Handspun Doll Hair

Here's a cute photo:

  My daughter saw this little doll body in my stash and asked if she could have it.  I said yes.  The face, including the two smiling "tattoos" on her cheeks were all drawn by my daughter.  The clothes are from a fashion doll and the hair is handspun yarn.  After the face was drawn, my daughter came downstairs and requested a particular color yarn for the hair.  Luckily, something close enough was available in the stash!

Washing & Spinning Hampshire Wool

A friend gave me some of a fleece from her Hampshire sheep.  I had been reading in the Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook which states that handspinners should try spinning Hampshire... and then I was offered some.  Woo-hoo!

The staple length is 4-5" as seen by this photo of the raw (unwashed) lock, but the tips didn't come clean after two washings and ended up breaking, so I cut them off, giving a final clean, trimmed fiber length of ~3-3.5".




My oldest daughter and I picked through the wool, cutting the tips and loosening the fibers, in preparation for drum carding.  It was the first time she has helped me with this and it was fun to see her interest in the process!  After a few evenings of picking, we were ready to card.







And look what the drum carder produced!  Aren't these batts beautiful!  My youngest called these rolled up batts "hotdogs" and after she grew tired of cranking the drum carder started playing with the scrap bits of wool to make her own "hotdogs".  All three kids came and helped me card.  I felt like Tom Sawyer getting paid to let his friends whitewash the fence!  Each of these batts required three passes on the drum carder to get them nice and even.  I don't think my elbows could have managed this one without my helpers!  Hooray for kids who like to help!








And, finally, here is a photo of the yarn.  I was aiming for a big and lofty yarn.  It's big, it's lofty....but it's not very even!  I spun this on my Louet S70.  The treadling action was different enough (and I probably sat in a chair at the wrong height) that my knee started complaining at the end.  I feel like my body is getting old! (My dad reminded my last night that old age isn't for sissies....dooh.  I may be in trouble over the next few years!)

 My take on spinning Hampshire wool?  It was wonderful!  The wool was springy, and reasonably soft, and a pleasure to use!  Hooray for new-to-me sheep breeds!

Tunis Preparations

 This bundle of fluff is some Tunis wool.  The tip ends were a bit matted, so I flick carded the locks (both the tip and the cut end) and then hand carded them into rolags for woolen spinning.

Here are my flick carded piles ready for hand carding into rolags.  Unfortunately, I forgot to snap a photo of the rolags.  I made two different types--the first was from the flick carded locks and they were very even and clean.  The second type was from the waste off the flick carder (see the messy pile at the lower left corner of the photo?).  The second type of rolag was more irregular, with odds and ends to pick out.

Here's the resulting yarn.  It is a fine (32-45 WPI) woolen single.  It's pretty and it is soft and cushy.  The white card at the top is information for the Handweavers Guild of America (HGA)'s Certificate of Excellence program.  I have 40 or so 1-ounce skeins to spin for the program.  I am learning "gobs" as I go.  My only hope at this point is that I don't get to the end, look back at my early work (like this skein) and say, "yuck! I can't turn that in!" and have to respin a bunch of these!

Rambouillet Wool

 This morning I finished carding my washed Rambouillet wool.  The stuff is springing and fine. The cotton handcards were just the right tool.  Two hours later, my bobbin was no longer empty, but my rolag bag sure was!
I was spinning a medium weight woolen yarn.  The rambouillet was smooth and easy to spin!  I can't wait to do some more!

Holey Yarn

 Check out the hole I discovered in my yarn!  The hole is huge--3/16" across!  This is yarn that was balled years ago and has been stored in the open in my craft room.  When did some bug eat its way in --or out--of this ball?  Your guess is as good as mine!

As soon as I discovered the hole, I put the ball in a ziploc bag and put it outside in the freezing weather.  After a day or two I brought it inside and started unwinding the ball to see what I could salvage.  It turned out that the hole was about a 1/4" deep.  I unwound from the center of the ball and had a lot of usable yarn.  I'm saving the external wraps (the ones that have been chewed) and may be able to use them as texture in some handspun yarn.

Color Block Vest

The last issue of Spin Off Magazine had the pattern for Susan Douglas' "Color Block Vest".  The idea behind the vest was that Susan often spun only bits and pieces  and never had enough handspun yarn for a sweater.  Rather than change her spinning habits, she designed a sweater vest to use bits and pieces.  Pretty cool!

