A stormy week of projects

 We've had 3 major snow storms in the past week.  While I know other areas of the province have loads more snow, we've had more snow than we've had in years.   We've had so much wind this year, which keeps the Great Lakes from freezing.  This in turn causes lake effect snow, on top of whatever system works its way up or across to us.   Then with the wind, even when we don't have snow, we get blowing snow, like today with blowing snow warnings because it's affecting  roads and visibility.   I'm really looking forward to spring and getting back to some sort of routine that includes something other than staying home because hubby took my car to work since it's better on the icky roads.

But while stuck at home, I've started spinning the merino/cashmere/silk rovings.   It's easier to spin the rovings processed and dizzed off the drum card thicker than the commercially processed rovings which are much easier to spin very thin.   

It' been interesting because I'd been spinning cotton for demos and to finish up my stash for ages now, and have had to rethink my spinning technique to slow down and be more mindful of not over-spinning the wool blends and wools.    I have one bobbin full and started on the second one.  I plied a sample, and didn't like the results.  I think instead I'll spin it all as singles.  I'll dye it as singles and then weave a scarf with it.   Otherwise I'll end up making mittens and it's almost spring and unless I manage to lose all 3 pairs that I still haven't lost yet, I won't need another pair of mittens this year, no matter how soft and yummy they'd be.

I've been busy using up some scrap sock and fingering weight yarn on the CSM.   There is a spring
crank-in which gathers up requested items for donations.  Last year it was comfort dolls that went to the Provincial Police to give out to children in trauma situations.   The group donated 80 of them and they had given almost all of them out during the next 6 months and have asked for more.   So I started making a couple for my donation.   I'm running out of sock yarn scraps though.  I thought I had more, because I'd saved up a bunch from many of the years when I'd knit socks by hand, but having used a lot last year, there aren't many left.   I'll make what I can even if it's not as many as last year.  

 Last year I had a skein of  generic browny fleshtone which worked well for people dolls of no specific race.  This year, I've not found any skin tones, and only had a bit of leftover greys.  I've used the greys to make a couple of bears or cats, because I can't tell what they actually are.  I had a couple of leftovers in a bit larger amount so have made some very colourful bunnies.  They seem to work better in crazy colours than the bear/cats.

I made a bear snake today which had 3 bears in it.   It's called a snake because it's a long tube of projects.  You can make sock snakes too, which are socks knit one after another and not separated until you are finishing them.  There are 3 bear project in between a double section of waster yarn, with a ravel cord in between each bear, so it's waste yarn, ravel cord, waste yarn, bear legs, shirt, head, waste yarn ravel cord - and so on..  It means you only have to set up the CSM once for multiple projects.

 That is the last of the grey in my stash, which I'd been using for fur colours.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do next.  There is no cheap yarn locally, and what yarn there is, if it's remotely affordable for charity work, it's in vivid, bright colour mixtures, which I don't think I can turn into bears.

Please note- that ginormous bag of stuffing I bought last year, is almost empty.  There is a good chance I'll need to buy more!  Yikes!

   

Spinning the last of my Cotton

I've been spinning up the last of the coloured cotton that I'd picked up out in Alberta, when I was doing my master spinner course.   I really only had odds and ends left, rather than some of the larger packets.   I'm a bit sad because this was lovely to spin.   I had enough of the green to divide the roving in two and spin up about 3/4 of a bobbin of plied cotton yarn.  I forgot to take a before photo, but it was a beige colour raw.   Once it was plied I soaked it in water for a few minutes and then brought the water to a boil.  This brings out the colour of the coloured cotton.  It's a tad darker than this but I didn't want to play around with colour processing because I took the photo too close to a large window with indirect light bouncing off a lot of snow!

The second skein was really spun with whatever leftovers I had in a willy nilly fashion.   I just grabbed whatever bit I got when I reached for it and spun.  It's a mix of white, green and brown.   It also shows why maybe heat setting colour of white cotton isn't a good idea.  White cotton when boiled can turn beige! It's definitely an odd looking skein of yarn, but at least there was minimal waste.  I have less than a metre left on the 2nd bobbin of singles!  Yay me!

Cotton Clouds cotton roving is a dream to work with and comes in several hard to find and interesting colours.   Not available around here sadly.

