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.

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.  

Combed top for worsted spinning

 You know all those single locks I've been washing in those tiny packets?   Well, over the past few days I've been combing some of them to prep the fibre for spinning a true woollen.    I've layers them the combs by catching the cut ends on the tines.   It is really important to keep all the cut ends at one end of the combs.  This keeps all the scales aligned for the worsted yarn.

I've seen people layer the locks to as high as a 3rd to 1/2 the height of the tines.  I try to keep it at 1/4 the height or so, just because it gets pretty dry in our house during the winter.  This creates static and the fibres go all fluffy and wild.  Then I need to spritz them with water, or a water/oil or water/ fabric softener mixture to keep the static down so that I can continue combing.   Then I feel the need to let it dry before I spin.  With slightly less locks, I can usually keep everything under control manually and spinning can commence quickly.

 I keep track of where my cut ends are in the combing process.   First pass the cut ends go from behind the tines to in front of the tines.   The second pass  is the reverse and the third is back to the original with the cut ends behind the tines.  This means when I pull the sliver from the combs, I know which end that I should start spinning from.   With a true worsted I want to start spinning from the cut ends.

 Once the sliver is completely pulled off the combs, I roll the sliver up into a little nest.
 I take a little piece of card stock and put a little slit or punch a hole in the middle and pull the cut end of the sliver through the card stock.  This marks the end that I will start spinning with.   Otherwise, it is too easy to forget which end is which when the cat knocks them down.

I started washing single locks, one at a time the other day.   While the little screen packets are great for keeping lock structure and everything perfect, it is a very long process.     This was a little faster, though my drying rack looks rather daunting right now.

Playing With Colour

 

Playing with making rolags and puni  of different colour and fibre combinations.

 More colours here and elsewhere.  They are starting to pile up.  The big consideration is making enough of one colour combination to actually have enough fibre for more than sampling.  I was surprised at how much time it takes to make good rolags this way.  I've seen some very messy ones which look like they'd be difficult to spin.  These spin so nicely that it's worth the effort.   It adds a nice change and twist to fibre processing.   It's a bit easier to manipulate the colours in a precise way than the drum carder or hackles.

 Playing with new project bag designs.  While I was making these, I was sure I wouldn't like them.  However the moment they were done, I loved them.  The larger one is big enough for a small project, notions and a pattern.  Awesome!  

One sock done and the other is started.  I was hoping to get these done before the end of September but I'll have to actually set aside some time to work on them if I want to meet that goal.  The cuff is a bit fussy, but once I got the grid work pattern worked out, it was super easy and the foot patterning became intuitive.  I love the use of the single cable travelling stitch, which I can do without a cable needle.  It's fast, fun and adds a nice bit of decoration to the sock, without any fuss or muss.

I spent an afternoon washing Alpaca.  It took over 2 days to dry because of the weather and the fact that I let the top and the bottom part of the fibre salad spinner get separated thus couldn't spin out the excess water.  Yay me!

The truck broke down, the day before I was going to head out for a day at Westfield.  It was Saturday morning and that's a dreadful time for getting emergency repair service.  We only have the one vehicle, so not fixing it wasn't an option.    However, we were 3 feet from the repair shop parking lot and they could fit us in but we'd have to wait 10 minutes, was that okay?  So after 3 hours in the waiting room, without my knitting, a book or some handsewing (argh), we had the truck back, with a shiny new alternator.  It wouldn't have been so bad but less than 2 weeks before, we replaced the alternator on my son's car and had to get new tires.   Bad things come in threes?  I hope that's it for a while.

Spinning Perrendale

Last spring I'd purchased a pound of Perendale fleece from The Fibre Garden.  It's a lovely place to shop.  The boys that run it are knowledgeable, friendly, lots of fun and enabling as well.  I'd washed it up to keep the lock structure, by laying out fibre locks on window screen.  It's a fairly time consuming method of washing, but the end results, with fleece that has the lock structure intact, is wonderful.

I'd put the washed locks in a bin and set them aside until I knew what I wanted to do with them.  Yesterday, I finally started spinning them.  I decided I wanted a fairly thin yarn, about 5- 6 twists per inch.  We'll see how close I stay to that as there were a few times that I caught myself relaxed and reveling in the act of just spinning to make yarn and not stressed trying to make yarn match specific requirements. 

To start with, I decided that I wanted a worsted yarn, so I'd be using a short forward draw.  Because the locks all had their structure after washing, I was able to pull out the flick carder for processing them.    All the locks are fairly long, so they flick open easily, with little risk to nipping the knuckles with the sharp tines, like with a shorter staple length.   I don't flick by brushing out the ends, but rather I use a hitting or bouncing motion, which creates static, opens up the ends.  This quickly separates the individual fibres and any VM and remaining dirt, just fall out easily.  There is virtually no chaff, bugs or any VM, so this fleece is a dream to process.