I was feeling extremely selfish over the holidays and cast on a project for me.  The sides and edges are a purple; the back and fronts are a variegated purple & green yarn.

The back (which isn't visible in this photo) is beautiful!  The color repeats in the yarn change nicely with the variations in the stitch pattern.  The front, well, I don't like it.  The color changes are ok, but the overall effect doesn't have the slim, trim image of the original.  Right.  My body is not the same as the mini dressform used for the original photo at the top.  My color choices are not as well chosen as the original either.  I think the dark stripes on the front provide accents in in-opportune places.

On the other hand, the vest blocked nicely on my duct-tape dummy.  It's the first time I've used the dummy.  It was nice to have it!

And, a last, interesting note...This vest weighs a ton!  The yarn must have been spun in my typical, dense, worsted style.  It has given me a good reason to practice spinning lofty woolen yarns!

Fleece Blanket

After our wonderfully warm and cuddly Christmas blanket got put away for the season, my husband requested a warm and cuddly replacement blanket.

I just happened to have some fleece in my stash and in a few days pieced together this sunshine blanket.  It has been a hit!  It's warm, it's fuzzy....and if it falls to the floor I don't complain (as opposed to my nice, handwoven blanket that I dislike finding on the floor!).

We love sunshine!

The yellow rays are machine stitched to the red background.  The last piece was the central yellow disc.  The back is plain (no rays) with a second yellow disc.  The red fleece started life as a poncho for my father-in-law. Apparently it didn't work right for him and it was given to me (with neck hole nicely finished).  The sun does a great job of covering the neck hole (I did cut off the finished edging) and no one is the wiser--except you and me. :)

Color Inspiration & Blending on a Drum Carder

I stumbled across a new-to-me website where four dyers have created a "Color Co-op".  Each of the four artists use the same photo as inspiration and interpret the photo with dyes on fiber and yarn.  Members of the co-op receive yarn or fiber from the different artists over time.  It sounded really cool!  

The top photo is the inspiration for their Jan.2012 colorways.   It inspired me!  In fact, I was already to hit the dyepots when I remembered that I had some blue wool in my stash.  "Some" turned out to be an understatement!  I had number of batches of blue in my stash!  The two main colors were  "brilliant blue" and an "aqua/turquoise" blue.  Instead of the dye pots, I pulled out the drum carder.

My first step was to identify some of the colors from the photo.  I used photoshop and the "eyedropper tool" to pick five colors from the photo.  Then I made a swatch where the amounts of each color were proportional to the amount of each color in the photo.  I created another swatch where I added a few more colors in the light range and then started my blending.

The basic blends are:

Sky blue:  pale pink; aqua & brilliant blue, white.
Med. blue: aqua & brilliant blue & some white.
Mountains blue: magenta, brilliant blue, and dark grey
Black: dark grey plus a bit of magenta & brilliant blue for visual depth
Water blue: aqua & brilliant blue, dark grey

Each roving was carded to open it up and make blending easier.  The weight of the wool for each color was calculated and the component colors were weighed.  Then the colors were blended (big sections like the sky and water were separated into multiple batts to fit on the carder).

The direct comparison between the original photo and the photo of my carded wool shows a marked difference in overall color.  The photo is much more uniform, almost monochromatic, purple/blue than my wools.  Aside from that, I am pleased with the variation in colors that blending produced.  I can easily imagine sky, mountains, something dark (a road perhaps) and then water from the wools.

December Quilt Block

December's quilt block is the "Ohio Star".  I snuck in some of the fabric left over from the original quilt for the points of the stars.  

Here are the twelve blocks together (in no particular order).  I will be working on finishing the tops in 2012--I plan on setting the blocks on point and adding some sashing between them--and maybe, just maybe I'll start some quilting too!

Evolutions

I came across these "evolutions" at Twisted Fiber Art's website the other day.  I love the transitions from one color to the next and I love how the overall color progresses without returning to the original color.  This particular colorway reminds me of the blue sky over sand hills.

I'm not sure how I want to use this ideas in my own dyeing.  I usually dye rovings (which Twisted Fiber Art will also dye into evolutions), but I'm not sure if I really need to put all those colors on the same roving to get this type of end result.  In theory, I could just spin light blue and then purple and then dark brown and then tan and then yellow without having to have dyed them together.

Sarracenia leucophylla hybrid (aka Pitcher Plant)

While I think about that, here is a photo from KathyW's Web Space.  Check out the color evolution/gradation in the flower petals!