A Rare but little rant

 I went over my friend's to try out her new huge electric carder.  It's double width at least of a home carder and has dual speed adjustments for the licker-in and the main drum.   She's worked out a spiffy way to draft off roving instead of batts, using a little bead as a diz.   It works amazingly well and the resulting roving is very professionally done.   It's light, fluffy, and easy to spin.

I brought the last of my bag of merino/cashmere/silk/nylon mill ends which were too hard to spin without processing.   I'd been hand carding them, but was frustrated enough to think about digging out my drum carder, when this play date came up.   It took a while, because it's still a fairly slow process, but what an amazing job.   I think we ran them through 3 times and we ended up processing just over 300g, into 3 huge bumps which filled 1/3 of a large plastic bin bag.   It was beautiful stuff.

I'd actually brought the mill ends in case we needed something else to card, as we were going to work on the black guild fleece.   The guild fleeces have turned into a rant worthy project.   I was away on holiday, so someone took my place on the field trip, to get the fleeces we were offered.  I'm hoping they didn't have a choice because that would make things much more acceptable.   We were supposed to get 5 fleeces, but the gal picking them up took one.  That's fine, because 4 fleeces is a lot of work so spreading the load is a good thing.    These are the fleeces that I was told weren't for me to work with during the summer and if they needed my help, they'd ask.   "Whatever"...still ticked me off, as I had the time and space to work with them then.  Anyway, in the fall, I got the rest of them as the person gatekeeping them decided she was tired of them and going to store them in a warm, dark spot - moth haven.   

The first fleece we had access to was washed by someone with little experience.   She was happy with her efforts, but there was still so much lanolin in it.  Plus with just a gentle tug, we found that a good part of the fleece had a break in it.  If you take a lock of the fleece with one end in each hand and give a tug on it, the fleece should hold together.  With a break in it, it will snap into two shorter pieces.  It's an unsound fleece and horrible to work with.  After you check the staple length, this is the next test to do, in several places. Not only that but parts of the fleece were felted.  A thinks that both issues are due to dunking and lifting a mesh bag of fleece during washing, instead of letting it soak openly.  So A took it home to rewash, and see what she could do with it.   She ended up trying to card it, then comb it and almost gave up.  With the new carder, she made something useable but only after running it through the electric carder 5 times!  It's a nice-ish knitting yarn, very rustic due to the ness, in a worsted/aran weight.   

The second fleece is also white but I washed some up with multiple washes and rinses.  I couldn't hand card it.  Literally was too compacted or felted to hand card.   It was a miserable mess on a small drum carder with coarse cloth.   I had to comb it and it was about 70% loss of fleece to useable fibre.  Not only that but it was hard on the hands, so not worth it at all.   I gave the washed fibre to A too see what her thoughts were and she couldn't get anything good out of it either.

The third fleece is a lamb's fleece with so much lanolin that 5 washings with soap and degreaser still left the fleece greasy.   I figured another wash would felt it up, just from overworking it, so I left it with A to see what she could do with it.  I'm sort of wondering if it should just be turned into compost because no fleece is worth that much time, effort and resources to process.

The  last fleece was the black one.  Of them all, it's by far the best.   Apparently someone washed it
before I got it, but that was the one that required 3 more washings and 3 rinses to actually get it clean.  We carded up just over 200g, into two bumps to see what our thoughts were for spinning this.   I'm half through my bit.  It spins up fairly easily.  There are many more neps than I'd like in it and not all can be picked out when spinning.  This means it's a lot thicker yarn than I'd normally spin with something like this.  It's full of vm, way more than I'd anticipated.   

If the guild was hoping we could spin up yarn for them to weave with it's going to be a non-event.  We've both already talked about how these fleeces are so bad that because of the number of hours required to turn them into useable yarns, that the people spinning them should have first dibs on them.  I'm not sure who would want to put that many frustrating hours into making a small amount of yarn, to give away to someone with no idea what went into making it.

Also, if someone gives you fleeces or you buy them, you have the right to check them to make sure they are worth the amount of work needed to make them into useable yarn.  I've gotten fleeces from the Canadian Wool Co-op and straight from the farm  which required only a couple of washes and rinses to bring up bright, easy to use fibre with almost no vm.  They can be a joy to work with.   Before you put your money down, you should be able to check the staple length and the integrity of the locks before you buy, or at least have an honest description from the seller.

