Exotic Fibres :-)

Happy Fibre Arts Friday! This week I don't have much productivity in any of my crafts, well there are a couple of knitting projects I'm working on but I don't want to bore you with WIP pics, so I thought I'd share with you some of my recent fibre acqusitions :D

First up is this gorgeous Suri Alpaca fleece, it's supposed to be purple brown but it just looks brown to me, but I love it anyway.

It's a very clean fleece, there's hardly any VM, the owner said she just spins as it is then wash. I've never tried suri alpaca, it feels heavier than Huacaya and the fibre is quite long... I know there are a few alpaca experts who visit my blog, your expert advice will be greatly appreciated ;-)

Next I have some samples of Baby Llama and De-haired Yak:

On the left are some baby llama samples all in natural colours, on the right is the de-haired yak. I was so surprised at how soft these fibres felt, the llama has a silky feel, almost like angora; the yak is super soft, almost more so than merino. I can't wait to spin this up, but I'm debating with myself whether to spin each on it's own or to blend with something else. Hmmm...

And the last but definitely not the least, it's Humpty Dumpty :D

This is a blend of 80/20 merino and bamboo, I just love the colours, should have got more!

My wheel is still kaput, only just received a reply from Ashford this morning which asked me to refer to their website to identify my model and check the relevant assembly instructions. I have already done that (maybe I didn't make that clear in my email to them), frankly I don't find it that helpful. Perhaps I shouldn't vent about these things until it's resolved, let's hope more helpful advice is forthcoming.

Meanwhile one of my spinning buddies, who is also my spinning classmate, just lent me an old Ashford wheel (~ I love fibre people!) which I picked up today, it's missing the drive band but I've got it in the maintenance kit that I bought sometime ago. So hopefully I can get it up and running this weekend.

By the way, it's been almost exactly three months since I ordered my Little Grace Special, which means there are two more months to go, I am so excited!!

Thanks for dropping by, there is more fibre arts fun at Wisdom Begins in Wonder. Indulge your creative side and join the party!

Baa baa black sheep ...

I visited a sheep farm with my spinning friend Deb on Monday, it is a small farm in the Macedon Ranges called Fairfield Finns. They have around 130 sheep and specialise in Finn sheep and Finn crosses. The owner Maureen is a lovely lady who took us to the field to meet her flock which is guarded by two gorgeous looking alpacas, some of her sheep are coated so the fleeces from these sheep are nice and clean. She also took us to the wool shed where she stores her fleeces, as it's spring in Melbourne her sheep have just been shorn. She has all these fleeces hanging up in pillow cases (to let them breath and to prevent moths) as you can see here:

Maureen is very organised, every pillow case has a label with the breed of sheep, weight of fleece, colour(s), staple length, price and a code to indicate which sheep it's from. We were encouraged to look around and spread out the fleece on a table if we saw something that we might be interested. Maureen insisted that we should check out the whole fleece and feel it before we made a decision, but making a decision was the hardest part because all her fleeces were just so gorgeous, it was really hard to choose from. I'm sure if we were able, physically and financially, Deb and I would have gladly taken a lot more! In the end Deb chose seven and I chose six, mine were three coloured and three white. I won't bore you with photos of bags of wool but I would like to show just one:

I got two bags of this lovely black fleece, both from the same sheep and totaling 1.7kg. Maureen was disappointed with the brown tips as the fleece came from a coated sheep, she thought that the coat would prevent the sun bleaching the tips. But I love it! I think once spun up it's going to be beautiful. My plan is to make a jumper for the old man, I don't often knit jumpers for him because, well, men's jumpers take too long to make. But he's turning 50 (shhh!) in a year's time so I thought I'd make him one with my handspun. I don't know how long it will take but at least I have a head start :)

Other than my little fleece hunting adventure life ticks along, but this week I was reminded of something important by my little man Elli. I was experimenting with dyeing (of course!) and I thought I'd try a semi solid effect, and I followed the instructions from Teach Yourself Visually Hand-Dyeing by Barbara Parry, which involves making up the dye at a certain temperature and dip the prepared yarn in the dye bath to allow certain colours to strike first before simmering it. Sounds easy enough but my yarn didn't come out as I envisioned, it came out all uneven with light and dark patches...

 ... so I was grumbling to myself when Elli said to me: "Be happy with what you have Mummy, because we're lucky." So we are, my dear boy, so we are! On that note, I wish you all good day and have a nice weekend!

