Things That Other People Have Made

I thought I should get around to sharing some pics of things that people have made with my yarn.  I first got in to spinning because I wanted to make yarn for myself to knit with.  But selling the occasional skein on Etsy means that I get to see my yarn in other people’s creations, which is a true pleasure.  Anyone who has tried spinning will know the effort and care that goes into a single skein of yarn.  I always feel attached to every thing that I make, and it’s exciting to see what people make with my little yarn babies once they have flown the proverbial nest!  Looking through some of the things that others have made has turned into a nice little retrospective of some of my favourite spins over the last year and a half.

To start, let’s go back to ages ago with this skein, and this awesome hat:

Undyed Falkland wool with sections of merino fleece

This skein was my first time spinning Falkland wool.  I stumbled across it by accident while trying to be restrained in the pick and mix section of the World of Wool warehouse in Huddersfield.  It’s an incredibly soft and silky wool with an almost pearly sheen.  It’s also a good alternative to other imported merino, as it’s always non-mulesed and on the Falklands the sheep are farmed sustainably in terms of land usage and pesticide levels.

And above is the skein, come to life and on the head of the beautiful  Sylvie from Phileas Yarns .  It’s a lovely use of handspun texture and the yarn knitted up exactly the way I’d hoped it would.

Jumping ahead in time, this past summer, I vended at the Indie Burgh Yarn Crawl pop-up market in Edinburgh, where I sold tons of handspun and met lots of lovely yarn people, including Helen who was a tourist from Arizona.  She bought this:

This skein was an early success with Ryeland wool spinning, which was a challenge for me when I started playing with different breeds wool.  It is combined with the undyed fleece of Clive, the merino cross who has permeated much of my handspun collection.  For more about Ryeland and processing Clive, check out these posts: A Weekend with the Oldest Sheep in England and Processing Raw Fleece: Intro, Processing Raw Fleece: Part 1, Processing Raw Fleece: Part 2

A month after the IBYC, Helen found me on Facebook and sent me this picture:

It’s combined with Ginger’s Hand-Dyed from the Ginger Twist Studio.  I couldn’t find Helen on Ravelry or Instagram, and don’t want to credit her using her personal Facebook, so Helen, if you’re out there and see this, feel free to claim credit for your lovely work!

And speaking of Helens, there is this hat:

This Helen from my old knitting group in Yorkshire is prolific in churning out beautiful knitting projects.  This hat was made from this skein:

This yarn was an all-time favourite of mine.  It was a spun-from-the-fold single from Clive’s merino fleece.  I think it’s important to know where our fibre comes from, and skeins like this remind me of this.  Spinning from the fold incorporates all the little slubs and felty bits that are natural to an outdoor animal’s life.  Looking back through my photos, I found some pictures of this skein being spun.

Such lovely slubby-ness

I spun a similar skein for myself and knit it into a shawl, which I’ve talked about it in a previous post.

I like to think that Clive, the happy, chubby sheep that I first met in a paddock in Australia is not contributing to hand-made hats and scarves in the UK and USA.  It makes the specialness of a hand-made item seem just a bit more personal.

Having waxed poetic about this sheep, I realise that I have absolutely no photos of him.  So I’ll close this post with this photo:

 

This is a really big kangaroo who sometimes hangs out in the same paddock.  I have a million photos of him

 

Knitting with Handspun Part 1: Beginnings and Pullovers

I haven’t really mentioned knitting here before, but those who know me well will know that I knit constantly.  One of the great pleasures of spinning is being able to knit the things that I spin, although I don’t do it as often as I should.  Below are a few of my knitting-with-handspun experiences and some good tips that I’ve learned along the way!

Above are my first knit-able handspun attempts.  I did them from raw fleece from Clive the pet merino-cross that I washed, dyed, and hand carded.  They’re very unevenly spun, and have some big felted chunks in them, from where I struggled to card with any kind of proficiency.  Very beginner attempts, really, but they were very special because they marked the beginning of my love of spinning.  I knit them into a string of bunting for my niece and crocheted her name onto them.  Because of the unevenness of the yarn, it was a bit of a challenge, but I also found that this kind of project is a lovely way to enjoy the crazy texture of a yarn like this.  The felted slubs that I had spun into the skeins because of my lack of skill ended up being lovely texture.

Next attempt was more ambitious.  I had spun up the following two skeins:  Red handdyed merino cross plied with Australian Alpaca, and yellow and red handdyed 2-ply merino cross.  All merino cross was process from the raw fleece of Clive the pet sheep.

