Category: hand spun

Distaffs

On By vikkihaffendenIn British wool, craft, creativity, fibre, fibre preparation, hand spinning, hand spun, spinning, Spinning wheelsLeave a comment

I recently read an article in SpinOff about distaffs and decided to try using one when spinning in a wheel, not just on a drop spindle. Luckily I had a handy drumstick lying around that I use to roll rolags off the blending board and it is just about the right length and weight. Its varnished surface also helps the wool slide off easily as I take it from the distaff.

At the moment I am spinning Ryeland fleece and have been preparing batts on the drum carder. I used to be able to take a roving off but since the carder was motorised its not so easy as it won’t rotate freely. So now I split the batts into narrower lengths to wind around the distaff. This seems to work OK and after a spray with spinning oil I find the fibre supply much easier to handle in this manner. Using my (new) large double drive wheel I get a good speed up and even doing short draft can spin a surprising amount, (for me anyway) at a sitting.

I will carry on with this and see how it works out. I may even get to attach the distaff to one of the wheel uprights which might be even more efficient.

Distaff held in my waistband, but sometimes under my arm or in my outside fingers.

Spinning a balanced yarn

On By vikkihaffendenIn hand spinning, hand spun, spinning, Spinning wheels, yarnLeave a comment

The fleece I am working with is not brilliant, but I am using it to practise making a balanced, soft spun woollen yarn for knitting. To do this I read up on Mabel Ross’ method, and with a little tweaking to suit my preferred yarn handle, it worked!

Mabel Ross worked it out for us and it is quite logical really. You do need to know your wheel’s ratios, work consistently with your draft and count your treadling to start with, so if thats not your style, don’t go there.

I was aiming for around 2tpi in the finished yarn, but actually increased this a little after the first samples.

The equation is to do with spinning the singles at the tpi you want and then plying them to get the final tpi you want. Its really helpful to remember that if you spin your singles Z, when you ply them S you will be unwinding some of the single’s twist. (update- I have subsequently spun some yarn at a much higher tpi using a 1:10 whorl that has come out soft after a similarly balancing plying method. Maybe I’m getting it…)

I worked backwards from my 2tpi goal.

For example: I was working with a 1:6 whorl, therefore one revolution of my wheel would turn the bobbin 6 times. I was spinning ‘Z’ twist with a long draw of 12″.

First of all I needed to know how many treadles to the 12″ draft would give me the tpi I required. Yes I know I’ve muddled metric and imperial, but it still works.

Number of treadles = (required tpi x planned draft length)/ divided by wheel ratio (which i know will be 6)

tpi of my singles = tpi of my plied yarn divided by number of plies

II reckoned that if I want 2tpi in the plied yarn, I needed to spin the singles at around 4tpi.

The equation I worked with using MR method to find out how many treadles I needed to a set draft length was:

tpi = (wheel ratio x treadles)/divided by draft length.

Go back to the earlier question of how many treadles?

Number of treadles = (required tpi x planned draft length)/ divided by wheel ratio (which i know will be 6)

which came out as

tpi (4) x draft (12″) = 48/6 = 8.

So 8 treadles using the 1:6 whorl to a 12′ draft should give me 4tpi. in my singles…

Well I wrote this post a while ago, and since then have done some spinning. It was not successful, way to soft and loose spun for my taste, but a balanced yarn – no twisting and it knits without bias.

I upped singles tpi a little and also the ply by a smaller amount and the yarn improved. and stayed balanced! A lesson learned.

Plein-aire spinning

On By vikkihaffendenIn British wool, craft, creativity, fibre, fibre preparation, hand spinning, hand spun, memories, naturaldyeing, spinning, Spinning wheels, Textiles, Uncategorized, Wool, yarnLeave a comment

A bit like outdoor anything – providing its not raining or freezing – spinning is enhanced by the open-air. I took my little Louet wheel with me whilst on holiday on the Pembroke coast recently. We were being careful and avoiding towns etc in our caravan sitting on a farm, so there was plenty of opportunity to spin in the lovely sunshine. It seems ages ago now, but was so refreshing.

Victoria beside the caravan, enjoying the view.

I took a bag full of mixed colour Jacob’s fleece and sorted it into dark and light before hand carding it. Ifirst of all spun a skein of cream to test the tpi and grist I was aiming at and on a rainy day decided to dye it with the onion skins from our soup.

