Tour de Fleece Reckoning

I’ve been watching the Tour de France from about 5:20 am every day it’s been on for the past three weeks, which has also coincided with the Women’s Euros (Spain lost the final to England today, boo-hoo), which I’ve also watched pretty avidly, both of them on Spanish television (RTVE) through a VPN. The Spanish commentators on the cycling are all ex-cyclists and had a different guest on every day of their coverage, which made it interesting — today it was a Spanish women’s champion who rode for Spain in the Olympics and knew the Butte Montmartre circuit the cyclists were going to be riding (in the rain and mostly over cobbles; it wasn’t a comfy saunter as it has been in previous years).

My spinning has been less avid. I’ve certainly spun a sock-quantity of fine BFL 3-ply (well it will be when I ply it) and made a good start on the chocolate corriedale a friend picked up for me at Black Sheep Gathering in June, but I confess to having been seduced by some lace knitting and wasn’t monocraftual.

Time to pick up a pen and get more focused on drawing in time for SAWgust, which starts on Friday.

Coil Spinning

I attended a beta coilspinning class yesterday at Meridian Jacobs, a sheep farm a few miles away where I’m a farm club member. Rachel, our teacher, had prepared a massive quantity of fiber and inserts for us to choose from.

I had found a kaleidoscope viewer in the bottom of a bin when I was searching for a rarely-used flyer for my Lendrum spinning wheel. My favorite place to spin is in the second fastest gear of my fastest flyer, not the slow loop-a-doop of the so-called plying flyer, but this latter has a large orifice and is excellent for art yarn, which we were attempting yesterday. This kaleidoscope allows you to look at colors and see what might work well together and in what proportion without having to commit to anything beforehand, which was especially helpful since we had such a wealth of materials to choose from.

I ended up making a batt to match the royal blue singles I’d spun on a spindle to demonstrate at the Sheepmowers event on campus last month. I threw in some complementary coral colored wool and some analogous green. Coilspinning means wrapping fiber around a central yarn (thin mohair, in this case) by means of controlling the entry angles and literally winding the fiber around until the core is covered.

I’d done this before so I took it a step further and pushed the wrapped fiber into little beehives which then get fixed in place by the tighter coils that follow.

It was a great day especially playing with the Ashford 4” Wild Drum Carder.

Stricken auf Deutsch

I think I’ve said elsewhere on here that I got back into knitting after a 35-year-break because I was supporting a bike ride as a radio SAG and ran into a Davis Bike Club volunteer who was knitting a sock. This was back in 2008: Ravelry was still in invitation mode and the knitting craze was really revving up. Since then a lot has happened, a lot of drama, and the community is as fractured as the political landscape.

I’ve been able, however, to combine my hobbies a bit. There are at least 30 groups on Ravelry that are at least partly in German (Deutscher Stricktreff is a group I’m a member of). I’ve been watching a lot of German YouTube content and a new favorite is Sylvie Rausch of CraSy Creative Things.

This book was brought back from Germany last year by a friend of mine. She’s returning there on Sunday and has asked whether there’s anything I’d like her to bring back this time…

Orcas Island, Again

I just returned from a spinning retreat on Orcas Island. I’ve been before two years ago; it’s a week of full-immersion spinning, fiber preparation, dyeing, and enjoying bald eagles fly over your cabin. This year I traveled with a friend from our new spinning guild in Davis by car, which was a luxury because I could take a lot more than I had before.

This week was supposed to be Sheep, Then and Now, but since we started off spinning camel it was obviously going to be a journey through whatever is getting Judith Mackenzie excited then and now, which is probably just as useful if not more so. I love fiber people — they are so generous with their knowledge and share everything they know. Judith lost everything in her studio to a fire about 18 months ago, including numerous wheels and looms and priceless bison fiber, but she’s a tough cookie and manages, somehow, to look on the bright side of this.

We learned to spin yak. We learned to make bouclé and hazed yarns. We learned how to spin a fat merino-silk single and stabilize it, then we hand-painted it. We were visited on the final morning by a diminutive Shetland sheep called Marvin. (He really is small, much smaller than normal Shetlands.)

On the way there and back we stayed with some lovely people, the first of whom had a replica Lord of The Rings shawl made with Gotland wool. Road trips with a fiber bent are new to me and I’m revved up and excited to share what I learned with friends. Oh, and I want a loom. I’m not buying yarn this year — I have so much already and I’m spinning more — but I have such a craving for a loom. Too bad we can’t fit one into this little house…

Spinning Update

The past few weeks have been devoted to getting ready for Lambtown, a small festival celebrating sheep held annually in Dixon, California. It used to be held in July, when it was hot. It was hot this weekend too, but just in the mid-80s. Not too hot, but lots of flies…

The featured breed this year was Shetland. The Davis Spinners Guild planned a display about Shetland sheep. We bought two fleeces at the Spinning at the Winery event in June in Livermore, one dual-coated white, one black. We divided up the raw fleece among members then we all washed, prepared and spun the various fibers we had. Some of us even went ahead and knit or crocheted what we’d spun.

I have never entered my work in a fair competitively but I was worried there wouldn’t be any entries for the Shetland category we’d worked hard to have recognized, so I spun and knit a lace shawlette with the darker (much softer) Shetland and made a handspun tam, stranded with the different colors in the purchased Shetland roving. I also entered two skeins of Shetland yarn I’d spun.

! Pushing me way out of my comfort zone was the spinning contest, where we had to spin blindfolded, then with gloves, then in pairs (one person treadles, the other person drafts). The yarn design (use at least four different fibers, make sure you ply your yarn) was very challenging but surprisingly fun (although not for one of the participants, who practically had a nervous breakdown in the middle of it all). The last event was to take three colors of roving, spin them so that when plied each color repeat is no longer than 18”, make sure there are at least three full repeats.