 

Both these skeins were carding and plying accomplishments for me, and so I decided to knit them into the yoke of a jumper.  Which turned out like this:

I should mention that my original bind-off method for the neckline rib was too tight and pulled the jumper up at the front.  Since this photo was taken, I’ve gone back and changed this and it’s much better!

I love this jumper to pieces.  But I had a bit of a problem…

When I started out I figured out an average wraps per inch for the handspun, and deemed it to be a worsted weight.  So I chose some nice worsted weight commercial yarn and knit the whole thing as if the different yarns were the same.  But of course the handspun wasn’t.  And as a result I have bagging along the raglan line above the armpits, and over the tops of the sleeves.  It’s pretty clear in the above photo.  Every so often, when I wear this and look in the mirror, the bagging of the handspun drives me nuts and I wish I’d been more sensible and swatched it first.

This brings me to my first tip…..

Gauge swatch and do the math!  Do it!

Nobody likes doing it, but swatching is so important!! I learned this the hard, time-wasting way.

Especially do this if your handspun is textured. You may need to adjust needle sizes, or adjust your stitch count when switching back and forth between yarns.  Remember that going down a needle size might make the knit handspun too dense and it won’t drape the same way as the rest of the garment.  Or maybe you need to go up needle sizes and decrease stitches so that the knitting is looser for a proper drape.

I employed this with success in my most recently finished project.

Self-designed pullover, knit top-down and seamlessly, using handspun for stripes

This pullover incorporated a beautiful skein of my friend Sylvie’s handdyed yarn (check out her Etsy shop: Phileas Yarns ) with this handspun and handpainted BFL:

Grey BFL 2-ply,with slubs of merino felt, and handpainted

While the handspun was approximately an aran weight, like the other yarns, it knit up to be 4 stitches/inch while the other yarns were 5 stitches/inch.  Actually a pretty big gauge difference when multiplied over the circumference of a jumper.  On first go I went down a needle size for the handspun, but it wasn’t precise enough and I had funny baggy bits and the knitting was too dense compared to the nice drape of the rest of the yarn.  So I pulled back the yoke and did it again.  This time I decreased one every five stitches when switching to the handspun, and increased one every four when switching back.  The result is perfect!  And the changes in stitch count are not too noticeable.

How I love this sweater!

Wearing something that you’ve spun yourself is one of the greatest joys of knittting!

Next post, I’ll continue and talk about shawl knitting and mixing sheep breeds when knitting with handspun.  Stay tuned!!!!

All images and content copyright ©Martha Welland, 2015

Please credit spunplum.wordpress.com if sharing any images.

 

Beginning Adventures with Grey Sheep

Dying grey wool is my newest love, so I thought I’d better write a post about my grey wool adventures so far.

The grey wool love started when I spun and dyed a couple of skeins of yarn for my friend Holl yas a thank-you for gifting me a pair of hand carders.  I used two corriedale tops, a grey and a white, and plied them together before spray dying them.  This was also my first time spray dying, and it was very successful.

Lovely grey corriedale, hanging out on my lazy Kate, all ready to be plied.

Grey and white corriedale yarn being spray dyed on the washing line. It was a rainy day, so I had to use a bin bag to shelter it while the dye soaked in.

The result was lovely, and I loved how the colours variegated with the different colours of wool.  It also felt like a lovely way to celebrate the natural beauty of the fleece.  Corriedale is a a lovely soft fleece with a nice lustre to it.  Also, the white corriedale is not a pure white like some merino. I liked it for variegated dying because the colours fade more gently than when dying over a stark bright white.

The finished product.

White corriedale plied with grey corriedale, spray dyed after plying

I was so pleased with how the grey wool created variation in the colour, that I went on to experiment some more…

Grey BFL 2-ply,with slubs of merino felt, and handpainted

Colour detail of grey handpainted BFL

The above yarn was my first time handpainting a completely grey yarn.  The colours were unpredictable but the end result was lovely.  Although I used about 4 different colours on the one skein, it doesn’t feel like the natural grey is overpowered.

Grey merino plied with white merino, handpainted after plying.

The above merino skein is a favourite.  The white merino top was lightly dyed to be a pale yellow before it was spun, and plied with a grey merino single.  In painting it, my hope was that the yellow base would help to brighten the greens, while the grey ply would create some nice variations in the blues.

