Spinning With Cashmere

In 2008 I traveled to China with my daughter's college choir.   While we were touring a cashmere factory I got our translator to ask the manager of the factory if I could buy just a little unspun fiber.  I (and the translator) had to ask three times.  "No," said the manager when he finally understood.  We don't sell such a thing."  He pointed to the showroom where they sold everything from rugs to sweaters to little stuffed kittens.  He couldn't understand why any sane person would want the fluff.  I think he felt a little insulted, too.  He was real frowny.

SO since I couldn't get even a pinch of cashmere in China, I bought some here.  And guess where it came from?  Yep.  China.  Mongolia, to be exact.  The following is an account of this spinning adventure.

I bought 8 ounces of cream colored cashmere top and when it arrived I just stuck my hand in the bag and touched it.  It almost felt like touching NOTHING at all.  I fluffed the top a bit and started to spin - using the fastest ratio on my Souped up Suzie.  I wanted as many yards as possible - spinning pure gold.  To make it go even farther, I planned to ply with a fine silk thread.

I found it was difficult to keep a very even draft - lots of little slubs.  The fiber was fine but not slippery, and the top was fairly compacted.  Had I been spinning on a drop spindle I would have had more consistency, but I was in a hurry this time.

I finally settled on a long draw spinning from a hunk of the top torn off and folded in half.  I didn't fold it OVER my finger, I just folded and spun from the point of the fold.  I was able to spin fast and fairly evenly.

By the time I had two full Majacraft lace bobbins I was sick of looking at cashmere.  I still had to ply.  I figured I'd had enough.  I let it sit for a week to set the twist then plied it with silk thread.

Final counts:  4.6 ounces of silk-plied cashmere is 1693 yds.  In other words, 368 yds/oz.  You can see in the close up that the strands are not perfect - some are fluffier than others!  The overall feel of the yarn is soft, soft, soft and very cushy. 

Knitted into lace it will have a lustrous drape and will weigh next to nothing.  I haven't decided if I will knit or weave it.

Side Kick - Price and Pre-Ordering

Schacht has not finalized the price on the Side Kick travel wheel yet, but rumor has it that it will retail for around $800.  The wheels will start shipping in May, but NOW is the time to get on the list if you want to be first in line.  They already have a growing number of pre-paid customers.

For $200 down I will pre-order your wheel.  Pre-orders need to be placed by the end of Feb but a queue is already forming so the sooner we get your wheel ordered, the sooner you will get it after the wheels start shipping.

Woollen Longdraw - for handspinning

Here is a nice video on how to do a woollen long-draw.  If you find the music distracting go ahead and mute the sound - the entire lesson is visual.

Happy Spinning!

Schacht SideKick! A Sneak Peek

IS THIS CUTE OR WHAT???

The rumors are true!  Schacht has been working on a folding wheel for over a year.  Finally we got the announcement - the SideKick is due to start shipping in May!

As soon as I have prices I will offer the wheel for pre-sale orders.

Here are some of the Sidekick’s features:

Folds to 21 1/2" x 15" x 8 1/4".
Integrated storage of bobbins, flyer, and whorls for transport.
Lightweight at 13 pounds.
13 3/4" drive wheel allows for ratios from 4.25 to 15.25.
Long, comfortable treadles.
Uses the same bobbins, whorls, and flyer as the Schacht Matchless and Ladybug wheels.
The Sidekick can be purchased without the bobbin-flyer assembly.
25" orifice height for comfortable spinning.
Employs Scotch tension with precise control knob.
The drive wheel spins on ball bearings. The flyer turns on self-aligning bearings.
Drive band tension adjuster allows for all whorls to be used with one drive band.
The Sidekick comes with 3 bobbins, 2 whorls, threading hook, and adjustable carrying strap.

Also available: The Sidekick Bulky Plyer Flyer Package can be added at any time.

This wheel will have all the Schacht features that discriminating spinners have come to expect - solid construction, precision engineering, and good looks to boot!

For comparison, the LadyBug weighs 13.5 pounds too, so this wheel isn't lighter.  Its advantage is that it can be packed up into a smaller package.  And, unlike the LadyBug, it does not have the option of double drive.

Weaving a Handspun (mostly) Blanket

This adventure started with a couple thousand yards of gray Romney-Mohair 2-ply, dyed blue.  Read here about the dyeing adventure.  I could have made a sweater but couldn't summon the Knitting Muse.  I decided to weave a blanket instead, and give it to my son for Christmas.  He's a doctoral student at the U of Iowa and is grateful for any and all free stuff.  I knew that no matter how it turned out he'd like it.

My big loom is only 35" wide so I calculated for twice the finished length at a fairly loose sett of 8 ends per inch.  I figured on a lot of shrinkage during finishing and wanted the blanket to retain a drapey, soft feel.  I dyed white sport weight Bartlettyarn in three warp groups using the kettle method and two colors - scarlet red and royal blue.