All very earthy!

I can’t resist a marl yarn, so plied the colours into variations on this.

From left: knot or knop marl, slubby marl, onion dyed 2 ply, chain plied random carded colours

Spinning fine yarns for machine knitting

On By vikkihaffendenIn alpaca, British wool, craft, fibre, fibre preparation, hand spinning, hand spun, Knitted textiles, knitting, Machine knitting, Machine knitting; knitmaster;silver reed; knitting, spinning, Textiles, Wool, yarnLeave a comment

If you have seen some of my earlier posts about machine knitting and spinning you might realise that I am keen to put the two together. I was given a fleece that is long-staple, not-very crimped and quite lustrous, but I don’t know what breed it is from. Its also quite coarse with well defined locks. The first batch I stove-top rainbow dyed, and spun from flicked locks. It worked OK, and I got a reasonably fine yarn. I also have a lovely soft, long staple Alpaca fleece, so I worked with the two as separate singles to ply together. This yarn worked at tension 8 on a standard gauge knitting machine.

However, I was determined to get it thinner. I started with the Alpaca, and after hand carding the fibres, spun it worsted using a double drive wheel with the lace flyer and was so pleased with the results. I got a 28wpi singles from the Alpaca which was quite dense, not light an airy, but I wanted it to match the coarser fibre’s density. To prepare the long-staple wool I decided to comb the locks on wool combs. At first I was slow, because although I have done this before I’ve not practised a lot. It was exciting to find I got faster quite quickly and began to get some lovely long slivers coming off the comb. After spinning in the same set up as the Alpaca, I have also managed to get the rather coarser wool to produce a 28wpi singles, so I am pretty pleased as this will give around 14wpi 2ply.

I have plied all of the yarn, and am waiting for the second skein to dry. Meanwhile I have knitted a tension swatch on the Knitmaste SK840 and can get it to knit at either tension 5 or 6. Tension 5 is a nice looking stitch, but the handle is stiff, so I opted for tension 6 instead. I probably should have tried between the two, but when each metre of yarn takes so long to prepare and spin I was reluctant to use too much on sampling at this stage. I will add photos of the fabric once I have given it a wash and steam.

The Knitting Thingamabob – mending a Knitmaster 700 carriage and knitting socks

On By vikkihaffendenIn Creative machine knitting, dyeing, fibre, fibre preparation, hand spinning, hand spun, Knitted textiles, knitting, knitting machine, knitting machine maitenance, Machine knitting, Machine knitting; knitmaster;silver reed; knitting, podcast, Short-row shaping, spinning, Textiles, Translating between hand and machine knitting, Uncategorized, Wool, yarnLeave a comment

Replacing the tension dial on the carriage of a Knitmaster 700, some tricks and tips to make this easier. Knitting socks and hand spinning yarn for machine knitting socks.

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Show Notes:

Although an older model, the Knitmaster 700 is a lovely machine. It is a punchcard machine and ball bearings so it slides very smoothly on the bed. One really nice feature is that it will knit intarsia without using a special carriage. Two white levers on the left and right of the carriage activate the intarsia setting.

Whilst knitting the sock, I found the tension dial was unreliable and replaced this with a secondhand assembly and this records doing this.

Follow this link to the accompanying video that shows how to remove the handle, cover, dial and cam lever, replace the dial and cam lever and re-assemble the carriage.

‘The Answerlady and Jack’ on YouTube are life-savers for machine repairs.

A trick for reassembling the carriage when it is difficult to get the tension assembly back into the carriage so that it will turn all the way round.

Never use metal things to poke inside your carriage unless you know what you are doing!

Mend the plastic carriage cover or any other plastic cracks, chips etc with epoxy resin glue. If you leave the cracks, particularly if they are around a metal screw head, they will quickly deteriorate and bits will break off.

  • Inside the carriage handle, around the screw hole
  • Inside the carriage, the mounting screws

Don’t use spirit on the plastic parts of the machine, use a slightly damp cloth to wipe these parts. Metal areas can be cleaned with surgical spirit (rubbing acohol) with a drop two of oil in it. This leaves a film of oil after cleaning. Make up a small jar and keep it with your maintenance tools so that it is always to hand. Use soft cloths and cotton buds to clean your machine.

Keep your machine oiled for the best performance, oil the bed every 100 or so rows. Invest in proper sewing machine oil or knitting machine oil.

