Wool For Brains

These are the marker pair. When I see these on top of the box that collects the dirty socks I know that it’s time to wash. These are handspun merino, silk and camel and they are the “best” socks. If he gets that far down the sock basket then there’s not much else left except shop socks.

 

This is what an average Casa WFB sock wash looks like. There are 15 pairs here and that about fills the box that sits next to the laundry basket. I could push them down and fit a few more pairs in but then I’d have trouble drying them. All the handknit socks go in here, the Opal would go happily through the wash with the rest of the clothes but I’m not risking having the handspun ones in with the shirts (we only have one pair of superwash handspun socks). It’s easier to keep all the socks together rather than having the non-knitting sockwearer determine whether his socks are superwash or not. “How long does it take to wash that lot?” I hear you ask. I timed it and it takes 40 minutes. The last time we bought a washer I made sure that it had a hand wash wool programme and if I never use it for anything other than socks it’s still worth it. I just don’t do “hand wash only” (and if you’re wondering how I wash all those shawls then bear in mind that I’m a process knitter, I give them all away)

None at this time

I have a post half written about my being a low budget knitter with expensive tastes and maybe one day I’ll get to finish writing it, but not today. This would be a good example because there’s a big gap between what I like and what I’m prepared to pay for. I’m thinking about the next sweater and I’ve been looking at possible yarn choices for Rogue. I don’t stash sweater yarn (well ok, “apart from the SirdarIndigowhichwasonsale and the lambswool/alpacathatwascheap, I don’t stash sweater yarn”) so it needs a purchase. This unassuming ball of off white yarn cost £4.80 which I wouldn’t have winced at except that it’s only a 50g ball. There is no yardage on the label but a bit of internet research says that I have here a grand total of 72 yards. Don’t get me wrong, it is lovely yarn, soft and cuddly from a named breed (BFL), worsted spun in Yorkshire, but I don’t want to be paying £100 for the yarn for a sweater. I bought the one ball although a two inch piece off the end would have done me because I just wanted to take it apart.

It’s the first time I’ve tried to reverse engineer yarn. The target is a three ply with 10 wraps per inch and 7 twists per inch. I worked out how many turns of the wheel I needed at what ratio and set off thinking slow thoughts and how a three ply needs less twist than a two ply. The only problem with this is that I am not yet good enough to be a technical spinner. It involves counting and consistency and that’s just not me. I tried hard and got the first sample. Too thin and not enough twist (it looks thick but that’s only because it’s pouffy).

The second sample was made with no counting because I’m obviously no good at that. It’s my usual ratio of 15:1 but treadling slower and drafting faster than for sock yarn. This is the first time I’ve made a three ply other than by Navajo plying and there’s considerable room for improvement but I’m pleased with it. The first sample showed me that I was on the right track so I made a decent amount of this because there needs to be enough to knit a tension square. It’s slightly too thick (8 wraps per inch rather than 10) and too twisty (9 twists per inch rather than 7) but it’s good enough to knit with.

Here is the swatch, washed because sometimes I do learn from my mistakes, the bottom at £4.80 for 50g and the top at 90p for 50g (labour not included). There’s no mistaking which is which from a distance of under four feet because my spinning is not even enough for that. My yarn isn’t perfect but it’s good enough for a wearable sweater and to be honest I’ll forgive a lot just to get that deep richness of colour. There is a deep richness of colour, honestly, it was just very grey and dull here. when I took the photo. It feels lovely, the extra twist wasn’t so much that it’s made the yarn hard or wiry. The cost of the hypothectical sweater would be under £20 for BFL, worsted spun just outside Yorkshire.

One of my standard parental phrases is “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should” and it applies equally to fingers in noses and making a kilo of sweater yarn. I can do it but should I? If the choice was between DIY and a £100 yarn bill then it’s DIY but there’s this lovely lump of aran yarn on ebay and there is so much else that I want to spin. Decisions, decisions…

 

 

…but you just wouldn’t listen. They tell you that hearing voices is not a good thing but I have this little one that chimes in when I’m about to leap into something. You could call it the voice of experience or the voice of reason or the one that’s stopping you from having fun. It’s the one that’s thought things through and sees where this is going to end up. I should just listen to it rather than argue with it and tell it why it’s wrong. What it said here was I should fiddle with the stitch count on the last pattern repeat to increase it by three to match the edging repeat. That seemed like a good idea, I had a lot of time to think about it and it was easy so I did that. It then said that I needed to match the trees in the edging with the trees in the border. I agreed with this until I realised that I had to sit down and find out where to start the edging, rather than starting at line 1 right now this minute. It was easier just to argue that it wouldn’t matter and it would all come out right in the end. Guess what, it does matter and it isn’t going to magically look right. Who would have thought? Well I thought but was too idle to do the calculation. Now I get to rip it out AND study the chart.

