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Dear Jan,

Many people hold two strands or even three together to emulate a heavier weight yarn.  How about 4 plyed together?

The green isn’t really that yellow, but my iPhone did a fine job of capturing the twist, I mean the gist of this yarn.

It wasn’t until I started this 4-strand cable that I realized that the Waterlily I’m using is itself a 4-strand cabled yarn.  Each strand is a two ply, so this yarn has a total of 32 plies.

For each skein, I used 4 balls of Waterlily.  I added extra twist to each skein on my wheel, filling all four of my bobbins.  The bobbins aren’t big enough to ply this much yarn onto them anyway, so it didn’t matter that I used them all up.  To ply them together, I pulled out one of those big bottom whorl spindles you gave me a number of years ago.  It took a bit of time, but it did the trick.

I’ll cast on tomorrow.  After the 8 inches of snow that we shoveled today, it is apparent a big cowl could still find some use here.

Love,

Ellen

Dear Jan,

I’ve been experimenting with another fiber in my spinning.  It is pretty rare; thus far I’ve only gotten my hands on barely over a gram of the stuff.  But it is soft and just my favorite color.

The staple is very short - hardly an inch to an inch and a quarter.  I spun it from the cloud with very light take up, using a semi-woolen draw similar to what I used for the bison.

The resulting yarn, a 2-ply, was extremely fluffy and haloed.  Because this is a double-coated breed, it has some itchiness behind the very soft down, so I’m not sure it would do for a cowl, but perhaps a hat?

Whatever one knit from it, I know it would pair well with jade-colored buttons.

So what are you spinning up these days?

Love,

Ellen

Hi, Jan,

Technically, I started the week with the admiration of this first finish - Lisa’s Swirl Spiral Scarf, during our Monday knit night. Yes, it is as luscious as it looks.

She knit it out of Jade Sapphire cashmere, after all.  I’ll be dropping it off at the state fair this weekend for her as she is traveling, along with my Greek Swan which I finished well in time to medal for the Ravellenic Games.

This hat, knit from a kit of merino/angora yarn hand-dyed by Solveig Gustafson to reproduce the original colors used in  Bohus Stickning haute couture knitwear, is in the original Bohus design Large Swan by Karin Ivarsson.

Solveig has had kits available for The Swan for sometime now, but the Large Swan, a more complex design though still relatively simple by Bohus standards, has only recently been recreated.

Another finish, just taken care of this morning, is all of the plying from those many storage bobbins of Columbia fleece singles.  Here is what I learned from all of this spinning:

• Resting singles on storage bobbins is so helpful.  They are so much easier to handle after letting the twist set up for a while.
• At 5 plies, the yarn is beautifully round and even (grist average over 14 skeins is 977 yds/lb with a standard deviation of 56 yds/lb).
• I could have put more twist in the singles and would have been able to get an even tighter twist in the yarn, but it is sproingy as is.
• Fiber prep is very important.  Second cuts and sections with significant vegetable matter must be culled mercilessly before washing and a second culling before carding.  It just isn’t worth saving a bit of fiber to have to fight with nepps and bits in the spinning.  Virtually every time I had an issue drafting, I could chalk it up to this sort of irregularity in the fiber.
• When one hits a nepp in spinning, especially long draw woolen, just leave it.  I tore a bunch of them out, despite having heard Judith MacKenzie say to leave them, thinking it would make the yarn better.  It didn’t - it left a ratty bit in the singles.  I belive much of this will disappear when I wash and full the yarn, but next time I’m leaving them alone.

Total yardage is 2,452 yds, plenty for a cabled sweater and the hat to go with it! The yarn isn’t finished completely.  There is still the washing and setting of the twist, and I believe I am going to kettle dye the whole bunch, too.

I have another finish that makes me kind of sad - the finish of my row crops garden by this guy.  Yes, we have our very own grizzlyhog* (probably a whole den of them as I’ve seen two at once cavorting in the back yard).   Got any spare wolves you could send my way?

Love,

Ellen

* A groundhog** of unusual size.

** AKA woodchuck.

*** AKA whistle pig.

Dear Ellen,

Sorry it has been so long since I’ve posted.  As you know, I’ve been a tad busy.  So, here’s your quick catch up!

All the way back in April (as you obviously know) I had a wonderful, wonderful time visiting your workplace and meeting and speaking so many of your colleagues and co-workers.  So many good memories and ideas from that visit!  The Navy let me hang around for a few more days so I could do some outreach for them — speaking to a number of groups in academia and youth development.  (My favorite was the time I spent with about 60 3rd-8th graders talking about women in technology.  Ten year-olds really keep you on your toes!!) 

It was great that the trip included Yarnover weekend.  Vendors, classes with Chris Bylsma, Mary Scott Huff and Susanna Hansson, and of course, time with you meant for fantastic fun!  (For our readers, no, the picture on the lower left is not one of us.)  I loved the chance to visit StephenBe’s and to enjoy the sensory overload that is his world.