Sock knitting on the knitting machine. Not being a keen hand knitter of socks, I revisit machine knitted socks made from wool yarn. Short row heels, short row or decreased toes?

Hand spun yarn for socks. Yarn spun from locally sourced fleece of indeterminant type, but definitely ideal for socks. To save time washing this filthy fleece I used stove-top dyeing to clean and rainbow dye the fleece. The resultant locks were nice to spin, but made a rather hard yarn.

Spinning yarn for 4.5mm standard gauge knitting machine on an Ashford Traveller, semi-worsted or maybe semi-woollen?

Use a waxing disk when working with hand spun on a knitting machine.

Combining commercial spun wool with hand spun wool when knitting a sock.

Half way through knitting a hat with hand spun yarns

On By vikkihaffendenIn British wool, craft, dyeing, fibre, fibre preparation, hand knitting, hand spinning, hand spun, Knitted textiles, knitting, knitwear, making, spinning, Textiles, Uncategorized, Wool, yarnLeave a comment

Having a few smallish quantities of hand spun yarn I decided to dye them.

The first was about 30g of blended tussah silk/wool singles that I’d then plied with itself. This is a slightly textured yarn with an interesting matte surface owing to the silk content. It took the deep purple dye beautifully, although the different fibres had varying take up of colour, so it isn’t quite even.

The second was a black and cream space spun yarn, plied with a solid cream. The solid is made from 50g of cream Suffolk fibre, woollen spun into singles. The second singles, with which this is plied, was prepared on a drum carder in alternating stripes of the same cream yarn and stripes of black Belwin fibre. This 25g batt was then woollen spun into singles, after which the two yarns were plied together into a 50g hank. This combination created a pretty spaced marl effect along a yarn which is reasonably even in thickness throughout.

The completed yarn was dip dyed in the same dye pot as the silk/wool yarn, plus another pink dye I had on the go. It was dipped a little into some yellow as well. Over-dyeing this black and cream marl yarn gives the impression of many more colours than there really are.

I’ve used the silk/wool as a band for a hat and the over dyed marl as the crown.

The band is knitted around the head, and has a cable along its length. The stitches for the crown are picked up along the edge and knitted in the round. The ball of yarn is on the right in the photo.

What do you sit on when at your spinning wheel?

On By vikkihaffendenIn hand spinning, hand spun, spinning, Spinning wheels, UncategorizedLeave a comment

This is a question I often ask other spinners, as I can get quite uncomfortable if I don’t set myself up on the right chair for the wheel I am using. I must admit to being a bit of a voyeur at my local spinning group, because I like to watch how others set themselves up and see how they work their wheel, its fascinating to watch different techniques. I never stop learning!

I have several wheels that all have different height flyers and orifice, so have found that I need to change position depending on which I am using. The lowest is my vintage double drive lace wheel (single, tiny treadle, named Penny) which comes in at just above knee height, followed by a Louet Victoria (Vicky, single drive, double treadle) and then my single treadle, double drive Ashford Traditional (Hamish). I’m considering adding a double treadle kit to him, but he has been stained mahoghany by the former owner and I don’t think I could bring myself to do that to the new treadles.

The highest orifice is on my double treadle Ashford Traveller (Dora), which is the one I use most. The Traveller is easy to manoeuvre around the living room, has a small footprint, and I’ve added a jumbo flyer as well as a wide ratio standard, so its pretty versatile. I just wish it was a double drive as I prefer this set up, but you can’t have everything. One day I might come across a double drive Traveller and have the spare cash to make the upgrade.

I digress – apologies, but I do that a lot.

Back to chairs. After attempts at trying other set ups, I’ve found a dining room chair best for the Traveller – with a firm cushion at my back and one on my lap. The back cushion supports my lower back, encouraging me to stay upright, and also pushes my bum forward so that I don’t get compression from then front edge of the chair seat pushing into the back of my knees. The lap cushion helps to prevent neck and shoulder strain. An added perk is that I seem to spin a more consistent yarn when using the lap cushion.

Before I discovered that this type of chair worked for me I was sitting in a soft armchair, albeit an high and upright one. Trouble with this was I had to have lots of cushions to sit forward, and then, although my lower back was OK, my bum tended to slide forwards because the soft seat didn’t support the backs of my thighs enough to keep upright. Plus the seat is quite narrow and I got neck strain from avoiding the arms when I worked long-draw or was plying.