By putting a twist in the middle of the fibre, and gripping before flick carding, the locks stay together.  By lining up the opened locks with the cut ends to one end and the tips to the other, I can easily keep the grain of my yarn running the same way.  Does it make a lot of difference?  The scales are all running the same way, so hopefully it means a smoother, softer yarn, which will be easier to work with.  I will say that drafting these locks has been most enjoyable.

This is what I've gotten done since yesterday.  That is about 4 and a half hours of spinning.  I'd worried after months of practicing, making small skeins and samples that I'd not be able to spin just to make yarn.  It was an unnecessary worry, as the moment I sat down to spin these locks, I felt the spinning zen happening and felt wonderfully happy and relaxed.   It was such a good feeling.

 With it being this much fun to spin, I'd love to pick up another pound of that Perendale- a Romney/Cheviot cross, it's lovely, long, crimpy and fun to spin.  It's such a lovely colour too!

More Day Tripping

We spent a day at Upper Canada Village.  Even so, we didn't get to see all of it.  It's huge and the costumed staff is knowledgeable and willing to discuss the history of the various buildings and depictions of the homes, businesses and trades.  

The Wool Mill was situated right near the entrance to the park.  The front part of the downstairs had a huge fibre washing facility.

 After washing, the fibre was spread outside on these racks to dry.   A storm had rolled through the night before so the fibre was really quite wet.  It was very clean and enticing.

Upstairs housed the carding and spinning machinery.   The fibre is  starts in the first carder and automatically is fed to the second carder.  It's pretty messy as large piles of vm and short cuts fall out the bottom of the carders.   

There is spinning machinery as well as bobbin winders.   It wasn't running when we were there but all the spinning equipment is functional.  I don't remember the all the details about the commercial spinning machines,  the speed was quite impressive.

After seeing the carding and spinning facility, the tour leads to the weaving room.  Here you can see the huge belts which connect the machinery to the water driven gears.   There were looms, a warping mill, brushing and fulling machines.  It was all fascinating but I was particularly taken with the brushing machine.  It uses Teasels!    The sample showed that the Teasels do a really good job of raising the nap.

The weaving and spinning house has a large number of wheels, including production wheels, one with an original distaff, and an absolutely lovely walking wheel.  It did invoke a small amount of lust, seeing that wheel in the corner.   It is a beauty for sure!   They have a 4 shaft barn loom in really good shape as well.  They were weaving a blanket with a cotton warp and handspun weft which was really nicely done.

 This very old castle wheel was in a roped off bedroom.   After asking a few questions about it, they brought it out into the main room so I could photograph it properly.  It's from the late 1700's.  it's in amazing shape.  The 3 legged design is so it will fit easily into a corner and be out of the way in a small cabin.    I was thrilled that they took the time to bring it out and show it off.  You don't see a wheel like this too often, at least in our area.

Washing Perrendale locks the hard way

Yesterday, I was having a bit of a brainstall when it came to spinning.  What I was trying, wasn't working in the least.  I was frustrated.  I walked away from my wheel and took a break.  I decided to do something totally different and picked up the bag of Perrendale fleece I'd purchased earlier this spring.  There is only a pound of it, but it is in lovely, long locks.  I've put off washing it as I wanted to wash it so it kept the lock structure.  That is a fairly time consuming job as I don't have enough space or supplies to do the whole pound at once.    I gently pulled a handful of fleece from the bag and separated each lock, laying all the tips in one direction and the ends in the other, on a square of fibre glass window screening.

I laid several layers of locks over one another.  If one is gentle with washing, the lock structure will hold, despite layering.  I pinned the packet together.  I did this 3 more times as I have only 4 pieces of screening.  I filled the sink with hot water and a squirt of dishsoap, soaking the packets without any swishing or agitation.  I did this 3 times and followed with 3 hot water rinses.  Then I laid the packets outside on the deck benches to dry.  It was hot out and muggy, but it should have still dried.  Later in the afternoon, the packets were still a bit damp, so although the weather had gotten hazy, we ran into town, with me totally forgetting my packets of fibre outside.  On the way home, it was obvious that I had misjudged.  The sky darkened, the winds picked up dramatically and we had thunder, lightening and a torrential downpour.  You could barely see on the way home from the heavy, blowing rain.  It was too wet  and too late to go salvage my poor little packets of fiber.

When the rain stopped, I rescued them.   They were flattened from the intensity of the rain and soaked through.  I pressed some water out of them with a towel and let them dry overnight inside.  Today, it's breezy, cooler and sunny. They spent the better part of the day outside drying, with me worrying about unwrapping a felted mess, since drying had left the packets flat and airless.  However, the first packet is dry and looks to be fine.  The long locks are clean, a bit lighter than I'd anticipated, but a lovely colour, even with the sun bleached tips.   It will take me  a number of days to get through washing the whole pound, but seriously, this will be used for some awesome project... I just am not quite sure what yet :)