM



Oh P.S. - recent projects:

Modified pattern from here.

Slightly modified pattern from here.

Yay - productivity!  :D