Flash Freeze: the next day

 Yesterday was the monthly spin in.   A bunch of us spinners gather to spin together for a couple of hours.  It's a fun, social gathering.  We've had weeks of windy, very cold weather and snow squalls.   Yesterday however, there was a break in the weather and instead of stupid cold, it was above freezing.  The roads were great, but it was raining.  More of a drizzle really but enough that I needed my wipers on and not quite enough to make them work efficiently.   It was a nice drive regardless, because there was no snow and you could see the roads!

We headed home about 1pm and by 2:30ish, the temperatures started dropping and the rain was now huge, huge flakes of snow.  They were falling straight down and within just a few minutes the road was covered over.   It kept snowing.   This morning though, the sun was shining and the sky a blue we rarely see in the winter around here. It was however, a crystallised winter wonderland outside.  It wasn't really an ice storm, although it sort of looks like it outside.  It was more of a flash freeze.  It was plus 2 in the morning and -11 by bedtime!

We went into town this morning and the trip in was interesting.   The ice and snow bound trees were far more intense and noticeable on the way, especially in areas not getting quite enough of today's sunshine, or in sheltered places.  However, there was a lot of icy areas still on the roads, and despite the shoulders being plowed, there wasn't a safe place to pull over to take photos.   I still haven't figured out how to quickly adjust the exposure on my phone for snapshots, so the sky really wasn't quite this blue, although it was pretty close.

We ended up not doing all the errands we'd planned.   The part for the kitchen tap turns out to be specialised and not labelled,  so we will have to go back with the part for comparisons.  It still works without it, so no urgency there.  The parking lot at the antique mall was overly full, so we passed on visiting today.   There is a business at the other side of the parking lot, with very clear NO PARKING signs on their workshop garage doors.   People still parked there.   Someone from the shop has parked very closely behind them, only slowing down a bit of access in the parking lot, but making sure the entitled parkers can't get out unless they get the big truck behind them moved.   That will put a bit of a damper on their day, for sure.

I filled the bird feeders when we got home.  Because of the rain, I didn't do it yesterday.   The food in the tray and around the little feeding  holes just gets wet and then freezes when the temperatures drop, making it impossible for the birds to get the food out.  But today, the old plastic feeder, may have just  finally gotten a bit too brittle in the cold and the lid closure snapped.  It's pretty old and is outside all year round so it doesn't surprise me too much.  I'm a bit sad though as  I'll have to go shopping for a new one next nice day.

The blue jays love the peanut feeder.  I'm not so happy about it.  Mainly it's because peanuts are expensive and the blue jays will empty the feeder in 30 minutes or less.  I've only been filling the feeder every other day because otherwise we'd go through way more peanuts than I'm willing to purchase as $43 a bag.   Second, I'm going to have to check to see that these are locally grown peanuts and not imported.  That's easy enough to do but I may still just replace it with a sunflower seed feeder as I know that the black oil sunflower seeds are grown locally, they are a whole lot cheaper, and more variety of birds will eat them.

Washing Sheep's Fleece

Generally these days, we wash our sheep's fleeces before carding and spinning.   Greasy fleeces used to be a "thing", especially in the 70's when there was a crafty revival and people were teaching themselves crafts without all the resources we have today.  However, spinning fleece in the grease generally leaves your equipment dirty and it's a pain to clean.   Why am I writing this post explaining this and more?  Because today, while finishing washing up the last of the black fleece, I came across a little note that had the date the fleece was skirted and then a small added scribbled "washed" below it.   I didn't realise the fleece had been washed already.   Yes, there was less lanolin in it than the other two fleeces.   However, it still had some lanolin and it was obviously dirty.   While this fleece may have been washed, it wasn't washed properly.   I'm going to explain a simple way to wash fleeces.  There are other ways to wash fleeces but this is a pretty basic method which is effective.

First thing to know.  Lanolin needs hot water and soap to be removed.  The water needs to be at least 120F, to "melt" off the fibre.   A bit hotter is better so that you have some working time.  If the water cools too quickly, it may settle back on the fibre.   If your hot water source isn't hot enough as some water heaters have safety measures of lower temperatures, you need to heat up water on the stove or in your kettle to add.   While I'm using a laundry tub for this demo, this applies to using your top loading washer if you're using it to soak and spin your fleece.   

Washed fleece should not be this dirty!

