Courageous Carding

My carding has become very circumscribed by convention over the last few years. Yesterday I took a baby step towards freeing my carding. With some grey alpaca as the bread I made a sandwich with scraps of merino from previous cardings, spun it, loved it and kept making more until I'd used the whole bag of scraps.


I've still got a long way to go. My next carding challenge is make every sandwich different and see what appears on the wheel

 Here's the single - with some silk too.

I soaked the single in hot soapy water then moved a plunger up and down to begin felting the single to stabilise the twist. I lost my rhythm every time the plunger stuck to the bottom of the bucket.
Then I removed the skein, pressed out the excess water, folded it in half, gently rubbed on Sunlight soap and felted the skein in a bamboo placemat NOT very much. As soon as the skein started to stick together, I reskeined the yarn, then rinsed it in cold water. It's easiest if I wind the skein off the bobbin onto the skein winder and then I use a niddy noddy for the second skeining. I found that I could get away without any more felting and reskeining.

I took out the saturated skein snapped it twice then hung it to dry. I always get quite wet during the snapping but it straightens out the yarn so well I don't mind. I hung it out sopping wet to dry without any weight.
The finished skein is soft, light and airy.

And a rich brown scarf

Here the warp threads included corespun natural dark brown alpaca with red and gold silk. I dyed the mohair weft to match.

 You can see the effect of the extra twist in the corespun alpaca. It gives an interesting wiggly effect.

Autumn colours Mobius Scarf

I'm in two minds whether this is a scarf or a cowl. I've used different shades of mohair for the weft interspersed with tailspun Suri locks that I spun and dyed. It is wonderfully soft. The scarf is very versatile as it can be worn with the interwoven ends in front, on the shoulder of at the back. The cowl can also be deepened so that the fringed ends are mostly hidden.

 Here are the tailspun locks I used in the weft together with some 2 ply Suri that I used in the warp.

Got there - 2nd woven scarf

I'm happy with this scarf. It is great to wear as it's long enough to arrange in different ways. The alpaca makes if super soft  and the edges are satisfyingly even (enough for me).

Close up of fleece locks.

The thick and thin yarn forms interesting waves in the centre of the image below.

All the yarns except one were handspun and dyed, not necessarily in that order by yours truely.

Back to weaving

J had thought my weaving days were several decades in the past but all that changed when I saw a friend weaving on an Ashford's knitters loom. Like spinning, weaving has become more creative in the last 5 years or so. I have not quite reached the no rules approach - I still like even selvedges - but my weaving has become more playful. Nearly all the yarns I used were my own handspun. Here is a wine coloured single pulled up to make little loops.

 These are some of the handspun yarns I used in the weft - merino, merino boucle, merino and alpaca thick and thin which I had lightly fulled, thick singles also fulled, grey plyed yarn and many more. The mauve mohair is a commercial yarn. I'd also dyed most of the yarns.

 This part includes spaces, inlaid art yarn, more fine singles and thick and thin.

The finished scarf. I'm not totally happy with it 'cause the mohair section is wider than the rest.

Building the stash at Cambridge

At the recent Cambridge Creative Fibres exhibition I indulged myself in some beautiful random dyed sliver from Lyn Walsh of Fibres to Go. I had seen her colourway, Paua, before and couldn't wait to get some. The colours are taken from the inner shell of the New Zealand paua or abalone.

I bought 300 g of merino (80%) and silk (20%) dyed predominately in blues, turquoise and green with splashes of pink.  I've decided to spin the sliver my version of fine then Navaho (chain) ply the singles.

I was half way through spinning the first length when I had an idea. If I wanted longer lengths of a colour I could spin from either end of each 100g skeins whenever the colours at the ends were the same. So I've decided to use the yarn I've already spun for sleeves and the rest for areas of knitting that have more stitches.

Another length that begged to come home with me was this one of 19 micron merino dyed in jewel colours. At this stage I think it will likely become a scarf.

My final purchase was a 0.7 kg share in a white alpaca fleece from Ridgedale Alpacas in Katikati. The soft locks are long and have a lovely crimp. I'm looking forward to washing, dyeing and spinning alpaca for the first time.

one lock of alpaca