It’s nasty out there I tell you, mean and nasty! Wind directly from Siberia – I didn’t even stop to take extra pix for you to describe the misery just right, here’s my oversize hamsters coming in for breakfast.
I’m force feeding the woodstove as fast as I can and moved the wheel over to ply that braid I spun the other day. Plus some odd singles I had sitting around, purpose forgotten.
First I needed to make an extra lazy kate however, for my weaving bobbins converted for spinning, since their center diameter is too small for my regular kate. Good thing we have this gizmo, also used for making all the holes in my blending hackle.
First I thought it had frozen to death, but it sped up as I let it run a bit. Voila, one piece of wood and some nails, good enough to go. Yes, I’ll make a base for it, so I won’t have to clamp it to the table, but never mind that now. We also don’t need to mention that I’m officially too old to read a rusty drill in a dark garage without my glasses, so the holes are too big… I can find another piece of wood I’m sure. It still worked with wobbly nails and no clamps, at least for transferring the singles onto a proper bobbin on the wheel.
Bottom of the board with indents for nail heads and all
The one on the right was lovely as fiber and then I did a really poor job of spinning it. Don’t like it much as plied yarn either, but I guess sometimes that’s the way of it.
All done and washed. The Rambouillet is incredibly elastic and squishy, I don’t know if the former is a good thing in yarn, but I love the feel of stretching and bouncing it. I’ll spin the other braid in the same way.
And well, it was also a good day to dye, as I had enough to try a bit of snow dyeing. More on that later!
Guess who doesn’t care about the weather…
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Tvindevejr
Ja, jeg behøver jo ikke fortælle jer danskere hvordan vejret har været de sidste par dage, så jeg har bare tvangsfodret brændeovnen og ellers flyttet rokken tilpas tæt på, så jeg kunne få tvundet det jeg spandt forleden.
Jeg vidste jeg havde nogen 3 mm tykke søm, der lige passede i de små, billige spoler, men havde overvurderet min egen evne til at gætte diameteren på boret; så det blev lidt vakkelvorent, da jeg lige hurtigt ville lave en spoleholder. Men jeg fik da flyttet garnet over!
Singlen til højre er jeg meget skuffet over i forhold til fibrene, og jeg er ikke blevet gladere efter tvinding, men sådan kan det jo gå. Jeg kan vel bruge det til et eller andet en dag, måske bare bamsefyld.
Rambouillet garnet er helt utroligt elastisk, jeg ved egentlig ikke om det er en god ting, men jeg kan godt lide følelsen, så jeg regner med at spinde den anden fletning på samme måde.
I haven’t been spinning since my fat singles adventure, but this week I thought I’d get out two braids of Rambouillet that I bought summer 2011 from CJ Delights.
I’m hoping they will take up less space as yarn, although braids are actually quite dense, but I also decided to use them for practising consistensy, so I’m just spinning and spinning from one end to the other, planning to make a chain-ply. I’ve got 3 batches of Targhee from Spunky Eclectic that are destined for the same fate.
Normally I’ve been able to put 100 g on my small bobbins, as you can see I’ve started to pack it down one end, but then I realised I had nearly 60 g of fiber left and gave up, started a new bobbin with the rest. I hope this means my yarn is getting fluffier = more yardage, but I’m not really organized enough to have kept solid records of everything I make.
And then today I read Woolwinding’s review of “The Spinner’s book of Yarn Designs” and was tempted to buy that and use my assorted fibers for something fun – but there’s time. Another time. (although the page says they only have 6 left, and not, as they usually add “…but more on the way”. ACK – what if they get sold out. Sigh. You have no idea what my Amazon wish list looks like. I need some cash. Wanna buy yarn?
Lageroprydning
Spinder Rambouillet denne uge, som jeg købte for et par år siden. Sådan et par fletninger er egentlig ret kompakte, men jeg håber alligevel at jeg kan frigøre mere lagerplads ved at lave fiber om til garn. Så jeg bruger de her købte, færdigfarvede fibre til at øve mig i ensartet spinding.
Jeg var lidt overrasket over, at spolen var så fuld kun halvvejs gennem den første fletning, normalt har jeg let kunnet have 100 g på, men her er altså kun godt 60g, så jeg valgte at starte en ny frem for at kæmpe med at få det til at være der. Jeg kunne sikkert godt, men jeg har jo rigeligt med spoler.
Det er dejlig blød og bamset fiber, men det er jo også en art merino. Minder måske egentlig lidt mere om Polwarth? Det er længe siden jeg har spundet Polwarth.
