Woolly Wednesday October....

September was a month of two halves - at home, dyeing and spinning silk and away, knitting and a bit of spinning, but a lot of woolly things...

First home and silk dyeing - I have been experimenting with different dyes on silk - acid dyes I have found do not penetrate the silk well, even after extended soaking, Procion Dyes on the other hand do and you need a lot less dye powder.  The natural dyes (cochineal, lac, Coreopsis petals and madder) I have tried so far also work really well on silk

Bottom row: from right to left - madder on mulberry silk. madder on Tussah silk, lac on soy fibre,
Middle row: -Coreopsis on Mulberry Silk, Procion Raspberry on Tussah, Cochineal on Mulberry Silk, Lac on Mulberry, and Lac on Tussah
Top: - Violet Navy (Procion) on Tussah Silk, some natural samples and top left Merino/Silk - dyed with black and claret.

Then we went to Yorkshire for Yarndale and the Masham Sheep Fair!  Yarndale was OK, nothing really new and very focused on knitting, so lots of indie dyers and commercial yarns.  Very little for the spinner and very crowded.  There was no where to sit down if you couldn't get up steps, and the food outlet was slap bang in the middle with no extractor fans - so the awful smell of bacon was everywhere and the queue went down the aisles so that it was impossible to get to see some of the stalls.  Oliver Twist packed up and went home as they were next to the cafe area - really an impossible situation - would you want to buy silk that smelt strongly of frying bacon?

There was a stall selling pre-loved reconditioned spinning wheels at ridiculous prizes - e.g. a 1970s Ashford Traditional (not very well reconditioned) for £225.00 and a Haldane Orkney for £325!  Really hope that no one was daft enough to pay that sort of money.

Masham was completely the opposite - all sheep and fleeces and a terrific day out!

Some photos of sheep

A beautiful Border Leicester ram, slightly unhappy as his wives were in the show ring!

Lincoln Longwool - champions in the long wool classes

Three Borerays - these won the Primitive Breed class

Kerry Hills, these were supreme champions in each of their classes and were really outstanding - sadly I was unable to nab one of the fleeces, beaten by another spinner who knew her fleeces!

I did however get a shearling Border Leicester £10 and prize wining White-faced Woodland £7 and a superb Llanwenog £4 - not a bad haul! I did turn down what look like a very nice cross Texel/Beltex for £3 because there was a break in the locks!  Was tempted by Badger-faced Welsh Mountain £4, but again although cheap there was a break in the locks - clearly this last year hasn't been kind to sheep.  There were some beautiful Corriedale/Manx Loaghtan cross fleeces, but they were huge. although a bargain at £10, I really didn't think that I could fit another fleece in the car/caravan for the trip back home.  Still there is always next year..............

Sadly there were no Masham fleeces, but I did managed to get a small sample from a lovely lady at  Yarndale, thus adding to the breed samples for SpinDyeWeavers.

This is my fleece haul from Masham with a small amount of North Country Mule from a ewe called Postie, because she had been found in a ditch next to a post box!


With the weather warm and sunny while we were away I did managed some outdoor spinning and have a sun burnt nose to prove that I did!

First up Toasted Teacakes

This is Perendale fibre, a New Zealand Sheep created by crossing a Romney with a Cheviot - interesting spin, but not the softest of yarn, from Southern Cross Fibres

I also spun up some some more natural dye samples - this one is from Rowan Berries - not what you would expect from such a vibrant red berry - light tan.

 

On the knitting front I finished my Clarice Again Shawl - not blocked as yet and began another...............

This one is Pizzicato by Linda Choo that I am knitting using some handspun/dyed silk and merino.

Oh, and I did get to visit World of Wool - fibre heaven and while there made a modest purchase of carefully selected fibre.................... 

Is it that difficult?

I was sat spinning this really gorgeous silk and superfine merino this afternoon considering the  ins and outs of getting what you pay for......  Customer satisfaction should be at the top of any supermarkets agenda, shouldn't it?  Well it is for some and others it seems couldn't really care less whether you are happy and likely to shop again in their store!

 

Contrast last Thursday experience in our local Tesco store with today's at M&S and Motability.  History first..............

Recently Tesco have introduced self-scanning in our local branch and we duly registered, having been using a similar system at Waitrose for many years, it does save time, because you only handle the shopping once - pick it up, scan, pop it in the bag and theoretically you don't have to touch it again until you put it away at home - well that's the basic idea.  Obviously you have to accept that now and again you will have to be re-scanned - in over ten years of self-scanning at Waitrose we have been re-scanned less than five times, twice at the Cirencester branch, once at Portishead and I think we were checked while we were away on holiday, any way no more than five times.