Thanks for dropping by, there is more fibre arts fun at Wisdom Begins in Wonder. Indulge your creative side and join the party!

A Chance With a Spinning Wheel: Part II

They say time flies when you are having fun, that is certainly the case this past week. Remember last week I said that in this week's spinning class I was going to learn to ply and scour my yarn and fibre? Well, I did just that and now I can present you my very first finished handspun, drum roll please... tah dah!

I learnt to ply two singles in the opposite direction to the one they were spun to make a balanced yarn, oh I love plying, it's so much faster than spinning! And then because my yarn was spun from the greasy wool I also learnt to scour and wash it to get rid of all the grease and grime. The transformation was amazing!

Project:  my first hand spun on a wheel
Fibre:   raw corriedale fleece
Yardage: 98 meters / 107 yards (2 ply)
Yarn weight: DK (11 wpi)
Amount: 70g / 2.5 oz

I am so pleased with my first hand spun, it's not perfect but I love it and just can't stop petting it. The next question is: What should I do with it? What should I make? And there's another point, I'm not sure I want to dye it - that's part of the lesson plan in a later class, but I really quite like the natural colour, it's so yummy... decision decision...

On a slightly down note, my attempt at scouring the raw fleece did not go quite so smoothly. I prepared my fleece as instructed, like this:

... then I scoured it, washed it and laid it out to dry:

 

 

For some reason the stains on the tips did not quite come out, I don't know if this is because I didn't use hot enough water or not enough detergent, but there it is. I spoke with the lady who runs the class, she told me not to panic and that she's going to scour some of this fleece over the weekend and see how it will come out, "maybe it will look better once flicked" she suggested. I think she's just trying to comfort me, but let's hope so! I'm waiting for the fleece to dry so I can find out whether I'd made a complete boo boo of this beautiful fleece.


Wish me luck!

Thanks for dropping by, there is more fibre arts fun at Wisdom Begins in Wonder. Indulge your creative side and join the party!

A Chance With A Spinning Wheel: Part I

After much anticipation my spinning classes started this week, hooray! The classes are being held at the Handweavers & Spinners Guild of Victoria, there are five sessions all together and each lasting 3 hours. The first lesson was about learning the basics, how to adjust the wheel, how to flick the fleece, how to get started and all that.

Since I don't have my own wheel (yet!!) the Guild loaned me one to practice on. It's a traveller single treadle by Ashford, there are larger traditional wheels available but my beloved little Honda Jazz could only handle this small wheel :)

What I hadn't expected was that we'd be handling raw fleece, well I knew we'd be learning about fleece but for some reason I just didn't consider handling raw fleece, complete with vegetable matter and erm, well, you know, things that get stuck on a sheep's coat... how naive was I! To be fair, the fleece we were given was quite clean, I was assured that there were worse ones. Anyway we learned to turn this corriedale fleece:

... into this: (I do love the sheen!)

... by using a flick carder like this: (yes, I bought my own carder :)

To be honest, at this stage I'm not entirely sure that I like handling greasy wool, maybe I'm just being a typical squeamish city dweller. On the other hand isn't this what it's all about? Learning where the wool/yarn had come from, how it came to be, like growing your own vegetables and making your own bread. In fact, come to think of it, knitting one's own garment is also part of that process of Make It Happen, it's earthy qualities serve as a constant reminder that that's what distinguishes us humans to the rest of the animals, that armed with tools and knowledge we can make it happen.

And make it happen I will, spinning on the wheel that is! It's easily said than done though, just when I thought I'd had the spindle under control, more or less, the spinning wheel is entirely a different kettle of fish! For you seasoned wheel spinners I solute you for making it seem so easy, so fluid, so serene, so transfixing... but to coordinate two hands and a foot while drafting/sliding/treadling is like trying to make a pair of puppets dance cha-cha!! Yes, yes, I know, practice makes it perfect, I'll drink to that! ... maybe I'll drink another one to that!

Next week I will be learning how to ply on the wheel and how to scour the wool, to do that we need to complete our homework of spinning two bobbins worth of yarn. This is my progress so far:

Actually this is my second bobbin - I didn't fill the first one mind you, it's just simply too ghastly to see. I've set it aside as a reminder of "how NOT to do it" whilst at the same time I can have a look at that and give myself a quick pat on the back and say "there there, you're making progress". By that, my friends, I will say good-bye for now because I have some real work to do.

Thanks for dropping by, there is more fibre arts fun at Wisdom Begins in Wonder. Indulge your creative side and join the party!