So I am now reasonably comfy on the dining room chair with the Traveller, but I think I’d be better with a slightly lower seat. Its just the palaver of carrying chair and wheel to a good position where: it doesn’t rock on the edge of the rug, there is a table near me to put mycup of tea on, the dog won’t walk through my fibre, and I can see the TV – not too much to ask I feel.

Working on the low lace wheel I use a nursing chair that is only 12″ (about 26cm) from the floor. This chair has a big seat and no arms, whilst the back is quite high so its a good shape for spinning. The back is a good height, but I’d like it a bit narrower to allow full movement in my shoulders.

The Traditional is in another room and I use a swivel office chair with adjustable everything. This is good, but is sadly an ugly (and patchily faded) royal blue and too heavy to carry from room to room. So its not an option for the living room where I like to spin in the evenings watching TV with my partner.

My Louet Victoria (Vicky) is a folding, portable, lightweight wheel for use outdoors or at workshops, so sometimes when using her there is no choice about where I can sit. If I can take a chair with me, I have a very lightweight aluminium folding directors chair that doesn’t have that awfully uncomfortable bar across the front under my knees. I like to take a cushion for the seat to make it super comfy and this helps me sit upright. It also keeps my bum warm if the day is cold. However this type of chair has arms – but they are pretty low and wide apart and I seem OK on this.

I’ve tried a backless stool and ended up with terrible back ache, so thats not an option for me. I am toying with the idea of a traditional ‘spinning chair’ with a low seat and narrow back, but the seats all seem really small, and I am worried my bum will overflow the sides!

So that is a summary of where my spinning chair experiments have led me.

Sometimes, depending on my overall muscular-skeletal day-to-day twinges I find working the treadle wearing a soft shoe rather than barefoot alleviates foot and knee pains. But I love spinning barefoot outdoors in warm weather.

Colour-changing yarn spun from a distaff

On By vikkihaffendenIn British wool, craft, creativity, dyeing, fibre, fibre preparation, hand spinning, hand spun, making, spinning, Textiles, Uncategorized, Wool, yarn2 Comments

I’ve had a number of different colour hand dyed carded batts sitting waiting for me to find inspiration. They are all from fleece I have scored and carder myself, so are a mix of Shetland, Suffolk and Texel, with maybe a little Alpaca blended into some of them. Some are in 200g amounts, some less. I’d got a bit stuck about how to use them until I saw a useful tip by Anna from my spinning group that she has put on YouTube.

Before you start, select a group of colours that work together. After a designing session during which I wrapped different colours together, I chose five: orange, pale green, mid blue, pale blue and lilac.

Anna used a combination of hand dyed and commercial roving, but the principle is the same with your own carded batts.

1. First of all split the roving/batt into the required lengths, (I just used the whole length of the batt of my drum carder).

2. Then split each length lengthwise into 4, (or more, depending on the thickness of the roving/batt).

3. Next, lay out the colours lengthwise, next to each other in the order you want to spin them into yarn. Test this beforehand to see how they mix throughout one repeat of a yarn, and if this works for your chosen outcome, such as knitting.

4. Repeat the colour sequence three more times so you have a table full of ‘stripes’ of fibre. If you have more than four lengths let colour, carry on until all are used up.

5. Now this is the clever part. I have hand spun colour changing yarns before and got the sequence wrong because I put it all away in a box between spinning sessions. To keep the sequence do the following.

6. Take a metre + long length off ribbon and tie a pencil or empty pen across one end. This is your fibre-stopper. Tie a hand-sized loop on the other end. This is your distaff.

7. Starting at one end of the ‘stripes’, wind each length off fibre into a loose roll and slip the looped end of the ribbon through the centre hole. Carry on doing this, working methodically through the fibre lengths, keeping the colour order as mapped out in your ‘stripes’.

8. You will end up with a ‘necklace’ of colour ordered fibre rolls on the ribbon. Tie the ends together to stop the fibre sliding off.

The dyed fibre arranged on the ribbon distaff before spinning

Now to can put them in a box and they won’t get muddled. To start spinning, simply lift the necklace out, untie the ends, and slip the loop over your hand. It acts as a distaff and will hold your fibre nicely as you spin each colour.

Spinning the lengths into singles

What a great tip!