In the ten days we have been using the Tesco service - four times, we have been re-checked three times, on Thursday the random checking was activated on five of the six checkouts at the same time!  The one assistant was then expected to re-scan all five trolley loads at the same time.  One man had one sandwich and he was forced to wait while two other people with far more shopping than he were re-checked.  Here's the bit that really got me quite angry - the assistant insisted on re-scanning the items that we had bought in M&S - going right through my bag, without my permission and despite me pointing out that the items she was attempting to scan came from another shop! 

By this time Sandwich man and I had struck up a potential life-long friendship as we discovered that we had similar tastes in good food and service, neither of which we were experiencing at that particular moment.  Plus we were both at heart Waitrose shoppers, and that the opening of the new Waitrose in Chipping Sodbury couldn't come soon enough of either of us!  'See you there' he said as soon as he was able to pay for his solitary sandwich.......

By this time the quick shop had become a long shop and Mr S was quite close to really losing his temper - the section manager did not agree that three out of four was unreasonable or that five out of six was random - strange because both Sandwich man, Mr S and I all agreed..

Compare that with the helpful assistant in M&S, who not only remembers that Mr S is a celiac but also knows that I am a veggie, and rang us up to inform us that they had the gluten free cod in store and would we like some put by?  This store, by the way, only opened in late July, so its not as if we had been customers for years and years....  

Then today, the day before we go off for a short holiday, I remembered that the Road Fund Licence on my car would run out at the end of this month, and that I wouldn't be here to renew when the reminder came.  This is my Motability car, so I have to wait for them to send of the reminder - well the very helpful Matt soon had things sorted out - rather than wait and do the renewal myself - just pop a cheque in the post and we will sort out everything and the disc will be waiting when you get home - now that's service!

One Day at a time......

I am a day late, not for the first time, for a Woolly Wednesday............  My excuse is that yesterday was such a lovely sunny day Mr S and I went for a walk rather than say indoors!

August was a month of spinning and dyeing, the only knitting project I had on the go, fell lost and forgotten under a chair until discovered covered in Molly's hairs and only partially on the needles.........  So I frogged and started over again as part of the holiday KAL on 12shawls4ever!

So spinning and dyeing - some of the dyeing was of the natural kind for samples on the SpinDyeWeavers display.

Marigold and Eucalyptus produced paler than expected shades, but the Marigold was the best - a really beautiful pale yellow here on some Falkland Merino.

I am still collecting petals for another dye bath as I think that this is one of nicest colours I have got from nature.

Dyeing silk, is very satisfying, the colours really sing out, but I have got the best results using Procion dyes which seem to penetrate the silk better than acid dyes!  But which ever, the results are stunning, well I think so!

Golden Rain

This is one of my favourites, acid dyed with lots of white, this 50grams is enough for a shawl.

Dark Summer Morning

Continuing with the luxury theme I ordered 500 grams of Superfine Merino and Mulberry Silk 50/50 from World of Wool - wow what a fabulous fibre, so silky soft it almost drafts itself

This is the first bobbin, the second is done and I shall 2ply tonight.  I have fractal spun this, so with luck it won't be too barber pole.

Actually I haven't spent the entire month spinning, there has been the ongoing/never ending fleece washing!  But by washing using littlemarchhare's method it hasn't been that onerous.

Every morning I wash two envelopes and hang out to dry, in the afternoon I 'try' to comb the day before's washed fleece!  I have slipped a bit, but for the most part this method is working and I have lots of lovely fibre nests waiting to be spun

Also washed is some Dorset Down, Poll Dorset and Exmoor Horn samples kindly donated for the display table by David and Ruth Wilkins of Rampisham Hill Farm. I have been lucky enough to source some Clun Forest, Border Leicester from this year's clip and have been promised some Blue de Maine from next years!  But as according to the British Wool Marketing Board (BWMB) there are 86 distinct British breeds so we still have a long way to go!

The Winning Team....

For the last three years the SpinDyeWeavers have demonstrated at the Gillingham and Shaftesbury Show.  The first year we were in the Wessex Marquee along with a lot people selling stuff, it wasn't very good for us and we didn't think that we fitted in.  So last year we moved to the Action Crafts Marquee which was much more us and to our surprise we won Second Place in a competition that we didn't realize we were in - so as you can imagine we were rather gob-smacked.

Last year we didn't have a real purpose other than too promote spinning and to show how the fleece of the sheep in the show rings ended up as sweaters and other knitted things.  So this year having taken on board some of the questions posed to us last year we came up with a new focus.  British sheep breeds and natural dyeing.

