Finally Finished That Fleece!

Finally! A new post! And even better, I am finally done spinning enough of the California Red fleece for a sweater.



It's not the greatest picture, but that there is 21 oz, or about 600 grams, and 1955 yards of three ply. I am jumping around for joy, and I hardly know what to do with myself now that this is done! (Besides dyeing it, of course...) I was aiming for six four ounce hanks, which would have brought  me up to about 2100 yards, but I checked the yardage requirements for my size and there's no way it's going to take more than 1800 yards to make myself a sweater.

I weighed my bag of alpaca fleece, and amazingly there's not even 2 ounces of alpaca blended into that. Way less than I thought, and it made a huge difference to the spinning.

My next spinning project? Yikes, I think I'm going to stick with combed top for a while. I have some Spunky Club stuff that I have been longing to get to, and a bump of BFL/silk I dyed myself which I could not let go of. However, I'm looking forward to spinning that new fleece in my closet, so it won't be too long before I'm carding again.

I have also been very busy in the garden, planting and weeding and digging stuff. It is so wonderful to see all the perennials I put in last year come up. The saskatoons and currants are blooming like crazy, the lilac is just about to open, and the sunflowers have re-seeded themselves, which suits a lazy gardener like me. I love comparing how the yard looked last spring to this.

A very unhappy rock and weed garden in May 2011:


A very happy flower garden now:


This picture was taken a week ago now, and things are even bigger, and I've put in a few annuals. I always wish there were more flowers at this time of year, so I might put in some anemones or pushkinia for more early blooms.

Last year, I put a miniature columbine in the rock garden by the back door, and it's doing so well I'm going to gather the seeds and plant more in that area. I think they'll look really nice blooming away in between the tulip time and iris time- and probably longer. I guess I'd also better get some glads in there so I have something to look forward to in August.



Oh, and I did finish the felted bum basket- it's so funny! and cute! The boys both asked for one, and I want to make some moebius baskets for their teachers, so I'd better get on with my knitting...

Mother's Day!

Last night, we celebrated mother's day with big bowls of butter chicken and chocolate mousse. Today, I intend to celebrate by spinning a lot. Shocking, I know. I can feel the waves of disbelief funneling through the internets at me. I also have a moebius bum basket started, and I still need to sew the zipper onto my felted wallet, so I'll probably work on those this afternoon while I'm at the yarn store.

I know how to party.

"Is there, when the winds are singing 
In the happy summer time,-
When the raptured air is ringing
With Earth's music heavenward springing,
Forest chirp, and village chime,-
Is there, of the sounds that float
Unsighingly, a single note
Half so sweet, and clear, and wild
As the laughter of a child?"


from The Mother's Hope, by Laman Blanchard.

Felted Things

It's a pretty cold and windy day, so I've been amusing myself with all sorts of indoorsy things- like carding, dyeing, laundry, and my newest obsession: felting and moebius knitting. I'll be teaching a class on May 26 at Make One Yarns on the Moebius cast-on , so I figured I should get Cat Bordhi's A Second Treasury of Magical Knitting and ramp up my moebius skills. Boy, has it been fun- and as a bonus, I've developed a love affair with felting.

It began with a simple attempt to unvent a moebius basket- which resulted in this:



An item which looks somewhat like a large, floppy shoe, but in reality comfortably holds a cake of yarn and WIP. I made it somewhat differently from the book using short rows, so it is long and rectagular, not round. I have a few other ideas for different shapes banging around in my head, but I can't knit as quickly as I can think them up!

One thing I love about Cat Bordhi's book is her clear and thorough instructions for wet felting things. I have felted the occasional thing, but not in the washing machine, because I didn't want to wreck it. (Either the machine or the item!) After following the instructions to felt a little wallet, I made this:



Yeah, I picked up a needle felting kit too- and I can't believe how much I love it! Which is great, because I hate intarsia, but I like having motifs and pretty things added here and there.

Next, I felted a little disc of knitting, thinking I would make a set of coasters. It turned out a little large for a coaster, but being wool it will be great for a hot pad or just a pretty accent:



This was done with Lopi, which produces an unbelievable and unexpected halo!