Sometimes I need to zone out from real life, and now apparently is one of those times. So instead of being busy doodling in my repurposed books (I’m planning for 7 with each its own theme, but I only have 5 so far) I’ve been reading and not much else. These breaks are usually very univited, I’d just figured out that acrylic paint doesn’t work in the books because the pages stick together and my promarkers don’t work well on gessoed pages. Doh. I’d tested them on acrylic only… So I splurged on a little box of pastel chalks just yesterday to force the flow, but alas, it’s not how it works. My body reminds me not very kindly, that I’m not really in contol 😉
Pause fra mine hjemmelavede skitsebøger og pause til at læse. Trænger nogen gange til at bare stene og lade verden gÃ¥ sin egen gang uden mig… Ikke af lyst, for jeg vil egentlig hellere fortsætte med mine projekter, men kroppen tager over og bestemmer noget andet.
Her op til og i weekenden har jeg læst “Labyrint” af Kate Mosse og “Bogens folk” af Geraldine Brooks. Nu venter “De ti herskere” af Christian Mørk, “I giftefærdig alder” af Sharon Moss samt “den ubundne sjæl” af Michael Singer og pÃ¥ biblioteket er bestilt “Sepulchre” af Kate Mosse, “The Map of the Sky” (den er vist ikke oversat endnu, men “Tidskortet” er) af Felix Palma og “Bird by Bird” af Anne Lamott. SÃ¥ hÃ¥ber jeg at jeg har nok til jeg igen dukker frem af tÃ¥gen! 😉 Jeg skal jo i gang med at lege med mine nye pastelkridt som jeg købte i gÃ¥r, dels fordi jeg ikke kunne fÃ¥ de sprayflasker jeg gik efter (som man bl.a. kan bruge med skabeloner til at lave art journaling baggrunde), dels fordi jeg har fundet ud af at akrylmaling ikke duer i bøger, siderne klistrer sammen, og mine fine dyre tusser tegner ikke sÃ¥ godt ovenpÃ¥ gesso. Doh. Jeg havde kun testet dem ovenpÃ¥, ja akrylmaling!!
***
Jeg har et spørgsmål til de danskere som evt. læser: vokspapir, hvor finder man det? Det skal være mere vokset end bagepapir, altså så man kan bruge det som mellemlæg ved sider som ikke er helt knastørre uden at det hænger i.
Originally this post was drafted to show and talk about “designing” yarn. (see how I had to put that into quotation marks, so as not to come off too presumptuous 😉 ) And then as usual I got sidetracked from the yarn ideas I had so they still live in my head.
The first yarn that I “designed” shortly after I started spinning, 4 shades of merino blended on my homemade hackle
The funyarns are figments of my imagination, not so much planned for or even suitable for knitting, but spun just because. Because the colour concept appealed to me, to resemble something I’d seen (such as the half done rowan tree yarn), or just to experiment. I won’t call them art yarns, because I’m just not that good. It’s not that I don’t enjoy spinning yarn for a purpose, but it’s a different joy. Funyarns are really more like painting.
So anyway, I’ve spun almost a pound of wool in the last couple of days for absolutely no purpose at all, it’s colourful and random, so I thought I’d kick off this category now and keep adding once in a while.
It started out with a challenge on Ravelry, theme “Safari” (which incidentally was my own suggestion). I had a couple of batts that I bought a long time ago before I knew the difference between a real woolen prep and “just” combed top blended on a drumcarder, still running perpendicular. One is not better than the other, just different spinning, different purpose. I thought one set of batts looked quite like a piece of rainforest, so off I went spinning a fat single.
I have all sorts of things going through my head while I see the fiber run by my hands, goes something like this: “I wonder if I should have included some pink tufts for orchids in a jungle, no, all that yellow is enough. So would this resemble the amazonas rainforest or this turquoise, where do they have those mineral lakes in old sinkholes, Indonesia? Hmmmm, this is turning out a bit muddy and earthy, a bit Mexican inspired colouring with the strong greens and yellows? Do they have jungles too? I should make some South American themed colourways. And Chinese inspired drawings (oh, don’t be silly, not in this lifetime. I thought you wanted to be the new Otto Frello?). And definitely look up something on Celtic symbols as well as old Scandinavian. And do a palette of the garment colours used in various times in Europe for some project. But something oriental would be cool too.” Yes, that IS pretty much what the inside of my head looks like more often than not.
Turned out much more blended than I wanted, I liked the batts better than the yarn, but such is the way of those things. In any case I decided to spin ALL the batts to practise getting that thickness. Whoosh! All gone, one empty box. And the red and purple with gold thread took me on a trip to India, so around the world in a few hours isn’t half bad, is it? I must be getting better at it too, since each yarn ended up shorter than the previous colour. I don’t normally thwack my yarns, because I don’t want the halo, but these got a severe beating because I wanted them to felt a bit and bloom as much as possible.
Bollywood collection 😉
Which leads me to my second mission: fiber stash bashing. When I first started out I bought all sorts of random stuff to try out, then I had a bad spell and didn’t spin for something like 8 months and now I just want something completely different. I still love to OGLE all the pretties that are offered for sale on Etsy, but I do love to make my projects from scratch, i.e. dyeing my own fiber. I also need more space for my paint supplies now, so I’m going to try to spin all that random fiber and in the future keep just a stock of undyed fiber in a few varieties that I like.
