Spinning Cotton With Joan Ruane February 2014

Mid-February brought a Studio 66 workshop - cotton spinning taught by Joan Ruane.  Joan is a superstar of the spinning world and one of the kindest and most gracious teachers I've had the privilege to study with.   I would take any of her classes in a heartbeat.

 Time passes...

Darn it!  It's been nearly a year since I started this entry and now I've forgotten so much of what happened at this workshop.

So to make a long story short - we had a great time dyeing cotton, carding, making punis and spinning them.  We also had a chance to spin several different preparations of cotton and other bast fibers - flax, ramie, and hemp.

Photo highlights of our days with Joan...

Our first day was spent dyeing cotton lint in various colors and using several different dyeing techniques.

First, we worked in groups to dye pieces of cotton lint in a few different colors.  Cotton pre-soaked, dyes prepped, cotton dropped in hot dyepots a bit at a time, allowed to soak up the dye, strained, rinsed, and left in the sun to dry.

We also space-dyed a fair amount of cotton roving.  

 Still trying to get over my fear of colors, I used several different colors, including yellows and oranges from outside of my comfort zone.  I was surprised that the color on the wet cotton (on newspaper below) was still quite vivid when rinsed and dried (on wood floor).

Next, Joan showed us how to combine colors and card cotton into a puni (a rolled up piece of carded fiber).    

These are some of the colors we used.

Joan discusses ergonomics while carding.

My first punis were made with natural, turquoise (one of my favorites), and a bit of the dreaded yellow.

 Here are the results of my first day:  A stack of various colored punis plus a length of space-dyed roving ready to spin, and a fair amount of cotton fiber I didn't get around to carding.  (Nearly one year later, I think this is still in my UFO stash).











 
Then we got to the actual spinning part.  Having spun mostly wool, cotton was quite a change.  But I enjoyed it.  My favorite of the fibers we spun was flax.   Joan demonstrated dressing and spinning from a distaff.  We tried spinning with the bundle of flax line wrapped in a towel, and also with the ends tucked into our belts.  Fun way to spin, but since I dislike linen, I don't think I'll be spinning any flax.

 Here, Joan demonstrates her technique for spinning a fine cotton thread.

 

And Wendy already has the technique down.

   My first try at spinning cotton - spun, plyed, and skeined.

Joan gave a demonstration of the book charkha.  As much as I love gadgets, watching the demo was enough to convince me this is one I won't be needing.

And Joan gave a demo of winding off the spun cotton using a yarn meter to count the yardage.  A cool gadget but probably another one I won't be getting.

(Quick, somebody check my temperature - I must be sick!)












For inspiration, Joan show us a number of skeins of her yarn and finished products.  Here are some of my favorites:

And who can resist beautiful wood products?  Joan brought quite a few items to sell, including these beautiful supported spindle bowls.  I love the laminated ones. Another thing goes on my list of woodturning projects to try.

Alpacas and Llamas and Sheep, Oh, My!

Nearly five months later...   I'm finally getting around to talking about the IEHG West's February road trip.

IEHG West is an informal group of members of the Inland Empire Handweavers Guild that meets one Saturday a month, usually at a member's home.   at our January meeting, one of the members brought out a box filled with roving processed for her by Tom and Metta at Ranch of the Oaks.  Well, we all raved over it and one thing led to another - ending with me whipping out my iPad and emailing Metta to see if we could tour the ranch and fiber mill.

The result was that one beautiful day in February, twenty or so members, guests, and assorted husbands converged on Solvang, a little Danish village in the Santa Inez Valley.  Solvang is the home of Village Spinning and Weaving, one of the few (if not the only) brick-and-mortar stores serving weavers and spinners in California.  We had time to shop a little and have lunch before we were due at the ranch.

I've mail ordered from VS&W and shopped in their booth at the SCHG's annual Weaving and Fiber Festival.  But I've never been in their store and I was pretty excited about seeing it for the first time.  As some of our members were getting ready to pose for a group photo in front of the shop, the owner unlocked the entrance.  Can you blame me for snapping this shot and running for the door?

They had all kinds of yarns, tools, books - not just for spinning and weaving, but felting, knitting...  all types of fiber arts.  Instant bliss for the fiber frenzied!  As much as I like being able to find anything on the internet, there's nothing like being able to actually see and touch.



At the ranch we were given the royal tour by Mette and Tom.  The alpacas and llamas are kept in separate pens by gender.  The males can get aggressive, so we were invited to go into one of the pens with the females.  They were a bit shy until we offered them little baby carrots.  Then we couldn't get away from them.  What fun! 


I just love alpacas.  Love their funny faces, their many beautiful colors, their little humming noises, their friendliness.  And love spinning their fiber.










The llamas were not as friendly.  They kept their distance, even when the carrots came out.  So naturally I took up the challenge of making friends with a llama.




I spent a lot of my time trying to get close to this beautiful llama.  No soap. Couldn't even bribe her with carrots.




Finally gave up and turned my back on her.  A minute later I felt a little nudge on my back.  Turned around and got a llama kiss right on the lips.  Guess playing hard-to-get did the trick.



This was a day of firsts for me...  first visit to Village Spinning and Weaving, first visit to Ranch of the Oaks, first kiss from a llama, and first time spit on by an alpaca.

Well, not really spit - I hear real alpaca spit is slimy and disgusting.  This particular llama simply seemed to take a dislike to a carrot I had just fed her and she blew it right back at me after chewing it up.

But I forgive her because she's so darned cute.  Even though I'm pretty sure she was laughing at me with her friend.

  

 

 A small herd of Icelandic sheep live in a separate pen. This is one of the oldest and purest breeds of sheep.  I love that these are very close to the same sheep my Viking ancestors would have kept while they were pillaging and plundering my Manx ancestors.

Then Tom gave a tour of the mill.  I was so excited to see their process, I failed to take photos.  Guess I'll have to go back for another visit.  There was just enough time after that to do a little shopping in their store.  I have to say it got a little competitive, but no limbs were lost and everybody went home happy.





This lovely little shawl is made of 100% Icelandic Lopi wool raised, processed and spun by Tom and Mette.  The pattern is called "Rustic Bohemian," designed and knitted by Rebecca Stromgren, aka "Knits With Penguins" on Ravelry.  Since I look almost as silly in shawls as I do in hats, this will be a lovely gift for someone special.

For myself, I bought this "mystery" roving.  I couldn't decide which color I preferred so I made the only sensible choice and bought both.  Because I really need more fiber to spin.  Yeah.

Below are the rest of that day's alpaca photos.  If you're not an alpaca fan, you can stop here.  Otherwise, please enjoy these photos of some of my favorite animals (with a llama or two thrown in for good measure).