Spinning Sentinel

I love starting a spinning project with an intention.  I have a newborn hat I want to design for my little boy.  I loved the bright colors of the June 2014 Superwash Bluefaced Leicester "Sentinel", the blues and oranges are bright and vibrant, perfect for a newborn photoshoot hat.  The colors are happy and the name is clairvoyant.  

 

I am hoping to get a really thick, possibly bulky, 2 or 3 ply yarn.  I am waffling over whether I should create a 2 ply from a center pull ball or if I should make a N-plyed yarn.  I think I'll wait and see how the singles come out before deciding how to ply this up.  

I'm going to spin Z singles (spinning the wheel clockwise as I spin)  I'm using the largest whorl setting (1:5 or 1:8, I can't remember).  I was having to treadle too fast to keep up with my drafting so I switched to the second largest ratio. My singles are thin enough (dk/worsted by look) that I think I will end up N-plying.

This yarn is pretty thick and thin.  I'm watching a republican presidential debate (I think the 4th one?) and it is streaming online so I can't use my TV in the living room, so I'm stuck in my knitting studio.  I can't sew since the machine is too loud for my puny laptop speakers.  Therefore I'm spinning. I've been meaning to do this project for ages anyway so having a chunk of time upstairs in the evening is perfect.  (I've been afraid to bring my wheel downstairs because it would be a prime toy for Lucky and I don't want a toddler to destroy my wheel!)

1 hr and 21 min into this debate and I'm done with my singles.  I'm ready to start N-plying... but I think I'll wait until the morning.  I'm pregnant and tired so I'm going to take this debate to a couch and lay down.

I started plying while watching Star Wars Episode 5.   The new movie is coming out and I am SUPER SUPER excited.  This is a perfect plying activity because N-plying doesn't take as much focus as the sweater I'm working on for Lucky right now.  I switched back to the slowest whorl to makes sure I didn't over ply and I'm getting a nice and thick yarn.  Maybe not super bulky, but certainly greater than worsted.

I finished the plying 20 minutes into the move, just as the imperial march was playing.   Pretty epic music to stop the end of plying!  I'm happy this project went so quickly, but wish that I had more to ply.  Now my hands are feeling really empty!

I transferred the yarn to my niddy noddy and washed with warm water to set the twist and then let the yarn dry.

41 wraps * 4 feet /wrap = 164 feet = 54 yards.

Apparently I didn't record the WPI of the singles or the finished yarn, but it is heavy worsted - bulky weight by eye.  I have an idea of something I can use this for the new baby but first I have to finish up a sweater for Lucky. Wish me luck!  

Spinning  begun and singles completed 11.10.2015
N-plying started 11.11.2015

Spinning "Moriary"

January is my Into the Whirled Luxury fiber month.  This month I got Polwarth/Tussah Silk (60/40)!  The colorway is called Moriarty and is a really deep tone.  I love deep saturated colors, so this is a great one to have in the upgraded fiber.  (I'm still considering swapping to the luxury club, maybe after I move.)

I split the braid in half in the middle, rather than separating it lengthwise.  The two sections are pretty different from one another, which will hopefully lead to some variety in the fiber.  57 g and 58 g.  Boom!  I schooled this one!  Of course, it is much easier to fold the fiber in half and separate at the center point then it is to try to split the fiber lengthwise.

I have a goal for this fiber.  I want to get more than 400 yards of a 2-ply yarn.  I think I can manage this, with the help of my new faster whorls.  I'm going to spin this with my 1:14 ratio.  I actually like how my "over twisted" 2 ply came out from the cabled yarn I made.  I don't think that I actually overtwisted it enough, but maybe I've been underspinning my plies in the past.  I get wonderful fluffy yarns, but maybe lacking in twist.  It is time to get twisty, people!

I'm spinning Z singles and will ply S.  Yes, I am going to start using the twist terminology more in these spinning posts.  A Z single is spun from spinning the wheel clockwise.  S spinning is done from rotating the wheel counterclockwise.  The slants of the letters "S" and "Z" are supposed to help represent the direction of the twist.  I don't have a handy way to keep them apart, other than to write it down a lot!

So far so good, I'm spinning a nice thin yarn easily.  I think the amount of twist is also pretty good this time, although I hesitate to state this when I'm only partially done with the spinning project.

There is some debris that I have to pick out (fiber debris, short pieces that clump and don't draft) that I have to pull out every once and a while.  They're no all silk, but maybe hey are?