This is the green shetland lace that previously looked like this. It still does look like that, at the top, then there is a bit with the bigger trees and the diamonds. I have a full ball and about a quarter of a ball left and I hope that’s enough for the edging. If not then I’ll be ripping it again because there is no more wool, I could spin it but there’s no chance of me hitting the same colour again. The voice has concerns about the wool but it’s more worried about what we are going to do when we hit the centre of the shawl and have to turn the corner. I have planned for this in as far as I’ve put a marker in after the last full pattern repeat. When I hit that marker I will then need to come up with a cunning plan that works with the number of stitches I have and also gets round the 90 degree bend at the bottom of the shawl. Edgings take ages to knit, I have plenty of time to think about it and take advice from my inner knitter. She thinks that graph paper would be a good idea rather than just winging it and hoping for the best and this time I think she’s right.

This is the founder member of BARF (Boys Against Raw Fibre) modelling his new cotton sweatshirt. It didn’t take a year to knit, most of the time was spent avoiding knitting it. It looks good, it fits and I’d knit another but not right now. This is knitted in Sirdar Indigo, if you wash it and tumble dry it, it shrinks in the same way as Rowan Denim but is considerably cheaper. I have no idea how many balls this took, I know that I ended up taking very nearly a ball out of each sleeve. This came about because I wanted to knit a jumper for my husband but he doesn’t wear them. I have no problems with being a process knitter but I did want to end up with something he would wear. He wears sweatshirts so the obvious choice thing to do was to make a sweater that was like a sweatshirt. It’s modelled on a favorite sweatshirt of his, except that the sleeves are nothing like I planned due to the droop shoulder. The back is slightly longer than the front, there is a seed stitch band around the bottom of the body, the side vents and the sleeves, the seed stitch is repeated in the collar and button band. That bit of seed stitch was the only relief to miles and miles of stockinette, which is why it spent so long in the naughty bag.

I must have knitted over 20 sweaters, cardigans and jackets but this is the first one that I’ve ever sewn up myself, all the others nave been consigned to the care of the making up fairy. This shows that I can sew up, I just prefer not to. It’s tedious in the extreme and very slow. I’d rather be knitting (or spinning, or cleaning the toilet) and the only reason for it being finished is that I cut my thumb and was unable to spin.

The 2007 sweater will probably be for me, possibly Rogue as a zipped cardigan. It will most certainly be from a pattern, I really appreciate the work that goes into a well written pattern given that my last major project didn’t have one. I don’t know yet whether I’ll buy the yarn or spin it, the advantage of buying it is of course that I can start knitting sooner. If I spin it I can pander to my expensive tastes at a more reasonable cost.

If anyone can think of a B for BARF that applies equally well to poor suffering non-fibre appreciating partners of both sexes please let me know. “Bodies” just didn’t do it for us and in this household the non-fibre people are both male. They have a shared joke, “How many sheep does mummy have to count before she falls asleep at night?” “One, because by the time she’s sheared it, washed it, spun it and knitted a jumper, she’s asleep” Ho,ho.

I am determined to spin my Suri alpaca fleece into something worth the effort. I know that the key to it is the fibre preparation and I think I’m getting there with washing the fibre and then combing it. Having got that bit sorted (or so I thought) I hit a problem with the spinning. I did try pulling the fibre through a diz into roving but it just fell apart. It’s soft, silky and crimpless and the individual fibres just don’t want to get pally with each other. When it is predrafted I can’t get it to hold together for long enough to get any twist in it but I have difficulty drafting from the big chunk of fibre. My cunning plan (not at all a rationalisation for buying more fibre) was to buy some properly prepared suri roving and spin that, the idea being that I can then get to grips with the spinning and forget about controlling the thick dollop of fibre.