After the loom was dressed it only took a few sessions to do the actual weaving.  When I cut the piece from the loom it was 15 feet long and 34" wide.  I zig-zagged the raw ends (which had a wool header)  and washed the whole thing in the washing machine, delicate cycle, with Woolite.  Then I dried it on the FLUFF cycle in the dryer.  It was nicely fulled when I took it out. 

I cut the blanket in two and once again zigzagged the edges with black silk thread,  and then  seamed the two pieces side-by-side by hand with weft yarn in an overcast stitch.  The last thing I had to decide was how to finish the ends.

I thought about making a binding of some kind but the blanket fabric is quite thick and I didn't want a "hard" edge.  After a couple of trial runs I decided on a blanket stitch hem along the turned-over edge.

Here is the finished blanket on my studio floor.

And here it is, on my son.  (I sewed the gnome hat by special request.  He's an English Lit scholar and said that if Scrooge has a nightcap, he wanted one too.)

I'm glad I took the risk on a BIG PROJECT!  The finished size of the blanket is 62" wide and 74" long. It is fuzzy and has a nice drape, and is WARM!  Best of all, it was Made By Hand, With Love.

Cotton Towels. Can't You Get Those at Wal-Mart?

For as long as I can remember I have knitted Christmas gifts for everyone in the family.  This year, I'm weaving.  Here are some of my projects and what I've learned from them.

Cotton Dish Towels.  When I first joined our local Fiber Arts Guild, before I learned to weave, I was struck by how many weavers made towels.  Towels?  I had that "can't you buy those at Wal-Mart?" moment, but once I started weaving I was intrigued.  For one thing, though I knit a lot, I rarely use cotton.  Using a new fiber sounded like an interesting adventure.  Second, I got a really good deal on some monster cones of cotton.

The towel on the far left was made with leftovers from a color gamp kit.  I had rainbow cones with a lot of thread left, and nothing to do with them!  I designed this simple twill towel.  It is 10/2 perle cotton set at 30 e.p.i.  When I took it off the loom I was in love.  After I washed and dried it, it became my new favorite.  Here's a close up of the twill.

The next three towels are in a pattern draft called M's and O's from The Handweaver's Pattern Dictionary, p. 129.  I used one threading for all three towels and had planned to use three different treadling sequences, but I liked #2 so well that I never got to #3.  The warp is 8/2 cotton set at 20 epi.  The weft is cotton flake.

What I learned.

1. I had to use a stretcher/temple for these projects in order to keep my fell line straight.  Unlike wool, cotton has very little give.
2. Cotton shrinks.  A lot. Really a lot.  Each towel shrunk at least 4 inches in length and 3+ inches in width.   Shrinking is a bonus too - any loose weave places close up.  What looks like funky bad weaving disappears.
3. All Flake Cotton Is Not Equal.  I got the cones of flake cotton as a bargain basement item from a weaving store.  After washing it was obvious that at least one of the colors was not going to stand up to  years and years of washing and drying.
4. Weaving cotton is noisier.  My big loom is upstairs and the noise I made beating the cotton weft into place (two beats, one on the closed shed, one on the next open shed) drove my poor husband nuts.  I had to weave cotton when he was at work.  Another reason to have two looms - one with a quiet project, the other with cotton.
5. Finally, I LOVED MAKING TOWELS.  While I was doing this project I "won" an Ebay sale - 20 new cones of linen weaving thread for next to nothing.
I hope my relatives and friends like handwoven towels.  I can see a future in this.

Weaving With Handspun - Continued Adventures

Here is my second weaving project made entirely with handspun yarn.  It was also my first attempt at overshot weaving.   It is a wool table runner, 13 inches wide and 48 inches long, excluding 4 inches of fringe at each end.  It fits exactly on top of a walnut radiator cabinet in our guest bedroom.  The colors do NOT match the decor, but TOO BAD.

I started with leftovers from previous projects.  The burgundy is a fine Romney single and the multi is a merino single made from a multi-dyed roving.  I had a lot of this and wanted to weave with it, but needed a stronger yarn for warp.

I spun 3.5 ounces of Romney very fine, with a high twist, and plied it at high twist also.  I got 800 yds of 2-ply from 3.5 ounces.

I measured the warp and then sized it with rabbit skin glue.  Eeeew.  Gooey.  I let it dry to a nice, crusty stiff as pipe cleaners hand, then warped the Wolf Pup LT.

I had to decide which yarn I would use for the overshot pattern, and which to use for the background tabby.  You can see what I decided here.  The stripes are the merino multi, in tabby.  The weaving was 14 inches in the reed, 12 ends per inch.  The yarn was fine enough for 15 epi, but I wanted to avoid breakage so I gave it extra room.  That had consequences.

 Using a less-dense sett meant the weft was more easily packed into a weft-faced cloth.  I hardly beat it at all, just pressed it into place, but I ended up with almost no warp showing at all.  This also made the pattern squished down and spread out.  But here is the good part.

NO BROKEN WARPS.  And very little wool fuzz under the loom.  This means that the ends were not being abraded (and weakened) during weaving.  I give myself a point for this.

