She Was Twisted

I decided that, yes, I did want to lighten up the doll hair for the second skein. Since Theresa will be cutting it into lengths for the doll wig, this gave me the opportunity to change it up a bit if I wanted. What she will do, is combine the yarns randomly and have twice the amount of variation. I can’t wait to see it all in “action” !

I finished spinning half of the handspun doll hair yarn last night, and now I can’t make up my mind for the life of me if it is too bright or not. –Like maybe I should spin the second half with lighter blondes and more pale pinks???  I can’t decide! I don’t want the hair to overpower the dress, however I also want the hair to be knock-your-socks-off in color. I want it to be shy, sweet princess, but then on the other hand, I’d love for it to be bold, strong princess. Which direction, which direction….oh how I hate making these decisions!

I think tonight I will go hang out in the “fiber room” and perhaps get some inspiration. Either way, it is going to be gorgeous. I’m just too nit-picky this way. It’s a curse!

Custom Handspun Doll Hair!

These are the batts that I drum carded for a custom doll hair order. They will all go in the same yarn, alternating colors.  It is mostly Merino wool with tons of sparkle and layers upon layer of color.  I will also be adding stripes of bright pink and yellow Coopworth locks to give some added texture.  I can’t wait to see how it turns out!

Here are the two fabrics the doll hair is to match:

Fun!

Crazy batt consisting of various wool, faux angora for wonderful softness and halo (it’s actually nylon, but made to mimic bunny rabbit, and oh-so-soft, it is), and tiny bits of firestar to jazz it up a bit. Can’t wait to see how it spins up!

Overdyeing is the greatest. You can take something that either you don’t like, or are growing bored with, and change it into something new and fresh.

This is the wool I dyed some time ago.

And this is the lovely yarn I spun half of it into. Pretty! (Notice how the white spots all blend together and the overall color gets muted when you spin it.)

Instead of spinning the other half, I decided I wanted to transform it into something new. So….out came the orange dye!

I kettle-dyed the wool in a bath of solid orange. No extra hand painting or rainbow dyeing.

And finally, the resulting handspun. (this photo is horrible, it doesn’t pick up all the vibrant color well at all.) I spun it low twist, into a single-ply yarn. I could not be more pleased! So let’s see them side by side:

Neat!

I’ve created the most ugly yarn of all times. …or is it?

Just for the heck of it, I spun a yarn that I usually make fun of when I see it at the store. I call it “used” yarn. Many people adore the look. Me? Yuck. It reminds me of an old sweater that has been wash way to many times, and is covered in pills and felted fibers. I see these horrish yarns knitted into big bulky scarves, and still, my reaction is not a pleasant one. The term “old hag” comes to mind.

So of course, I had to try to spin one of my own!

I started with raw locks from a Merino Columbia fleece that I’m still deciding if I like. When it was in the grease, it seemed like it had so much potential. Then I washed it, and, well…it got scratchy. Very weird. So anyway, I  solar dyed the locks in canning jars into basic color of cools and warms. Then I teased the heck out of the wool by hand, mixed up all the warm colors and put it into a grab bag. After seeing the colors together, I decided there need to be a “pop” of contrast, so I found some lovely purple mohair locks that I dyed ages ago. I teased these lightly and kept them in a separate pile to add when I pleased.

I spun up the ratty mess into a super bulky yarn, all messy and uneven. I added locks of mohair here and there. The result? Nah. O.K. but not great. The colors are dull and and dreary. The texture is “used” and haggered. So what do I do? I plied it with a cherry read yarn thinking that it would liven up those sad colors. Nope! Not the case. I actually think I liked it much better without the ply, darnit.

So here is my finished yarn. ewww?

Just for fun, I’m going to knit it up. Just to see. Maybe seeing it in stitches will help.

More to come.

Paradise Fibers sent out a newsletter last month announcing their newest spinning fiber – Faux Angora. It is made from Nylon, and was supposed to mimic angora bunny fiber. Soft as a bunny with no allergies and machine washable? You bet I’m interested!!

