There's a hole in my yarn pot Dear 'Liza a Hole!

Picture the scene I am sat happily carding on my new wide carder, Mr S is contently watching cycling on the TV and on the stove my yarn pot is gently coming up to a simmer.  The cat is gently snoring on the arm of my chair (her preferred place is my wheelchair is occupied) and the log burner is keeping the room at a ambient temperature.  Afternoon tea has just been served so all is harmony and in nearly every way everything is generally perfect, and fairly productive (well Mr S isn't actually doing anything!)

Then from the stove comes a very loud hissing noise as water vapourises - immediate thought is that the pot has boiled over - tragedy, but no - not not even near to boiling!  Investigation finds that there is a hole in the side of my pot, the size of a pin prick but enough for water to be pouring out - gaffer tape doesn't seal the hole and the water is too hot for me to safely remove the fibre without risking some felting!  Nightmare - I can't be certain that the dye has set on the fibre, although the water gradually seeping into the hob is almost clear.... 

Now this wasn't the most expensive of stock pots, possibly around £20 at a well known Swedish store.... but not heavily used and certainly not thrown around and dented in any way.  Immediate reaction is 'how much is a new one going to cost?'  Then whilst looking in another well known DIY store for something to dissolve super glue I came upon some epoxy putty for metal.

I have mixed, and applied and am now waiting to see whether I have achieved a repair - fingers crossed. Quick update - it worked! !

But why was I looking for something to dissolve super glue?  Well some bright spark has super-glued a distaff into a spinning wheel as well as nailing the Mother of All!!

This is a lovely little wheel that I am doing a bit of restoration work on for a friend - its probably a flax wheel, but I am not 100% sure on that!

It does spin despite all that the previous owners have put it through.  The wheel has been well covered in varnish, both the uprights that form the Mother of All have been nailed and the leather orifice support split as it was completely dried out.  But we did managed to spin a little - with me holding the leather together. New leather and a bit of TLC will probably see this sweetie spinning very fine......

The observant will have noticed my passing mention of a new wide carder - brownie points for those who did!  Well truth be told I haven't been a great user of my drum carder, as I never, until now, enjoyed spinning woollen.  But all has changed thanks to Fibrefrog - who patiently took me through the process of producing a fibre puni or a faux rolag - I prefer puni................

Punis are usually made for cotton spinning, but it is possible to make wool fibre punis using a puni stick made from a wooden dowel by. who else but Mr S.

These are my puni sticks the smaller one is 15mm and the other larger one is 25mm, I also have a 12mm one (well if you have a wood turner for a husband you might as well make good use of his skills).

Preparing punis for woollen spinning - first card some fibre - I have been blending to get a tweed effect

This are the colours for Bramble Wood Tweed, which I carded 4 times making sure that I had some little silk nupps as I went

Then I made punis you need a grippy surface, this is D-C-Fix which you put in drawers and the like to stop things slipping around

First roll the fibre around the puni stick one and half to two times then holding the fibre down with the right hand gently pull the fibre apart 

and then roll the fibre around the stick making sure that all the ends are well rolled in

like this....

some finished punis

And here are lots punis waiting to be spun

The finished yarn

I can sing a rainbow....

Well perhaps not sing, because I am tone deaf and sing flat and completely out of tune - in fact at school I was made to mime the words so I didn't put the other off!!  Is it any wonder that I am such mixed up person?  Although Mr S and I did provide the backing group to Simon and Garfunkel last night of the M5 aftering collecting Demelza

What I have been doing is blending colours on my drum carder, and the words of Sing A Rainbow kept popping into my head - red and yellow and pink and green, orange and purple and blue!  I haven't actually put this particular combination through the carder (it would probably come out a muddy brown) but I have been having the most fun ever with a drum carder.