Crown Mountain Farms to the rescue – they have baby suri alpaca as roving and now so do I (only four working days after I ordered it). It’s finer than mine because baby animals are smaller (a lesson learnt from the poopy lamb fleece) and very much better prepared. Like mine, it’s soft, silky, crimpless and will fall apart at the slightest provocation. I usually split top along its length into pencil wide sections and then predraft it but that idea had to be dropped very quickly. The fine fibre flew off everywhere, up my nose, in my hair, all over my clothes. Hugging the husband after spinning it was a really bad idea given that he was wearing a black T shirt. It’s so fine that when it flies away it goes up rather than down, I could see it hanging in the sunshine. I had to spin from the big chunk of roving, which is ok except when I had to change hooks and looked down to find that the fibre was on the floor and I just had a little whisp at the end of the single. I no longer see my prepared fibre as being fine and flyaway now that I’ve seen what fine and flyaway really means.
I have 4oz of fibre so don’t expect much knitting until it’s all done and plied, providing of course that my swollen thumb returns to normal. This is half of it posing with the international scale measure of a tic tac, it is 66g and about 310 yards. It would have been finished sooner had it not been for the sore thumb on Tuesday caused by the freak coffee machine accident. There might have been a second skein had I not attempted to push the same sore thumb through a microplane grater on Thursday morning. It’s thicker than Cherry Tree Hill Suri lace alpaca (which has 440 yards in 50g) but I don’t care. It’s by far and away the loveliest yarn I’ve ever made and I am very pleased with it. It could have done with more twist in the single and it wavers a bit in thickness but it’s soft and lovely. It didn’t break on plying which amazed me as some places were thinner than they ought to have been. I’ve had problems interesting learning experiences in dyeing alpaca yarn spun from fleece but alpaca yarn spun from commercial roving has always dyed like wool. Hopefullly this will too (yes, I will test a bit first, I can learn from my mistakes) and it will become turquoise to knit with the leftover Cherry Tree Hill yarn in the “Tropical Storm” colourway that I have. It’s not going to match in terms of thickness but if I get the colour close enough I don’t think that will matter too much. Until then I’m going to keep it close and pat it from time to time.

I have also been sewing up the demon sweater, it wasn’t a question of tearing myself away from the wheel as much as being unable to spin with my sore thumb. I have a sleeve seam and a side seam done from a morning’s work so don’t hold your breath.

Yes, we’ve all seen the pre and post shrinking photos on blogs. They are always funny, the way the huge big thing shrinks down to the tiny wee thing. I’ve seen so many but I still had my doubts about this, which is why I just made one of these to start with. I wanted to be sure that it wasn’t a waste of wool before I made the second. The first one has had three trips through the washer and drier followed by a wetting and a severe stretching for length.  I know that they look to be different colours but they are from the same skein and I have confidence that the second one will ultimately match the first. This is the felted bootees pattern made with some home dyed BFL 4 ply held double on a US 15 needle (10mm). It makes for a very sturdy fabric that will certainly be outgrown before it is worn out (although that is hardly difficult when the owner of the foot is six). I didn’t knit it all, my mum knitted about half of the first one and four inches on the second one on days when she came without her own knitting. On anything else this would have been a problem because I knit much more tightly than she does but once it has shrunk by half you can’t see any difference in tension. I have some iron on non-slip spots for the sole that will go on once the two bootees are a pair.

The only thing that’s stopping me making a pair of these for myself is the pointy heel. Has anyone used a pattern for felted slippers that has a more rounded heel? If you are too shy to comment you can email me at caroline at woolforbrains dot net (changing that “at” to an “@” and the “dot” to a “.”)  and I promise not to whip your legs with Elizabeth’s portfolio for lurking in the shadows.

(Tomorrow there will be some really lovely alpaca yarn, it’s wet now so it can’t come to the camera but by the time it’s had a day of my hot little hands patting it it will be fit for viewing)

I play on Tuesdays. I plan the week’s menus, shop for the week, pack it all away, make a coffee and then rest on my laurels the rest of the day. I may do laundry, I may pull out the settee and vacuum under it in a futile search for the bath plug, I may tidy up. I did all of these yesterday and the plan was then to spin some prepared suri alpaca. It all fell to pieces with the making of the coffee. DH loves the coffee machine but I have more of  a love-hate relationship with it. Yesterday morning it bit me, the cup for the grounds was stuck in the holder and as I tried to jiggle it out it pinched my thumb. It’s not deep but it bled and left a rough edge to catch the lovely smooth alpaca on. Bye bye to plan A(lpaca) then.

 

Plan B was to sew the buttons on the demon sweatshirt with my thumb stuck out at an angle. My cunning plan was to get the buttons on it before the sleeves were in thereby making myself fall in love with it and whip up enough enthusiasm for the massive sleeve shortening exercise. The major fault with this plan was that I bought the buttons on Saturday and had lost them by Monday. They definately weren’t under the settee (neither was the bath plug) so plan B(uttons) bit the dust. At this point it was time to move on to plan C, the shortening of the sleeves.

To the casual observer it may seem that the sweater has spent the last 10 days stuffed in a bag behind the settee but this has just been the planning stage. I have been giving a great deal of thought to the easiest way to remove 7.5″ from the length without altering the top (one of the sleeves is sewn in) or doing any more knitting. I’m all for doing this with the least possible effort. Grafting would seem the key, except for the little matter of the sleeve shaping. Whilst sitting at traffic lights I’d devised this scheme that involved cutting a chunk out, fiddling a few edge stitches and grafting the top and the bottom. This became a non starter when I realised that the increases were one stitch at each side every half inch, far too many stitches to fiddle. 

