unicornduke | May crafting update and June goals

May crafting goals

spin! currently 4oz of Romney on the wheel, maybe I'll do another weaving yarn, high twist for warp? (write about cotton spinning) - I spun the 4oz of Romney, started 6 oz and finished 3 of it of blended Wensleydale/Angora for warp. Cotton!
ply, skein and wash yarns sitting around - done! They are finishing drying today and I'll put their labels on and put them away
knit sweater - worked on it! making progress, just seamed the shoulders together and will be starting the sleeves shortly
start a crochet project? - nope
wash a fleece? - nope and picked up four more during shearing season
process fleece - worked on it a little
work on tablet weaving project and get it off the warping board - haha no
Get weaving! - warped, got the warp on the loom and am weaving!
muslin of waistcoat - needs to be done before weaving finishes so uhh - done! also in sewing related news, I picked up a bunch of sewing yardage from an out of business tailoring company, so I can use that for fancy things!

Cotton spinning! This was my first time spinning cotton and I started with 25g of Egyptian cotton from Hearthside Fibers Plant based sampler. I spun it on my supported spindle and I really enjoyed it once I got the hang of it. It's definitely similar to long draw wool in some ways but it's so short and fine that you need a lot of twist to make it go right. This was also very slick, so I had to either card it into punis or make tiny "punis" by hand, by taking a bundle of the top, ripping into into little 3/4 inch long, stacking them up and pulling them out sideways and rolling them a little. Now that I've started another cotton spin, I realized that this was perhaps learning on hard mode.

A brown wooden spindle loaded with white cotton singles.

A brown wooden spindle loaded with white cotton singles.

Here is the 4oz of Romney, barely fit on the wheel. No plans for it.

A marled brown yarn on a wooden wheel bobbin.

Here are all the yarns I plyed, washed, skeined and wrote labels for. Some I was originally planning to keep as singles for weaving but I decided I just didn't care to keep them sitting around on my storage bobbins and got them split in two and just two plyed everything. The multicolored purple was chain plyed to keep color together, I got the fiber from Dirty Girl Yarns, it is....rambouillet maybe. Listen I'm sitting on my porch typing this and the labels are inside. The solid purple is from Gnomespun, superwash targhee that spun very finely and came out of the wash with some puffing up. The natural colored skeins are from top to bottom: 4 oz of brown romney from Ross Farm Fibers, see above, 4oz of North Ronaldsay (seaweed sheep) grey from Hearthside Fibers, 3oz of brown gulf coast from a local farm that might have gotten mislabeled since I think that's a white breed, 4oz of hmmmmm, it's from Ross Farm Fibers, I think maybe Hog Island? It's white and a down breed. And not in this photo but two 1oz skeins of Angora that had been on the supported spindle and a skein of lock spun Jacob wool from a guild meeting thing. I'm working through some of the oldest fibers in my stash, I think I got the ones from Ross Farm Fibers in mid 2020.

A lot of skeins of yarn laying on a mesh table to dry. There are six total, in order from top to bottom: A fine purple yarn, a mixed black, grey, red and purple yarn, a brown skein, a grey skein, another brown skein and a white skein.

A lot of skeins of yarn laying on a mesh table to dry. There are six total, in order from top to bottom: A fine purple yarn, a mixed black, grey, red and purple yarn, a brown skein, a grey skein, another brown skein and a white skein.

Weaving! This is mohair from fleece from Giant Cricket Farm

reedrover and it will be fabric for a waistcoat, see below. I may have goofed my yardage and put too much warp on to get equal amounts of warp and weft, but I definitely have enough for at least the front of the waistcoat, if not the back. If I run out of yarn for weft, I have other mohair I can spin up and use as weft since I love the shine. If I did that, I'd cut off all the completed cloth and tie on the warp again so I could get sewing. The lighting in the house is bad, so the color is not quite as strong as in this photo but the shine is right. Simple twill because I love them

A shiny tan piece of cloth with diagonal twill lines as the weave pattern. The unwoven warp stretches away at the top of the photo.

A shiny tan piece of cloth with diagonal twill lines as the weave pattern. The unwoven warp stretches away at the top of the photo.

And the waistcoat muslin done! I mucked up one or two things but now I know. I did darts, lining and understitching for the first time and I'm actually surprised at how well it turned out. I can do the back fabric in something else if I don't have enough mohair and I'll definitely need to do the lining in something nice. I need to buy actual nice thread, tailoring canvas for the interfacing of the front and buttons. No I didn't put buttons on this, I should have but oh well. A friend pointed out that I could wear the finished thing to my friend's wedding in August if I got a move on, so I might aim for that instead of October which was my original goal.

A tan muslin waistcoat laying on a bed. It is very wrinkled and you can see the marks on it from cutting and labeling.