With the linen spinning class I took on Saturday morning (red badge of courage, impaled myself on a linen hackle, below right) and my other volunteer duties, I didn’t get to see much else of Lambtown. But I understand it was very successful. I came home with half a huge Romney fleece, some silk alpaca, some yarn, some more bobbins, and some blue ribbons.

This week is Spinzilla, where we’re supposed to spin as much as we can. I won’t be spinning competitively. I’m working all week and have stuff on almost every night. But I’m working on it. Two pounds of Jacob roving not prepared by me. Diego Cat comes running the second I sit at the wheel and settles in.

Spinning at the FARM

Last week there were three Farm-to-School trips out to FARM 2.6, where we have a dye garden. (We’re also growing flax but it seems like we’re mostly growing Bermuda grass, so we may abort the flax for this year.)

I’m not very comfortable around children, but I volunteered to come over and show the kids the dye garden, help them dye their silk bookmarks in solar-cooked plant dyes, and show them some spinning. The one day I volunteered for turned into three; three different age groups, learning about where their food comes from. Not just food: This was also an opportunity to teach them about the principles of Fibershed.

We had a great time. I sang the spinning song in French for them (well, for two of the classes; for the César Chávez Spanish immersion group, I told them about spinning in Spanish). They asked intelligent questions and seemed truly interested. It was fun.

I joined my friends Vera and Jen on a trip to the Spinning at the Winery event in Livermore on Saturday for a change of pace. We all somehow ended up with Tibetan support spindles. Here’s mine, with a cop of pure pygora — it’s a tricky little instrument, but fun to learn on. Trying to think of a name for it.

It's Lambing Season

I went over to Meridian Jacobs this afternoon to sketch the first of this year’s lambs, which were born last night. Their mothers were very wary of me and stamped the ground, but I sat on a bucket quietly and made no sudden movements, and they settled down and started eating or just resting.

Robin had put fresh straw out in all the indoor pens and the sheep were all comfortable and snug. It’s astonishing that creatures not yet 24 hours old think it’s an appropriate thing to do to jump vertically, because they were all trying it, the lambs. Their suckling isn’t very vigorous yet but they have the tail waggle down for sure.

Three sets of twins… lots more ewes will be lambing over the coming days. Robin’s going to be busy. Glad I got the chance to head over there and sit quietly…

An Adventure in Felting

At the Fibershed Symposium in November I was entranced by Some felt at Robin Lynde’s booth: the surface was unmixed, unsorted pieces of a Jacob fleece. I was having visions of making myself a jacket from this beautiful fabric.

When you process wool there can be a lot of waste. I don’t like to throw away my drumcarding or combing waste, but up till now have just been hanging on to it. Well, a wet felting session over at FARM 2.6 gave me the perfect opportunity to try out the technique on a small scale.

We made a resist for slippers using boots as a template (felting shrinks the wool considerably, so rubber boots are a good model). I made these slippers for Numenius using Suffolk as the first two layers and ending up with Jacob on the surface.

Felting is a lot of work and requires some upper-body strength! I decided to add to the punishment by kneading some sour dough afterwards last night…

Back from the San Juans

I spent last week on Orcas Island in Washington at a spinning retreat with Judith Mackenzie McCuin, one of the world’s most famous spinners. And certainly one of its best teachers.

What I learned, among other things:

1. Not to be afraid of qiviut.
2. That the reason I’ve had so much trouble with my cable plying is because I’ve spun the singles normally, which for me includes a lot of twist. Underspinning and overplying result in perfect cableplied yarn. When this involves bison, it’s a bit unicornish.
3. Almost any lichen will make a dye, not needing a mordant. Almost all the colors are like compost, though. For people with pink skin and white hair, this is a disappointment.
4. JMM and I share a bewilderment at the Canadian obsession with the Queen.
5. Angora bunny is held to have curative properties such as an ability to alleviate arthritis pain, and that it’s REALLY warm. I don’t think it’s as warm as qiviut, though.
6. Spinning flax with spittle is better at breaking down pectins than spinning it with straight water. Break them down further by boiling in Tide.
7. To spin semi-woolen. OMG. The possibilities.
8. That bald eagle courtship happens in late February in the San Juan Islands.
9. That spinning cotton straight from the seed isn’t just possible, it’s easy, no super-fast flyer required. I’m going to try and get all kinds of cotton bolls from now on. We’re planting cotton later this spring at Farm 2.6. Cotton grows in many natural colors.
10. Cross-plying pygora onto reclaimed cashmere yields a yarn of unimaginable luxury and makes the pygora go oh so much further. Pygora, a cross between African pygmy goats and angora goats (the cashmere ones), is the world’s newest fiber animal.
11. One load of laundry from a week’s worth of exotic fiber spinning will yield enough dingleberries for a large tweed sweater.

Shearing Day Coming Up

I’ll be helping out on Saturday at Meridian Jacobs for Shearing Day, which is an intense but lovely transformation of shaggy, probably soggy-tipped (it’s going to rain tomorrow) gray animals into piebald fairy creatures. Apart from a couple of them which are a prized lilac color; a lilac fleece may well come home with me.

Just learned about In Sheep’s Clothing, a short silent film from 1932 about gathering in Shetland sheep, rooing their fleeces (primitive breeds like Shetlands shed their fleeces and can be plucked, or rooed), spinning and knitting fair isle sweaters. It was a sunny day — wonder how long they waited for that — and despite the well-combed hair and smiling faces the crofter’s life was obviously VERY hard. (Still photos from the Shetland Museum archives can be found here.)

This all goes well with my nightly sheep study (I got a copy of Carol Ekarius and Deb Robson’s Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook, which has me counting sheep at night.)