Mohair Cloud Spinning; Emi's Visit to Vermont; The Lunar Ladies at Leslie's; Finished Flame Hat; Mini-Comb Question

Chris and I were taking advantage of the sun a week or so ago, as we lounged by nearby Lake Raponda, reading our respective books...mine on earthbound ghosts and his on something philosophically music...or maybe that's musically philosophical. Chris was bare-chested and lying on his back. I glanced at him and said, "There's a bug in your belly button and you'd best remove it." (alliteration at it's best...or worst?) He nearly jumped to high-heaven, since when he was a child his sister used to tease him that she'd take a knife to carve out his belly button, knowing he was sensitive there. On inspection, the "bug" was nothing but a "fuzzle"...my Ma's scientific term for fuzz. Chris said, "It's just a textile. I think I've been in your spinning room too much." I asked Chris if he had a pencil and scrap of paper with him? Chris, knowing that I wanted to record this moment so I could post about it said, "Is nothing sacred?" Now anyone who personally knows me KNOWS that I hold a lot sacred. But when it comes to blogs...I told the Lunar Ladies about this incident and they chimed in regarding my blogging habit, "NOTHING is sacred!" No question needed. Geesh.

Chris and I have also been tooling back and forth from NYC this past month. First, we brought Alexander, youngest of the spider, to JFK airport to pick up his beautiful fiance, Emi, from Japan. Then, after Emi's whirlwind 2-week visit, we took her back to JFK. 'twas not sad to do so because she'll be back in a month or so for good, as Alex and Emi will be getting married!!! YAY!

Whenever we go into NYC, we get to see our David, oldest of the spider. Here's a pic (l to r) of Alexander, Chris, and David.

The two brothers Bakriges, (l to r) Alex and David.

When we asked the couple where they would like to visit they chose a shopping mall, for goodness sakes! Soooo to Holyoke Mall in Massachusetts we headed. Afterwards we stopped in Shelburne Falls, MA to see the glacial potholes and walk the Bridge of Flowers. Apparently the bridge used to have a trolley line running on it in the 1920's. Now it's lined with colorful flowers to admire. (l to r) Emi, Chris, and Alex.

And here's (l to r) Alex, Jenny, and Emi!! Can you tell I'm ready to have this lovely woman join our family?!!!

Hiccup.

Chris and I were also invited to a very special wedding of our friends, Sadelle and Ann this May. The service was Quaker and oh-so-elegant with its quiet, prayerful intervals. Sadelle and Ann each wore a gorgeous, custom-made, silk salwar kameesz. Congratulations Ann and Sadelle! We wish you all the best in life.

(l to r) Sadelle and Ann!

Hiccup.

Jofran's been doing some lacy knitting with her "lurid" (Jofran's word, not mine) Louet Northern Lights handspun. See past post: Immersion Dyeing With Osage Orange Sawdust; Newlywed Gloves Story; On Winding A Round Ball; Leslie's Moebius Scarf; Jofran's Northern Lights.

Above you'll find Jofran's pretty lace knitted stole. It's not blocked in the pic, but Jofran promises to send a pic of it blocked later. When asked who the stole is for, Jofran replied, "It's for ME!" Jofran, do tell us more about the spinning and knitting of your stole please. Thanks!

A close-up of Jofran's handspun and knitted stole.

Hiccup. It's spring and that means the spider made a trip to Hemlock Haven Farm for some of the best poop...llama, that is...a gardener could ever imagine. Thank you Elizabeth, our own Llama Farm Girl.

Elizabeth...or "E" as we like to call her, purchased a hat on a trip to Colorado that was fit for a Lunar Lady named "Lady Sunshine." Bears are dancing on the hat above the caption, "Dance by the Light of the Moon." Very cool headgear.

Poop scooper extraordinaire.

One of the poop providers, Alina.

Hiccup.

The Lunar Ladies, sans Queen Bag Lady, got together in May at Madame Moonshadow's. A more beautiful house cannot be found than Leslie and John's home. Also, Leslie may be the best housekeeper I know...with everything shining and fuzzle-free.

Here's Leslie next to her really neat stove. Do tell us more, Leslie, about the stove, please. Thank you.

