Batts, Artyarn, and a Video!

Camel-silk combing waste carded into batts

Color Theme: Underwater

This is how it looks like on the bobbin...

... and this is how it looks like when I spin this :D

Sorry, it's in German. But you can jump to minute 3:30, there will be only spinning and music!

Camel/Silk Artyarn Shawl

Last week I could finish a project which I am really in love with...

More than a year ago I got this fiber from Sidi. It is the "waste" that is produced during the industrial combing process to make combed top. It is a mixture of camel and silk. Camel naturally has a very short staple, but it is extremely soft and light. Silk is a long and sleek fiber, but as this here is the "waste" of the production, there are a lot of knobs, short pieces and also pieces of silk cocoons in it.

Camel / Silk "Bandabgang" (waste from the industrial combing process)

I decided to dye it in some colors that remind me of a beach in Ubatuba, Praia Vermelha.
I chose the colors green (for the jungle), brown yellow, orange, red, and different shades of ocean blue. One part I left undyed, it should be the color of the sand :)
The red comes because on that particular beach you can find many many red and orange shells. Also the name "vermelha" means red.
I apologize for the flood of pictures that coms now... but there are just too many good pictures of that beach :)

the fibers after dyeing

So much to the colors :)

Then I took my hand carders to prepare the fibers for spinning. This has two effects - to make the fibers more organized and easier to spin, but also to mix and blend the colors and to make transitions...

fibers are spread on the hand carder while blending different colors

when finished carding, the fibers are rolled u with the help of two sticks (knitting needles)

Like this I made about 100 fiber rolls, called "rolags". Unfortunately I don't have a picture of all of them together, because I started to spin some, before I finished making all of them :)

The nice thing about these little fiber packages is, that you can build up a gradient or stripes, by spinning them in the order you like...
And then came the spinning wheel!
Due to the knotty fiber the thread became a bit uneven and has a lot of texture.

 

How to ply this single?
This question was in my head for many weeks... I wanted to keep the gradient, but a navajo ply would just look weird... Then I came to the decision to take a thin silk thread that is usually used for sewing, and to ply it with this. I chose a natural beige color. While plying I held the silk thread tight and let the camel/silk thread go on it loosely with a slight angle. By this I obtained a funny spiral yarn, with many bobbles and knobs in between:

Almost at the end! :)
For almost half a year I had the yarn and didn't know what to knit from it... it should be something special. But there were just not the right knitting patterns out there for this yarn...
So I have decided to just cast on 3 stitches and start to increase in a regular way to make a semi-circular shawl. Along the way I picked up some shell beads and knitted them in.
And for the border I got an inspiration at my yarn shop, a pretty wave pattern...

I love the scarf! It's so soft and light and warm... incredible. And with all this story behind it, it really is something special.

Danke, Sidi, für dieses Geschenk. Ich hatte so viel Freude damit :)

Fiber Club October 2014

This month I received my first fiber club from Sidi's.

The name of the colorway is "Autumn Leaves" and this describes it perfectly:

50% Polwarth / 50% Tussah Silk

(dyed by the wonderful Swiss handdyer Sidi)

She dyed the roving in a "palindromic" sequence, from golden yellow over orange to red and back.

So I have spun the roving from one end to the other into a fine single to then ply both ends of the single together out of a ball. I thought this should keep the gradient a bit (because of the symmetrical dyeing), but not too much, to give a little bit of the "barber-pole" effect.

plying ball: one piece of single comes from outside, one from inside the cake

Here's how it turned out - 106 grams, 373 meters (Yippie! Fingering weight was my goal!)
Super soft and shiny thanks to the 50% of silk.

I'm already so curious what the colors of the next month will be!

Homemade Blending Hackle

My love is experimenting on how to build a nice blending hackle. For the first try he took a piece of wood, drilled some holes and fixed nails that are 120 mm long and 4.5 mm thick.


The disadvantage with the nails is that they are a bit too thick and not so smooth at the points.... around here we couldn't find any nails that are thinner and still that long.
For the next model we are planning to use stainless-steel tines with a thickness of 3 mm.

Here are some pictures of our prototype in action!
First we dyed some merino wool and tussah silk in pretty colours, and now we are blending them on the hackle. On the last picture you can see the first combed tops - they are heavenly fluffy fiber "clouds" and I can't wait to spin them!

Here you find an instructive and funny video on how to blend fibers on the hackle!