I'm not going to finish 2 yarns in March, but I"m giving myself some leeway because I've been VERY sick and we're visiting different cities trying to figure out where to live next year.  Not to mention that this is a project where my goal is to get a lot of yardage out of the fiber.  More yardage = more time spinning.  Yes, I know that is an obvious statement, but this spinning is taking me much longer than normal.

Due to house hunting and our move, it was a while before I could pick up spinning again.  In the middle of May, I started spinning while watching 10 Things I Hate about You.  I may or may not have been a little inebriated, but I was determined to continue my thin spinning to get to my yardage goals. It took me long enough to spin the singles that I think I have a shot here.

Comparing to the first bobbin it looks like I'm pretty close in wpi.  We'll have to measure after the fact to see for sure.

My spinning isn't very even as I move through the second bobbin.  Thick, thin, lots of twist less twist... at least it hasn't broken (so far).  I keep checking to see how it doubles over and I like the way the yarn looks, but I'm not sure how it is going to turn out.  EEE the suspense is huge over here!

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By the middle of September I was ready to set Sandry back up and start spinning again.  I had some distraction with my pregnancy and with the purchase of my first sewing machine, but I am determined to finish what I had started in my old home.  I'm so glad I keep close notes but since I've taken such a long hiatus I hope that i"ll be able to pick this project back up where I left off.  

The second bobbin finished so fast! I know why I didn't have the chance to finish before the move, so it is cathartic to be finishing it now.

Plying time!  Cross your fingers for me that I added enough twist to the project throughout these singles.  I didn't take the time to check the WPI of my singles, but I know that there is some variation through the project.

I feel like I've been plying forever and I've barely made a dent in the bobbins.  I just might have reached my yardage goal for this project.

Bummer, I had a break around half way through the project.  I just overlapped and had a mini 3-ply section and carried on.  Fingers crossed that this is the only one.   Drat!  A second break happened as I started to approach the end.  These are few and far between so at least I know that my yarn has some good strength to it.

When I (finally) finished plying, there wasn't much left on the second bobbin.  BUT this gives me the opportunity to check the WPI of one of my singles.  Guys, I did it!  I got some lace weight singles!  And they only broke on me twice!!

SINGLES - 29 WPI (lace!)
2-PLY - 20 WPI (fingering)

Silly enough, I don't yet have a spot in my knitting studio where I can set up my ball winder.  The Expedit shelf is too thick, as is my writing desk.  Once I have a sewing table I should have a spot that can double as a yarn winding station.

Large skein - 294 wraps = 1176 feet = 392 yards.  Weighs 116.5 g.

I am so freaking close to my 400 yard goal!  Let's see how many 2 ply yards I get out of my mini skein.  I only need 8 yards.  Come on 8 yards!

Does this look like 8+ yards to you?

Mini Skein  - 21 wraps = 42 Feet = 14 yards.  Weighs 5.1 g.  

YES!  I did it!  I successfully got >400 yards out of 100 g of fiber!  I am so proud of myself.  Both the large skein and the mini skein are wrapped on the niddy noddy at the same time.  The large skein is a 4 ft skein and the mini skein is a 2 ft skein.  I set the twist with warm water and then let the skeins dry on the niddy noddy.

I am so proud of this project.  Now that I have faster whorls and can spin at higher ratios, I can finally achieve the types of yarns that I purchase in the store.  This 5 g miniskein is on target for the yardage that I would need to make a hexipuff.  Maybe I need to pick up that project out of hibernation, too.

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spinning started 3/6/2015
First half of singles completed 3/23/15
5/16 picked up the wheel again
5/21 Put on hold while we moved cross country!
9/17/2015 picked back up
9/17/2015 finished second half of singles.  
9/17 - plying begun
9/18 finished plying and adding onto niddy noddy

Spinning "Butterfly Effect"; a 4-ply cabled yarn

Into the Whirled's October 2014 colorway "Butterfly Effect" is Superwash Merino in oranges and blues.  It is making me think of my BIL's wedding, although the colors are a bit more muted.

 

I decided to pull out my copy of The Spinner's Book of Yarn Designs: Techniques for Creating 80 Yarns for this spinning project.  I want to try something new, but what should I try?  It would be fun to spin beads into my project, and I also really like the look of wrapped singles, but I don't have any silk thread (yet... I'll have to order some once we move!)  I think I'm going to go for a simpler "advanced" spin and try a cabled yarn.  This is essentially a 4 ply yarn created from two 2-plies.