And on top of the stove you can see Leslie's a great baker. Look at that apple pie! Next to the pic is a tray of leftover piecrust...one bit with cinnamon and the other with sugar and cinnamon. Mmmmmm.

The Lunar Ladies had some serious helpings of the desserts. Leslie also made the carrot cake on the left and the spider made some lemon/raisin/oat bars on the right. We were celebrating the May birthdays of Maureen and Jenna. Alas, Maureen was not there to enjoy her fave carrot cake.

But Jenna was thankfully with us for her 40th birthday celebration. E made Jenna a beautiful beaded necklace. Eagle-eyed knitters will note the useful yarn cutter pendant. Please take a look also at Jenna's stylish T-shirt. Jenna drew the illustration for the tee which promoted the Wardsboro, Vermont annual Gilfeather Turnip Festival. Check out the link to buy a tee just like it! Or how 'bout a turnip cookbook?

After the Lunar Ladies ate...and ate...and ate...Leslie took us over to her blueberry bushes and gave us a nifty lesson in pruning them. Thank you, Leslie!

LOOK at Leslie and John's incredible "sheep corral." A famous stone fence builder made it. Please tell us more, Leslie.

Three of the Lunar Ladies happily herded inside the sheep corral.

We walked around Leslie's property and saw an amazing amount of Lady's Slippers in one place. A quick count of these pretty little slippers came to about 100 I think!

I was about to take more pics of the Lady's Slippers when E yelled out something that had me stop in my tracks. A newt! Heaven forbid I step on the little fella/gal.

The Lunar Ladies, of course, had some show 'n tell when we went back inside Leslie's house. Above you'll find some of Jenna's whimsical needlefelted pins. Just looking at them makes a spider happy.

And above is Jenna's foot wearing an in-progress sock made by Leslie for Jenna. What's the pattern, Leslie? Jenna doesn't wear two socks alike...ever...so the other sock will not be exactly matching the above.

But E's socks knit by Leslie DO match. Tamara, E's sister, beautifully dyed a knitting blank and Leslie knit the socks for E as a present. Here's what Leslie wrote in one of the blog post's comment sections: I bought a "sock blank" from KnitPicks last year for Elizabeth. She gave it to her sister, Tamara (aka Spincerelyyours) to dye. Aren't they GORGEOUS COLORS? The blank came back to me so that I could knit a pair of socks for Elizabeth for her birthday. I love the idea of the sock blank which is knit up in to a long oblong with two strands of yarn and you are supposed to dye it and then knit both socks directly off of it so that the socks will be identical. I unraveled the whole thing into two balls and am knitting both socks at the same time albeit separately! The pattern is the Ridged feather pattern from the "Chevron patterns for self-striping yarn" section (p. 70-73) of the book "SENSATIONAL KNITTED SOCKS" by Charlene Schurch.

Leslie also knit a soft and cuddly Elizabeth Zimmermann's Baby Surprise Jacket in a luscious periwinkle color. The little sweater isn't blocked yet, nor does it have buttons, but when it does it's going to look smashing on a very lucky baby.

Leslie showed the Lunar Ladies a Frame Loom that Leslie's husband, John, made for her from the directions in the link. John AND Leslie are amazing carpenters/woodworkers/etc.....together they built their own home and barn. I can't wait to see what Leslie weaves with this beautifully finished tool.

Hiccup.

Finished my Flame Hat. See the past posts: A Spinner's, Knitter's and Dyer's Array of Shading Techniques; 3 Handknit Hats; and Spider's Present Projects, and 12-Step Hand Carded Color Wheel for Spinners and/or Dyers; Color Gradation; More Children's Knitwear; and Mrs. Schneider's Shawl, and Immersion Dyeing With Osage Orange Sawdust; Newlywed Gloves Story; On Winding A Round Ball; Leslie's Moebius Scarf; Jofran's Northern Lights, for more info on the fiber, the handspun, and the knitting stitch pattern. The hat is lined with a naturally brown Romney X from Ontario and the tip is blinged with sardonyx, and Japanese and Czech glass beads. The sardonyx is a little on the heavy side for its size, so it nicely weights the tip of the hat down...no need to be a cone head unless you choose to be! I still want to knit some matching half-mitts to go with the hat. When they're done, perhaps I'll model the set.