Next, I knitted up a moebius basket, a la Cat Bordhi:



(pre-felting)

This one was done with Berroco Peruvia Quick, and it took a little more than one ball. I think this yarn is a little thicker than two strands of Cascade, which is what is recommended, but it sure felted up like a dream.

I'm going to needle felt a swirl on this.



Did you know it's actually kind of hard to blow up a balloon inside a basket? I think I'll let the kids have the pleasure of popping it when it's dry. Wait, no, there's only one balloon... two of them... how could I think that would end well?

There are going to be more, many more of these. How can I not give them to the boys' teachers for the end of the year gift? They will love this! However, I think the next moebius adventure upon which I will embark will be The Bum Basket.  My kids have each noisily requested one- well, really, one of those and one of everything else in the book. Time to get knitting!

The Perfect Crummy Fleece

Last fall, we had a local shearer bring a huge assortment of beautiful fleeces from all kinds of different sheep and alpacas. My attention was caught by a particular one, from a rarer breed of sheep- a California Red. This breed was developed in California by crossing a Barbados Blackbelly sheep with an American Tunis. The Blackbelly is a hair breed which is red. The California Red lambs are born reddish and lighten to white or oatmeal over time. I looked the fleece over, and although it was very greasy and dirty, I was utterly charmed by the way the sample washed up into a creamy, warm white and felt so very soft against my skin.

I also picked up a tan alpaca fleece with both the blanket and second cut. I decided to card and spin the alpaca with the CR fleece, thinking it would only make the yarn softer. However, I had to use the second cut of alpaca, since the blanket cut was too long to card with the CR. This meant that it didn't really make the finished yarn softer. I was happy with it, but I only did about 5 or 6 oz altogether. This was that yarn:

It was a nice 2-ply, if a little coarser than I had hoped. I didn't have serious problems with it, besides it being a little neppy and shedding a million little bits.

My problems started when I decided to spin the California Red all by itself. Since the alpaca wasn't making it softer, and it was tan, not white, why bother with it? Besides, I wanted to see how this fleece would behave in a pure yarn. So I washed more of the fleece, and started carding with my hand cards.



I began to realize what was lurking under the grease and dirt.
This is a picture of a typical, nice lock:


Lots of crimp, springy, soft, white. But I found there are also a lot of locks like this:



Longer, wavy and not crimpy, lots of kemp, quite coarse, and darker. I think these sections are a throwback to the Blackbelly ancestry. Besides these long sections, there are some of these:



I would just chalk these up to short cuts, but the odd thing about them is that they are clearly a different color and crimp pattern again.

Those parts aren't annoying in themselves. I just have to relax and let myself toss them out. The worst part was discovering that a lot of the fleece- ok, most of it- has sun damaged tips which break and scatter and create neps while carding. Also, there seems to be a lot of, well, gunk, that won't wash out and is hard to get out any way at all. Some of it is sticky and is probably suint, some of it is dry and looks like dandruff, and a lot of it is vegetable matter. And there is a LOT of it, especially the dry stuff. So much that it is messy to card, hard to draft, and frustrating to spin.

I thought if I drum carded it, that might help, so I made a batt or two- carefully trimming off the damaged tips (with the help of a friend! Thank heavens for that!) and cleaning out the VM as much as possible. There were fewer neps, but it was still frustrating. I tried spinning it from the lock, opening and flicking them a little, which helped reduce the creation of the neps, but it was not fun. Spinning should be fun, right? And I was ready to wind off the bobbin of singles I'd managed to make and pretend that this experiment never happened. Except I'm so damned stubborn.

I picked up my hand cards again, wondering why I was having such a crappy time of it when it wasn't that bad last fall, and decided I would fill my second bobbin, ply it, and wash my hands of the whole affair. I carded another rolag or two and began to spin, when suddenly the wool started drafting like butter! I watched slubs dissolve in the drafting zone and neps popped off on their own. Whaaaa?? And then I remembered that I had been carding some of my new white alpaca fleece and hadn't cleaned out my carders.

