Thoughts on washing wool
This was another big wool washing weekend. I spent most of my time scouring the Freesian fleece that I bought on ebay. I really like this fleece, it washes up into a very spongy sort of fiber, a lot like Corriedale.
When I received my raw fleeces I showed them to my grandmother, who is very interested in the scouring process. She remembers being a little girl and watching her mother clean fleece. She told me that her mother used to lay the fleeces out on the lawn and let the dew rinse them and the sun bleach them until they were white as snow. Well, the time of year is wrong for that, and I don't have a lawn, but I think the sun idea has some merit. I think it probably would help bleach a white fleece whiter.
In the meantime, this is my main fleece-washing instrument.
A three dollar salad spinner with removable strainer, spotted at Walmart by my mother. This thing makes washing small batches of fleece so much easier! I just pack the strainer with fleece and submerge it in sink full of hot water and detergent. It has more holes than a regular colander so it fills up with water easily. When the water temperature drops and the water is visibly full of grease, I lift the colander out, refill the sink and resubmerge it. So easy. I really wasn't crazy about just putting handfuls of fleece in the sink, I hated trying to corral all the little fleece bits before draining the sink, and trying to keep them from going down the drain. Plus the wool dries so much faster after the water has been spun out of it.
For bigger batches of fleece I use a cooler, a handy method suggested to me by the woman who sold me the longwool fleece. I fill it with hot water and detergent, put a bunch of fleece in there, and when it's ready I drag it into the bathroom, pull the little plug thing in the bottom and drain the greasy water down the shower drain. Like using your bathtub, but better. No fleece grease to clean out of the tub, and a lot easier on the pipes.
The Freesian fleece was really yellow from all the lanolin, and I was a little worried that it would be a little stained but it really wasn't. Here's a look at it in the various stages of processing.
In the middle is the raw fleece, right out of the box. To the left of that is the washed fleece. It took two detergent washes and one vinegar rinse to make it this white. On the far right is a little clump of washed wool that's been handcarded. In retrospect, it was probably not the brightest idea to photograph this on a white paper towel. Oops.
So that about sums up my weekend. I did get some knitting in though. The Yoke Pullover has a front and a back now!
I pinned the front on the livingroom floor alongside the back. Yes, the back of the sweater has been pinned to my floor since
I finished it. I know, it's been there a long time. Long enough that I've actually vacuumed it. Twice.
Before:
Lamb fleece. What kind of lamb, I can't remember. And I can't find the little bag it came in that Erin so neatly labeled for me. I think it had some Wensleydale in it though, among other things. This was a DIRTY fleece! Sticky, greasy, and lots of VM. Which actually made it kind of fun to wash. I like getting dramatically cleaner results, it's very satisfying. Kind of like (stop reading right here Mom) letting the bathroom sink get so filthy you can't stand it any more and then finally cleaning it and then standing back and admiring the shiny faucet, the smooth, clean sink basin. . . makes you feel like you really got something done.
But enough of my housekeeping philosophy. Here's the same little chunk of fleece after a lot of scouring, some handcarding, and two turns through the drum carder:
It's a batt! It still has some VM in there but I think it will fall out during the spinning. That batt represents about 5 hours of work. It weighs .288 oz. That's .018 pounds. Or 8.16 grams.
Altogether I have about 2 oz of lamb fleece batts ready for spinning. Two ounces and countless hours worth of soft fluffy lamb batts.
I realize that the blogging has been a little sporadic around here lately, but I'm hoping to get back into the swing of it now. I've been keeping busy with my fleeces so I'll have a lot to blog about as those progress. Knitting will probably be a little scarce though, so if you come around here just for that, this will be a disappointing few weeks.
I do work a few rows every night on the Vogue Yoke Sweater, so eventually there will be some news on that. I'm hoping that that old adage about slow and steady winning the race will come through for me in this case.
So, last weekend was
SPA weekend up in Portland, Maine. This was actually my second year, I went last year too, but I didn't spin then. And what a difference that made! I brought the wheel up this time and spent the day in the gallery room, spinning. I met up with
Erin and
Monica right away. I didn't bring my camera, so no pictures, but Monica has some good ones on her blog. Including one of the back of my head that makes my hair look just fantastic. All shiny and glossy, like a Pantene commercial. That girl has a way with the camera! She also has a way with the spinning, as you'll see on her blog. She does some incredible work.