This project will start with me spinning in the S direction, counterclockwise, and plying for the first time in the Z direction. This is the opposite of how I normally do this.  I'm working on my smallest whirl (8:1) to get a thin single.  I just ordered smaller whorls but I'm going to have to wait for those to arrive and I want to finish one more yarn before February ends.

Smaller whorls will give the wheel a higher ratio.  On the smallest whorl the wheel came with (8:1), I get 8 twist in the yarn per revolution of the wheel.  This is great for beginners because the twist travels into the yarn slowly, but it can be harder to spin thinner yarns without treadling your feet much faster.  

I could start out by dividing the yarn into 4 equal parts and making singles etc... but instead I'm going to divide the yarn in half and make one bobbins of Z 2-ply yarn.  I'm then going to create a center pull ball and make the cabled yarn from this.

This project involves over-twisting the 2ply yarn.  One recommendation is to ply normally and then run this yarn back through the wheel in the same direction to add more twist.  We'll see how I do the first time around.  My yarns usually have a little more twist in them than I need.

Am I crazy?  This is MERINO!  Merino is hard to spin sometimes!!  Wish me luck.

Bundle 1 is 56 g, bundle 2 is 59 g.

I tried to start spinning a really thin single (thinner than my last one) but the staple length of merino is shorter than the Falkland, and I couldn't get enough twist into it for the yarn to be stable.  I'm therefore doing a slightly thicker single.  It is spinning and drafting SO FAST that I'm afraid I'm no putting enough twist into it... wish me luck.  (How many times am I going to ask for luck in this project?)

I am learning a lot from being part of the Into the Whirled fiber club.  I haven't spun merino for a while, but spinning it immediately after the Falkland I am amazed at how smooth the fibers are.  I tfeels so silky going through my fingers.  Even with too much twist in parts of the singles, they feel smooth and wonderful, not hard or rough.

This yarn isn't exactly balanced.  I think I'm spinning the second spindle much thinner than the first one.  I've also noticed that I have a lot less tension in the breakband to get uptake of the yarn onto the bobbin.  Maybe this is because of the counterclockwise spinning?  I have no idea, I've never spun singles this way before.  Of course, it is possible that the old break band was worn out enough to break,m so when I replaced it there is more friction.

My tiny whorls arrived!  I now have 1:10, 1:14, 1:18 and 1:20 ratios in addition to my 1:5 and 1:8.  Since I want to over ply my singles the first time around, I'm going to ply them with the 1:14 whorl.  his way I should have an easier time getting too much twist.  In the worst I'll have to spin slower where I was spinning as fast as I could on the reverse end.

With the first round of plying the colors matched well at the first, but as the plying went on I got more and more barber-poling.  This doesn't bother me, because since I am going to ply a second time from a center pull ball this should even itself out a ton.  Wahoo!  So far so good, right?  (On an aside, I broke my tailbone a bit ago so that is making the spinning much harder to do.  Oy am I in pain!  I sit forward when I spin so it is somewhat manageable, but I have to take lots of breaks.  Therefore I am giving myself a bit of leeway if I take longer to get through my Into the Whirled backlog.)

A preview of the 4 ply cabled yarn from the overtwisted 2ply

For plying step 1, I wound my 2 ply yarn into a center pull ball.  Then using the 1:8 whorl (to not overtwist the cable) I spun these Z 2plies in the S direction for my 4 ply cable yarn.  While I was at it, I also wound the left over S singles into a center pull ball.  There are a ton of pictures from this spinning project because I thought that each step was lovely.

Z 2-ply yarn

1 ply and 2 ply on bobbins

1 ply and 2 ply in center pull balls.  Each are ready for the next plying step.  

When creating the 4 ply chain, I quickly swapped to my slowest whorl (1:5).  This would allow me to ply slowly and make sure I was happy with my twist ratios.  You can really see that the fiber looks like a chain!  It is less pronounced when you're getting a barber pole of 2 plies, but when you are twisting two barber poles it looks like there is some woven fiber going on.  Pretty fun!

Spinning the 4 ply yarn

A close up of the cabled yarn.  Doesn't it almost look like a chain in some parts?

I think I may have lost some twist while winding into the center pull, but I like how the yarn is coming out, even if it really isn't a perfect cabled yarn.

I really am enjoying spinning with the faster whorls.  I think that it makes my 2 ply much more balanced and I'm really excited to try to spin lace weight and maybe even fingering weight 2 ply yarns.

