A little update on my shawlette

Rather than waiting until February, I thought I'd post some pictures of my finished shawlette from the Autumn handspun yarn you've seen in previous posts.

From Colinette roving spun in November

Here is the whole length indoors, followed by pictures taken  outside in slightly better light.

Dawns February Woolly Wednesday adventures

Whoosh another month.  More Dorset Horn spinning and plying, almost finished the fleece now, just a little more carding and spinning and she will be done.

Plying Dorset Horn

Was hoping for some warmer days to wash and dry (outside) some more zwartble but that's not happening so maybe I could get it dry indoors if done in smaller batches - we'll see.

Singles Icelandic on the Niddy Noddy

In the meantime I decided to leave the Icelandics I spun and finished last month as singles so have set the twist in them.I decided to set these with steam whilst under slight tension and it has worked perfectly. They are holding together really well and as balanced as can be for a single ply! I used my steam cleaner to do this - rather than a pot of boiling water or the kettle and it worked really well - easily controllable and hands clear of hot steam! Yay for another use for the steam cleaner.

Setting the Single ply

Skein  to be wound

I'm going to use some up on some weaving squares for my long-term project of a breeds blanket I mentioned previously. The rest I'm not sure - maybe a bag or cover for something, I might spin up the other Icelandic colours first so as to have some more colour variation.

In other spinning news I have been on a Yarn design workshop with friends and had a fabulous day, lots of laughter as well as spinning. We did lots of samples of different yarns of which some were really out of my spinning comfort zone although I persevered and actually quite fancy practicing them now. Practice makes perfect right? Will share some pictures and experience another time.

Workshop on yarn design

(blurred on purpose for sharing the picture on the blog!)

The workshop was run by my Spinning Guru, a lovely teacher who helped me much in my early days when I used to go to her house for spinning classes one evening a fortnight. Many of the people on the workshop have been to her or go to her now so there was a good mix of abilities. I was quite honoured at one point to be handed a larger amount of wool and alpaca than others for one of the yarns as "you're an experienced spinner now" were the words of my guru! I guess I am compared to some others, but always feel like I am learning. I shall experiment a little more with what I have learnt and share experience and photos on this another time.

I gave my wheel a good clean and oiled the wood before the weekend, forgetting that Danish Oil has quite a pungent smell and did this in the house one night. Hmmm not such a great idea when I almost instantly got a really bad headache! Lesson learnt. Note to self: oil the wheel in a ventilated area - preferably outside in future.

Lots of ideas running around in my head, have picked up a couple of 2nd hand books recently and watched some videos and feeling all inspired to push my spinning to new things, alongside continuing spinning a lovely standard yarn of course.

What's keeping you busy, or inspiring you?

Dawn Woolly Wednesday - 3rd August

Well July has been a busy month around here, end of school year for my daughters first year in school so lots going on and wonderful times being had. I have been busy with the wool too.

I have spun, plied and skeined awaiting a final wash this Portland white seen previously on the blog.

 

Portland plied - worsted weight

I have carded and started spinning this Hebridean wool, although I really wasn't enjoying spinning this from drum carded batts so will need to look at this a bit more to see how to prepare it for a better spin. Anyone any experience with Hebridean? I think it's because it has a double coat that it is proving difficult for me - it is so so soft, and still quite lanolin rich. I did try and spin some of this unwashed but found it just so full of lanolin I couldn't get a handle on it properly. I will persevere.

Hebridean spinning

 

I moved onto the Dorset Horn fleece from my last Woolly Wednesday. It washed up so beautifully white and is carding lovely too. My experience with this wool has always been good - the fibres just pull out of your hands so effortlessly. This will keep me busy and I have the other fleece to wash too.

Dorset Horn spinning

Also I have started spinning some roving that I have. I'm normally found spinning from raw fleece that I enjoy preparing but have a few of these around too. Here is a real riot of colour, no idea how this will come out or what I will do with it but I'm enjoying it so far. That is if my daughter Imogen let's me spin it - she eyed it the other day and asked if she could have it for felting so we are "sharing"! There will be some felting projects over the Summer holidays.

I've dug out a drop spindle. Attached to it here is some Blue Faced Leicester roving so I will continue with that and maybe have a play with something else soon depending on having the time to do this, I do prefer spinning on the wheel though.

Drop spindle with BFL 

Summer Holidays here in England, so I shall leave you with this (just skip the first 25 seconds) ...

Dawn's Woolly Wednesday for April

Wow, another month and it's been busy, sunny and warm since last month. I've just got back from helping out at the school visit to the farm today which was fantastic. We had a great day feeding the animals and seeing them all on the farm and we had a bumpy tractor ride too! Gorgeous weather we had too, sunny and hot ~  20°C ... perfect.