As spinners we are naturally concerned that some breeds of sheep are endangered and one, the Boreray is on the Rare Breeds Survival Trust's critical list. That means that there are less than 300 breeding females.  But where to start?

One of the groups favourite books is Beautiful Sheep, known  as the 'sheep book of porn' because many of the rams shown in the book are rather well endowed!  So last year we bought the Beautiful Sheep Postcard Book and began to collect a samples of fleece from each of the 30 breeds shown in the book.  It was these knitted samples that were going to form the basis of our display for 2013. 

We felt that it was important to use fleece samples as it would give us insight into the breed characteristics and the handle of the fleece which you wouldn't get from just buying commercial top or yarn.

Thus far we have all but the Galway, Border Leicester and the Wiltshire Horn and quite a few others that weren't in the book (can't quite believe this but yesterday we were offered Wiltshire Horn, so only two to go!).  This of course doesn't fully represent all the breeds in the UK - as there are 86 distinct breeds of sheep in this country and many many more from overseas, but we are well on the way!

This year we won first prize and we have a shield to keep for a year and here is the winning team together with the Mayor of Gillingham.

This post has ended rather abruptly as my PC crashed and over the weekend the hard drive has been wiped and the system completely re-built thanks to Nico at  http://www.ekonnic.com so now I am able to get back to normal life with PC.......

Silk the final frontier....................

Like many spinners I started with an easy fibre - I think my first spinning was done with a Portland fibre and plied with Corriedale.  Also like most new spinners it was thick and tin and over twisted and under plied - but it was my very first yarn and I was proud of it!

Time moves on and your spinning improves, as does the variety of fibres spun - recently for the SpinDyeWeavers display board I have been helping out by spinning some British breeds and dyeing using nature's harvest.  All this has been great fun, some fleece is a joy and some you can understand why they make carpets................  but they are all different and were and still are bred for a particular purpose.  For the natural dyeing I used a Cheviot (mainly because it was the cheapest British fibre available from World of Wool) and it is rather coarse - well it is a Hill breed, with a fleece designed to keep out the wind and rain and rather more important to keep the sheep warm!

Well after all this I decided that I needed a treat and perhaps a bit of luxury, pampering in fact.  So I delved into my stash and found a 25gram samples of silk that I had dyed back in May 2011 using Procion MX Dyes.

The brown was gifted, but the turquoise I still had, and here it is spun up

What an absolute delight it was to spin - Demelza definitely a wheel for silk, a double drive and crossed on the flyer to get more twist - this is so fine I could do cross stitch with it....

This, not very good photo of the crossed yarn on the flyer, shows Lavender's Blue being spun.  Well I just had to experiment with dyeing more silk - this is Tussah silk (that's wild silk where the grub is allowed to live) which I dyed in the oven, using Landscape, Saltmarsh, Dusk and Sun Orchid....

The colours were inspired by the lavender growing in our garden which the bees love.....

A Tussah Silk Moth - isn't it beautiful, so more colourful than the Bombyx Mori?

Here's some more dyed silk, again Tussah (I like the idea that the grub gets to become a Moth!)

Which I call Mr Tangerine Man

Spinning Tussah silk is very different to spinning Mulberry Silk (or the silk from the Bombyx Mori moth where the grub is smothered before it can eat it way out of the cocoon) very smooth and soft and spins up like a dream, you hardly have to draft at all!

This I called Golden Rain, again oven dyed (at the same time as Lavender's Blue, so two for the price of one) with Landscape Broome and Dusk and spun cobweb

 

 

Another thing with silk that makes it so rewarding is you don't need vast quantities - all these are 50 grams and produced enough yarn for a shawl - so luxury at a bargain price!

Great Expectations, unfulfilled..............

Imagine a chocolate coated Bond - no not the Martini drinking spy, but a sheep, whose fleece is chocolate in colour and has worn a coat to keep the fleece clean and free from debris.................

Bond is an Australian sheep created when Thomas Bond mated a Saxon-Peppin Merino ewes to stud Lincoln rams to improve the wool. I don't need to go into the background you can 'Google' Bond sheep and get all the same information as me!  Anyway we don't have Bond here in the UK, so of course it became a must have fleece!  I wanted to find out what all the hype was about, especially as I had never spun from a coated fleece, so last year I ordered a kilo of fawn Bond as part of a group purchase organised through the UK Fleece group on Ravelry.

It has been a long wait and along the way the SpinDyeWeavers had the opportunity to purchase a chocolate fleece.  Then it failed to arrive in the UK, then it was in Amsterdam and finally after 4 months at sea the fleeces arrived - I arranged to collect at Fibre East along with my Fawn - excitement was growing.