And then, right after I returned to the DC area, I had the chance to take a class with Brenda Dayne of the Cast-On podcast.  She is as lovely as you would expect from her podcast.  I thoroughly enjoyed having the chance to get to know her a bit — witty, smart, funny and engaging.  She’d fit right in to any group that you and I put together, that’s for sure.

The class project was the Mrs. Beeton wristers.  I went against recommendations on my accent yarn choice (purchased at Yarnover!), but I’m very happy with it.  Future versions should include a modification to accomodate the lack of elasticity in the Seduce (rayon, linen, silk and nylon blend).  The minor problem is that without the “sproing” the knitted ruffle works up to a depth that is a bit too long.  It hides the inner ruffle knitted out of the main yarn, a superwash merino sock yarn.  I do love the contrast in texture though…even more so than for the versions of Mrs. Beeton worked with the recommended yarn types.  The simple fix will be to modify the ruffle pattern to lose just a few rows and that will be very easy.

Things are definitely popping up all over the farm these days. That gazebo I mentioned is firmly situated across from the house — bedding plants to come.  And I’ve got fairy ring mushrooms, knock out roses, peas, melons, corn, wildflowers, onions and spinach coming along very nicely!

Our tenants are doing well too.  I thought the chickadee had abandoned her nest in the birdhouse and opened it to make sure.  Surprise!  She was right there.  I quickly snapped a picture and closed it back up.  She didn’t twitch a bit and the next day was still sitting her clutch.  I was relieved I hadn’t frightened her by the rude intrusion.  The eggs above our front windows have hatched (see the tail sticking out?) and the babies are making a mess of things.  (That’s okay, we know how to use a scrub brush.)  And the purple finch who nested in the holly bush just outside our back door has laid a nice little trio of beautiful blue eggs with little black speckles.  I caught this photo while she was out taking advantage of the bird feeders.

I’ve put some time in at the spinning wheel and now have 3 very full bobbins of alpaca/tussah silk singles.  I’ll be doing some trial plying of these to see how I want to finish them.  I’m hoping two-ply will yield a heavy sock weight or light DK. 

The alpaca fleece that I ordered from Morro Fleece Works arrived this past Saturday and it is incredibly lush!  I was so glad I had an extra bobbin at the ready and on Sunday I sat down and spun up about 4 1/2 ounces.  Like buttah!  The roving drafted like an absolute dream — the closest to the zen of spinning that I think I’ve experienced.  It’s a semi-worsted spin with a lot of energy.  I want to test out how a highly spun and highly plied alpaca behaves in a fabric.  I love this color and this fleece so much that I’d really like to use it for the Knitmore SPAKAL, but am smart enough to know I need to figure out the lack of elasticity issue before I knit an entire sweater out of it!  (By the way, I’m seriously considering Mishke by Julie Weisenberger.  Yes, she seems to have both of our attentions!

Before I say goodbye, I want to share the helmet liner I knit for my trusted assistant.  He is heading off to Afghanistan for a year to command an Air Force communications squadron over there.  I wanted him to stay warm, a small token of my appreciation for all the hard work he did for me over the last few years.  He loved it…can you see the smile?  His last day is tomorrow.  We’ll all be sorry to see him go.  Good luck, Mike!

That’s it — next post will be sooner and shorter.  I promise!

Love, Jan

Dear Jan,

I believe that sometimes the body just takes over and tells you to slow down.  I woke up this morning feeling a bit of malaise which grew to a lot of malaise, coupled with some minor chills and lack of interest in food.  Coupled with a dank and rainy day, no real agenda, and a companionable cat, I had no choice but to go back to bed, from which I’ve just gotten up at 5:30 pm.

If this wave of minor illness had hit me during the week I likely would have muscled through it.  If it had hit next weekend, your visit and all the yarny activities would not have been as much fun.  And if it had been beautiful outside, I would have felt a bit more guilty at burrowing under the covers.  It certainly could have been worsted worse.

The brown merino from the Wool Gatherings sampler pack not only could have been (and, in fact, was) worsted, it could have been (and, indeed, also was) woolen.  I spun it up both ways, directly from the top for true worsted and after carding some rolags for true woolen.

Here is the top on the left and the rolags on the right.  The fiber was nicely prepared and spun easily, but I was surprised to find dark and light kemp fibers in a merino.  You can spot one of the dark fibers in the picture of the top.  Perhaps the natural colored merinos are not as uniform as the white ones.

And the resulting yarn from left to right - woolen 3-ply, worsted 3-ply, woolen 2-ply, and worsted 2-ply.  Note how the fluffy woolen yarn actually looks lighter in color because it is so airy.

I won’t move on to another breed from this set until you catch up with Jocelyn and me.  Maybe you want to select the next one?  I’m skipping the Lincoln Longwool, which Joce has already done, as I gifted that fiber to a friend.

More later,

Ellen