1 ply - 21 dpi (fingering weight)
2 ply - 12 wpi (DK weight)
4 ply - 8-9 wpi (Worsted/Heavy worsted)

4-ply (left) and 1-ply (right)

2-ply (left) and 4-ply (right)

Two bobbins of 4-ply yarn

Large Skein - 54 wraps * 4 ft/wrap = 216 feet = 72 yards, 90 g; 8 wpi
Small Skein - 33 wraps * 2 ft/wrap = 66 feet = 22 yards, 23 g; 9 wpi

So I ended up with 94 yards total of my 4 ply cable yarn.  This means that I had 386 yards of singles!  This might just be a record for me.  I'm so excited for the improvement that I cannot wait to try out spinning thinner singles.  Yippee!

Did I already mention how I had no breaks while spinning or plying?  This is a miracle!!

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  Spinning begun 2/24/15
bobbin 1 finished 2/25/15
bobbin 2 finished 2/27/15
Plying round 1 - 3/3/15
All plying finished 3/5/15

Spinning "Prance"

July 2014 Into the Whirled's colorway is called "Prance."  The fiber is Falkland and it is another fiber I've never tried before.  I recently joined the Into the Whirled Ravelry group and there you get a little extra because you get to see the inspiration photo for the monthly colorway.  Awesome!  I'm finding myself tempted to join the luxury club, but I should probably wait until after we've moved.  Maybe I need to take a break for a while until the move, even though I've been keeping up with working through my stash.  

I really like this colorway.  The colors are really deep and saturated, full of (mostly) blues, greens and purples.  

I realized that if I divided the fiber in half, then I could spin a gradient directly from the braid.  It would require predrafting, but it would basically be ready to go.  (Unlike my previous handspun gradient which took a lot more planning.)  

I divided the fiber into two 56 g sections and removed the green bit from the end of the red/pink section.  Wahoo, I'm ready to go.  Two spools of singles starting with green and heading to red.  

I've been saying this a lot recently, but I want to try to spin this thin.  I'm going to predraft, spin on the faster whorl and really try to make my singles nice and thin.  We'll see how this goes.  As always I'm spinning clockwise and plying counterclockwise. 

So far so good!  I'm maybe half a gram into the fiber and I think I have multiple yards.  Woot woot!  I think the staple length is lending itself well to a really thin spin.  

Eek my hands are turning blue again!

So the spinning was going really well, and then as I approached the end of the first bobbin I got a little over confident and starting putting too little twist in the yarn.  How do I know?  It broke multiple times and I had to pull out almost a few YARDS to get to a place where I could start spinning again.  I really REALLY hope I won't have trouble when it is time to ply, I'm feeling a little nervous.  

The second bobbin filled really easily.  The singles are around 25 wpi.  Maybe on the way to lace weight?  It was hard to wrap without worrying about untwisting the singles.  

Plying is slow going, but that is because this is really thin yarn!  I had a few breaks in the red section, but I just laid end over end and continued iwth the plying.  Thankfully it hasn't been a huge problem yet.  

During the plying, I started to worry that the green/blue sections of the yarn would be much smaller than the red.  It could be really unbalanced and strange.  

I LOVE this yarn, it is so fuzzy and soft!  It is not too tightly twisted at all.  The yarn is soft and has a good bounce to it.  Maybe my intuition is just getting better.  This is the most yardage I've gotten out of a project in a while, so I'm excited about that, too.  I'm still not sure how I feel about the gradient, but it was a fun thing to experiment with.  

People often have varied reactions when I mention that I own a spinning wheel.  Knitters and other crafters tend to think it is cool, whereas non-fiber folk think it is a little strange.  I once had someone tell me that she could never have the patience to do it.  I explained that it is relaxing and soothing.  Unlike many other crafts I do, spinning can be very mindless and requires little to no thought once you start going.  You are creating something beautiful with little effort, just some time.  If you're going to be sitting around anyway, you have nothing to lose!  

13 wpi, 2 ply.  DK weight.  

large skein - 214 wraps * 4 ft/wrap = 856 ft = 285 yards; 105 g

small skein - 22 wraps * 2 ft/wrap = 44 feet = 14.6 yards; 6 g

While I was plying the yarn it felt like there was a LOT more red than there turned out to be.  The color gradient is nicely balanced, with some great barber pole sections where the colors transitioned.  

300 is a really good yardage to get out of 100 g of fiber, at least for me.  I can't believe that I had 600 yards of singles!  No wonder it too me a while to ply.  I will have to think of the right project for this yarn, but I would be happy to use it as a cowl or shawlette of some type.  Do you have any suggestions for me?  

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Spinning started 2/18/2015

First half completed 2/19/2015

Second spindle finished 2/20/2015