The Fiber Artist

Wow, that sounds pretentious doesn't it. But it is the name of my company, so I decided to use it. This is where I will keep a record of works in progress in the hope that it will result in more productivity. It will also give me a place to ramble on about my life, so that maybe later I will remember what happened in ___ (fill in day, month, year of your choice).

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Pink!

No not one of those sweatshirts that say pink but are blue or grey or some other color, that makes me feel sorry for the poor child wearing it because they never learned the names of colors properly. (Yes, I know it's a singer.)
Pink puffs

more pink thread
I started this stuff a while ago, even blogged about it, good thing because I could not remember what I used to prepare the fiber,  (cotton cards) so I am taking the cards and the rest of the fiber with me this weekend, and with any luck I will come back home with all the fiber turned to puffs.   Then I can spin it up.  It was only 5.5 ozs total and I have 1/5 and part of the next 1/5 spun.  

Isn't it pretty, merino and angora so soft too.
Chase's Birthday Socks

Twisted stitch swatch

















Then there are these which are also going. Socks  for Chase's birthday.  He is partial to ankle socks, and since he wears a size 11 shoe I am quite pleased about that.











The last thing for this morning is the swatch for the twisted stitch sweater.  Frangipani 5-ply in the Natural color.  there are post-it notes in some of the books and I will pick whatever will fit and start swatching some patterns if time permits this weekend.

What is done so far is double moss in reducing needle sizes, working now with a 00. 
That's all for now.
Frangipani 5 ply Natural

Monday, July 29, 2013

Spinning yarn for Sweaters

When the Tour de Fleece (June 29-July 21) was going on my personal challenge was to spin 2 pounds of Jacob fiber for a sweater for one of the boys.   As I spun I decided to ply the Jacob, not with itself, (as I had planned) but with some grey Romney that I also had.  So the project went from 2 pounds to over 4 pounds of fiber.
Jacob singles
 The Jacob was full, absolutely full of grass and burrs so I had to spin all of it out on the porch.  It was all completed during the T de F period.











Romney singles
The Romney was so much more fun to spin having much less vegetable matter in the roving.  It did have considerable spinning oil in it which left black grease on my fingers but washing solves that.










Plied Jacob/Romney
After spinning 3 bobbins of the Jacob I spun a bobbin of Romney and plied it because I was anxious to see what it looked like.  It has more brown than I really wanted but I do like it and it will make a very masculine, rustic looking sweater.

After 3 skeins of plying the flyer on the Roberta broke and plying came to a halt, so I finished spinning the Romney, (the Jacob was finished by this time, and wound plying balls with the Jacob and Romney together.

Plying balls 1 and 2
 There are 4 "cakes" of plying balls, 3 large skeins of plied yarn and one small skein (that is when the flyer broke) which I washed and hung.

There is a little Jacob left on the toilet paper tube that is still a single, if I run out of yarn I can ply it to some Romney (have quite a bit left) but I don't think I will need to.  That is a lot of yarn.  Once I get it all plied and washed I will measure the skeins again and find out just how much.




Plying balls 3 and 4

Jacob Romney as of today