Well. April, etc Crafting Update and July Goals

[unicornduke]

April Goals (and May, and June)

• Spin something and ply the Montadale - I spun 8 oz of purple mystery wool and plyed 4 oz of purple with the montadale and then plyed the other 4 oz together. I also spun 4 oz North Ronaldsey roving which is going to be some sort of weaving thing combined with a fleece I have for rugs, just trying to decide if it should be 2 ply as warp or singles as weft. Also starting spinning through a bunch of samplers of cellulose fiber 25g each and writing some notes about them. I spun mint, ingeo corn, banana and soybean top so far. They're similar but not all the same. Also spinning a pound of roving on my CPW, which I'm done with 8oz and onto the next braid.
• Work on tablet weaving - worked on it! almost done
• Get Romney on the loom - got it on! need to make a whole post about it, but also got it mostly woven and off
• Knit sweater - almost done! I have a sleeve cuff left to knit. It's now a 3/4 sleeve very light sweater
• Process alpaca fleece (I want to try and get this done quickly to start another fleece for an event but we'll see) - I ended up pulling the other fleece out just for the event, prepping and spinning about 4oz on my CPW at the event which was very fun. I'm debating whether to switch to carding the alpaca fleece instead since I'm not enjoying combing it. I want it to be 2 ply warp for a blanket so combing would be better. Maybe I can card it into sheets and spin from those
• Crochet mittens - done!
• Other (not specified at the time) - mended a pair of pants with dragonlady7 's guidance, wound new warp to go on the loom, garden got in the ground and I have a lot of happy dye plants

Life sure happened and I didn't write these posts. I was busy.

Spinning!

This is the Montadale (white) and mystery wool (purple) plyed up. I'll need to skein and wash. No plans for these but it's more rustic, so good for mittens and things.





Cellulose fibers - only the banana and soybean fiber is visible, banana is the white, soybean is the tan. I didn't mind spinning the mint and ingeo corn fibers. I really liked the banana fiber, it was about six inches long and just nice to spin. I hated the soybean fiber and complained bitterly about it until I figured out that it did better when spun from the fold. It was merely annoying then. I've got a bunch more fibers but a lot of them are just rayon style where they make a slurry and extrude it.



This is superwash Targhee roving in Pansy Pandemonium from Llady Llama Fiber Co. I have a pound of it and it will be chain plyed to preserve the color changes. It will be warp and weft in plain weave for probably a blanket or something because it's going to be heavy and I think, very nice. The colors should have some nice interactions. I really have enjoyed spinning it. I've gotten 8oz through the wheel so far and on well into the next 4 oz braid. It's so pretty!



Wove the Romney singles. This was an experiment to see if I could weave with handspun singles without sizing and without much frustration. I can! I did choose relatively bad fiber for this experiment, it was Romney lamb roving that hadn't been super well prepped so there were nepps. I did need to add more twist. I did have warp breakage, especially on one side where I had some tension issues. But overall I was pleased with it and I wove 2/3 of the warp before I cut it off. The wrinkly one was sett at a wider epi than the flat one. I went and resleyed the reed at a much closer sett for a tighter weave/cloth. I went from 21 epi to 27 epi and I was much happier with the closer setting.



Crochet mittens! So happy with these! The pattern is spraoi from Moorit Magazine Issue 1. I had to rip back one because I crocheted it too tight, which I think was more of a function of the yarn I used which was handspun and I think slightly lighter than the yarn they used. When I make another pair with the same yarn, I'll just add two or four rows of stitches to make it wider and possibly add one vertical row of repeats. Yarn was handspun, 4oz of mystery purple roving plus 4oz of white Tunis from Ross Farm Fibers, both 2 ply yarns from shorter stapled bouncy wools with elasticity (also probably part of the tension problems). The one underneath, I absolutely messed the colorwork up so badly since I did it during PHF playoffs (rip PHF, what nonsense occurring in women's hockey rn) but since it fit fine, I don't care what the actual pattern is.




Wound the warp - this is wool singles that I bought from a local yarn store. It's cone ends from Green Mountain Spinnery. I wasn't really pleased with the number of breaks in the yarn, made for more waste than needed but I'll see how it goes. I'm weaving the entire width of the loom, so 30 inches wide. This is pretty fine yarn, so I wound 780 ends for about 26 epi. I have a grey that will be weft. Probably just plain twill but maybe I'll do something else.



July Goals (I wish I had time/energy for Tour de Fleece but I don't usually so I'm not going to push it)

• spinning - work on Pansy Pandemonium. I doubt I'll finish the 10oz in July but that's okay. maybe spin some more samplers on the eel wheel
• knitting - finish the sweater and get B to take actual nice photos of me wearing it
• finish the tablet weaving
• warp and weave the wool singles cloth
• process fleece - now that I typed that all up above, I think I'm going to switch to carding the alpaca and comb a sheep fleece
• dye something????
• wash a fleece

Comments

[graydon]

Those mitts embody the mitt-nature, that's like a reference photo for "has the mitt nature".

It's interesting to me to see how MUCH yarn what sounds like a relatively small amount by mass is.

Also, this sure seems like a lot.

[unicornduke]

The pounds to yards thing still blows my mind when I think about it, just the fineness increase as yardage per the same amount of fiber. Getting 1500 yards vs 300 yards and the difference in those yarns is just so cool. But also the finer spun, increases the amount of time involved. And so much depends on singles vs 2 ply vs 3 ply vs 4 ply vs some other structure and breed and and and so much variation!

I forgot to do the monthly posts for three months so you know, it's less impressive. Some of those posts would have been "everything is in progress still". I'm on a finishing streak these last couple weeks, just finished the sweater tonight. Also it helps that I have once a week dedicated time to crafting for two hours, which is why I love crafting hangout so much.

[graydon]

I seem to recall you've had some stuff going on in those three months.

Layers of variation! spinning then weaving and they're both individually complicated.

Also, yay! for getting time to do the fun stuff!

[house_wren]

I learned to spin and weave in college (long, long ago) so I really enjoyed your post, which brought back memories of how much fun it was to learn to make things. I no longer do either one, although I still knit & crochet & like to use a needle and thread. I hope to see more of your textile adventures.

[unicornduke]

I love making things! I normally post the goal posts every month, so mostly they're shorter than that one. Life got away from me. I started doing the monthly posts because I would forget to post what I was making but with a schedule, it's easier. Knitting and crocheting is a lot of fun still!