Mi Contra Fa

Recent wool work

When I re-did my blog categories, I didn't include spinning. Really wish I had!

I bought a gallon Ziplock bag of Icelandic "black" (chocolate brown, but in sheep-speak this is black?) roving at Sheep and Wool this year.  It was blended fiber, tog (long hairs) and thel (soft wool) together.  Also bonus bits of straw in places for extra authenticity! (I kid.)  I actually spun it all!  I did about 33 yards of a thin yarn (maybe laceweight-ish? still trying to figure out what's what) then decided to do the rest thicker, for nalbinding.  Thicker is hard!  For one, it feels wasteful to put so much of the fluff into the yarn at once.  For the other, I have a harder time controlling the consistency. 

The thinner skein is on the left, with the other two being the thicker ones.  Each of those is about 25 yards.  Is that enough for a hat?  We will see.

Speaking of hats. The one I started with my first two-ply yarn had an unfortunate issue.  I put it down for a while, and when I came back to it, I could not remember what I was doing.  I put in a piece of two of yarn, took them out, put them in again, and then put it all down in frustration.  I haven't thrown it out or anything, but I'm not sure what to do with it next.

I got to play with my new combs:

On the left is the red-brown (moret? More sheep-speak) tog, some of it spun into thread.  It needs a lot of twist to stay together - the tog has very little crimp, so it's like spinning hair.  The chunk of fluff next to the tog is an intermediary bit of wool, the last stuff to draft off of the combs.  This sheep had red-brown topcoat, a light grey undercoat, and some dark black/brown hairs in between.  That bit of the wool had a lot of those hairs in it.  I don't know if it's worth it to separate from the thel in general or not, but I pulled it off as an experiment.  The little coils are the ....slivers? of thel drafted off of the combs. The coil on the bottom-left is the one that had the middle coat section removed.  The one on the top-right did not, and you can see that it's darker.

Way, way up in the top-right corner is what was left on the combs after drafting.  This did not seem like bad wool!  It definitely has more junk in it than the stuff that came off the combs, but it's not total crap.  I finger-spun a bit of it, and it seems like it will make an okay woolen yarn for... something.  Or maybe it becomes felt.  Dunno yet.

This was all done with the unwashed fleece.  This is the last that will be done with the unwashed fleece.  I learned at Stierbach's birthday that the strong smell comes from the ram urinating on himself so his scent is stronger for the ewes to detect.  Sexy.  Falen of Bright Hills recommended I get some Eucalan, which is an enzyme-based gentle cleansing agent, which should leave most of of the lanolin intact, while de-stinking it.  I will also try washing the yarn there on the spindle.  Not sure what will happen to the slivers there.  I suppose I may as well try washing them, although I suspect they'll need to be combed again afterwards.

Lock spinning

On a trip to Colonial Williamsburg, I picked up a small envelope of indigo-dyed Long-haired Leicester wool locks. I've gotten around to spinning them, in the hopes of having white (Wensleydale natural), brown (Romney natural) and blue hand-spun wool I could embroidery with.

I looked up information on spinning from the lock, and learned that you need to "flick open" the lock by flick carding it. A pet brush works as a flick carder in a pinch.  My tourist locks are a jumbled mess of shortish locks, so I am doing them in ones and twos, rather than in a big handful like in the video.  It takes me back to brushing dolls' hair - blue My Little Pony tails in particular. 

Things learned, in no particular order.

1. The indigo is not colorfast. My spindle and fingers turned blue. (So I either need to figure out how to fix it, or maybe this is not a good idea for embroidering with.)
2. For some reason, this was easier to do with the drop spindle than the grasped spindle.  Big ugly slubs with the grasped spindle.
3. I would have thought lock spinning would have been the ultimate way to do worsted.  If it is, worsted yarn looks much different than I expected. Still pretty fuzzy.
4. Part of me thought lock spinning would be simpler/easier than combing wool for worsted.  No, brushing out each individual lock is a big pain in the butt.  Want to get Viking combs at Sheep and Wool.
5. I can totally cheat and pick the fluff out of the brush and spin that, too.  It's not worsted when I do that, since the fibers are in all orientations.  Don't see much difference in the yarn? But maybe it would come out in the tensile strength.
6. The fluff is easier to spin than the locks.  Not sure if that is because I learned on fluffy roving? Or if fluffy carded roving is popular because fluff is easier to spin than combed wool.