Alpaca. I was carding with alpaca. The tan alpaca may have not made the fleece softer, but it made it smoother. Much smoother. I couldn't believe the little bit of alpaca on my cards had made such a huge difference, but it had. Like adding a little dab of butter to the pan of eggs, it does an almost invisible but effective job. So now I am adding a little white alpaca to the blend, and I am much happier with this project. This alpaca blanket is short enough that I don't have to cut it or anything to blend it in.



I'm glad I figured out this fleece. I am learning to let go of wanting control of the fleece, and to use every last little bit, and to stop trying to be a perfect spinner. It's ok that one ply of the yarn won't have alpaca and the others will. (I keep telling myself that). Yesterday I decided to ply up a hank of yarn, wash it and see whether it is worth proceeding with more singles, because I have given myself permission to ditch the fleece and the singles if it isn't.



I love this yarn. It's a 3 ply, and super smooshy, poofy, springy, and soft: the soft I had envisioned having when I picked out this fleece. I'm once again excited about making myself a sweater from this fleece. No, it's still not perfect and there still are neps that I have to pull out, but I am happy enough that I can keep going... and just keep my vacuum handy.

Knitting Update

Wow, it has been a busy week- I can't believe it's Friday, and I didn't post a single thing all week. Yikes. I engaged in several fiber adventures, and one of them is definitely something I will write about... but not today. I have a short post with some knitting, and I think tomorrow I will discuss The Crummy Fleece and What I Am Going to Do About it. (Not the alpaca fleece, but another one I have.)

When I went out to the alpaca farm, I came home with a hank of sock weight yarn as well as the fleece. I have so many projects on the go, that I assured myself and everyone that it would be ages before I could hope to get to it and knit a pretty wrap... but then I kept thinking about it and thinking about it. Before I knew it, I was mentally flipping through my stitch dictionaries and choosing between a couple of different summery lace patterns... and casting on "just to see" how it would look...

It looks like this:



Pretty, no? I have done enough beach walks to know that, at least in Canada, they are not necessarily pleasant without a little something to wrap up in. What could be better than to beachcomb in a shell lace wrap?

Once I got going, I couldn't stop. Well, I had to find out if half the ball really was going to be enough for half the wrap, right? And I was a little worried there, because before it's blocked, it doesn't look like it will be.



But it is. 30 inches long for each half will do. Yay!

An Alpaca Adventure

Yesterday I packed the boys in the car and we went to visit Leslie at A to Z Alpacas. (Her website is www.atozalpacas.com). It was a gorgeous day for a drive- not too sunny and not windy or raining either. (When does this happen? It was perfect!) We saw many old farmhouses and leaning barns along the way, as well as plenty of horses, cows, and even a flock of sheep. Keeping an eye out for them kept the boys busy!

We headed into a part of Alberta I have really only seen from the highway, and I was glad to go and explore. I love the way the landscape rolls and opens up at the top of every hill; shelves of cloud reveal every shade of white, gray and blue as they rise above the horizon and then fall behind. I regret that I could not take a picture of it; even if I had stopped, there is no way a simple camera could capture what the prairies are.

When we arrived at the farm, we were greeted by the sight of dozens of sheared alpacas grazing on the south pastures.

I found out later these were all the females, as they begin shearing them the first in the spring. Leslie had invited us for lunch, and after we ate, we went out into the pasture to look at the alpacas closer. We visited the females first, to check if any of them were in labor. I was kind of hoping, but none of them were, so we went to see the little cria who was born two days ago.



He was so cute! And quick. Leslie tried to catch him for us to see, but he was too fast.



Curious, but wary.

We saw an older cria, who was a surprise birth last winter.



We went down towards the yearlings to find Alley and Zaiden, who were bottle-fed and tame. They actually come when you call them!



Here come the alpacas!



Benny met Zaiden:



Nope! Too close!



Ian made friends with them quicker (I guess being taller than them does help!)



Benny was a little worried, but petted Zaiden a little:



And then they became best buddies!



The alpacas were all quite curious about us and came to see us when we showed up, although only Alley and Zaiden let us pet them.





Zaiden, the one facing the front, has such a funny grin! He looks like an amiable boy- which he is.




After we were finished seeing the yearlings, we stopped by the chicken coop. I have an affection for chickens (probably because I have never had to clean up after them) and find them beautiful.





We even found some eggs!



They were also colourful.