This will not win any prizes but I learned a lot.  If I were to do it again I would switch the two weft yarns - make the solid color the background tabby and the multi the overshot pattern.  It would be a completely different look, more unified, I think.  I didn't have enough warp yarn for sampling....naughty naughty me.  Had I sampled I would have discovered my preference.

And finally, I STILL have leftover weft yarn, enough for at least a scarf! 

Schacht Ordering Deadlines - Get it by Christmas!

Want it by Christmas?  I need to have your order in by the following dates:

November 11             Last day to order a Matchless
November 18             Last day to order a Ladybug, Floor Loom or Wolf Loom
November 30             Last day to order Accessories and Small Looms

ALL Schacht Looms and spinning wheels (including Matchless) are 10% off retail prices if ordered this month.  Let me know!

Open House on Saturday, Nov. 6th.

If you are in the area on Saturday, stop by for my Fall Fiber Open House!  Wool, wool, WOOL!  Wheels, looms, and a fire in the fireplace.  I'll be open from 1-6 pm.  Email me for directions!

A Tiny Adventure in Ikat.

One of the things we used to see along the mountain roads in Guatemala was long lengths of warp threads drying in the sun, held up off the ground on forked sticks.  The warps were cotton and had been tie-dyed and then dyed indigo or black.  In Guatemala this technique is called jaspe.  In the world of weaving it is also called Ikat, which is Japanese.

I decided to try a little ikat at home.  I measured out a couple of yards of silk warp and then tied it up and down. 

Then I dyed it dark green.  When I took off the ties there were little white areas.

Here is how it looked on the loom.

Here is how it looked woven.

There was only one really big surprise here.  I wove the silk at 24 epi and it was so tight the resulting cloth felt like cardboard, or at best, upholstery fabric and was barely shiny at all.  The little white streaks were interesting but I realized I'd have to go back to the drawing board and experiment more with the sett before designing a complete project.

Once again, I am GLAD I made a sample! 

Gamp and More Gamp - And What I Learned This Time

Last May I bought a weaving kit from Halcyon Yarn but when it arrived I realized it was far too advanced for my skills at that time.  I got it out two weeks ago and decided I was ready.

The kit used 10/2 Perle Cotton at 36 ends per inch in a Huck Lace (also called Huckabuck or Huckaback) pattern.  Once I got the loom warped the weaving was pretty fast.  I finished sewing the hems on the six place mats last night.

Here is what I learned.  I would probably not make placemats from perle cotton again.  It is too soft.  I expect place mats to be a bit stiff and sturdy.  These are soft enough to be napkins.  If I'd known that from the beginning, I would have made napkins instead!  I ended up pressing them with spray starch.

Huck Lace draws in A LOT.  I spent a bit of time trying to iron the placemats into rectangles.  You can see how they flare a bit at the ends where there is an inch of plain weave.  If I made them again I would not add that inch at the ends.

I don't like black edges with colored weft.  It seems to show every tiny flaw.  The pattern called for an inch of tabby on either edge.  If I did them again I would reduce this to half an inch.

With such a dense warp (36 epi) it was IMPOSSIBLE to get an even weft, no matter how hard I muscled the beater.  36 warp ends equaled an inch - half that many weft shots equaled an inch in pattern, and in tabby it was even less, more like 12-14! 

The hems of each place mat were woven using plain sewing thread for weft.  This made a smooth, warp-faced BEAUTIFUL shiny fabric!  The color of the thread hardly showed at all.  In fact, tightly packed 10/2 warp with sewing thread weft would make fantastic striped napkins. They'd have a great sheen, be smooth, and the stripes would be solid.  The spool of thread fit right into a small boat shuttle so it was easy to weave.

I liked the huck lace pattern and will probably make something with all my leftovers.  I will expect it to be soft, cushy, and draw in...a lot!  I will not repeat the elements I didn't like but will do it my OWN way next time. 

As always, I learned a lot!

Spun It, Dyed It, Wove It, Sewed It!

I finished Marty's vest yesterday and he wore it to work today.  It looks fabulous on him!

Sewing with my handspun was a fun challenge.  (Here is a link to my post about spinning and weaving the fabric.)   First I had to CUT OUT THE PIECES.  The first snip felt positively sinful but after that it was fun.  The fabric pattern is the same on front and back and so I was able to fit all the pattern pieces on, one layer at a time, without regard to any of that.  It is a good thing my husband is skinny.  I wove this on an 18" wide loom - any larger and the pieces would not have fit. 

Because the fabric is somewhat coarse I had to handle it as little as possible because it ended to fray at the raw edges.  Fortunately the pattern didn't call for any overturned or hemmed edges - the whole thing was lined.  The fabric would not have been stable enough for an unlined garment - I think it would have stretched out of shape.

I lined the vest with rayon lining.  The welt pockets were also lined with rayon.  I reinforced the buttonholes with a strip of iron-on interfacing on the back side of the fabric and sewed them on the machine.  Mom would have made hand-bound buttonholes, I hope she was not looking down at me from that sewing room in the sky!