I plied the colour changing yarn with a single spun made from navy blue Corriedale. This made a lovely marl yarn that to me resembles stained glass windows. I can’t wait to see what it looks like knitted.

The plied yarn

Here is the link to Anna’s video

Acid dyeing handspun remainders

On By vikkihaffendenIn alpaca, British wool, dyeing, hand spinning, hand spun, knitting, spinning, Wool1 Comment

A recent stock-take of the various bits of hand-spun yarn sitting on bobbins I now want to use for other projects inspired me to ply them all up and dye them into interesting yarns. Only small quantites of most, but great for small items.

One was a test of blending Tussah silk with Lleyn fleece, and I plied this with some nice soft spun Dorset singles. The silk added a pleasant dry handle to the plied yarn, and the noils added texture. There was more Dorset singles left, so I plied these together as a separate yarns. Next I plied two ends of Suffolk together, they were somewhat different thicknesses and twists, so made a slightly uneven, spiralled yarn. Finally I worked with a lovely colour changing singles, spun from a blend of Alpaca and Texel (cream) and Black Alpaca and Dark Grey (almost black) Suffolk fleece. The Alpaca blends had been carded in stripes on the drum carder so that when it was spun off the batt it alternated in dark and then light lengths. I plied this with a pale grey Suffolk single that I had acquired from a farm in Hereford last summer.

  • Stripe carding blended fibres
  • Bi-coloured rolags

All these came out as interesting yarns in their own right, but I wanted to add some COLOUR. So I got out the dye kettle and the acid dyes. After some thought I decided to aim for a Deep Red and a Blue-Violet. I’ve been trying to be more technical about my dye mixing, and so with the aid of an Excel spreadsheet I have devised, I carefully mixed the solutions, but the Blue-Violet still emerged as Violet.

There was 66g of the Dorset and Suffolk/Dorset, and they went into the Red dyebath, whilst the 45g of Lleyn/Tussah/Dorset went into the Blue-Violet bath and they gently cooked away for an hour or so.

Part of my improved technique is to use a jam thermometer to keep the bath below 90C, preferably just above 89C to prevent felting. I also walk away so I am not tempted to STIR IT! The only stir I am allowed is after teh bath gets to temperature, when I gently remove the yarns, add the vinegar and stir it in. I read that doing this allows the different colours in the mix to be absorbed into the yarn (or fibre), before the acid does its work to set the dye to the fibres. Both these techniques seem to work well for me as I am getting less felting and more even, accurate colours (apart from the Blue Violet of course).

The dye baths were not exhausted – I had worked with a 2% colour to fibre weight ratio for medium depth of colour – so the lovely tweed ply was dip dyed into both pots, leaving mid-sections of the natural tweed plies undyed. I felt this needed a third colour to lift the others, so a very small section between each of the main colours was dipped into a weak yellow dye.

Dark red in front, dip dyed tweed in the middle, blue-violet at the back. You can just see the texural Tusssah silk blended purple yarn.

I’m really pleased with the products of the session – carried out whilst I watched the new TV programme ‘Roadkill’. Unfortunately I was a bit stupid, or maybe it was the effect of the programme I was watching, and whilst mixing a new batch of yellow stock solution I mindlessly poured boiling water onto the dye powder in a plastic jar. Of course the jar melted, buckled sideways and then toppled to the floor before I could catch it. Waves of strong yellow dye flooded the kitchen floor (I am exaggerating, it was only 150ml or so, it just felt like waves). It took five washes to clean the floor so that no-one would walk yellow onto the beige carpets, and my socks will never be the same again! Plus I had to start again with the stock solution. I did debate mopping the floor with some yarn, but decided that might be too hit-and-miss even for me…

In fact this morning, whilst hiding from the dog, (don’t ask why) I noticed a snail-trail of yellow dye snaking down the side of the kitchen cabinet – how did I miss that one?

What am I going to use the yarns for? I think a warm hat to cheer me up with its bright colours during this depressing winter-to-come is on the cards. I might knit it by hand or I maybe use my Brother KH260 chunky machine, and hope to report back on here when its finished.

Footnote:

Leaving the dye overnight in the pots – I was tired after all that floor-mpopping – the next morning I decided to finally extract the last from each one. So 50g of Dorset fleece went into each, and I got a rich coral pink, and surprisingly bright lilac for my troubles. It was so rewarding to empty clear water out of the dye baths afterwards.

Waste-not-want-not is a good motto.