Nasty Alpaca Made Nice

I call this "nasty alpaca" but let me assure you, it has nothing at all to do with the animal, only the fibre.  I never had the pleasure of meeting the beast, but if I did I would ask him/her why he/she insists on rolling in blackberry brambles.  Those are difficult and painful things to remove from fibre.

Here's the story of it.  At our last guild executive meeting before the summer break, a member of our guild was given a dozen bags of alpaca fibre.  Apparently there was an alpaca enthusiast in her network who finally decided to shear his animals, and when he learned that the fibre was good quality, donated it all to our guild. 

I selected a grey fleece -- see below. It's a lovely cool grey that will look fine on its own, but grey fibre dyed is magic.  Tones down the colour and adds a depth that's hard to obtain on white fibre alone.  At least for rookie dyers like me.

It's a good sized fleece and the staples are long.  Really long -- between 10 and 12 inches.  My first experiments with combing the fibre were so frustrating, I left it in a bag (unwashed) on the backporch.  I deliberately left it right where I would see it every time I walked into the house.  I knew the guilt would build until it became action.  The guilt trip worked -- just in time.  When I finally opened the bag to tackle the fibre, out flew several moths.  If I had left it any longer, those lovelies would have laid eggs and the larvae would have started munching their way through the fibre.

I threw it into a bath of very hot water with Orvus paste.  Let it soak for 1/2 hour and then did that again.  Then I did hot water rinse baths with a bit of white vinegar.  It dried in the sun over two days and then I assessed it.  Much better.  No moths, no more "wet dog/old animal" smell.  Time to tackle this fibre.

The staples are long, much too long to deal with comfortably.  There is so much debris in this fibre, I decided I needed to comb it with my wool combs.  The debris is what makes this fibre so nasty: pieces of blackberry bramble buried deeply enough that you can't see it until you grab a handle of fibre and stick yourself with it;  some kind of seeds that have nestled themselves deep in the soft down of the fibre; and of course sticks, hay and other mysterious grasses.  No problem, this is a job for wool combs.

I solved the problem of the length of the staple by cutting it.  I cut off the tips where most of the embedded seeds were and then cut the rest of the staple in half, resulting in a 4 - 5 inch staple.  Quite manageable indeed.

Here it is loaded on the combs.

First pass with the comb.

After a couple of passes, it was lovely and clean.  This is it being pulled off the comb.

Here is the result.  From a couple of locks of fibre, here's what I got.  A 3.3g nest of clean, combed fibre and 1.9g bundle of waste fibre.  Not the ratio I like, but I've got tons of this stuff -- I don't care.

A half hour later -- and not a very effecient one as I did each lock one by one and stopped to do "photo-shoots" -- I had a total of 28.6g (one ounce) of combed, clean fibre ready for spinning.  And 17.6g of waste fibre.  I also had stab wounds from the brambles and a severe dislike for this nasty fibre.  I will feel differently when I spin it up -- so I won't throw it into the compost quite yet.

We'll see.

How to Make a Hat that Fits or A Hat is Just a Swatch

While it is stunningly hot in the daytime, the days are getting shorter and the nights cooler. My husband is up early in the morning and needs a new hat for his lovely bald head.  It's too early to put on any heat and the farmhouse is decidedly cold in the morning.

"No problem", I said with the confidence of a seasoned and fearless knitter.  "I can make a hat in a weekend."

So I rooted through my stash to find the right yarn.  I found this one. I have four balls of this, so didn't worry at all about running out.

It's 100% fine merino wool, single ply, loosely spun. The colours are perfect for him and I love the name of the yarn -- Jasper. :)  I measured hubby's head, did a quickie swatch to figure out how many stitches to cast on and I was on my way.  I cast on 110 st.with size 4mm Addi circulars.  I knit a 4 inch. 1x1 rib and then changed to stocking stitch.  It was great, the hat was developing nicely, and with circulars, you can easily try them on the head for sizing.  When it was about 8in. total I started  decreasing:

Round 1: *Knit 9, k2tog*  (cause that adds up to 11 stitches, and there are a total of 110 -- so I'll be decreasing 10 on each round).
Round 2: knit
Round 3: *Knit 8, k2tog*
Round 4: knit
And so forth, decreasing the number of knits on each odd round before you knit two together, and always knitting on the even rounds.  I like this decrease, it echoes the shape of a head, it's dead easy to remember.