I had spun merino, and blue faced Leicester before, and now I’m looking forward to trying out other different breeds of grey sheep!  For more, stay tuned to the next post.!  If you’re interested in grey fleece and different sheep breeds, check out A Weekend with the Oldest Sheep in England

All images and content copyright ©Martha Welland, 2015

Please credit spunplum.wordpress.com if sharing any images.

Landscape Yarns

I’ve recently completed a couple of yarns inspired by familiar and favourite landscapes and am thinking of making a whole series specifically dedicated to the landscapes in my life.  I used to be really fascinated with landscapes when I was in art school (a very long time ago!) and I’ve been remembering this a lot lately, as I’ve also been doing a great deal of driving along the edges of the stunning Scottish Borders and Northern Pennine regions in the UK.  Both are open and vast with beautiful variations in natural colours.

The northern Scottish Border region, near the town of Biggar, taken by me on a very windy hike.

Here are my landscape yarns so far, based on two other favourite landscapes:

This one was inspired by early summer on the North York Moors in Yorkshire, when the heather is starting to bloom, but the moors are still very barren and red.  It’s a beautiful expanse of empty and dramatic land with distant sea views.  When I first moved to the UK, I remember driving through this region with a friend, and stopping by the road side to stand quietly together and look at the view.

Heather blooming on The North York Moors National Park, photo credit http://www.walkingenglishman.com (also a fab website for finding walks all over these beautiful places!)

This is a single that I spun from hand painted locks of merino cross fleece from Clive the pet sheep.  It’s mostly sock weight, but was spun directly from the locks, so it’s textured and a bit thick and thin in places.

This was my first time painting locks, as I usually kettle dye them, or paint the yarn after its spun.  It was very successful though, and there was much less blending of colours than I thought, so the yarn maintains the dyed variegation of the fleece, and some of the natural white comes through.

My other landscape yarn was spun from handpainted merino top.  I like how dense merino top is, and how when you paint it gently, the colours maintain a brightness from the white fleece in the middle that the dye doesn’t reach.  I dyed this to be turned into a self striping yarn.  It was based on the landscape of my childhood:  a basic combination of lake and trees and sky, translucent blues and variations of greens.

An old photo, taken many years ago at my favourite lake

I used three shades of green and one shade of blue on the top.  I had hoped for a bit more variation in the blue, but I’m pleased with the translucency of the colour.

I spun it up as a thick single and then chain plied it to maintain the striping.

As a single

As a 3-ply

The result is bulky and squishy.  The idea was to make the yarn as comforting and cozy as my memories of the place.

Stay tuned for more landscape yarns.  I’m sure I’ll be spinning up more soon 🙂

All images and content copyright ©Martha Welland, 2015

Please credit spunplum.wordpress.com if sharing any images.

A Weekend with the Oldest Sheep in England

I had a very productive weekend and finished a lovely new yarn that was a small triumph because I’ve been doing a lot of experimenting with using this kind of fleece and have had mixed results so far.

This is kettle dyed merino cross (from Clive the pet sheep), spun from the fold and plied with undyed coloured ryeland.

Ryeland has beautiful natural grey variegation, resists felting, and has a hard-wearing, cobwebby texture.   It’s also the oldest breed of sheep in England which makes me feel like I’m spinning with a little bit of history every time I use it.  My ryeland fleece came from a farm up in Aberdeen.

A ryeland sheep Photo credit: http://www.accidentalsmallholder.net

Raw ryeland fleece

However, while beautifully textured, it’s not very soft.  So I like to ply it with something super-soft, like merino so that I can achieve the best of both worlds: natural beauty and texture with super soft wearability.

Above is the ryeland single, pre-plying.  It was spun from the fold and has incredible self striping. All of this variation from the same sheep!

It’s taken a lot of experimenting with this fleece to figure out how best to use it.  I love it, but the yarn that I’ve spun and knitted with that was 100% ryeland turned out to be not so pleasant to wear.

Above are early experiments with 100% ryeland, spun from the fold and then handpainted  Because this wool resists felting, dyeing can be kind of fun because you can rub the dye in and the wring it out in places. However, the yarn has a very springy texture to it, and was difficult to knit with.  I knit these skeins into a shawl, along with other handspun, but after about a month I found that the shawl had gradually shrunk, or rather had retracted, as the ryeland yarn slowly sprang back from how the knitting had, evidently, stretched it.