We were lucky enough to get a handcarding lesson from a very nice woman (whose name escapes me) and it cleared up a lot of my hancarding problems. The other highlight came towards the end of the evening when I spotted
Juno at the other end of the gallery and had a chance to have a quick chat with her. I'd have loved to have spent more time with her, she's completely fantastic. She convinced me to stay for
Stephanie's talk at the end of the fashion show and I'm glad I did, it was brilliantly funny. As soon as I got home I read her
book
(I know, I'm the last knitter on the planet to do so) and it too was brilliant.
I seem to recall being introduced to several other wonderful bloggers but it all became a bit of a blur there for a while. Next year I'll have to spend the entire weekend instead of going up just for the day.
With all that going on I still had time for a quick stop at the vendors. I made a beeline for Grafton Fibers and picked up three batts of their beautiful dyed Corriedale.
How beautiful is that?! It deserves a closeup.
I also stopped at the booth for Nick's Meadow Farm (which is actually only about 15 minutes away from me, in Barrington) and got some merino roving and some dyed Corriedale. I got a pound of same merino at the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival and another at the Wool Arts Tour, but you can never have too much undyed merino roving! That's what I always say anyway.
The Corriedale happens to go perfectly with my very favorite skein of yarn, the Leicester Longwool skein that I blather incessantly about on this blog. See?
I notice that it also matches my blog. Interesting.
The last two days have seen the arrival of not one, but three raw fleeces here at my wee apartment. Three! I have my work cut out for me. In fact, some of it is soaking in hot water in the cooler right now, in a mesh bag, kindly donated to the cause by my mother.
Here's a look at what I've got here. First up A Freesian fleece, from Vermont, beautifully soft and crimpy:
Next, my favorite, a Leicester Longwool. From a farm here in NH. I got some
Longwool Roving from this same farm back in September and spun it up into my very
favorite skein of yarn. I love this wool and it's not that easy to come by so when I saw this fleece for sale I pounced on it. And now I have seven pounds of it. I may have gone a bit overboard.
No worries though, I plan to unload some of it on some other unsuspecting spinners.
Lastly, A Gotland Fleece, from
Treenway Silks. This just arrived today and I can't stop touching it. I had no idea it would feel so good!
And it's so clean. This will be a pleasure to spin.
So altogether we're looking at 15 pounds of raw fleece here. Yikes. I'll be washing wool until my hands are permanently pruny.
Then there's the carding . I tried out the handcards a little while ago and it wasn't as easy as I anticipated. I pulled them out again last night to work on some lamb fleece that I had washed up and it didn't go very smoothly. As usual, I pulled out the books to see what the experts had to say.
First book,
Handspinning, Art and Technique, by Allen Fannin, borrowed from the library. This book has an extensive section on carding, complete with little pictures.
And very specific instructions about how you should hold your hands. Take a closer look at one little section.
What?! What kind of "slogan" is that?! Can you really call that a "mnemonic device"? Hilarious. And yet he's right, it's strangely catchy. I find myself muttering it quietly throughout the day. At the post office, in the car, brushing my teeth . . . "Card clothing up, palm up; card clothing down, palm down . . . Card clothing up, palm up; card clothing down, palm down. . ."
Has it made me any better at hand carding? No. But at least it's taken the place of
Good King Wenceslas (which has been in my head since I was about seven years old) for the time being. I can't complain about that.
C. . .
. . . Candy.
Valentine's Candy, to be more specific. From my Dad. My Dad gets his girls Valentine's chocolates every year. I don't get really excited about Valentine's day but I always look forward to getting my little box of chocolates from Dad. Thanks Dad.
Happy Valentine's Day!
Okay, brace yourselves for some pretty horrible pictures. I had to take these inside in the dark so they're not that great.
I took the back of the Yoke Sweater off the needles last night to see how it was shaping up. I have some serious concerns about the fit on this, The pattern pulls in so much while knitting that it's really hard to tell how your gauge is. The only way to know is to get it off the needles and block it.
The first picture is pre-blocking, the second is during blocking. You can't really tell from the pictures but blocking expanded the width of the back about four inches. That was a good thing, I was worried about it being too tight. Now I'm a little worried about it being to long for me. I want it to fall just below my waist but it's looking more like hip length. If it ends up being too long I'm planning to cut some off the bottom and bind off.