After the round of k2tog throughout, you will knit one more round.  Then cut the yarn leaving an 8in tail, and then draw up all the remaining stitches, I think there will be 10?  Weave them in.  Voila.  A Hat.

I knew from experience that this yarn benefits from a good wash to full the fibres. When it dried I was disappointed; the hat shrunk, not horizontally as I had planned, but vertically.  It got shorter and wider instead of narrower and snugger.

It's still wearable, but for another head. But isn't it lovely?  Look at the way those fibres smooth out and make a nice dense fabric, and I love the colour ways too.

Back to the stash.  I had a skein of green-blue yarn from a Dorset fleece I washed, dyed, carded and spun. I wrote about this in an earlier post.

It is heavier yarn than the Berroco, but still in the hat-making range. When it was made into a ball, it's a pretty decent amount of yarn.

 Again, I did a mini-swatch and then cast on 99 stitches, again using size 4mm Addi circulars. This time I knit a 5in 1x1 rib, in case the vertical shrink thing was going to happen again.  And then I knit and  knit around and around until the whole thing measured a bit longer than 8 in. and started decreasing.  This time round 1 of the decrease was *knit 7, k2tog* (cause that adds up to 9 stitches, and there are a total of 99 -- so I'll be decreasing 11 on each round).

It ended nicely, but it was looking big.  So I washed it and to help with the shrinkage, I threw it into the dryer.  It's way too big. I know from experimenting with the first mini skein of this year, that it doesn't felt much.  It fulls, which is just fine with me, but now that I have a larger-than-I-need hat, I want to shrink a bit.  Everything about this hat is perfect -- except for the size.  I guess that rules out perfection.  I will try washing it again, this time throwing it into the washing machine.  On hot.

It's just a hat.  And a hat is really a swatch. And now hubby has two of them and neither are really right.

On to Hat #3.

Garlic and Blackberries and Figs, oh my!

Summer was late coming to this part of the world.  While eastern Canada was suffering through a heat wave with 30+ temperatures and a humidex reading into the 40's, we were still wearing sweaters and dealing with umbrellas. 

But in August, summer arrived. Nice hot days, coolish nights and no humidity.  The bugs vanished and the river started to go down.  The garden which was late in producing, picked up speed and now everything is ready at the same time. 

I know this is a blog about fibre, but there were many more things that have occupied my spare time ever since I returned to work. The Garden.  It's not as large a garden as in days gone by; it is more of a recreational garden.  We use it to grow stuff that we want and as a way to learn more about the finer edges of growing food.

This weekend we harvested our garlic. We planted it in February, very late by our standards, but were still pleased by the result.  Good sized bulbs (larger than a golf ball) and strong flavour, even before it has had time to cure. There it is, drying in the sun.

This is the result of three full beds of garlic.  Enough to plant another three beds next year, give us a good tasty supply for our own consumption, and have enough left over for some decent bartering. 

The garlic was ready and so are the blackberries.  In this part of the country, blackberries are the bane of anyone who has a garden.  Not originally from this part of the world, they are an aggressive plant and take over spaces in very little time.  They grow all year round for heaven's sake, the leave don't fall off in the autumn to allow for a domant period.  They have one redeeming quality: they offer free food. 

It's amazing.  In mid to late August you can pick all you want, anywhere -- in the city and along country roads, for you can find blackberry brambles where ever you go.  We have plenty surrounding us.  On the edges of the hayfield and along the fence line.  They are taking trying to take over.

There is an art to picking blackberries.  First is to find the mother lode.  Yes, the mother lode.  That is the amazing abundancy of berries that is so densly clustered that you can't pick in a systematic, methodic manner.  When you find the mother lode, you can fill your bucket in 15 minutes flat, with little pain. 

Blackberries, while very good for our health and all that, are hateful plants.  No matter how careful you are, no matter how well covered you are, you ALWAYS get serious gouges and splinters from the affair.  But this doesn't stop me.  Blackberry picking is war, and the best prepared get the best result.  Here's a shot of the mother lode, located along the front fence line at my place.

It's hard to dress properly for blackberry picking because the berries are ready when the summer heat is at an all time high.  Although full coverage is recommended, I pick sleeveless and in shorts.  The brambles scratch but at least they don't get snagged in the clothing -- which is actually worse than a gouge.  You need a belt and a bucket with a handle.  Attach the bucket to the belt so you can pick with two hands and get the job done fast.  You also benefit from having a leather glove handy and some clippers.  I told you this was war.

The next things that are coming on are the figs. Several birthdays ago, a friend planted a fig tree for me on the north west corner of the house.  I didn't know much about figs and thought that it would be years before I was harvesting anything. Well, these are amazing plants, and this one loves the spot where it was planted for it is thriving.  Here's what they look like on the tree.  They grow straight out from the tree and as they ripen, they start to sag and soften.  They keep for days in the fridge so you can easily collect the 2 dozen that you need to make a good fig chutney. 

The last thing to show off is the chard.  That's my hand on the left edge holding the leaf.  I love the colour of the spine and the deep green of the leaf.  All the leaves on these plants are huge like this, huge yet still tender. 

I am thankful for this bounty.

Claudia Skirt --photo shoot

Finish-itis

I've been on holidays for the last 4 weeks.  And before you start to feel jealous about that amount of time and mental space I had-- it was delicious -- let me assure you, it was a different holiday than the one I had planned for the weather did not comply. 

While the rest of Canada and parts of the US were burning up with record breaking heat waves and oppressive humidity -- we out here in the Pacific Northwest, were dealing with rain, clouds, drizzle, and more rain.  Living on the flood plain did not help matters either.  Due to a late spring and non existent summer, the Fraser River has been high as the snow pack melted and found its way to the ocean.  The fields surrounding us slowly filled with water and stayed that way for weeks.  Thus creating the perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes!

I grew up in Northern Ontario, so I know bugs.  But it is amazing how after a couple of dozen years away, the memories of swarms of blackflies and mosquitoes fade.  So imagine my surprise when, upon our return from Montreal and Maine, despite the rain, I headed out the garden to start making sense of the weeds and such. I couldn't stay outside for more than five minutes because of the bugs -- I had zero tolerance for dealing with them.

So I spent time indoors. Nearly three full weeks of dismal weather and rain.  In the last week of my holidays, the sun finally came out.

It was a productive time.  I was tempted to start a bunch of projects, but decided instead to reclaim knitting needles from the unfinished objects box.  Four big projects have been completed so far.  Here's what I have managed to get done.

The sweater is an Elizabeth Zimmerman "Baby Surprise Jacket".  The yarn is two skeins of softly spun singles by Kaffe Fassett.  Lovely yarn.  The only thing this sweater needs is buttons.  The socks are a pair that I started in the airport on one of my many trips to Winnipeg this year.  Nothing inspriring about the yarn.  Just glad they are done and could remember how to make the second sock.  The half mitts are from a nightmare knitting marathaon.  I ended up knitting five mitts in an attempt to get a pair that matched!  At least I have two pairs to show for it.  The fifth mitt ended up getting ripped all the way back.

The final thing I completed was the Claudia Evilla skirt by Ruth Sorensen.  I made a lot of changes to the pattern.  First, I didn't use a fingering weight wool yarn. I used a worsted cotton linen blend. I used larger needles than what was called for and finally, in the last 1 1/2in of the pattern, I went up a needle size, to give an additional increase oomph.  Here it is, off the blocking board and hanging to encourage the pleats. 

I will definitely make this skirt again.  It was fun to knit, and now that I understand the construction of this skirt, I will make even more changes.  Next time, I'll do it in my handspun, locally sourced yarn.