And so the experiments continue.  My recent success is encouraging, as it’s soft enough to wear and still celebrates the natural beauty that is this weird and wonderful wool.  I still have almost half a kilo of fleece left in my stash, so I’m looking forward to spinning future yarns with it!

Like grey fleece?  Check out Beginning Adventures with Grey Sheep

All images and content copyright ©Martha Welland, 2015

Please credit spunplum.wordpress.com if sharing any images.

Processing Raw Fleece: Part 2

So now you’re ready to get the fleece into the tub.  I like to use plastic baskets that you can get from the pound shop or dollar store.  You don’t need the lids.  If you want to spend more you could also use the sifting trays that insert into cat litter trays.  I can wash 300-400g of fleece at a time in three baskets in my bathtub.  As I mentioned before, how much I wash is determined by how much drying space I have.  I set aside a couple of hours to soak the fleece.  I do a minimum of three soaks at about 30minutes each.

Run the tub full of hot water (not scorching or boiling).  Place the fleece in your baskets, and when the tub is full and the water is off, submerge the baskets in the water.  The fleece will start to float, so gently, gently place your hands on the fleece and submerge the locks.  Don’t agitate them, squash them down to hard, swoosh the baskets around, etc.  If you aren’t using baskets, you can just put the fleece straight into the tub, but it will be harder later on to remove them without agitating them.

Don’t be alarmed by the amount of oil that comes off the fleece right away.  The water will turn orange pretty quickly.  This is just the lanolin separating from the locks.

To the left is a picture of  yarn spun ‘in the grease’ from unwashed merino, soaking in the sink with a bit of soap. This photo is a bit unsavoury, but you can see how dark and orange-y the water is.

Leave the fleece to soak in the water for about 30 minutes.  Don’t let the water get cold, or else the oil will congeal back onto the fleece.  When the time is up, lift the baskets out and drain them well.  Don’t squeeze the fleece!  Drain the tub, give it a rinse, and fill it again with hot water and dish soap.  Put the baskets of fleece back in and let them soak in the soapy water for another 30 minutes.

Ryeland fleece in the tub

After the soap soak is over, drain the baskets as before, drain and rinse the tub and fill it again with clean water for a final soak.  If the soapy water is still yellow, or the fleece still looks dirty, then you can do another soak with soap.

After the final soak, drain the baskets and gently pick up the fleece to let all the water drip off.  Lay the locks on a towel, lay another towel on top, and gently press out extra water.  You can skip this towel step if you like, but your fleece will take a lot longer to dry.

And now you should have a lovely big batch of clean, fluffy fleece!

Air dry the fleece in whatever way is convenient.  If it’s a sunny day I put it outside.  I also like to lay a piece of muslin cloth or netting overtop of my drying rack before I put the fleece on it.  When it’s dry, you can trim off any dirty bits that remain, although most of these will dust away  when you start handling the fleece.  Don’t card, comb, or spin your fleece until it’s dry!

Finally, don’t forget to give your tub a wash.  Whomever you live with will thank you for it.  It will be a bit gritty and sludgy after everything is finished and those who aren’t radically enthusiastic about fleece will find this a bit off-putting when they go to take a shower the next morning.

Happy washing and stay tuned for future posts about carding, combing and spinning from the fold.

All images and content copyright ©Martha Welland, 2015

Please credit spunplum.wordpress.com if sharing any images.

Processing Raw Fleece: Part 1

So here we go!

This is what a bag full of raw merino cross looks like.    Lovely creamy colour….

But quite dirty in places

The first thing I do is trim off all the caked and dirty ends.  If your fleece supplier has already done this for you, then you’re a step ahead, although do have a look through the locks to take out anything they may have missed.

When I started washing fleece I was hesitant to trim off too much because I didn’t want anything to go to waste.  However, it meant that I was just dealing with the dirty tips later down the line, and in some cases inadvertently felted the fleece by trying to pick off the dirt when it was soaking.   Going through lock by lock also means that I can pick out any large pieces of vegetation which will inevitably be tangled in the fleece.  Sometimes I come across beautiful little surprises like this dried up flower bud.

Through the whole process you’ll do yourself a favour if you keep your locks of fleece laying in the same direction as neatly as possible.  Trimming is the most labour-intensive part of preparing your fleece,but take the time to keep your fleece organised and it will be easier to dry and spin later on.

It may feel like you’re trimming off a lot, but what is discarded is actually in fairly small ratio to what goes into the tub.  Here is a picture of fleece ready to wash ( about 300 grams raw) with everything that was trimmed off, to show the proportion of waste.