This was originally named Sea & Sand when I dyed it – but it actually could go in the savanna category all spun up, yeah? Smallest braid spun this week also.
In an ideal world and a bigger house I’d have all the yarns and all the fibers (and all the paints, inks, papers, cameras, horses, greenhouses and…). But then I do like my sleep, so I think the current plan is probably the wisest. 😀 .
Spindehalløj
Jeg kunne godt tænke mig at tømme lidt ud i mit fiberlager, så jeg kun har ufarvede fibre i mine yndlingssorter liggende. Dels mangler jeg plads til andre hobbyting, dels fordi mit fokus har ændret sig lidt siden jeg begyndte at spinde.
Og da jeg har rigeligt med strikkeprojekter pÃ¥ venteliste, vil jeg bruge den næste tid pÃ¥ at spinde garn som ikke har noget formÃ¥l, men bare er skægt, har en flot farve eller fordi jeg har en tosset “design”ide.
SÃ¥ jeg startede med en fletning jeg selv havde farvet, i superwash BFL. Bagefter kom turen til Ravelrygruppens februarudfordring “Safari”, og da jeg var godt i gang med at øve tyk single tog jeg lige de resterende batts i den kasse fra samme leverandør, købt den gang jeg ikke kendte forskel pÃ¥ rigtigt karteflor og kæmmede fibre kørt en gang pÃ¥ kartemaskine for at blande farverne let. Det gik let og gesvindt, og hvert garn blev lidt kortere end det forrige, sÃ¥ lidt bedre til at spinde tykt blev jeg da, selvom det ikke er super-bulky.
Normalt tæver jeg ikke mit garn, for jeg kan bedst lide det glat, men singlerne her har fået rigtig mange bank, så de kunne filte lidt og puffe så meget op som muligt.
So I promised this would be knit-week and then I haven’t had any more show and tell here. Such is life. I did knit, but not as much as I hoped. To prove that I have indeed been doing something, I’ll share my tada! list with you:
Got the plant dyed yarns out and started on the first planned project – using the oldest ones since the new ones really should sit until next year so I can see how much they fade in storage.
Finished priming one of my homemade sketchbooks, working away on the others, one 2/3 done, one just started.
Started doodling in the sketchbook.
Did some painting 2 days in a row even.
Read some books, some nonfiction as well as “The Sunne in Splendour” by Sharon Perman
Walked the dog in the forest quite a lot, as per request. AND tested the pocket camera I was given.
Started spinning some fiber I dyed last summer, just recreational spinning, no project in mind. Another one lined up for a challenge.
Made a few stencils out of laser transparencies which I was given a whole package of (100). The circular cutter came in handy among other things!
Baked swedish buns “rÃ¥gsiktskakor”. Yum.
Woven almost half of the ends on my sweater dress and wore it.
Decluttered my desk.
Found a foam block and the fiber that I wanted for some needlefelting.
Aktiviteter
Jeg havde jo lovet at holde strikkeuge, men det er ikke meget jeg har fået rapporteret her. Jeg har strikket en smule, men ikke så meget som planlagt. Så nu vil jeg i stedet kede jer med ugens tada! liste, ikke at jeg holder op i weekenderne, men jeg trænger til at lige huske hvad jeg egentlig har nået.
Rodet lidt i mit plantefarvede garn, taget et par nøgler frem til mit første planlagte projekt og strikket nogen prøver.
Færdig med at grunde den ene af mine hjemmekogte notesbøger, 2 mere på vej.
Skriblet en smule i bogen.
Malet en smule, endda 2 dage i træk.
Læst et par fagbøger færdig og et par romaner, “The Sunne in Splendour” af Sharon Perman og “Taxo Luma” af Lars Muhl (meh).
Taget på hundeture i skoven og testede det brugte lommekamera jeg har fået.
Begyndt at spinde noget BFL jeg farvede i sommer, ikke med noget særligt formål, bare afslapning. Og fundet mere uld frem til en udfordring på Ravelry.
Kreeret skabeloner af overhead folie som jeg fik forærende, cirkelkniven kom lige til god anvendelse igen.
Bagt svenske “rÃ¥gsiktskakor”.
Syet nogen af enderne pÃ¥ min sweater, damn det er kedeligt….
Ryddet op på mit skrivebord.
Fandt en skumblok og de fibre jeg vil bruge til mit første nålefilteprojekt.
First I thought it had frozen to death, but it sped up as I let it run a bit. Voila, one piece of wood and some nails, good enough to go. Yes, I’ll make a base for it, so I won’t have to clamp it to the table, but never mind that now. We also don’t need to mention that I’m officially too old to read a rusty drill in a dark garage without my glasses, so the holes are too big… I can find another piece of wood I’m sure. It still worked with wobbly nails and no clamps, at least for transferring the singles onto a proper bobbin on the wheel.
The one on the right was lovely as fiber and then I did a really poor job of spinning it. Don’t like it much as plied yarn either, but I guess sometimes that’s the way of it.