Benny! No! Those came straight from the chicken's butt!

All the female alpacas had been sheared, and they were beginning on the males. They do the yearlings last. We got to see this male get sheared:



He was pretty reluctant.

They blow the alpacas first to remove a lot of the dust and any vegetation:



Then they are tethered for shearing. This is done so the alpaca and the shearer don't get cut during the process.



The fleece is graded as it is taken off. The desireable blanket cut, which has the best fiber and the least guard hairs, is kept in one pile, and the second and third cuts piled separately. Leslie also goes through the fleece and removes any second cuts in it by hand. They are picky about which fleeces they sell to spinners.

After the shearing, Leslie brought several bags of fleece inside for me to look at. I really was amazed at how clean they were. They really put a lot of effort into getting the bulk of the dust out of the fleece. I was able to pull out my spindle and test spin some right there. We had a good chat about crimp, staple length, and what spinners are looking for in a fiber. I am no expert in that, but I was impressed by the quality and selection of these fleeces. And they're clean!

This is the one I chose:



It's a nice, bright white, crimpy, with a shorter staple. I'm planning to blend it with some of the other luxury fibers I have, so I was looking for a shorter fleece. It has some longer parts too, but with the fleece starting out this clean it's going to be no problem separating out what I want.

All in all, it was a great day, and lots of fun. The boys just had a blast, and I can't wait until we can make another trip out there. It was well worth the drive.



Goodbye, Alpacas!

Lace and Flowers

I am so excited! Tomorrow I will be visiting Leslie at A to Z Alpacas with the boys. I can't wait to see the shearing and there is one cria. I'll be sure to bring my camera and blog about it! In preparation for our day trip, I made a couple of pans of blueberry muffins:



Yummy! And yes, we already dove into them while they are still warm and have perfect, crunchy tops. I like to add lemon juice and zest to flavor them, but I'm out of lemons at the moment, so I added cardamom instead, and they are really good.

I started knitting the cabled four-ply into a nice lace pattern:



It's a sort of modified fishtail lace. I decided to add the garter stitch welts which flow in the opposite direction from the eyelets. I think I'll have to chart this out and write some instructions for a scarf or neckwarmer! I like the 4-ply, but I think I'll stick with the 3-ply. I have dyed up gobs of the fleece (I haven't actually weighed how much, but I think I must have a pound by now) and I am deciding whether to make a blanket or the Petal Cardigan from Knitty, or maybe something else entirely. If I do the cardigan it will mean more swatching, though, because even with all the swatches I've done, I haven't done simple stockinette!

I realized I was going to need a lot more spindles for this project, and really light ones too. I wondered if it would be not that hard to actually make my own spindles, so I got some dowels and toy wheels. First I tried out a top whorl with a hook. It ended up terribly unbalanced and I hated it. I decided the problem was poor hook placement, and that I don't have the patience or whatever to deal with trying to find the precise center of a dowel, so I tried a low-whorl with a groove. It worked almost perfectly! So well that I have made 2 more, just adjusting the placement of the groove so the new ones hardly wobble at all.



This is great, because I have an awful lot of fleece to spin, and quite a few more dowels and wheels. This way I don't have to try to make plying balls, and I can put off my decision about how many plies I need for a while. Also, my top whorls are free to spin other things, though most of my spindles are dressed up in something...





Just a couple of the wobbly ones are empty. They're better for heavier singles, which force them to behave themselves and stop throwing themselves on the floor. I call them spindle tantrums... it can't have anything to do with how I spin...

I have more rovings to dye up. This batch will have BFL, Corriedale, BFL/silk, Merino/bamboo, and a little Wensleydale. I also have some soysilk to dye up, and I'm going to try out some milk fiber as well. There should be a lot done by the end of the week!

Spring is surely on its way, with all kinds of fresh green things popping up everywhere! It was gloriously warm- I think we topped out at 25C, which encouraged all things green, so I took my camera outside and captured what I could.



Our May Day tree



A crocus coming up in our north-facing front yard



Yet more crocuses in our flowerbed



A daylily is starting to grow (this is about an inch high)



More daffodils on the verge of opening



And some yellow trumpets blowing.

Hurray for spring!