Next you'll need soap.  A high quality dish soap like Dawn for Fairy, Orvus or other quality animal shampoo or a wool wash.   I don't use wool wash because it's way out of my price range, but I've seen some results and it works well.   I also use a citrus degreaser in the first and sometimes 2nd wash.  I use Zep,  because it's available locally, in 4 litre containers at the big box hardware store and smaller amounts available at a local hardware chain.  This is effective in the first wash to help remove the lanolin and some of the excess dirt.  I usually use a glug or two of Zep and about 2 or 3 tbsp of Dawn in the first wash, along with only hot water.

Remember -  felting is caused by 2 things.  First, is agitation.  Be gentle when you move the fibre through the water.  The second, is temperature changes.  It's not hot water that shrinks sweaters, but going from a hot wash to a cold rinse, or the agitation cycle of the washing machine.    You always need to be careful that the water temperatures remain close to the same, or if you leave for a while, that you use the same temperature water as you just drained out.

Start the hot water and add the soap and degreaser, or wool wash.    Once the tub is full, gently press in some fleece.  Don't over load the tub.   You want enough fleece to be a full layer, allowing enough depth in the water for water to move through the fleece and not be bogged down with depth. This will help get the dirt and lanolin out of the fleece.  It usually takes several washings to get the dirt out of the fleece and then several rinses to remove the soap.  I found so many short cuts  and neppy bits with this fleece that I ended up repurposing my little strainer to scoop up as many bits as I could.

Non-scientific explanation of how the soap does it's job when washing fleece -  When the water is hot enough for the lanolin to melt and has enough soap etc, the lanolin gets attached to the soap and the soap gets attached to the water.  This means when you drain the tub, the lanolin gets washed away with the water.   The soap is hydrophilic and hydrophobic which is the science stuff you need.  The soap will do the same to a lot of the dirt.   

Once the wash water is clear or at least clearish, you can start rinsing.   Remember the water temperature should be similar to what you just used.   Washing should be in hot water, but rinsing just needs to be in similar temperatures to the water as it's cooling down.  Here you can see that there is still soap in the water and some dirt  or dirty water being removed, so it will need another rinse.

Once the rinse water is clear and not soapy, you're almost finished.  Now you need to gently squeeze out the excess water.  You can do this with a towel, or if you have a mesh bag, you can put the wet wool in it, go outside and use centrifugal force by whizzing it over your head to remove the water.   If you have. a fancy extractor that works well.  I have an old lettuce spinner which does the trick, although it's a slower solution.  

Dirt left in the bottom of the tub, from the supposedly washed fleece.   Just no-  this will muck up your hand cards or drum carder.   If your fleece has this much dirt left in it, you need to wash it again!

I'm a bit ticked because I shouldn't have had to rewash the fleece, if it had been done properly in the first place.   I'm glad I hadn't noticed that it was supposedly washed because I would have hated to run that through a friend's equipment.  

more project updates

The shawl is finished.  It was an easy pattern to remember since it was all garter stitch and increased 1 stitch at the start of every other row.   Once I had the stripe pattern done once, it was all that was needed to refer to once in a while.  Most of it was self explanatory.   I am sort of thinking I should have gone for the blue for the dark stripe like the pattern suggested but I'm happy enough with what I chose since I already had some of that dark brown/grey wool on hand.  I didn't add the fringe because it would have made the shawl less useful for warmth while doing things.  I just did a single row of double crochet along the edge to tidy up the side with all the yarn joins.   This pattern is in Peterson's, 1862, jan - June, pg 419 or so.

I was also knitting this bunny toy at the same time.  Well I'd started the bunny, set it aside while I knit the shawl and am now finishing up the bunny.   It's a large toy and it's taking a while to knit it, mainly because by setting it down for a while, I started knitting again at the wrong gauge.   Now I'm having to re-knit some of the pieces so that they match properly.   I just finished my 2nd set of arms.   I have the body done, 2 arms done properly, 1 leg.  I will start the second leg tonight hopefully and then re-knit the head which is the fussiest part.   It's the wrong tension though and looks odd with all the other pieces. 

This bunny takes a lot of knitting.  It's done on straight stitches so takes even longer.  I'm using handspun merino/cashmere/silk so it's really soft though.   It has knitted clothing as well.  I'm going to dye up the body pieces when I'm finished knitting them but before I sew and stuff them.  I'll also dye the clothing yarn at the same time.