Now the fleece is ready for the tub!  A word of warning before closing this post….

Cats really like raw fleece.  They like to lick it, roll in it, kneed it, smell it obsessively, etc.    It must be the sheep-y smell (I don’t think I mentioned that raw fleece smells VERY sheep-y and lanolin-y.  I love it, but check with whomever you share a house with before you start filling your spare rooms with bags of it like I’ve done).  My cats go crazy for the fleece, almost like it’s catnip.  Keep your stack of neatly trimmed locks away from the kitties, and make sure they can’t leap into your storage bags!

Continue the raw fleece adventure in the next post….. Processing Raw Fleece: Part 2

All images and content copyright ©Martha Welland, 2015

Please credit spunplum.wordpress.com if sharing any images.

Processing Raw Fleece: Intro

Processing raw fleece is time consuming, but not labour intensive.  At the bare minimum all you need is a bathtub or sink, some dish soap, somewhere to dry the fleece, and a few hours at home to mind the fleece as it soaks.  Other materials that will help:  two or three plastic baskets (I bought mine from the pound shop); a towel that you don’t mind getting dirty and a bit wooly; mesh cloth, muslin, or netting to lay over your drying rack

I did a lot of online research about the best way to wash fleece when I got started. Some ways worked better than others, and in the end I found a method that worked best for me and the fleece that I was using.  The only thing that you must not do is agitate the fleece, as it will felt, and probably quicker thank you think.

So this is a step by step of how I turned raw merino cross fleece in to fluffy, spin-able, super soft wool.

Before and after: raw, greasy locks straight from the sheep, and washed, hand-combed top from the same batch of fleece

Continue the raw fleece adventure in the next post….. Processing Raw Fleece: Part 1

All images and content copyright ©Martha Welland, 2015

Please credit spunplum.wordpress.com if sharing any images.

From Fleece to Yarn…

This is my favourite way of working and is also how I learned to spin.  Working from a raw fleece allows you to be involved in every step of the process and to see the transformation of wool from fleece locks, directly off the sheep, to yarn that’s ready to knit or weave.  My first handspun knitting project was particularly special because I was able to knit, and now frequently wear, the wool from a sheep that I had actually met (and cuddled).  I feel that it’s important to know where our products come from and to be able to appreciate their natural properties.

My first handspun knitting project: The yoke uses my first two successful skeins of hand-dyed handspun merino cross from a pet sheep named Clive.

The downside is that it’s time consuming and much more difficult to produce a yarn with a consistent gauge.  Raw fleece will contain dirt, pills of felt and vegetation, and sometimes the fibres will be too tangled to spin smoothly.  As a hand spinner using raw fleece, I sometimes like to spin textured yarns that incorporate the felted and tangled bundles that you find in the locks of a fleece.  But sometimes it’s nice to spin smooth, knit-able, and more hard-wearing yarn.  That’s why I do like to buy commercially combed tops to spin more consistent yarn, to try out different types of fleece, and to save some time and effort.

Three skeins spun from raw fleece. They’re fluffy and more textured than commercially combed fleece would yield. The skein on the far right has big granny stacks of partially felted fleece locks.

A single of hand-painted yarn, spun from hand-combed merino cross fleece.

I usually get my fleeces from Ebay, where farmers will often sell partial fleeces, weighing around only 1 kg (better for storage).  These are unwashed, but often the worst of the dung and mud will have been trimmed off.  You can also find fleece sellers on Ravelry.  I almost bought an entire Border Leicester fleece for only £30 from a Raveller this past spring.   Sometimes sourcing fleece like this also allows you to experiment with breeds of sheep that you can’t get as combed top.  I’ve been working my way through an interesting coloured ryeland fleece, which is primarily a meat breed but has a multi-tonal wool with an interesting cobwebby texture that resists felting.

Always store your fleece in something breathable, like old cotton pillowcases, or paper bags (I made extra big ones out of a role of brown newsprint paper).  Raw fleece is very oily, and if left sealed in plastic, it will sweat and the oils will eventually go rancid and rot the wool.

Coloured ryeland on the spinning wheel. This is the oldest breed of sheep in the UK!

Next up… posts about the whole process of raw fleece to spinning wheel!

Check out: Processing Raw Fleece: Intro,  Processing Raw Fleece: Part 1, and Processing Raw Fleece: Part 2

All images and content copyright ©Martha Welland, 2015

Please credit spunplum.wordpress.com if sharing any images.