Category Archives: spinning

OFFF stash enhancement

Posted on October 1, 2009 | 7 Comments

So what did I get at OFFF?

A few very carefully chosen goodies!

stash

My main goal for this festival was to buy another spindle. I love my Turkish Delight, but I wanted one more spindle so I can experiment with one while the other has an ongoing spinning project. I thought I’d try a top-whorl spindle. I found out that there are a lot of spindles out there, with a wide range of prices. I bought this cherry and red cedar Kundert spindle and the book, Productive Spindling, at the Carolina Homespun booth.

kundert

Here’s the underside. The fiber is a sample from Abstract Fiber; it was in the goodie bag from WWSiPDay. (Thanks to Susan for donating, and Tami for organizing!)

kundert2

It spins for a long time, and I’ve learned to roll it off my leg so it really gets going fast. Just another hint from the Productive Spindling book by Amelia Garripoli. I have a lot to learn!

I also bought four one ounce fiber knots from Knitted Wit. I love the colors, and I could see using handspun from these for colorwork, interspersed on a background of commercial black or white yarn. At $3 a knot, it’s a completely non-threatening experiment fiber (merino, yummy).

My last purchase was a small maple niddy-noddy from Ol Lar’s Drop Spindles. Isn’t it pretty? I almost bought a bubinga top-whorl spindle from them, but it was gone when I went back. That’s probably a good thing, because I was just going to impulse buy it because it was so beautiful! I had already bought the Kundert the day before.

niddy

It comes apart and turns into this.

noddy

Pretty restrained, huh? Now to go spin all that fluff! And Lorajean gave me a braid of merino/silk in her Rose City colorway to thank me for helping her set up. It’s gorgeous. Thanks, LJ!

rosecity

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Turkish Delight goes viral

Posted on September 30, 2009 | 13 Comments

You may remember that I fell for Leila’s Turkish delight spindle back at Sock Summit. Leila’s quite the enabler. She was trying to get me to try out her spinning wheel at OFFF, but I’m not falling for that. Yet.

Last week at the WWSiPD event, Rachel fell for my Turkish spindle. She bought one at OFFF.

rachel

I think Rachel is stalking me. First, the February Lady Sweater. Then the Turkish Delight. Next, she says she’ll be making some Leyburn socks…

Anyway, when Tammy saw my spindle last week and Rachel’s spindle this week, she had to have one, too.

tammy

Leila enabled another spinner, my friend S (seen here). Who then enabled L. (Names are hidden to protect the innocent.)

leila

And so it goes. Pretty soon, you get this:

viral

All Turkish. Except Duffy. We let her spin with us, anyway, because she’s nice. She and I broke out into song: One of these things is not like the other. Shades of Sesame Street!

By the way, my new Maya Floral bag from Lantern Moon is perfect for holding a little bit of roving and my Turkish Delight. I love it!

maya floral

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OFFF report

Posted on September 30, 2009 | 8 Comments

Finally catching up with myself. I had a great, if brief, time at the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival last weekend. After helping Lorajean set up on Friday, I returned Saturday afternoon with three friends. The first thing we did was make a new little friend.

puppets!

Last year I completely missed the animals; I never made it into the barn. I only experienced the Fiber part of the festival! This year I made it a priority to see the flock.

We saw goats. (At least I think they’re goats. I’m a city girl; what do I know?)

goatsithink

vgoat

V loves goats. She has a business plan for our goat farm. DH makes a million dollars, and then he bankrolls our hobby farm. Perfect, no? I stipulated that we hire someone to shovel goat poop. Or she does it. Anyway…

We saw sheep. (I think.)

sheep

And alpacas. (I’m sure these are alpacas; note the helpful sign.)

alpacas

alpaca chocolate

And bunnies. Definitely bunnies. What kind? Um, the bunny kind. Oh, there were chinchillas, too, but I don’t have a picture of them.

bunnies

It’s not all animals in the barn. We also saw some cool knitted items, dyed fiber, and this exquisite little exhibit.

loom

There was a lot of fiberlicious eye candy. Here’s Lorajean’s booth.

lj

booth

Karie (silverpurl) was there with her beautiful silver jewelry and stitch markers.

silverpurl

Roland from Laurel Hill had a small corner carved out for himself at the Carolina Homespun booth. They have some interesting new straight needles that are triangular in shape (you may have seen Kollage’s square ones before). I tried them, and they were easy to hold, but I remain a circular needle fan. Pretty woods, though.