Hiccup.

The spinning techie portion of this post deals with spinning and plying for a mohair "cloud" yarn. It's also called a "halo" yarn. Technically, it's a "corespun" yarn...meaning that one of the plies is made up of either a thread core or a singles yarn core that's been wrapped with another unspun fiber. A cloud yarn is true to its name; light as a feather and very fluffy. Basically, my mohair cloud yarn begins with a cotton thread core that is wrapped with mohair. The mohair is kept in place via plying with a fine, handspun, Tussah silk singles.

The recipe for wheel spinning this cloud yarn is as follows:

• Wrap the mohair onto the cotton core with the wheel going S (counter-clockwise). Hold the mohair perpendicularly to the core as you wrap.
• Ply a fine singles with the wrapped core with the wheel going Z (clockwise), just until the mohair doesn't move around freely on its core.
  

You can use teased mohair locks or do as I did and tease out some staple lengths of naturally dyed mohair top. You can also try not teasing mohair top at all and wrap from the tip of the top. I used a soft yearling mohair but you could choose a softer kid mohair if you'd like. Anything coarser than yearling mohair can tend to be on the scratchy side.

The brown-ish mohair on the right was first dyed with an exhaust of Osage orange and logwood, but that looked icky if I remember correctly. I then solar over-dyed it with cochineal and madder root. The mohair on the left was not first dyed with the exhausted Osage orange and Logwood, but did go into the cochineal and madder root bath. The silk was dyed as unspun fiber with sandalwood. All the fiber was pre-mordanted with alum. The silk singles was spindle spun using a high whorl from my collection. Note the tufts that were teased from staple lengths of the mohair top.

A close-up of the mohair and silk.

The cotton thread in my case really didn't need to be multi-colored...it could have been plain...because I pretty much covered it all with mohair. But do note I could have left more of the core show if I had wanted to. Plus, I could have used a handspun core, especially if I wanted some of the core to be shown. The package this thread is in makes it convenient to put on a lazy kate. My kate is tensioned, but I didn't find a need to tension this thread bobbin as it didn't unwrap willy-nilly as I was spinning.

To make the mohair wrap around the core, first attach the cotton thread to your bobbin. Again, please keep in mind that you'll operate the wheel counter-clockwise (S) at this point. I like to hold the thread straight towards my body with my left hand. As you begin treadling, the right hand gently holds a teased mohair tuft next to the cotton thread. Hold some mohair fibers under the thread until they catch.

Here's an example of the fibers catching onto the thread as you treadle S. Once the mohair catches, you have to move your left hand towards your body to expose the next bare thread area and you need to move the right hand so more mohair catches. You don't have to draft the mohair until it is removed completely from the thread...instead you can just draw some out (perpendicular to the thread core), watch it catch as you treadle the wheel, and move on down the thread doing the same thing over and over.

BUT, another technique is such that you DO remove the mohair each time you've caught it onto the thread and then re-attach it as you spin, etc. See which technique you like...either not completely detaching the mohair as you move down the thread OR detaching it...they can give somewhat different results.

You may want to consider treadling slowly so your hands can learn the motions needed to make your cloud yarn. Hawk-eyes will see, however, that I'm using a Schacht Matchless wheel in Scotch tension mode with a 9:1 ratio...in other words, not a huge, slow whorl.

Also, don't forget your corespun yarn has to get onto the bobbin for storage, so make sure your hands let it get where it wants to go, please!

Here's a pic of detaching the fiber from the cotton core. I would re-attach it immediately and repeat: attach, detach, attach, detach, etc. But honestly, this attaching/detaching tends to be a lot of trouble if you ask me, and I didn't deem that the end results were that much different than simply remaining attached until I ran out of my handful of mohair and needed to get more.

You can wrap thick-ish and make a slub of sorts. When I wrapped more thickly I still kept the slub "airy"...think cloud!


