2010 TdF - Second half: plying and knitting my handspun linen yarn

08.31.2010

The next step in my TdF project was plying Serena's singles. Serena had trouble with the 2 ply snagging on her tiny hooks, so I called in Suzanne, an antique Quebec saxony, for the assist. Serena's Little Sister wound the finished skeins.

Suzanne is wearing her red Team TRU driveband and a jaunty Quebec blue tassel. Little Sister sports herTeam TRU red tassel, and a white novice tasse because this is the first time I have reeled yarn on her.

To prepare Suzanne's 2-ply linen yarn for knitting I skeined it, washed it, boiled it for two hours, dried it and wound it into the final balls. The ball in front is the main batch of linen that Serena spun. It is 108 yd. at 2199 YPP. The yarn on the tp tube was spun from the same strick, but using a different style of dressing the distaff. It is 19 yd. at 1394 YPP.

On the very last day of the TdF I met my final goal, knitting with the linen yarn. After considerable swatching for both pattern and needle size, it went on the needles, committed to becoming a neckscarf in New Shell Shetland lace. That day I wore a yellow t-shirt and a big, happy smile.

We did it! I am mighty proud of our flax Team TRU: Serena, Little Sister, and Suzanne.

After the TdF the next step was to finish the neckscarf by the traditional method of cold mangling. After a gentle wash in tepid water, it spent the night rolled in a towel. The next morning I spread the barely damp scarf on an antique linen mangling cloth. Using a rocking motion I pressed down on it HARD with an antique oak roller. I worked along the scarf in short sections, rocking and pressing as hard as I could. Under the pressure the fabric began to smooth out and take on a sheen impossible to attain with a heated iron. The lace became unbelievably thin, with a texture that was at once crisp and flowing. Reflecting the morning sunlight, the linen seemed to be lit from within.

Spun silver--Serena's linen scarf:

What a lovely souvenir of the 2010 Tour de Fleece.

Posted by Jan at 08:47 PM | Comments (9)

2010 TdF - Serena Spins Flax

07.20.2010

For the 2010 Tour de Fleece, I joined Team TRU, fielded by the Ravelry Antique Spinning Wheel and CPW Lovers groups. My goal for the TdF is to put several of my antique spinning wheels into working order and then spin some challenging yarn on them. I also decided to have fun playing with with all the colors and ribbons of the real Tour.

Serena is an exquisitely turned double upright Scandinavian wheel from North Dakota. She came to me accompanied by her own diminutive yarn reel, very like a princess and her lady in waiting.

As ethereal as she looks, her treadle (here tied up for the ride home), says a lot about her. The heavy treadle bar and double pivot bar suggest that she was made in northern Sweden, and was intended to be a working wheel. The wear on her footpad says that indeed, she has seen much use. I wanted to put her to work again, but time, and a heavy coat of shiny varnish, had frozen every moving part in place. Days of squirting turbine oil into her stiff joints and some strategically placed matchstick shims put her back into alignment and working order.

My project for Serena, once she was up and going, has been to learn to spin a strick of long line flax from her distaff.

A strick is made from the longest, finest fibers of the flax plant, carefully combed and bundled.

This is long line Belgian flax; the fiber length is more than a yard. It is a magnificent preparation, befitting a princess.

Because of the fiber length and my inexperience, dressing her truncheon distaff was a daunting task. Dressing the distaff involved tying the end of the strick to my waist and fanning it back and forth on a table, then rolling the distaff up in the flaxen web and securing the fiber to it with a satin ribbon.

At last here is Serena, shimmed and oiled, and tensioned and dressed in her finest, ready for the TdF.
She is wearing her red Team TRU tassel, and a winner's yellow tassel for the victory newly gained: coming back to life after so many, many years. Her distaff is wrapped with a white ribbon, identifying her spinner as a novice at spinning strick.

Distaff dressed, water cup filled, she is ready to go.

Well...

It didn't take long for Serena to announce that she preferred spinning Z, and that she would condescend to cooperate in this S business **ONLY** if her pretty red Team TRU driveband was crossed in the direction opposite to what every other S-spinning wheel in the fiber universe wants and needs.

