Ravellenics

Olympics are Over

by CZeitler

I am not including a photograph of my shawl for Ravellenics…because it has not grown since the last photo.  I have been plagued by these weird should and neck aches, I use a memory foam support pillow so I don’t get these anymore…so it was weird.  Then I was waiting in the doctors office for mom to finish her stress test, knitting away on my shawl, hunched up trying to get these tiny stitches to do what I want, and realizing, “Shoot, that’s why my neck hurts.”  So the shawl went into the, “When I get better at knitting I will try this again.” Or more Likely, “mess around with this every now and again until I deem it done.”  Either way the shawl is not going going to be finished anytime soon.

My Spin along went very well!  I am very happy with my 300+ yard skein of rainbow yarn.  It is beautiful and so very sparkly.  (I have to figure out how to photograph sparkles so they show up, I’m working on it.)  I also have my Unicorn Fluff and Faery Dust Skein spun and washed at about 150 yards.

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Again, I really love how this skein turned out.  Before long I hope to pick up my spinning for the breed study again with a combination of breeds and non-animal, non-plant material spins.  I recieved a Vegan Box not that long ago and I’ve used the fibers for demonstrations.  I have not taken the time to spin the vegan fibers to see how they work up.  I really am looking forward to adding that aspect to my explorations and sharing the results with my students.  I cannot believe in 6 weeks I’m going to be dyeing wool with students again.  Shoot, I’d better get started trying to figure out what went wrong last time I tested things with the commercial acid dyes.

Happy Crafting!

Shawl in Progress

by CZeitler

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I still have 5 days, I’m sure I can make a ton of progress on this in five days…maybe if I give up sleeping…or spinning.  Woah, I just gave myself a head rush, give up on spinning, what a joke!  Actually I guess I thought I had a lot more time to devote to this than I do, or I thought that the fine alpaca would knit as quickly as the worsted acrylic.  Sure fooled me, lol.  I love how it looks I am going to keep at it and see how far I can get before things are over.  So this is my progress, wish me luck!

Miscalculation

by CZeitler

It turns out that the Spin Along for the Olympics starts on the 15th, whoopsie.  Oh well.  The ravellenics knit along is going strong.  I’m working on my shawl, a little haphazardly but it will get knit.  I recieved my February 2018 Paradise Fibers box of the month and I really enjoyed the challenge.  They decided to advise that we create a crepe yarn from the supplies they gave us.  I decided to go with that choice.  I did change things up a bit, while they advised that we spin from the top, first one shade of blue then the other and ply them together from there I modified things.  I like carding rolags, not sure why I just get a kick out of them, so I carded the two blues together in a striped rolag formation adding sparkle along the way.  I also didn’t use their silk that they provided instead I spun up some of the silk blend I had left-over from december that I tried to dye black.  It wound up grey instead but I really like how the yarn turned out.  I am also pleased that I have some of the silk blend left.

For the technical side.  I spun the silk blend with the wheel going to the right.  Then I spun all of the merino blue rolags with the wheel going to the left.  Then I put the blues into a center pull ball and plied them with the wheel going to the right.  This means that I had a 2 ply yarn and a silk blend singles all from a wheel going to the right.  Then I plied the 2 ply with the single on the wheel going to the left.  This means that some of the ply twist came undone causing the plied yarn to bubble up a bit.

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The effect wasn’t as extreme as I thought it may have been, but truthfully until I work with it I cannot really judge it.  I am not sure if I am going to just use this as an example for my students and swatch the heck out of it. or try and make it into a project.  It might look cool as a woven purse for example.  Who knows.  I’ll post progress on my ravellenics and spin along later this week or next. ‘Til then, Happy Crafting!

Getting Ready

by CZeitler

Using my Brother Drum Carder and my Howard Hand Cards I managed to create a really amazing set of fiber preparations.  The rolags at the left are from my handcards, I really like how they turned out.  The middle was carded as a striped batt on my drum carder, I put it through the carder once and added a lot of sparkle that is not showing up here.

The single color batts were put through the drum carder once, again with a lot of sparkle added.  The final batt looks red on one side, purple on the other, and has every color in between (along with a ton of sparkle).  I tried to show the colors using the spots where I ‘nibbled’ it off of my drum carder, but they don’t show too well.

I am really looking forward to spinning each of these yarns and then plying them to make an amazing 3 ply yarn.

Happy Crafting!

Getting Ready for Ravellenics & SAL

by CZeitler

I am getting myself psyched up for the Paradise Fibers Spin Along for the Olympics as well as Ravelry’s Ravellenics.  For the spin along I purchased the Brights package from Paradise Fibers, it contained a rainbow of colors as well as three other shades off of primary, burgundy, a blue, and a fluorescent pink.  I didn’t think that these colors would do much but I wanted to card them with some sparkle anyway.  I loaded my handcards, and away I went.

I tried going for a bit of a striped effect but soon discovered that I liked how everything looked when it was blended more thoroughly.  I decided to create punis from my carding, since they are so much fun to spin, and I really hope that when I spin them they create an amazing tweed effect.

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I decided, rather whimsically, to name them “Unicorn Fluff & Faerie Dust”.  They have a lot more sparkle to them in person than they do in this photo.

As for the primary colors, I will make that into another post when I have pictures.  I am very happy with how that turned out also.

As for the breed study, Heaven Help Me, I’ve decided to get a bit organized with it.  I managed to spin and knit 13 different breeds in January.  As stated in a previous post, I need to take more time with them.  Unfortuantely for my resolve to move onto something different until I find out what my guild is doing, Camaj Fiber Arts is selling Perenale Wool for $1 an ounce as their wool of the month (which might be different by the time you are reading this post).  So I have decided to look through the Field Guide to Fleece by Deborah Robson and Carol Ekarius to see what breeds I’m missing, which I already know are 90+.  This should be a blast to work through, and since I have created a spreadsheet I hope to minimize my duplication of effort.  In other words, I hope I’m not going to buy a bunch of breeds I’ve already spun, lol.  Back to listing breeds.  Later this week, or early next, I hope to post pictures of the pages I’ve already finished.

Happy Crafting!