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September 24, 2006
Knitting machines and self striping yarn
Thursday night, my knitting machine arived in time for me to play with it this weekend. My fabric had its share of flaws and dropped stitches, but I was happy with it. Besides, all I'm going to do with the machine is make up fabric to paint my yarn. I started with Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool (I wasn't about to use handspun until I was adjusted to the machine.) I knit up two 'blanks', one long one that will be the main color of the bag, and a smaller one that will make up the design. Below are the picures of the process. They should be pretty self-explanitory. :-)
I'm still working on my technique to get the color more even, but I'm working on it. I think I should have let it dry a bit before steaming, but I'm more than happy with the results.
On Friday, I went to Grinny Possum to meet Nathan, a LiveJournal friend who's also a spinner. We spun with Ann for a few hours and began brainstorming ideas for a group of younger-ish spinners. It's just so nice to be able to spin with other people. I really love it.
I'd been spinning some of my commerical cashmere that I bought from Little Barn Inc. It's so soft and white, I should have known it was too good to be true. Nathan pointed out it was faux cashmere, despite the 100% cashmere on the bag's label. At home, I did the burn test to find out for sure. And yes, it melted. I wrote the customer service address this morning, expressing my displeasure with the labeling. (Not to mention that I paid $40 for a pound of synthetic fiber.) I recieved an apology for the mistake in less than two hours on a Sunday morning. Plus, I have been offered to swap 4 ounces of fine cashmere for my 8 once bag of fake cashmere. I will take them up on that offer. I'm only going to send one since I've spun up some of the fiber. I was impressed with the response time. I'll do business with them again, but I may be a bit wary in the future.
Posted by Holly at 10:31 PM | Comments (1)
September 17, 2006
I hit the jackpot!
No, no, I didn't win the lottery, but for a fiber whore enthusiest, it sure feels like it. Lori, my former neightbor, announced that she had a present for me when I called her to find out when I should head over to her place. Being that she's an artist, I figuired that maybe she'd painted something for me.
I was wrong.
Lori took me out to her car to get my gift out of her trunk. It was dark and all I saw were some tied up garbage bags, and a box. She opened one of the bags and told me to feel. The bag was full of raw alpaca fleece!
So were the other bags.
So was the box.
In all, she'd obtained roughly 25 pounds of raw alpaca in a range of colors... FOR FREE! An artist that she's modeling for said it wasn't going to be used and to take as mch as she liked. She got as much has she could fit in the trunk, and he told her to get more the next time she came out!
She doesn't knit or spin, but took it, knowing that I do. The only stipulation? I have to make her something from it, either a scarf or some alpaca bed socks. I think I can handle that. :-) There are about 4 or 5 good fleeces with long staple length. A lot of the others seems to be second cuts. Not too bad! I'm going to send them off a few at a time to be processed into roving, to spin and to possibly sell.
I've been spinning quite a bit. I dyed some austrailan wool and hand carded it with a bit of tussah silk and firestar. I made two lighter skeins with more white and less navy, and a darker skein with more navy and less white to compliment. Here are a few pictures of the process:
I've also been dying more. I've dyed some more of the Australian wool, to make a sock yarn (I think) with it. And I dyed some of the Ukrainian lace yarn a lovely raspberry color. My next dying experiment? After getting the new Spin Off yesterday, I'm inspired by the self striping yarns created by machine knitting , painting thing in stripes, only to unravel and reknit the yarn. So much so that I bought a knitting machine on eBay. But until I get that, you'll have to settle for these pictures instead:
Posted by Holly at 11:04 PM | Comments (0)