All this was prompted by a discussion on Ravelry (when isn't it?) and the request to show the result of blending using the custom blending service at World of Wool.  I had used the blending service before, but to put together blends of fibres for dyeing.  My favourite is Polwarth and Silk 75/25 and if you have passed though five times you get the most gorgeous silky soft spinning top - bliss!

What I hadn't done was to use the Custom Blends to mix colours.  I have to admit I am a bit nervous about choosing colours like this, as monitors differ and my conception of a colour might not be how it comes out.  The Gaywool dye Spearmint is a example of this. Spearmint to me is a pale minty green, the Gaywool Spearmint comes out more a Dijon mustard colour.  So do you jump in and risk not getting the colour you're expecting or do you experiment?

You blend.................................

First blend Autumn Leaves was inspired by this picture

For this I blended Black, Mocha, Caramel and Red and added a very small amount of yellow and this was the result

Not quite as light as I had envisged, but perhaps with a touch more orange it would be perfect.  And then I made lots of punis

For the second blending I took more photos so here is the colours I chose

From left to right - Dark Forest Green, Pale Blue, Turquoise Silk, Grass Green, Spearmint, Sherwood Green and what I would call a Dark Blue Green which I think came in a mixed bag. 

This was after the first pass - I added the colours fairly randomly and blended the silk directly on to the drum.

The second, I split the batt into five strips, and then pulled the fibre out and added more silk directly to the drum

Third - just repassed through the carder

Four as Three

And this is the finished product

Spring Meadow (darker than the photo - the light is bad today and the flash bleaches out colours) - may need a little yellow to even out the bluey tones.  Total 50grams of light airey fibre.........

When is a spinning fibre not a spinning fibre?

Answer when it is dyed by Colinette!

Here I am quoting directly from their web page 'Our rovings are made from 100% merino fibre at 23.5 microns and are just great for all types of felting and spinning projects. Each length is approx 140g in weight and hand dyed to our stunning range of shades. So time to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in – no double sided sticky tape needed here though.'

The sticky tape bit, is supposed to be a joke, but it is no joke trying to spin with this fibre.  One thing I must say is that a takes a lot of skill to ruin fine merino - but they have managed it superbly.  I was drawn by the vibrant colours and bought 5 rovings from the Spinning Weal in Clevedon back in July.  Due the Olympics and Paralympics I did not get around to spinning one of the rovings until September - I could not believe that anyone would sell such rubbish.  To get anything that could be drafted I had to tear the fibres apart and you could hear the fibres breaking as you pulled.  Each and every bit had to be pulled apart until it was smaller than pencil roving and then it was still matted.  Thinking that it might be a one off I looked at the other rovings, they are just the same.  Then I did some research on Ravelry - where I found lots of similar reports and I give a sample here:

'the roving was extremely hard to work with, almost felted throughout. I’m not sure if this was intentional or not, but provided quite a challenge to work though'.

'badest roving I’ve ever spun, many many felted parts, no fun in spinning :('

'There were three felted areas in this roving, causing me to just discard it.'

'I love a lot of the Colinette yarns, so when I saw they also had roving in their webshop for a very good price, I was over the moon! So I ordered six different colours, thinking I couldn’t be dissappointed. I was wrong. I haven’t tried spinning with any of them yet, but I don’t like the look of them at all. I can’t really explain what’s wrong with it, but I don’t think they will spin up nicely, or if they do, I will have to put quite a bit more effort in it than usual. Also they smell very acidy from the dye bath, it was like opening up a bottle of vinegar when I opened the bag.'

'so much color came out when I washed this'

When I showed my 'Jewel' roving to Sarah at the Spinning Weal she said that she was 'only selling them for felting now' - but I was sold them as a spinning fibre and so were a lot of other people - there are 56 stashed on Ravelry all for spinning - a few lucky souls have done so - but these seem to have been early dye lots (mostly 2011 and early 2012) - mine are all dated June 2012 - steer clear!

I have just left a review on 'Jewel' - but I doubt that it will get approval!!!

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED