Nasty neps and nits

I'm gradually spinning up the 16+ colours but I'm having multitudinous probems with neps. Every few draws I have to stop and remove those pesky little concentrations of short fibres. From the 33g of fibre I've spun today  I've removed 3g of neps. I've also let many more go through the spinning wheel. It makes the spinning arduous instead of a pleasure.

Nasty neps

Close up of a nep

3 g of neps from 33g of fibre spun

I contacted New Zealand spinning guru Pat Old and asked for help tracking down the cause. Possibilities were:

• Over dyeing in the microwave which would make the fibres brittle and more prone to breaking. I tested the strength of the undyed and dyed fibre but they seemed identical.
• Short fibres in the undyed fibre which could form neps in the carding process. I checked the length of the fibre and they all appeared long.

By this time I was wondering if it was my carding technique. I'd done the carding with one hand - the other was out of action - so maybe I wasn't as careful as I should have been. I tried carding some undyed fibre carefully. There were no neps of short fibres before carding but after there were plenty. I looked again at the length of the fibres and discovered there were short fibres amongst the long fibres. In my determination to master handpainting roving and dyeing in the microwave I'd completely forgotted to check the fibre quality. I'd assumed Ashford's merino sliver would be ok. However this is sold for felting as well as spinning so it wasn't surprising that it had a mix of fibres of varying length.

Lovely gradations of colour

During the spinning I've let many neps into the single. There are far too many to attempt to remove. I'm just hoping they don't bite me on the bum and cause endless nits on my knitted garment. Next time I shall test the fibre using combs. If there are short fibres they will be caught on the combs.

The good news is I love the colours and effect of short rows in the knitting. The triangles are knitted with alternating balls.

Smaller jacket

From the leftover Perendale yarn I'd dyed for my Noro jacket I made this sweet one for the youngest grandchild.

Finished Noro jacket

Interesting design with back shorter than front

 It's taken me a while to get these photos onto my blog. Way back last July I dyed some commercial Perendale yarn as one of the colourways for this Noro jacket. It was a massively long skein to dye - 300 metres in total. Together with the Noro colourway I had bought from Laughing Hens in England I made the jacket. I love the way the colours move across the garment and the way the short rows influence the shaping.

Brilliant design with short rows

Rows become vertical on the back

Paua merino becomes waistcoat

But only just!

I spun 300g of Fibre 2 Go's paua merino sliver aiming to get wide bands of colour. I undid each of the 100g units to give six ends. I found the colour that was most common to the six ends and spun that in a worsted style. Then I found the next most common colour and spun that and so on. This also coped with the slight differences in the colours of the sliver.  I'd bought 200g then another 100g months later.

Single ply

Next I chain (Navaho) plyed the yarn. The yarn looked beautiful, smooth and rounded but I hadn't anticipated how heavy it would be and consequently what a short meterage I would get compared to 2 ply yarn.
 

 The colours were very effective in the waistcoat but knitting it was like driving a car when you are running out of petrol. I had to unpick the fronts and lower the neckline to get enough yarn. Even then I was scrambling to finish it. The last lengths of yarn were cut from the ends left from casting on.



The buttons were a problem. My little town of Thames on the Coromandel Peninsula doesn't have much of a choice so I usually recycle old buttons. This time I had nothing suitable except for one button made from paua shell. Eventually I found a shop in Waihi that has a fantastic range. The owner imports buttons from England.

Challenging 16+ colour yarn

I love the effects of the colour changes in Noro yarn and decided to try to dye and spin a yarn that also had long colour changes. One of my hands was severely out of action for months after I'd stupidly flick carded alpaca for a day. However I could still dye using my left hand. I hand painted metre after metre of merino and occasionally merino and silk and dyed using a microwave. It was exciting and also frustrating. I couldn't get a red red.
 

A handpainted length of merino

 Then I separated out the colours in the skeins.

While I was on a weekend fibre retreat I carded the lot into batts. Then I admired them for the next 4 months. At the same time I was dreaming up idea after idea for using them.


Spinning sequence: left from middle of picture
bright cherry
deep mushroom
pale mauve
deep mauve
rose
dark cherry
scarlet
orange
gold-brown
light green
mid green
red


The initial problem was how to spin the yarn. The obvious solution was to chain (Navaho) ply as the colours would easily form a sequence. However I wanted a light garment and chain plying gives a triple ply that is heavier than a two ply. The obvious answer was to spin the merino finer but fine yarns are not my forte. What about fulling a single? My experiment looked beautiful but I couldn't face fulling hundreds of metres of yarn. I could see tangles, snarls and disaster. After experiments with different techniques and whorl sizes I chose to spin the batts on my Majacraft Aura with the 7.3 whorl then ply.
 
The batts in total weighed about 450g. I decided to make 6 units. I had widely differing amounts of the various colours. There was 56g of pale green but only 17g of mushroom. I got out the scales and divided each colour into  six. Five of them I put away in a box then I split my first unit of 16 colours into two for the 2 singles I would ply. But wait, there is more. I didn't want abrupt colour changes so I took a little of one colour and carded it with a little of the next colour to give a colour bridge from one to the next. But now it was getting very difficult to keep the weights the same for each ply. My scales don't really differentiate between 1, 2 and 3 grams. On Trademe I found scales that would measure in 0.01g so I ordered some.

I dizzed then plyed the singles and I'm happy with the colours. There were only 4 spots where I had to take out a metre or so because the colours weren't working. Here's the first skein done using my old scales.

Kid mohair corespun

I teased out some lustrous kid mohair curls and corespun then around a commercial mohair yarn.  The skein was delightlully soft.









 The resulting yarn was unbalanced so I
spiral plyed it with a fine silk/mohair thread. It is just visible at the bottom right.

Now I'm wondering  what to make with it. It feels so good around my neck that I could just wear it as a necklace/cowl.