roland

And here’s my favorite set-up at the festival. This is the Bellwether Wool Company van (mini-bus?) from Philomath, OR. Note the cool awning for sheltered yarn shopping.

bellwether van

But even better is the inside of the van. Yes, you can shop inside, and it looks like this! (I’m shooting from front to back.) So cool.

bellwether van 2

And the PDX KnitBloggers and PDX Spinnerati were at OFFF, too.

pdxkb

More on that in the next post. Stash enhancement post is coming, too…

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Dizzy, my head is spinning

Posted on September 5, 2009 | 17 Comments

Are you old enough to remember this song? Apparently I am! But it was an oldie when it first came across my radar. Honest.

Here’s my first yarn! The fiber is Shimmer, 80% merino, 20% tussah silk, from Knitted Wit. The colorway is Hydrangea.

plied

I did the shoebox lazy kate, but my center pull ball didn’t want to pull smoothly from the center. It kept tangling around the knitting needle because the outside yarn was wrapping around the needle in the opposite direction. I ended up putting the knitting needle up through the box and using it like a flagpole so it could unwind over the end of the needle. Whatever.

flagpole

Plying seemed to be pretty straightforward, and the resulting yarn isn’t wackily twisty at all. I don’t know if it’s true, but it seemed like the twist of the single was untwisting itself into the twist of the plying. Is that what makes the whole thing balance? I just let them twist together, and if it didn’t go twisting back on itself in one direction or the other when I took the weight of the spindle off it, I considered it to be ready to wind off before plying the next bit.

close

I haven’t washed it or thwacked (!) it yet, but I will soon. I have some blocking to do for a friend, so I’ll use a packet of soak for all of it.

plied skein

And apparently I’m a spinning fool. Because look what I’m doing now. Dizzy…

rose city

This is more Shimmer from Knitted Wit. The color is Rose City, and I love it!

rose city 2

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What happens next?

Posted on September 4, 2009 | 10 Comments

I finished spinning my first bit of fiber. What do you call that thing, anyway? It was in a pretty braid. My spinning isn’t very consistent yet; sometimes there’s a clump of almost roving, but mostly it’s a nice single. I’m getting to the point where I can feel if it’s doing what I want. I love it when the twist jumps up between my fingers and the fiber is nicely drafted and takes up the twist with a little zing.

Here’s Day 1.

first spin

And here’s where I ended; I think it was 4 sessions in all.

first spin done

This is the sum total of it, on a small Turkish Delight. It’s a center pull ball, if I can screw up the courage to take it apart. Will it explode? There’s a lot of twisty energy in that little ball of yarn! It’s all new to me.

I’ve read that you should ply your singles to balance the yarn. There’s not a lot of yarn here, so it won’t amount to much. I think I can take the end from the inside and the end from the outside, and ply them with the spindle in the opposite direction that I spun it. How do I hold the ball, on a knitting needle maybe? And I’m guessing that I somehow need to keep it under tension so the twistiness doesn’t curlicue everything up? Any and all hints welcome!

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Down the slippery slope…

Posted on August 15, 2009 | 17 Comments

I’m having a hard time getting started on a post-Sock Summit project. I have several ideas in my head, but haven’t found the right combination of yarn and idea. The Jojoland Melody turned out to be not the right yarn for what I’m planning, so I went back to Twisted and came home with this.

Noro

Noro Kureyon Sock. Still not soft, but such gorgeous colors. I like purples. I like gray. I like black.

Noro2

And I love purple with green! Noro skeins are always a surprise inside. I like this combo a lot. And while it seems like I’m sliding down the slippery slope for a self-avowed non-stasher, it’s not quite as bad as it seems. I exchanged the Jojoland Melody for the Noro.

On the other hand, I also said that I didn’t want to learn to spin, but then I bought a Turkish Delight drop spindle from Jenkins Woodworking at Sock Summit. Today I met up with the local spinners’ group, Portland Spinnerati. They meet monthly at the Central Library. Tami and Leila got me started on some beautiful merino and silk roving that I got from Knitted Wit.

first spin

I spun some yarn! And liked it. After I spin some more, I’ll have to learn how to ply…a slippery slope indeed. Oh, later today I brushed the cat. I found myself drafting out the hair from her brush, wondering if it could be spun. Help.

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