Also, as you may guess with me, I have made another connection and will be returning to the farm in June to pick up some gorgeous Alpaca fibre and hopefully a Dartmoor fleece or two (shhhh ... don't tell the husband!) and all free. Well you have to take these opportunities when they are handed to you, don't you.

So onto my post for April, a while back when talking with Imogen's teacher about this terms subject of the farm (hence the visit today), Imogen told her that I spun wool and had a spinning wheel. Her eyes lit up and she was quick to ask me if I would come in to show the children what I do. I said yes without thinking about it, thought it would be a great opportunity to show them something they probably hadn't seen and share my love of fibres and spinning. So my post to share today is about spinning with children.

I took the Louet wheel with me - easily transportable

Now I'm not a great speaker in front of people, and have always shyed away from needing to talk to large groups of people, so this was challenging me and taking me a little outside my comfort zone. But what the heck, it's for the kids. How many? ... 60! although in two groups, 30 at a time. Sorry no pictures, that would be a lot of permissions I'd need to gain. I can show you some of the stuff I took in though.

Over the previous week I have been gathering ideas of what to take and what to show them. I didn't want to just sit there spinning away for too long as that's not that interesting after a while if you're 4/5. So lots of things to look at, to smell (oh yes!) and to feel. I also made up some simple weaving braids for them ~ I was going to just make a few, maybe 20 and then let the teachers know how to make them but then was guilted by Imogen who said everyone needed one and those who didn't might get upset if they didn't have one. I had to agree, and didn't want that so I made 77 of these over a few evenings - plenty for everyone including the adults as Imogen said they needed one too!

 Making up the braiding/weaving disks

So we started by talking about wool and where it came from, how it came off the sheep, they are visiting a farm next week so this tied in nicely with things they were learning. I then sent round several bags of wool of different breeds to show the variation in natural colours - Black Hebridean, Grey Zwartble, Brown Manx and White Portland.

Some of the sample bags - washed and unwashed!

A bag of unwashed straight off the sheeps back, and a bag of washed to see the difference. They liked this bit - lots of shouts of "urgh" and "smelly", yes I did warn them! I also pointed out that they may not want to touch it but if they did to wash their hands afterwards (my little bit of H&S). They had a good feel of the wool, both unwashed and washed and loved it. I showed them the hand carders and how they combed the wool to get the fibres all in the same direction to make it easier to spin.

Carders, wool and roving

One of my spindles with rainbow roving

I then showed them a drop spindle and how that spun the wool which was received with lots of enthusiasm, and then showed how the spindle was like the spindle part of the wheel but that the wheel moving round spun the spindle. They saw the single ply yarn that both made as I sat and spun a little on both the spindle and the wheel. I sent around some samples of spun yarn - natural wools and some brightly coloured dyed wool.

Spun wool, alpaca and linen

Thinking that they would perhaps like to see wool spun I handed out to every child a small sample of merino roving for them to roll on their legs which they were all excited to try. I showed them if you pinch one end and roll it down their leg it spins it, hold both ends and repeat the rolling down the leg again in the same direction; once spun thinly I showed them that if you put the ends together it twists on itself and looks like wool yarn you would buy. They loved it, and there were varying levels of accuracy - some of them really got it. The teachers and assistants loved having a go too. Something for them to keep and take home.

A little merino roving to roll and spin on their leg

I then asked them if they knew of any other animals that have a fleece that could be spun? There were some interesting answers before I mentioned goats and sent some angorra goat wool around; alpaca and sent some alpaca round and llama fibre and sent some of that around too. This amazed some of the adults who didn't know you could spin that too. We then touched on spinning of other fibres too - plants and synthetics and I had samples of flax (linen) and cotton and some synthetic fibres too for them to look at and feel.

Angorra Goat, Alpaca and Llama fibres

Flax (linen), cotton and synthetic roving

The braiding and the finished braid 

~ can be used for friendship bracelets or whatever you like

A lovely day, I think it went well, they were very interested and enthusiastic, children and adults. The nerves? Well they kind of disappeared pretty quickly as the children came into the classroom and started asking questions "Wow, what's that?", etc. I also left a few books with the teachers to read with the children and a couple of small books about sheep breeds so they can look at them too over the next couple of days.

Some good woolly story books that take you through the 

process of shearing, washing, spinning and using the yarn

A good afternoon, a good afternoon indeed. A wonderful afternoon showing lovely children something that I love. But I was tired by the end of it! Lots of the children have since thanked me for the visit and told me they loved it, and their parents have said they talked about it too with enthusiasm. It was a great day today too, it was so hot and sunny today, and we're all tired, but another great day.