Corriedale

My New Drum Carder

by CZeitler

My drum carder came!  My Brother Drum Carder finally arrived, and it is all ready to go!  As you can see from my ‘unboxing’ pictures my Brother Drum Carder arrived assembled and ready to go with instructions in a lovely plastic pouch.  The intake drum and larger drum are at the right depth, though there are detailed instructions for how to change that depth if needed.  I will admit I followed directions from another website, I cannot find them again to give them credit, and did some sanding.  I took an emery board and ran it in all directions across both drums of my carder, this was supposed to take out any little burrs left by the manufacturing process.  The emery boards were all chewed up at the end of the process so I hope it worked.  The carder itself works like a dream, but it really is a good idea to be up on your tetanus shot before working with something like this.

I am having an absolute blast playing with my new drum carder.  I am experimenting with corriedale, merino, and some other colored wools.  I will post later today or tomorrow about my new batts!

Happy Crafting!

Spinning Along

by CZeitler

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I have been having a blast spinning on my Schacht Ladybug!  In the beginning I thought that 3 ply yarns were all that I would create, but since then I have discovered the joys of 2 ply yarn.  While I still have consistency issues, the journey has been a lot of fun and created some beautiful yarns.  From the bottom up, the purple is a corriedale roving plied with a merino strand, the next skein is the same corriedale plied with itself.

From left to right the first ball is a pretty blue roving I got from Paradise Fibers (it has rose silk in it) plied with a white merino.  The second ball is the same roving plied with itself and a bit of a lighter blue roving I had from paradise fibers.  The third ball is a random batt I had lying around (It was  bit coarse and almost cotton like) plied with a merino.  All five have been washed so this is their final appearance.  As of the time that I am writing this post, I have NO IDEA what I am going to do with them!  Cowls, fingerless gloves, or weaving samples the possibilities are endless!  Such lovely dilemmas.

Happy Crafting.

Rigid Heddle Loom

by CZeitler

Recently Ashford came out with a 10″ Sample-It Loom.  Previously they had an 8″ Sample-It Loom I was thinking about getting, the 10″ was only $7 more than the 8″ and already comes set up for a double heddle experience, I could not resist.  I have not taken any real classes on the rigid heddle loom and, since there is not as much information available on the Kindle Unlimited plan, I have not read as much as I would like on the subject.  Despite these limitations, I managed to watch a few movies and am in the middle of reading “The Weavers Idea Book” by Jane Patrick, I did weave a piece of fabric that I enjoyed creating.  The warp was my Corriedale in Summer Days along with a bit of a wool mixture I carded up.  The weft started with some crochet cotton then I used a commercial blue yarn.  The picture below is before I washed  the piece to finish it.  Once I washed it the energized yarn that made up the wool mixture activated the twist causing the fabric to ruffle a bit.  I like the effect for a beginning piece and can imagine how it could be used as a weft to finish off the edge of a piece or in the warp of a much larger piece.

My First weaving

Corriedale in Summer Days

by CZeitler

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I purchased a 4oz roving of Corriedale Sliver in the Summer Days colorway by WoolverineFibers.  I had spun up tiny bits here and there playing with my tahkli and the rich colors found in the roving.  To pass my idle time, I work several part time jobs so idle time is made the most of before sleep, I pre-drafted the remainder of this roving into fine strips that would be easy to spin.  Boy were they easy to spin!  Before I knew it I had spun up half of the roving and the results were beautiful.

Since I had half of it spun and many of the articles I had read expounded upon the joys of 2 ply yarns I decided to create this yarn as a 2 ply.  It is not perfect, but to be honest it isn’t garbage either.  I had to deliberately twist this into a hank since once it was taken off of the niddy noddy it did not twist back on itself.  This is the pre-washed skein and it might shorten up and twist more when it is washed, but for now most of a 4 oz section of roving created 148 yards of 2 ply yarn.  I spun it in a worsted manner, occasionally trying a long draw but mostly succeeding with a short forward draw.

Washed and sampled materials will be posted later, I hope.

Happy Spinning!

New Batt

by CZeitler

New Batt Crafty Creations

This is my brand new batt from Crafty Creations out of Missouri.  It is a fantastic piece of fiber, and I have already started spinning it.  There is an amazingly bouncy texture to this fiber that makes if very different from the Corriedale that I have been spinning.  I did split the batt into three sections and I am spinning each section separately, at the end I hope to have a three ply yarn.

Navajo Plied Wool Hanks and One Silk Hank

by CZeitler

This past week we had one lovely day of Indian Summer.  The weather was about 70 so my mother suggested that I hang the wool that I Plied using the Navajo Ply, and then washed, out on the line to dry.  I had also managed to ply the bamboo silk I though I had ruined using the same method.  Since I could not decide which picture to post, I posted a selection of them.

Fiber on the line 1 Fiber on the line 2 Fiber on the line 3

Navajo Ply

by CZeitler

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With some of the single left over from my plying, I attempted  to Navajo Ply.

I really like how it turned out, it has an art yarn feel since my spinning isn’t very consistent right now.  Watching a couple more videos, I now know that I don’t have to create a nice short consistent chain, but big long loops to ply.  It will be fun to try again in the future.

Corriedale Ply

by CZeitler

First Plied Corriedale

I managed to Ply 2 of my Corriedale Singles into a very nice ply.

Plied Corriedale

Okay, since I overspun in a few places I did wind up with this huge snarl in my plying.  After fighting with it for a few minutes I just went around it and plied the rest of my singles.  There is enough left of one of the singles for me to try Navajo plying, when I get up the guts to do so.  Right now I am going to enjoy my 2 ply yarn on the lovely decorative spool mom bought me.  I will also not do any more plying until I have a tensioned Lazy Kate, quite a while in the future I’m thinking.  Oh well, I’m enjoying spinning and getting the right amount of twist and yarn size.

Two More Singles

by CZeitler

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Tonight I spun two more singles from my Corriedale fiber.  Each one weighs about an ounce, the single on the left was spun second and the fiber was weighed before I began spinning.  They will rest overnight and if all goes well I look forward to plying them sometime tomorrow.

As you may know I am planning on exploring my new interest in fiber arts, from spinning to weaving.  Right now I am not sure if I want to pick up an inkle loom and see if that kind of weaving interests me or if I should just hold out and get a rigid heddle loom after I get my spinning wheel.  Oh well, plenty of time to decide!

Happy Crafting.

Corriedale

by CZeitler

Corriedale 1 Ply First Corriedale fibers

These are the first fruits of my Corriedale Fiber.  Mom had a great suggestion and said that since this fiber is for experimenting I should leave my first fruits as a single, and consider plying my next two spindles full!  I think that sounds great.  I weighed my first fruits and it turns out that I spun 1 ounce of my pound of Corriedale.  I really look forward to seeing how much I can get out of my plied spindle, maybe I should look into experimenting with plying methods!