Furthermore, if her spinner slighted her by letting up even the least little bit on her gorgeously carved treadle, Serena would whip around Z-wise and fling 5 or 6 flyer turns of loose yarn all over her hooks.

It was a slow slog at first, but by the end of the day everything changed.

Fiercely independent and enormously talented, Serena spun fast and well, once the two of us learned to maintain constant contact and communication with each other. Yarn began to build steadily on the bobbin. Spinning became a pleasure.

FO!!! - Wet-spun linen singles.
One and a half ounces of real linen yarn. What a joy.

Serena bedecked in ribbons--
She earned every one of them! Team red and triumphant gold, a snippet of her white novice ribbon, and a multicolored bow for mastering the climb up the learning curve. A beautiful princess, proudly wearing her own beautiful yarn.

Way to go, sweet Scandi girl!

Serena, I love you. Flax, I love you too.

-Jan

Posted by Jan at 07:58 AM | Comments (10)

Asymmetry

07.06.2010

Believe it or not, I finished something. That's not happening much lately, I feel like I knit and knit and get nowhere. Maybe it's the continued stifling weather.

Anyway, I ran across this pattern on Ravelry not long ago, looking for shrugs for fingering weight yarn. It caught my attention for several reasons. First, it was a sampler of real lace patterns, not just an all-over lacy-looking thing. Second, it didn't look like a shrug - most shrug patterns I see nowadays are to my mind rather silly-looking things that don't even come down to your bra in back. This looked like it would come down nearly to one's waist in back, and look like a bolero in front. Third, it used close to the amount of yarn I had earmarked for such a project.

I didn't have QUITE enough yarn. I had some old Wooly Wonka cormo/angora fingering that amounted to about 650 yards, in two radically different dye lots. On the other hand, I didn't need those sweepy knuckle-length sleeves. So I set about replanning the lace. I was going to have color asymmetry, as well as the asymmettry of different lace on the two sleeves, so I decided to do away with the asymmetry of having the center pattern not lie in the middle of my back. I reduced the number of repeats on all the repeating lace patterns, and when I was done I had cut almost 25% out of the length of the body as well as centering the zig-zag pattern on the back. That seemed like enough to get going.

The knitting was easy and the yarn was appealing. The challenge was in the finishing. There was a lot of it.

First, you knit two cuffs - they are an edging pattern, which you start from a provisional cast-on. When you have repeated the pattern the required number of times, you put the last row on a holder, pick up from the straight edge of one cuff, then begin knitting the body, which proceeds like a stole. When you have completed the length of the body, you take the second cuff and graft it onto the end. Then you have a big rectangle, and at each end you have a stitch holder on one side of the cuff and a provisional cast-on at the other side..

Next, you begin again with a provisional cast-on and knit the edging pattern, but a lot more of it this time, till you have a very long piece about 3 times the length of one cuff. At the end, you stick the last row on a holder, so one end has a holder and one end has a provisional cast-on.

Then you block. I followed a steaming method to avoid this thing getting skinny - after washing and pinning it out, I laid a wet sheet on top and ironed it so that it steamed.

After THAT, you sew. Here is a picture to break up all the words and show you why this was all worth it. (It looks like the sleeve lengths don't match, but it's just how I"m wearing it - the vertical lines of eyelets are supposed to lie approximately at my shoulders with the pattern centered on my back.)

Pretty, eh? Good thing, or I'd have gotten very discouraged at this point. The invisible joins of the cuffs and the edging. I followed her directions, which I don't even want to repeat hear as I still feel faint when I think about it, and I got something like an invisible join, which is a miracle.

Then, you mark the edging so that you know where the four quarters of it lie, and place the center of it at the center of the top of the back, and start sewing it to the edge of the body. When you get close to that quarter mark, you stop, and begin mattress-stitching the edges up from the cuff to make the sleeve. When it looks about right, you stop, and continue sewing the edge to the body, across the seam. At that point I stopped and went back to the center top and went down the other side and did the other sleeve. Then I finished sewing the edging from both sleeve seams across the lower back so that it fit.

Phew. This took for EVER. And I probably had about 3 yards of yarn left. But the result is really beautiful.