Last Saturday was the day - we spread out the fleece, its a phone photo so not the best, but take my word it was a big fleece 3.4kg and not cheap................

 

 

It was divided up between the six of us and it did involve a lot of crawling around and I believe that some derrieres were a trifle stiff on Sunday! 

In total fairness we all got two bags, the not so good stuff and the better - well Sunday I sat down to sort though my share and I really thought that there had been a mix up and I had got two bags of the 'not so good', but not the case - so all my great expectations were dashed....

I did expect some felting from the coat, but quite a lot is very felted, bent right over and bleached - which according to Judith McKenzie this could be because the coats weren’t change soon enough.

A goodly part of the fleece looked like this and when you pull a lock this what you get

You can see how dry and brittle the tips are and when you flick them they just break off! Remember this is from the better bag!

There are some locks which do live up to expectations, but not a lot (and these were on the top of the bag!!!)  However, in these locks  there is a lighter part running through the fleece! This lighter bit breaks as you pull the locks and would indicate that the sheep was stressed at this point (again as per Judith McK).

The shorter hairy fleece is quite coarse and not what I expected from a 25 micron fleece. There are a lot of second cuts, some VM and fleece encrusted with poo!

When in comes to preparing the fleece the felted ends make pulling the locks very hard which means there is a lot more waste than I normally get with a fleece - all this and more!

These are the two sample skeins that I have spun - the top is from the shorter locks and is quite coarse, the other from the longer ones, softer but there isn't much of this.............

At the moment I don't know whether I shall even bother with the 'not so good' fleece, if the better was so disappointing I am sure that the other lot will be even worse!

I have come to the conclusion that we are completely spoilt with Yvonne Hoskins's beautiful fleeces - yes they aren't coated so there is a bit of debris, but she skirts her fleeces so well that there is no poo and the quality is second to none!

At Fibre East I talked to Michael Churchmouse and he told me I would be disappointed with the Bond and he was so right - from now on I will stick to good ol' British fleece

The perfect drying/dyeing month.................

I can't believe that it is Woolly Wednesday again... Another month gone, albeit a gorgeous one weather wise!  The Tour de Fleece and France is over and most of Team Blissful Woolmakers made it to the finish line and prizes were awarded!  With the weather so very hot we felt that it would be unfair to Molly to spend days in a hot caravan, so we stayed home until Fibre East.  Last year Fibre East was practically washed away by monsoon rain and people moaned, this year it was sunny and very hot and again people moaned!!!!!  I was very good and spent very little, well I was a volunteer, so not a lot of shopping time!

July was certainly a productive month - all my fleeces are now washed and I have started a fleece book, grandly named Fleece Book Volume One, in which I have a lock of washed fleece and very soon a spun sample for each fleece.  I still have to wash some BoDo which is a Bowmont/Dorset X and rather lovely. Also I have finally got my one kilo of Fawn Bond, ordered nearly a year ago, but well worth waiting for.....

I am currently sorting the locks as there is a surprising amount of colour variation from the palest fawn to quite a deep fawn almost light tan/brown - very difficult to describe - but lush!  The crimp is amazing and impossible to capture on my camera.  There is also a chocolate bond currently sitting by the door waiting for Saturday's meeting of the SpinDyeWeavers when we will split our booty!

Perhaps not the dark chocolate I pictured more milk chocolate, but again a gorgeous fleece which is going to complement the fawn!  I see some colour work on the horizon...

But more than anything else July has been a silk month.  Inspired by some gorgeous spinning and colours by LindaCC on Ravelry.  I have spun camel and silk before and loved it, but looking through my spinning book I hadn't really just spun pure silk, it was always with something rather than standing alone. Remembering that many moons ago I had experimented dyeing silk with Procion Dyes I dug out the samples and these were the results!

 2plied

 

 N-plied

 

I wanted more so I dyed some silk, from my stash.  There are two types of silk available to the spinner - Wild or Tussah silk and Mulberry silk and here are the first samples that I dyed, from right to left, Tussah, Mulberry and Silk Hankies

The 50 grams of Tussah Silk (orange) then became Mr Tangerine Man, 456 yards with 48 wpi.

 2 plied

I loved the Mulberry silk sample so much that I dyed another batch - the skein looks like molten gold and I can see a shawl in this colour.

I found that Tussah silk takes the colour better - this I call Lavender's Blue as I took inspiration from the lavender plants in the garden

It is dry now and my fingers are itching to get spinning...................