I also left the neck stitches live for now, I don't know exactly what I want to do with the neck yet, I may want it a little longer, so I didn't bind off.
You'll notice that in the almost-finished back the scalloped effect at the bottom is much less pronounced. I actually liked the scalloped look it had while I was knitting it so I was a little disappointed about that. I may be able to emphasize it with more blocking though.
For tonight, I'll be working on the front while I suffer through the Grammys just to watch
the love of my life. And it's not Mary J Blige.
Sunday was such a beautiful day it almost felt like spring. I actually opened the door to the balcony and sat in the sun spinning for a little while.
A very little while actually, maybe about fifteen minutes. Then the wind picked up and it got a little chilly so I shut the door. But it was a nice 15 minutes.
I did a lot of spinning this weekend, working with some Romney. I'm not a fan of Romney AT ALL, but
Pumpkinmama had some romney fleece that she spun up into a nice, soft skein of yarn. I got to feel it when I was at her house, otherwise I'd never have believed it. After that I had to pull out my trusty old ball of Romney roving and see what I could do.
This is the very first bit of fiber I ever bought, I got it at the NH Sheep and Wool festival, back before I knew anything about fiber, and I
learned to spin with it. It's been processed into roving but when I took it out to work with it last week I couldn't believe how greasy it was. So I put it in the sink with some Dawn to clean it up.
Then I figured since it was already wet, I might as well dye it, so I stuck it in a big pot with some plum colored dye and let it simmer for a while. It came out much better than it went in.
It's still not a very good quality fiber - it's coarse and neppy and scratchy - but I can make a passable yarn with it. Here are the singles on the bobbin.
I spun this using what I
think is the long draw technique. It's perhaps my own, slightly modified version of the long draw, but I think it's pretty close. When I took that intermediate spinning class the teacher was all about the long draw, that's the only way she spins, and while she wasn't very good at teaching it I watched her very closely to see what I could pick up. I combined that knowledge with
this excellent post at Curlypurl and it worked pretty well once I got the hang of it. And it was fast! I can see why they call it "speed spinning". I think with a bit of practice this would be a good way to spin low-twist singles too.
Look at that, there's a Team New Hampshire in the Knitting Olympics! This almost swayed me to join up - there's only a few people, they could use a few team members - but not quite. Don't get me wrong, I do love the idea of the Knitting Olymics, and the immense number of knitters joining up is certainly awe-inspiring. And I think if this had come along last year at this time I would have signed on without hesitation.
This year, my mind is going in other directions. I ordered a couple of raw fleeces that will be arriving right about the same time as opening ceremonies (one is a Gotland Fleece from Treenway Silks), and I know that as soon as they get here I'll be spending every spare moment scouring, dyeing, carding, blending, spinning. Actually, processing fleeces of this size will be an Olympic sized endeavor in and of itself. But not one that I want to give myself a time limit on.
So, no knitting Olympics for me this year. Although, like I told Team New Hampshire, I'm very happy to be a spectator. And the Olympics need spectators, don't underestimate their importance. Without spectators there'd be no sponsors, no media, none of the general frenzy that surrounds the Olympic games. So that's my plan. When I need a break from all the scouring and carding, I'll be popping around to all your blogs, cheering you on and whipping up a little knitting olympic frenzy.
I took at these pictures out in the woods behind the building at work this morning (click thumbnails for bigger images). My camera was woefully inadequate in capturing the sparkling ice crystals covering everything but it really was beautiful. It was so warm today that everything had melted by about 10 am.
I know I've only been talking about spinning here lately, but there has been some knitting going on too. I'm about half way done the back of the vogue sweater I posted about in
this entry.
Anyone been reading my blog long enough to recognize that yarn? It used to be
this: the back of the
Tilted Jacket from Interweave Knits Winter '04 (well, apparently
Juno's been reading long enough to recognize it, she's the only one who left a comment on that old post. Sorry I never finished it, Juno, after you exhibited such sincere interest in it, now I feel like I've let you down somehow). Anyway, I stopped feeling the love for that Tilted Jacket and ripped it out when I saw this new pattern. Let's see how far I get with this one.