Red Mountain Mead Hall and Night on the Town

Two events in two weeks! It's like some sort of record.

Red Mountain Mead Hall

This is a charming, laid-back event at a gorgeous 4-H camp in Isenfir.  The main hall had a large fireplace and a really rustic log-cabin look to it - really felt like a mead-hall. I took classes on Birka posaments and sprang, did my "Beowulf" performance as requested, and enjoyed a quite delicious feast. 

I tent camped, and there was frost on the ground both mornings.  Lessons learned: my old blue puffy sleeping bag is still hella warm.  Next time I put up the pyramid tent, try not putting the stakes in all the way.  Get the pole up, and then get the stakes down.  It was just unreasonably hard to get the pole up.  The only thing I can think that I did differently from when I first got the tent is that I drove the stakes all in.  (I remember I did not when I first used the tent, because I caught my gown on one of them and tore a hole in it.)

Night on the Town

I don't know if I've been to this local Lochmere event before.  Since I've been rationing my events (e.g., since kids), a mostly-fencing event doesn't usually rise to the level of me spending one of my 'chits' on it. Having just spent a full Fri-Sun in Isenfir, I didn't think I'd be able to make this one. But the weather was lovely and my husband was okay with it, so off I went.

Good Garb: I wore my oldest still-fitting violet tunic under my 7th cen. caftan, with appropriate jewelry and headgear. And you know what? I rocked it.  More and more these days, I am looking in the mirror and seeing things that fit well and look right, instead of seeing a to-do list of things to improve.  And at the event, a lady actually recognized what I was wearing down to the era, because she was interested in making the same sort of garb.  Yay more Anglo-Saxons!

Bardic: Lazy afternoon hanging with the bards.  Got some tips from Lord Wyn that might help my strained throat.  Warm up with humming, then open-mouth humming, then la-la-las.  Keep throat relaxed when singing.  I tried it and I think it helped.  I told "Thrymskvitha" here and at Red Mead Hall, and it went really well both times.  Comedy!

Spinning: I entered my spinning into the Novice A&S competition, since I've been doing it just since last year's Sheep and Wool.  And I won!  Woot.

 

 

Plying wool and spinning flax

Plying Wool

Inspired by a downright cold camping trip at Red Mountain Mead Hall, I thought I'd nalbind a hat.  Since I still have a bunch of roving, I thought I'd also spin the yarn for it.  Now, I don't want to be nalbinding this hat forever.  A thicker yarn would be okay.  But I have having trouble spinning as thick as I wanted!  So I decided to spin a sort of medium-ish weight (I suppose I should learn yarn-speak) and then ply it.  I did that today, for a small amount of yarn that will surely not be enough. 

It actually went fairly smoothly.  I spun the singles on a low whorl, so I plied on a high whorl.  I put the two skeins of singles, just pulled off the spindle, into a bowl to contain them, drew up the two yarns, and spun them together.  I didn't handle the high whorl spindle the same as I do for the actual spinning - I seem to have trouble doing grasped spinning with so little spindle up at the top.  But the yarns wanted to spin together, so I just had to help things along, doing a sort of supported spindle thing on my leg.

The two-ply yarn is now on the niddy-noddy waiting to be put into a hot soak.

Spinning Flax

I finally got around to spinning the flax I got at the Yorktown Victory Center.  Oy.  The long staple is hard to manage.  I'm spinning it finer than anything I've done so far, which is cool, but I'm having problems drafting.  I am using water, which helps.  Not sure how much of the problem is the fiber preparation (pretty rough) and how much of the problem is my inexperience.  Anyhow, did a bit and have put it down for the day - no use getting frustrated.