Back to work tomorrow. . . . so off to the garden for some bubbly.

Vermont: Local yarns and lots of charm

Last week my husband and I travelled through the northern US states from Montreal to Bangor, Maine.  We are on holidays and decided to take our time getting to our destination.  We stopped for the night in Montpelier, Vermont.

Here's where we stayed. It's called The Inn at Montpelier.  Built in 1828 and lovingly maintained throughout the years, it is the best place to stay when in town.  If the rooms and delicious (free) breakfast don't grab you, maybe an evening drinking gin and tonic on the veranda will do the trick.  It certainly did for us.



Here is the view looking south from the Inn. The entire town is full of charm and historic buildings.  Look closely at the tiles on the first steeple. Yes, those are indeed hearts.

As the state capital it draws a regular and monied crowd.  So of course it has a yarn store.  The shop is on one of the main drags and it's called the The Knitting Studio. From one end of the continent to another, and into another country, it's amazing how similar yarn stores are.  Yes, there are all the regular yarns and needles one would expect to see.  But I was looking for local fibre.  And I wasn't disappointed. 

They have an ENTIRE section (shelves 6' x 6') locally produced yarns.  That's what I was looking for.  I settled for these two lovelies. 

The blue skein is from Vermont Fiberworks Yarn. It is 180 yds of 65% wool and 35% mohair.  Gently varigated with sky blue and periwinkle, it will make a warm hat and mittens for someone.  The white skein is from Good Fibrations -- its 132 yds of handspun merino and mohair. It is beautifully spun and I suspect that it is 50% mohair. 

I was really impressed at the number of fibre artists that were featured in this section.  It may not be local in the sense of my "100 miles" but for that part of the world, it certainly was.  And I bought them.  I wanted to buy more, and there were lots to tempt me.  Wonderful colours and textures -- mohair seems to be a popular blend with wool.  Not much alpaca and llama.  That doesn't mean they don't raise them in Vermont, it just means I didn't see much local camelid breeds in this particular store. 

The moral of this story is:  where ever you travel, support the local industries.  Especially the cottage industries.  That's where all the big ones started.

Local Dorset -- dyed, carded and spun

I mentioned earlier that at the Fleece Sale, I split a 6lb. dorset fleece with a friend.  Washed it all up on that first day.  The following weekend I divided it into 4oz portions.  That's when I realized I lost nearly an entire pound in the washing process.  I ended up with 8 - 4oz bags.  The plan was to dye each portion some variation on the theme of green.  I had a large jar of blue and another of yellow.  So into each dye pot went a combination of blue:yellow. 

After they dried, I teased and blended them -- and then put them through the drum carder. You can see the piles of green, blue and bright green.

The plan was to put them throught the drum carder a few more times.  However, on Tuesday I attended a spinning demonstration at the Fort in Fort Langley. I didn't have much time to plan this -- so I just grabbed a batt of this fibre.  It could have used a couple more passes, but it still spun up with no trouble.  I like the fact that it isn't completely blended, so the colours come out in inconsistent ways.  Just like they do when you are looking at a field of hay, or a body of water. 

I spun the entire batt onto one bobbin and then navajo plied it.  Here's the result -- washed and thwacked to encourage blooming.  It's not my best spinning, but I like the fact that it really looks handspun. 

The next thing I plan to do is knit up a swatch of this yarn -- wash it up real good and see what it does.  I've been told that dorset -- as a down breed, doesn't felt.  So it may be a good contender for sock yarn.  We'll see. This experiment used up one pound of the fibre.  With the other 4 - 4oz bags, I am going to do the same thing, but with variations on the theme of Ruby. 

It's the Langley Weavers and Spinners Guild 40th anniversary this year.  For our first meeting in September, we have organized a Ruby Challenge.  The challenge is to spin, knit, weave, felt something -- anything -- from Ruby coloured fibre.  I like the way the blues and greens blended in this experiment, so I am hoping for a similarly lively result for the Ruby yarn.