SpinnySpinny

I did some spinning the other day and thought I’d post something. I am working with some long staple, about 20 cm, Romney fleece that’s been sitting around for some years now. It’s not the nicest stuff so I haven’t been terribly interested in using it for a project. But right now I’m working on yarn for a weaving sample so random wool from the fiber closet is fine.

For singles warp I need to spin from combed fiber, but the big scary English combs that would work best with this fiber are still packed away back east. The Viking combs, or any hand-held comb, are difficult to manage with this stuff. So I’m using a dog brush to comb it out and spinning directly from the staple.

To keep the fiber under control I’m basically holding it against my leg with my left hand like this:

It sorta functions like a distaff, holding the fiber in place so I can draft it a little bit at a time. I do have to stop and prepare more fiber frequently, but the wool itself is long enough that it’s a reasonable amount of fiber to hold at one time. If I were spinning thicker yarn that would be a problem.

Actually this yarn is fairly thick for me, and very inconsistent. I’m not really paying attention because for what I’m working on I’d rather get it over with than really work on getting good yarn. It’s more than stable enough for warp and will show the effect I’m after in the finished project. After I finish this bobbin I’m doing another twisted in the opposite direction so I can experiment with combining them together in woven fabric.

This weekend I kinda got volunteered to host a fiber get-together, but that’s ok because it’s why the studio is the studio and doesn’t have a tv and other things usually found in a room of that sort. (Just because there’s a sofa doesn’t mean it’s the living room.)

I had good intentions to actually get a bit of spinning done, but instead did some sewing (and laundry) and hauled out the drum carder for a lesson. Unfortunately I managed to not get rid of the proffered junk fiber, my guests having better taste than mystery wool. (I still don’t know what some of it is, but I sure did end up with a lot of it.)

So fiber was carded and weavings were passed around and stuff like that. One person is a novice spinner and she was quite taken with the drum carder. It isn’t actually mine, being on semi-permanent loan, but its owner has expressed some interest in selling it. I need one that can handle finer fiber so although it’s been living at our place I have only used it on occasion. Now as it turns out, my other guest has a drum carder she never uses that is better with fine fiber, so I may well end up buying that one.

This is pretty much how things go, equipment wanders around here and there, settling in where it’s needed at the time. Although my textile closet has lately been hard to escape and many of those “seemed like a good idea at the time” items are still lurking. I keep thinking something would be good to have around for students, but when was the last time I had one of those? For someone who hates hand carding I have rather a lot of sets of them, along with various “gift” yarns and fabrics that are probably worth about what I paid for them.

I needed something to work on at the Swedish Christmas Fair, so I dug out some Romney fleece I had sitting around and started on a medium-weight single. It’s really long staple (20 cm) so combing out with the dog brush is fine and it’s fast to spin. Normally demo yarn is total crap but this stuff is so mindless to work with that it’s coming out fine.

I’m finally following through on a project I’ve been talking about for years, spin direction patterns. You can get interesting subtle patterns like checks and stripes in a plain-weave fabric by changing the direction the yarn is spun. Light reflects differently off each yarn and it makes it look like a much more complex fabric.

This was common in early Scandinavian weaving of the Viking era, so I want to do a sample for an upcoming talk at the local Swedish cultural society meeting. I also saw a really nice Peruvian piece at the Textile Museum a few years back, done with 2-ply. It’s one of those interesting techniques that you can only do with handspun because you just can’t buy the right yarn.

So far I’ve gotten almost a full bobbin done Z. It’s not great yarn for me as I’m not much paying attention to size but it will be fine for a sample. I will probably have to do it on the table loom just because the smaller one has less yarn lost to loom waste. That’s a big deal when you are spinning it all.

It’s also using up some fiber I’ll never make a real project from. I bought some of this fleece years ago to use for students and never did anything with it. It’s coarse and not great for clothing, not to mention the annoying canary stain that causes it to all come out vaguely yellowish.

I went to the book store last night for something entirely not about textiles but of course wandered over to the craft section. Much to my amazement, there were multiple books about spinning. (And, for the first time in forever, I can get Spin-Off lots of places but am having trouble finding a copy of Handwoven.)

But hidden in the miscellaneous textiles section was Weaving in the Peruvian Highlands by Nilda Callañaupa Alvarez. I have somehow managed to miss meeting Nilda on several occasions, but have heard much of her work from publications and my friend Abby Franquemont. She taught me about Peruvian weaving, which she learned as a child in Nilda’s village.

I haven’t had a chance to really read the book yet, but already there are interesting patterns I want to weave. And finally photos of how the woven edge finish works. I really like spinning Peruvian-style weaving yarn, partly because it’s totally unlike the well-behaved modern mill yarns. It has so much twist that it’s traditionally kept in balls to maintain tension. But it works perfectly for traditional fabrics that withstand decades of daily use. I just wish I had more time to spin and weave my own.

Again this year I did a spinning demo at the Swedish Christmas Fair. Last year we were an emergency replacement but we had so much fun that we did it again. Alfred brought his antique wheel, we ate open-faced sandwiches and spun all day. I had to run back home and find the clip that had fallen off my flier (which resulted in an expensive parking mess upon my return) but other than that it was a perfect day.

The Swedes kept textile traditions going long after most other countries forgot how, so everyone had stories about grandmother’s spinning wheel and got compliments on my spinning from women who did it themselves as children. It’s nice to do a demo where you don’t have people pointing out to their children your “loom” or asking if I killed the sheep myself.

Plus I got quite a bit of spinning done. I hadn’t taken out the wheel for months.