50 Yards of Yarn

That represents about fifty yards, more or less, of fine single-spun wool yarn.  I did it on my top-weighted drop spindle with a hook, purchased at MD Sheep and Wool.

I (awkwardly and probably inaccurately) wrapped it around a ruler to get the sett.  Looks like 24 ends per inch.

I am planning to weave some kind of small sample with it.  I got told at BotB that "of course, practically, you'll need to ply" yarn to use it for anything.  I am curious to see if this is true, or if I can use singles.  (Singles were certainly used in period, but my understanding is that they made good use of the hairy top coat of the sheep for warp threads.  Those were longer and stronger fibers than the fluffy undercoat that's sold as roving to handspinners.)  And I'd rather find out on a small sample than on a big project.

Colonial Spinning

We just got back from a trip to Williamsburg, VA, where they hold drop spindle classes some evenings.  I plopped down my $25 for a spindle and some roving, interested to see their take on it.

Spindle: Bottom weighted, no hook, but a sort of ring had been cut out of the spindle to help hold a half-hitch.

Leader: First time using string for leader, rather than trying to finger-spin some of the roving.  It's certainly faster and easier.

Dressing the spindle: First time I've seen or done this. Take the leader (or yarn, later) from the spindle, loop down around the end under the weight, then bring back up and secure at the top of the spindle with a half-hitch.

Spin: Gah, my spindle wanted to wobble all over the place. Not sure if it was me or it.  We spun clockwise and were supposed to wind on clockwise.  I thought I was winding on clockwise but was really doing it counter-clockwise.  It still mostly worked, although maybe that was why I was having some issues with getting enough twist.

Technique: The instructor taught the usual technique for drop spinning these days.  We started with spin, stop, let twist up; spin, stop, let twist up.  Then she taught drafting.  A few folks started to experiment with letting the spindle hang, but mostly we were doing 'park and draft.'

She mentioned a couple of colonial American depictions of drop spindles, and I tried to ask about their posture - did it look like what she was teaching us, or did it look like the 'hands apart' pose?  "That's linen," she said, which seems to be the go-to answer.

I tried my "spin and pull" method, which still kinda worked.  I think the twist can climb up too high into the roving, which makes it harder to draft, and then I pull too hard and snap the string.  But when it works, it works really well.

Edit: Video of hand-spinnders. Slavic? I don't recognize the language that's being sung.  This is the sort of thing Fifteenth Century Spinning has shown on her blog.

Overtwist: Baroness Emma said that if the yarn tried to make string out of itself when tension eased up (self-plying), that was too twisted.  The Williamsburg instructor said that was the right amount of twist, and you were only over-twisted if the self-plyed yarn was twisty, too. I bet they are both right, depending on what qualities you want the finished yarn to have.

Edit: Janel Laidman at the Beebonnet Report has a great graphic that shows how to tell if you're over- or under-twisted.  The engineer in me really likes that sort of material properties-based evaluation. It's clear and seems pretty dang reasonable. 

Finishing: For singles, skein up the yarn on a niddy-noddy.  Place skein into hot (? maybe warm?) water to which a squirt of dishwashing detergent has been added. Rinse in cold water.  Hang to dry with about a gallon of water as a weight to pull it taut to set the twist.  If plying, create two balls of yarn (using toilet paper tubes or something as a base) then spin the yarns together with a counter-clockwise spin, if they were spun clockwise originally.  Then skein up the finished two-ply yarn and finish.  Weighting it to dry didn't seem necessary.

 

Yarn Ball Winding

The next time they ask me at the yarn shop if I want the skein wound into a ball, I should say yes.

Failing that, I should put the open skein over the back of a chair, or between an assistant's hands, or something.

Failing that, I should hold it firmly in one hand while winding the ball with the other.

I should not put it on the ground and think that the sticky wool yarns will just lift up individually as I wind.