This is the only way I could come up with to fold it safely for storage - straight across the center back and tops of the sleeves.

Yes I feel very virtuous to have completed it. No, I don't think I want to do it again! If finishing doesn't make you want to crawl under a table, this pattern really makes a beautiful result, and I am quite happy with the shorter sleeves. I will get a lot of wear out of it in the over-air-conditioned summer office.

Posted by Prudence at 02:40 PM | Comments (5)

Repurposed

06.20.2010

Socks with holes under the heels, meet office chair arms chewed up by cat.

On the left, "Widdershins." On the right, "Dublin Bay Socks."

Scheming to use old sweatshirts as seat and back covers...

Posted by Prudence at 02:18 PM | Comments (3)

Out with the new, in with the old

05.16.2010

Part One - The Tale of the Hoard

Once upon a time in Genesee County, Michigan, there were two brothers named Mott. They started a hardware business in the 1940s, but apparently they had a sideline as an informal pawnshop, giving people cash for stuff when they were in need. Thus they accumulated an eccentric mass of miscellaneous stuff. When they died, their large and eclectic estate went up for auction.

Oddly enough, it seems a lot of people brought them spinning wheels of Canadian origin. A collector in central Michigan ended up with a barn full of these. They were partly disassembled, jumbled up, and very dirty. There must have been another batch that ended up somewhere else, as will be seen.

When a couple of these wheels turned up on eBay, a member of the Ravelry forum for lovers of Canadian spinning wheels investigated and found out about this cache of wheels that needed cleaning and sorting to be made saleable. Before too long, five spinners (and one kid) from Baltimore were making a spring break drive to central Michigan to help the owners of the cache sort and match parts and see what was to be seen.

Two days were spent at what became known as The Hoard. By the end of the second day, the wheels and parts had been sorted - yellow tables and yellow drive wheels in one place, orange ones in another, screw-tension wheels in a third place, large wheels with cast-iron fittings somewhere else - so that at least matching had a fighting chance of happening. Some wheels that were fully put together were tried out by the five spinners, and five wheels came back to Baltimore. Other wheels just could not be put together. Sometimes, a very attractive table just could not be matched to a wheel that was the right color and also fit between the uprights. Sometimes there was no flyer that would go between the maidens. We could not escape the feeling that there was another Hoard someplace else, and that Hoard included dozens and dozens of FLYERS.

It made for an interesting vacation. Here are a few photos from the Hoard itself.

But what I know YOU want to see is - what's the wheel that came home with ME?

This is a marked wheel made by Frederic Bordua, and probably dates from between 1890 and 1910. It was a dirty little bird - half the shellac was pretty much gone, and the remnants of it were decayed to a dark dark brown. There were some cracks in the table that probably came from drying and climate extremes, and rust and dirt coated the iron parts. But it spun. We threw a driveband and some oil on it and a makeshift footman, and I spun a whole bobbin of singles in a couple of hours. The flyer on it probably wasn't the one the maker originally made, but it was definitely a flyer from the same size wheel, and it fit fine.

There were some cracks in the table, but there was no weakness - the cracks evidently were very old and may have come from the use of insufficiently dried wood.

Following the lead of other antique wheel lovers on Ravelry, I bought a bunch of rags, a jug of denatured alcohol, and some Danish oil, and went to work on it. The denatured alcohol dissolved the old shellac and probably left a thin uniform coat of it in places there was any to get off. The Danish oil coated and sealed the wood without changing the color. After a month or so, it looked like this.

If you like this kind of thing, the before and after photos are all here.

I'm not a wheel namer like some people. My cars don't have names either. I call this one Fred just because that's the name stenciled on the table! This wheel is identical to the one in the last entry, photographed at the Merlin Tree booth and refurbished by Dave - the only difference is, I believe that one has the original flyer. And, Dave takes a more conservative approach to finish preservation. I had no finish to preserve!

Fred has been spinning a pound of Corriedale I had lying around.

There was a wheel I wanted that I had to leave behind - no flyer could be found to fit.

It was a little screw-tension saxony wheel made by Amable Paradis, who lived from 1811 to 1893 and was the first of at least three generations of wheelmakers in St-André, Quebec. Waah. The one that got away. I still want one like this.

