Knerdy Knitting
where spelling isn't as important as awesome

Inspired by the Ravelry group Ply-By-Night, some of us at Corvallis Ravelers decided to have a spin-a-long using wool from Bellwether Wool Company. (Whew! That’s a lot of links!)

Here’s how it worked: we each got the same 4 oz of roving (2 oz of aqua, 1 oz of blue, and 1 oz of lime green) and then secretly, under cover of darkness, spun it up any way we pleased. The goal was to see how different people could start with the same roving and get wildly different yarns.

I decided to card my roving with hand carders, just barely mixing the colors. I mixed half the the aqua with the green and then the other half of the aqua with the blue. Here are a few photos of the process.

I then spun two singles, one from each of the mixes. I spun fairly loosely (as is my tendency) using a long draw. This, along with the carding, made for super fuzzy yarn.

I then plied the singles to create a balanced yarn. I believe I described it at Knit Night as “cat yak,” and I’m sticking to that. Not pleased with the results at all. But maybe with the right project it will look lovely. Here’s hoping!

Except it doesn’t eat people, it’s just purple. I got about 10 ounces of beautiful, beautiful Lorna’s Laces top wool in the colorway Black Pearl. Did I mention it’s beautiful? It’s squishy, with lots of shades of purple, a little blue, and a little brown. So of course as soon as I thought I was a decent spinner (that is, after a month of spinning) I started with this. I spun it that only way I knew how; short draw at the ratio the wheel was at when I got it. This made a nice, soft, fluffy yarn, slightly underspun. It’ll be great for this pattern here (a warm cabled hat), but not this pattern (a streamlined 20’s style hat.) This would be fine, except I was trying to make the second one.

At the spinning class I took at OFFF, however, they taught me crazy new techniques. Like how to use the ratios on my wheel. Basically, this means that I can treadle the same speed and get more twist. A lot more twist. So I went home and tried it out. Same wool, same wheel, same draw. But this time I used a different ratio. And I got much finer, tighter, more even yarn. It’s like magic! Except it’s actually using tools correctly. See if you can tell the difference….

Ok, so maybe the pictures don’t show it well. But believe me, the one on the right is much twistier.

The Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival was a blast!  It was also three weeks ago. But there was so much to say about it that I hardly knew where to begin. When this is the case, I usually say nothing at all. To guide me, I’m going to make this a photo essay, just talking about some of the pictures I took on Sunday. This has the advantage of allowing me to actually, you know, write about OFFF. It has the disadvantage of ignoring Saturday, as I forgot my camera that day. Also, the beautiful loot acquired at OFFF will be discussed in a forthcoming post. On to OFFF!

We arrived early in the morning. Ok, so it wasn’t early when we got there. But Canby is an hour and a half away, so we had to leave Corvallis at 7:30. Which is early. This way WildThingsRun could make it to her all day class on natural dyeing.

There was some mix up about when my class was to start. We assembled, but through a mix-up the instructor wasn’t there. This is us all waiting in a circle with our spinning wheels. The instructor, Laura Cunningham, offered the class in the afternoon to compensate. It was increadible! I learned how to spin with a long draw, and from the fold, and how to use the different ratios of my wheel to make really fine worsted yarn. Before I could only make loosely spun aran weight doubles. Now the possibilities are endless! And I know how to adjust my spinning to the kind of fiber and to the kind of fabric I want to create. It’s awesome.

You know what else is awesome? The PDX Knit Bloggers! They had chairs and a canopy, and were very warm and welcoming. While waiting for my class they let me leave things there (like Cynthia the Spinning Wheel), and I even got to spin some with them. I’ve joined their yahoo group, which is also awesome.

No fiber festival would be complete without fiber animals. There were all kinds of sheep, all kinds of goats, rabbits, and alpaca. They were all beautiful and soft and fluffy. And you could buy their fleece, if you so chose. I did not so choose, through enormous strength of will.

All in all, it was a wonderful time. I got to sit in the sun and in the grass, spinning and carding and knitting. They even had a stage where people sang folk songs about fiber. How happy does that make me? Answer: pretty dang happy.