When the fiber arrived I just about peed in my pants. It was heavenly. Super, super soft. Just like angora. I couldn’t stop touching it. I dyed some up and started spinning right away.

Here is my roving that I dyed with deep purples, green and pale turquoisy-blue Lanaset Acid dyes. I had to take the photo with the flash on, so the colors aren’t quite so crisp and sparkly.

Dyeing:

Dyeing the fiber was a little bit tricker than the usual wool. It sucked up the color like nobody’s business. I swear the dye had already striked before I even got it to the heat source. So there was a lot of moving and squishing and re-squirting to get the dye evenly without white spots. You also had to be very careful when handling the roving because it would start to pull apart. But the results were gorgeous, and no dye washed out in the final bath.

My only complaints, are 1.) The wet fiber is really slimy feeling. Kinda like playing with a big wad of seaweed in the ocean. 2.) The roving sheds to anything it comes near. I wasn’t smart enough to separate it from my other wool rovings that I was dyeing when I hung them to dry, so there are now tiny nylon fibers all over my other wools. So be careful where you place your fiber.

Spinning:

If you are a new spinner, you will need to take your time because the fiber is very slippery and loose. A little bit of drafting is all it takes. But I found it super easy to spin into a fine yarn. I spun a 2-ply yarn, that was somewhere around a DK/Worsted weight. I really enjoyed spinning it.

Here is my resulting yarn. Didn’t it come out pretty?

The Yarn:

I have to be honest, I was a tiny bit disappointed with the resulting yarn. It felt a bit wirey to me. -Nothing like the original roving when it was loose and fluffy. I blame it on my spinning such a tight yarn. -But then again, had I spun it loosely, I think the shedding would be horrible. I rubbed the skein up again a few items of clothing and was impressed with the minimal shedding. -So we will see.

Knitting:

I decided to knit a pair of children’s mitts for my 1-year-old sister-inlaw, Solara. I used the formula from my favorite book, The Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns to knit a swatch on size 3 needles. It was a nice tight knit. –Let me tell you, the fabric is coming out beautiful!! The bloom of the faux angora is just like the real thing. Very amazing. It softened up just like I was hoping for. I still have the thumb of the second mitt to knit, then the ends to weave in, and a few final touches of pom-poms. The final test will be throwing it in the washing machine. (scary!) I’ll post a final pic once I get them complete.

The Verdict:

All in all, I love this fiber. It really does feel just like angora bunny yarn for a fraction of the price and none of the hassle. Everyone needs to give it a try!

I’ve been a very bad blogger and I haven’t updated in a long, long time. I blame it on the holidays. It’s been busy, busy for the past 3 weeks, as I am sure it is for everyone this time of year.

But….now we can get back to the grind. Spinning and knitting! Yay!

So let’s start with my new obsession. FINE spinning.

I usually get frustrated with spinning fine because it takes forever and I usually end up fighting with the fiber and throwing it across the room. Well, I decided to give it another go. And it was great!

So here is the roving. It is Faux Cashmere roving (nylon) that I dyed with Lanaset Dyes in the microwave. Purtee. I’m going to call this fiber Faux Silk from now on. To me, it is not like cashmere at all, but everything like silk. Sue me.

I started by dividing it up into super, super thin strips so I wouldn’t have much drafting to do. I figured that would be a good way to get my hands into the groove. Since the fibers are so fine and long, I found that you have to keep your hands firm on the fiber and never, NEVER let the twist come anywhere near the drafting triangle. (Just like when spinning silk.) If it does, the whole thing will get choked up and it won’t draft at all.

LOOK! Oh my, it’s so fine! Weeeee.

The more I spun, the more confident I got, and was able to start spinning thicker pieces of roving. Still split pretty thin, I’d say like finger width. And much to my utter surprise, I LIKED IT.

So here is my bobbin filling up with singles….