Part Two - The Winder's Tale

Having lined up a buyer for the Prelude, I wasn't feeling bad about bringing Fred home - he cost a bit less than a Prelude costs. I had been coveting an antique skein winder for some time, but not seeing any that were the right price and accessible to me. Then one popped up on eBay that was just about the right price even taking shipping into account, and was different from the ones I'd been looking at. I pondered it for nearly a week, and then about 2 days before it was going to end I emailed the link to Jan and asked her opinion. The opinion came back: "BUY IT! It's worth more than the seller is asking! New England style, as opposed to the more common six-armed Pennsylvania style." So I did. When it arrived, FedEx ground in a HUGE box from upstate New York, it was stunningly gorgeous.

Although it is in really good shape (maybe refiinished?), it's really old. It's pegged together everywhere. A peg holds the two arms onto the axle, pegs hold the legs into the base, pegs hold the top assembly onto the base, there are even pegs holding the ends of the arms on.

The clicker clicks, and is held on with old-looking nails.

It clicks every 40 turns and has a two-yard circumference, so 40 turns is 80 yards. Apparently, a knot was created every 80 yards, and 7 knots was a full 560-yard skein.

It creaks a little as you wind on it, like an old ship. I love it.

Part Three - The Tale of the Goodies

I didn't buy much at MS&W, partly because I had just done my out-with-the-new-in-with-the-old shopping, but there were a few lovelies I couldn't pass up.

I bought a nice big sturdy bag from Merlin Tree - they are meant to haul Hitchhiker wheels around in, but they were willing to sell it to me by itself. I promptly put my inconvenient backpack into it and was much more comfortable for the rest of the day. I also love the maker's mark that is very like the mark on my Cadorette wheel.

I bought two skeins of sock yarn from the booth of my LYS, Cloverhill. Every year they bring in loads of wonderful stuff from indie dyers for MS&W. I got very lucky and got a skein of Three Irish Girls sock yarn in a color I loved (there was not much left there by the time we arrived at the booth at something like 10am...), and a skein of purple from Serendipitous Ewe. Finally, 8 ounces of sky-blue bluefaced leicester/tussah silk top from Bullen's Woolens. I have never really noticed that vendor before although their name is always on the list of vendors. But this year, they had a big rack of top on the outside of their booth, which took great advantage of the fact that they were on the end of a section next to a side exit door from the main building. They had beautiful top in it, the blend that I bought but also merino/bamboo and a couple of other luscious things, and gorgeous colors. As you walked up that aisle of the building, it caught the eye and for me it was like a magnet. I wanted a lot more than I finally bought. I hope they do it again!

Part Four - Of Knitting

Socks were knitted amid all this.

This was Socks That Rock mediumweight in the color 'Rockstar' that I was lucky enough to snag, with no effort, lines, or waiting, at MS&W last year. I used Cat Bordhi's Upstream architecture and did some garter stitch stuff in the gusset area.

I'm nearly done with Vilai from Cookie A.'s book. These are beautiful socks and you really have to pay attention to the chart and directions or you will end up doing a lot of frogging. The yarn, I'm editing this to add, is Shibui Sock in the color 'peony'.

I'm also half done with Azami from the spring/summer Twist Collective. I am using Creative Focus Linen, which is 50/50 linen and cotton. It's working up really nicely. I had to raise the neckline a little by making the armholes shallower, and I don't want a hood so I faked up some mitered garter stitch for the back, which looks nicer on than it does lying on a table. It was the lace neckline that made me fall for this sweater.

The other thing I knitted this winter was Cable and Lattice pullover from Vermont Fiber Designs. I have wanted to knit this for a long time and it was just the thing to start in January. I don't have photos of it yet, but this entry is long enough as it is! Emmy wants a hoodie in her school colors (orange and black, meh), and I need to make teacher mitts as the school year is, unbelievably, ending. So there will be some knitting of obligation going on once I finish those socks, which should be today or tomorrow. The next knitting I want to do for myself is this (Ravelry link)....

Posted by Prudence at 10:20 AM | Comments (6)