TdF, Days 7-8. A Fractured Fractal and Navajo Ply!

 Two great spinning days!


Finished my second project I call “Fractured Fractals.” I used separate rovings in red, gold, and creamy white. Broke the red and gold into two separate pieces each, the white into four. Alternated red, white, gold, white. Divided each one in two lengthwise, so I had two sets of eight pieces each. Spun one set “as is,” divided the other set in two again, giving me sixteen pieces, and spun those in the same R-W-G-W order.






The red and gold pieces were the hardest to draft that I’ve done, and I really struggled to get a consistent thickness. When I got to the white bits, drafting was so easy I got a little sloppy. Even so, I’m pretty pleased with the result and after a break to spin somethings non-fractal, I’m going to make another skein of this. Already have enough of all three colors and might as well get them out of my stash.  Got 96 yards out of this set.

I had quite a bit on my “short” singles bobbin from the tropical fractals set -- so I use the Navajo ply technique on it. This is where you take a singles, attach it to the lead on your bobbin forming a loop, then chain by hand - similar to the way you would make a crochet chain stitch.  The result is a three-ply yarn.  If you watch your singles carefully, you can control your color changes so you don't get barber-poles (see the closeup above for an example) if you don't want them.

The first time I tried to Navajo ply, I failed miserably and thought I wouldn't ever try that again. But this time it was incredibly easy and I actually enjoyed using the technique. After finishing, I have 63 yards of this yarn.  And  I like the result much better than the two-ply fractal skein I finished a couple of days ago.  Plus I think this is my best spinning to date.

This whole thing has been a very good lesson for me in envisioning how the spinning and plying methods used will create quite different results.

The icing on the cake was being able to go to my guild meeting this afternoon.  My friend Carol hosted it in her home and we worked on our projects while overlooking her reflecting pool and outdoor dining room.  A few hours to relax with friends, and enjoy a beautiful day.  It's the simple things like this that make life good.

Bunny Watson Enjoying the View

I started a new braid of fiber at Carol's - this is a merino called "Burning Bright" from Edgewood Garden Studios on etsy. You can see a little bit already spun on the photo above.  Think I will Navajo ply this one too!

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Tour de Fleece, Days 4-5 I Finish a Skein!

Sometimes I don't mind waking up before the alarm goes off.

Tuesday morning I did some fantasy treadmill walking -- in Holbrook, Arizona.  Because it's very, very flat!  And still had a couple of hours before I had to leave for work.

Finished my first skein of fractal spinning - 200 yards!

The two singles:  Smaller bits on the left, larger ones on the right...

  Plied...

Moving to Thor's reel...

It's all on the reel now...

Washed and all done!

Phew!  On the one hand, I'm pretty proud of the result.  Although it's still uneven, it's much better than my last yarn.  On the other, I pretty much hate the result.  It reminds me of the string they use in those cheap drawstring bags.  Know the ones I mean?

I took it to class Wednesday night and got mixed reactions.  Most of the people reacted like I did.   A couple of them actually LIKED it.  A lot.  I guess there's no accounting for taste.

On to my next project.  I'm calling this one "Fractured Fractals."  Instead of using a space-dyed roving, I selected three solid colors of Merino - red, gold, and cream.  Yes, I know I droned on in my last post about how much I hate predominantly yellow shades, but my school colors happen to be cardinal and gold.  So loyalty won out over personal preference.

I decided to alternate the red and gold with the cream, so I broke the red and gold into two pieces each, and the cream into four.  The repeat will be R-C-G-C..  Split each of those pieces in half lengthwise, and set half of those aside.  The other half I split into four pieces, so there will be two repeats on the first set and eight repeats on the second one.

Pre-drafted the first big red piece.   Not good.  Maybe it's felted a little, or maybe I was just having a bad day, but it felt like the fibers just didn't want to separate.  Finally got it loosened up enough to spin, I thought.  But spinning was just as difficult.  I kept having to stop to draft and also had lots of breaks.  Decided to give myself the rest of the day off -- it was Independence Day, after all.

I may go back and unspin what I did, and try carding it to see if I can loosen up the fibers.  Or shove the whole thing back in the roving bin and work on something else!

Tour de Fleece, Day 1

Why is it that when you set a goal, it takes the guilt out of doing something fun instead of doing chores?

Today was the first day of the Ravelry Tour de Fleece (hereinafter called "TdF").  So I got up determined to get all my "must-do" chores out of the way so I could have the rest of the day to work on my fractal spinning project.  The housework is just going to have to wait.