And here it is plied on the bobbin. Doesn’t all the color mixing look nice? I just love how rainbow or handpainted rovings spin up. You never get bored with the color variations.

And the final product. (This pic was taken in natural light, so it is a better representation of the true colors.) I ended up with a fine, sock-weight 2-ply yarn. Yippie! I’m so proud of myself! Since then, I’ve spun one more Faux cashmere and 2 Merino yarns. The Merino did not come out as thin because it likes to pop out of itself when plied and the twist is set. Sneaky.

I’ve got another Merino ready to spin that I will start tonight most likely. It does take a long time to spin fine and 2-ply, but the results are worth it!

Yes, fake cashmere. I couldn’t resist buying some of this stuff. It is synthetic, made from rayon I believe, and is advertised as being as soft as cashmere. Machine washable and long fiber length is a bonus. Humm. Sounds fun, right?

Dyeing
Dyeing the fiber was a lot of fun. It soaked up the dyes beautifully. I used Lanaset acid dyes in pink, mauve, fushia and tan. I dyed the fiber in the crock pot, just randomly pouring color over the layers of coiled up fiber. The dye bonded just like an animal fiber. I didn’t have any color wash out in the final rinse. So that was a good thing.

But spinning it was a bit tricky.

Spinning
The fiber is so fine and has such a long staple length, that even just pulling the fiber apart was a challenge. It is STRONG. My first attempt was to spin a single-ply, bulky yarn. No, no, no. I got extremely frustrated. Drafting was a nightmare because if the teeny-tiniest bit of twist got anywhere near the fiber supply, the whole thing would harden up and not budge. After fighting with the roving for a half hour or so, I gave up. – Not worth my time.

So instead, I opted to treat the fake cashmere just like silk. – I split it down to tiny little strips about the width of my pinky, and I spun long woolen-ish style, never allowing the twist to ever come in between my front hand and the back hand holding the fiber. Now we are spinning! The biggest challenge was to keep the twist away from the drafting triangle. I plied it and ended up with some really nice worsted weight yarn.

Now is it as soft as cashmere?

IMO, not really.

The Yarn
In my opinion, it is identical to silk. It feels like silk, it spins like silk, it has the same strength as silk and it knits like silk. I really think they should call it fake silk. And if anyone thinks I’m out of my mind to say this, please! let me know. I’d love to hear what other folks think of this stuff.

I do love the slight sheen, the softness and the “crisp” in the final yarn. However there is very little stretch (what is that called – elasticity?) so you wouldn’t want to make anything that is going to require a lot of stretch and memory.

Oh wait – but I am one for doing exactly what you shouldn’t do…so I decided to knit a pair of wrist warmers.

The Knitting
I looked through my handy-dandy book, The New Knitting Stitch Library, and found a simple cable-looking pattern that isn’t really a cable. (The cross-over is actually formed by knitting behind 3 stitches.) Then I knit up a swatch on size 7 needles, calculated my stitches per inch, measured my wittle wrists and found me a cast-on number. Last some fiddling here and there and figured where to place my cable.

The cable was a pain in the butt to knit with the fake cashmere. Remember my saying that there was little to no elasticity and memory? Well try knitting in the back loop of a stitch that is 4 stitches over on your needles. You have to stretch across without dropping all the stitches that are being skipped. I found it very difficult. I would imagine had I been working with a nice stretchy wool yarn, it wouldn’t have been such an ordeal.

To add some frills and thrills, I added a ruffle border that I found in the book, Knitting Over The Edge. Again, this was not fun at all to knit with a non-stretchy yarn since you are knitting like 3-4 times in the same stitch over and over again. But the ruffles are so cool. I love them.

End Result
I do like the faux cashmere a lot. It created a strong, super-soft yarn that I can dye with my regular acid dyes, and can throw in the washing machine when I please. However, I did learn to treat it like silk in both spinning and knitting. Plan projects accordingly. My wrist warmers are warm, snuggly and soft. Now I need to start all over again and see how much more I can learn with my next project!