The sleeve had an inch at the bottom and two inches at the top with no shaping. I measured again and decided to whip 5″ off the top and 2.5″ off the bottom and it’s just too bad about that top seam. Whilst unpulling 5″ at 8 rows to the inch it struck me that one of the reasons for the droop shoulder is the weight of the sleeve. If I shorten the sleeve, I’m reducing the weight and it’s going to rise up by more than the length I chop off. I’m so glad that I thought this through before I did it. I tacked the sleeve seam back in, lassoed it onto the home-working husband and the sleeve….is the right length. That’s the right length without me shortening it by another 2.5″. Oh, so nearly a whoopsie. This was nearly plan C(ursing) rather than plan C(hopped).

You will note that the buttons are not sewn on. By the time I’d found them I’d had enough of the sweater and they’ll have to wait for another day. This time I put them in the bag with the sweater – how is that for radical thinking.

 

All questions in the comments to do with the winding of wool have had a personal answer (or they will have done after I’ve made a cup of tea), maybe another day I’ll look at the making of a skein and the various ways of then getting it into a ball.

The item in the middle looks like a down market version of what Black Rod uses to bang on the doors of Parliament. It’s a stick and it’s one of those useful things that you either know what it is or you have to have it explained to you. Intuitive it isn’t. Nostepinne it is. The item on the left is one of the pair of attachable handles for my grill pan. That’s what I used to make the centre pull ball on the right as I didn’t have a stick (I still don’t, someone is buying it me for Christmas after someone else has finished the wood). I have also used the handle of the wooden spoon although it’s a bit too long to be comfortable. I usually end up leaving some vital piece of kitchen equipment in an odd place in the house so I thought that it was better to move to a purpose built stick. I do have a ball winder but if I want to wind big balls or wind pencil roving then the old way is the best. It’s surprisingly relaxing too and the balls are really pretty, more appealling than the cakes that come off the ball winder.

(Although I’m happy for you to be amazed at the standards of cleanliness that allow me to use the handle from the grill pan as a wool winding tool I feel compelled to point out that the reason it’s still as clean as new is because it’s never been used)

 

I have a giggle whenever I think about an alpaca with ringlets. This is suri alpaca and as you can see it has 8″ long golden ringlets. This has been the sole exception to the “no fleece” rule and that was only because I couldn’t get hold of suri roving (try Crown Mountain Farms, they have some) It was not at all poopy, contained no vegetation and (obviously) did not reek of sheep dip. I love this with a passion but can’t yet spin it as it deserves. Every so often I return to this and see whether I’ve improved to the extent that I can spin a decent laceweight.

This is my latest effort, washed, combed and shown with a tic tac for scale (a cracking idea that I pinched from Eunny). Bits of it are good, bits are not so good and it’s all very hairy. It’s better than the last sample I spun though so I’m still progressing on the learning curve.

This fibre is teaching me so much and some of the lessons have been pretty painful. The point about preserving the lock structure was an early lesson learnt, the pile of glop that came out of the rinse water was a sad sight and it didn’t get better on drying. In my dreams I spin this into a soft and glowing laceweight and although I’ve managed a few yards of that, I’ve managed yards of wiry string too. It’s so nearly within my reach. I’ve tried spinning it raw, combing it and spinning it raw, washing it and carding it, washing it and combing it, washing it, dyeing it and, well you get the picture. Don’t anyone say that I haven’t learnt my lesson about sampling. I went back to my ultimate weapon of the drop spindle and produced something like reasonable yarn but as yet I can’t scale it up on the wheel. If it was a pile of poop all of the time I’d give up, but the good bits are so unbelievable gorgeous that I just keep on trying. The pressure is now on as I’ve signed up for a spinning class in January and I am determined that by then I will have shown this alpaca who is boss. It’s either that or I take the fluff with me and admit to my failure and inadequate fibre preparation skills.

I’ve looked at dog combs and I’ve looked at hair combs but I didn’t expect to find my latest fibre tools in the kitchen store. They are sold for holding onions while you slice them but they make a mean wool comb. They are stainless steel and are pointy sharp and they look as if they might be the solution to taming my alpaca. My aim is to spin to match Cherry Tree Hill Suri lace alpaca (I have some and I love it but I shan’t be buying any more at £16.50 a skein). In my dreams I can spin Kidsilk Haze too, but that dream is much further away because look at this, CTH on the top, wheel-spun WFB on the bottom. It’s not all like this but at least there’s hope.