Ashleigh got a new drum carder and want to play.  Since it's a spinning day next week, I'm washing up

some guild fleece to try out.   The guild was given 4 fleeces to play with.  The gals who picked them up were hoping we could spin them up for them to weave with.  However, they have no idea how much work that will be.   I'm not sure if they checked the fleeces when they got them, or even if they got to choose them.   The gal who was gate-keeping them finally let me have access when she was tired of storing them.  I just tossed them in my garage where they will be cold enough to not get moths all winter.   

However, in washing them up, one fleece turns out to have a significant break in a good part of the fleece.   Ashleigh has been playing with that one and with her new drum carder has gotten something useable in 5 passes - that's a fair bit of work.  The lamb fleece is so short and so much lanolin that I've test washed some and after 3 washes with soap and de-greaser, and 3 rinses there is still so much lanolin left in.   The other white fleece is meh- full of neps and lots of dirt and sand.   I couldn't card it but had to comb it with over 50% loss.   Not fun at all.   This is the last fleece, the black one.  It's really black and night time lighting doesn't show it up.  It it cards up it could be a nice enough fleece, but with the others being such as they are, I'm not holding up a lot of hope.  However, having a nice large carder to try it out with should be fun.

There are tons of second cuts that I've been picking out while washing.   I also heard a rumour that the farmer has sold off all its sheep because they couldn't get their wool processed in a timely fashion.   Some of the small mills around here have ridiculously long waiting lists, so I can understand the frustration.  It's nice having the skills to do it myself if I need to.

Winter walks, garden visitor and shawl update

Hawk, right side, middle of picture.

 Here is a photo of the hawk visiting our garden.  He sticks around for over an hour at a time and has a couple of spots he likes to hang out.   With his dedication and patience, we're now thinking it might be the hawk who got one of our chooks.   DH says he found that hen just inside the door of the chicken coop, so it's possible.   The poor girls have been stuck inside since then.   With the risk of a hawk attack so likely, I'm keeping them in the coop.   They aren't fond of the snow regardless.  They'll make a track to the feeders and sometimes to spots where they can sun themselves, and mainly they hangout in the open part of the barn, making a mess of things.

The photo was taken through a double pane window which I didn't think needed cleaning this fall.  I was wrong.  It does.  The hawk is fairly large, like a crow size or a tad larger.  His back is grey and his underside/tummy is white and brownish.  He has a greyish head, which makes it hard to see, but he scanned the area constantly from that perch and I watched him sit there for over an hour.  He's been back daily, sometimes multiple times a day.

We headed out for a walk today.  I needed my sunglasses when we left the house.   The skies were mainly white, with some patches of very pale blue.   The sunlight was reflecting on the snow so it was bright, despite the high clouds.   By the time we were halfway to the chosen trail, I no longer needed my sunglasses.  There was a light flurry as well.   Luckily, the winds and the real snow, didn't pick up until we got back home.   

The trail was white.   Enough people had been on the trails by the time we got there, that the fluffy snow we had over the past 2 days was partially packed and easy to walk on.  No slippery spots and no ice.  Just light fluffy snow and lots of foot prints.

The lake or pond is mainly frozen over.  I don't think the ice is really strong enough to walk on yet, but there were foot prints on it.  They were likely animal prints, but we didn't go close enough to the shore to find out.   We were on top of the hill when we took this photo.   There are some houses and a train track on the other side of the lake.   You can't see them once the trees are leafed out.  This time of year though, they are able to be seen, and I'm betting they have great views as well.

The sun came out briefly (sort of) just as we were near the end of the trail , which runs beside the river.   It's not actually as steep as the photo suggests, but a weird angle to capture that tiny bright spot, the sun and trying to get a bit of the river in as well.  I don't think I was horribly successful.

The winds only picked up after we got home, which was nice and now it's snowing the kind of big flakes which tend to suggest we'll get some accumulation.  

Shawl update:   I'm getting about 4 -6 rows a day done if I put some effort into knitting right now, due to the length of the shawl.  I'm pretty sure I'm going to make this the last repeat.   It's certainly big enough to be a useful shawl, and maybe useful enough to be worn like a sonntag or tied shawl.  It's small enough though that I could also use it as an under-shawl and wear my larger one over top of it for warmth.   I'm also trying to decide whether I'll put the suggested fringe on it or just crochet a simple edging around the sides of it.    I fear the fringe might get in the way of wearing it for warmth while doing things like baking at Westfield, although the fringe in the sample picture was very pretty.