Slight detour on the chores...  I just couldn't wait to get started.  First order of business was to split the bump of Tropical Rainbow into sections for fractal spinning.  .  Although the colors are not what I would ordinarily choose, they are actually quite pretty -  the photos don't do justice to it.  When I unbraided it, I found that the colors are sequential - blue, green, yellow, orange, pink, purple - repeated 6.5 times.  I think this will make a lovely fractal yarn.

 Although I'm still a rank beginner at spinning, I like to try to be precise, so I did my best to make the first division as equal as possible.  Not nearly as easy as it sounds.  The piece weighed 3.85 ounces, and when I split it I wound up with once piece at 1.55 oz, and the other at 2.3. Split the 2.3 oz piece into four and got three .6 ounce pieces and one .5 ouncer.  Debated about putting the smallest piece with the largest for the "big" half, but I doubt that I could have managed to keep the colors aligned.  Then decided perhaps I would simply save that bit for later.  The chances of me spinning two singles of relatively equal length even if the division was precisely even is nil, so I thought I would just set the smallest bit aside for a later date.

Then on to the must dos:

Pick up Tallulah's Fourth of July cards at Walmart.  (Yes, my dog sends greeting cards to special friends on all major holidays).   Check!

Pick up a case of Tallulah's food at the vet.  (Tallulah has some food intolerances and requires a special diet.)  Check!

Address and mail Tallulah's cards.  Check!

I think I'm beginning to see a theme here...

Pick up prescriptions at the pharmacy.  Check!

Toss a load of laundry in the washer.  Check!  But darn,  I forgot about it and it's been sitting in the washer all day.  Excuse me while I go finish the laundry...

The incentive to begin spinning makes me get my chores done in record time.  By 10:30 I'm raring to go!

As it turned out, when I began to pre-draft one of the .6 oz. pieces, I quickly realized that I was dealing with a staple length that I haven't encountered before.  So the extra bit turned out to be a good thing.  I took the opportunity to spin that bit first, and had a chance to get acquainted with this fiber. I spent quite a bit of time spinning a little, stopping to check the twist, and fiddling with the tension and speed of the MS until it felt right.  I still have a feeling I may be underspinning a little but whenever I check it looks ok so we'll see.

I'm adding the three .6 oz pieces to this -- since I'll be plying directly from the bobbin, the small bit will be at the end of what I'm plying and I probably won't even get to it before I run out of the big piece.   It's really lovely to spin -- except for a couple of tiny slightly felted spots, it drafts more easily than anything I've spun yet.  And it feels so soft running through my fingers. 

Here are the five pieces -- in the midst of pre-drafting so they look like all random sizes.

 One of my group challenges is to do something extra to improve my fitness every day - and document it with a photo.  Rather than posting pictures of myself doing activities, I decided that my fitness challenge will be to take a walk to a different spot each day with Bunny Watson (my Hansen MiniSpinner) in tow and do some spinning there.  Then I would document it with a photo of Bunny on location.  This morning was already turning into a scorcher, and my little dog needed a training workout and a chance to play.  So I decided to take advantage of the shady part of my yard and work on Tallulah's leash etiquette. Then we chased each other around the yard a little bit.

Finally I sat on the back porch and started my spinning while Tallulah chased the birds and patrolled the perimeter of the yard.  A very pleasant morning until the heat drove us both indoors.  Since my porch is still loaded with plastic tubs full of fleece and assorted stuff, I cheated a little and took a photo of Bunny near the fountain.  The sky really was that blue today!

You can't really see the yarn already on the bobbin, but at this point I had spun about a quarter of an ounce.

 

This Tropical Rainbow is a bit of lovely soft Corriedale top.  I read up on this breed in The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook, which I highly recommend.    The cool thing about this book is that you get the history of the breed, and there are tons of photos of the different fibers raw, washed, spun in different styles, and even swatched. Today I was excited to realize that I'm actually beginning to tell a difference between the several types fiber I've been spinning. Maybe I'm going to get the hang of this!

 The afternoon just flew by.  I  alternated spinning with a bit of reading, catching up with email, a quick nap, and a dinner break, plus some quality time with Tallulah.  I only stopped spinning for the day when I noticed a little ache in my wrist.  Don't want to risk an injury this early in the competition!

So here's what I finished today.  This is about 1.4 ounces, quite a bit more than I expected to finish today.   Gotta get some rest so I can put another big dent in this project tomorrow.