Or you can wrap thinly. You can glump on more fiber or less fiber...even unto very little mohair for a yarn that resembles commercially spun mohair yarn. Your choice, but remember the yarn has to fit through the orifice of your wheel and needs to move nicely under the hooks. I had little trouble with my hooks when I was spinning the mohair onto the core, but I did have a tad of problems when I was plying. You'll see in a bit what I did to help the yarn along during the plying.

If you want exaggerated texture, you can even squoosh up the airy slubs towards the wheel if you like.

Here's a pic of the mohair that's been wrapped (corespun) onto the cotton thread.

Now don't think your cloud yarn is finished after you achieve what was talked about above. If left the way it is, the mohair would slide hither and thither along the cotton thread in a very unstable manner. You could ply two bobbins of the above on itself (but make sure the doubled yarn fits through the orifice and under the hooks!) or, if you want to keep the yarn on the light side and very cloud-like, you can ply it with a fine, perhaps decorative, singles. In my case the silk singles I used for this purpose is Z spun and will be further Z-plied. The extra twist bothered the silk singles not, as the plied twist was only enough to stabilize the corespun mohair.

Please let me refer you to the past post, Plain Vanilla Two-Plying And Balanced Yarns, as this is the kind of plying I'm doing here. One of the plies is the silk singles and one is the corespun mohair. I am using a tensioned lazy kate as I ply.

Above is a pic demonstrating how my right hand stays put by my stomach as it equally tensions the singles. My left hand moves back towards my right hand as the two singles ply together, with the plying twist being guided by and following my left hand.


My right thumb being used as a gate-keeper. See the above link for the Plain Vanilla plying post to know what a gate-keeper is.

And the gate-keeper opening up and letting the left hand bring the just-plied yarn towards the orifice for storage on the bobbin.

Yes, I used the same 9:1 whorl for plying my mohair cloud yarn.

Remember I said that the mohair got a tad tangled occasionally in my hooks as I plied? I have a c-hook on the hook closest to me that is smaller than the rest of the hooks. I simply avoided that hook and then had no more "catching" problems. If you have catching problems, consider using only a few hooks to guide your yarn onto the bobbin. Each wheel is different so experiment with what works for you.

When I finish spinning enough cloud yarn, I'll knit it into something and show you what I've knitted!

I'd LOVE to see your cloud yarns. Do please send me jpgs so I can post your handspun clouds!

Hiccup!

I'll end with an e-mail from a kind reader:

Hi Jeannine,

I have gotten into hand spinning (on a drop spindle) and find it positively addicting. So far I have worked from prepared roving/top but now I want to branch out to preparing from a fleece. So I am looking into wool combs. Specifically, mini combs, as I am not a spring chicken anymore ;-).

In your blog, you have a section on combing using your Louet mini-combs. They are one of the brands I have been looking into and everything about them appeals (not too sharp, very light). However, on some forums, I have read that perhaps they do not stand up well to heavy use or not-so-fine fibres. Your project used Romney which is a medium/coarse wool, I think. I would be using them on any type of wool that was similar to that available in medieval England. Do you find that the lack of sharpness makes for resistance in the combing? Would you say that the single row combs are more versatile (useful for more variety of wool types (medium, fine, etc)?

The spider responds:
Welcome to the world of spinning! A good addiction, eh?!

From the blog you know I love my Louet mini-combs. Yes, I did show them using Romney, but the Romney I used is on the finer side and well-prepared so that there's minimal tangling "glumps." I often scour keeping lock formation (as shown on the blog), which helps keep the fibers from over-tangling.

Some folks are very hard on their equipment. On Ravelry, I read how one woman ruined her mini-combs in one day or so!! Mine have lasted years and years. It's just last year that a tine fell out and that was due to degradation of the base on the edge...understandable with years of use! And even with the tine out, I still use the mini-combs just fine, tho' I have a new pair, as well.

I don't own the double-row mini-combs, but I do find my single-row quite versatile for fine-medium wools and fibers. If I was going to comb medium-coarse fibers, I'd opt for my Vikings or my English wool combs.

The lack of sharpness in the tines on the minis haven't been a detriment in any way. If anything, I love that they are not as dangerous as my Vikings, etc. But again, how you scour your fibers does have a bearing on what combs well on the minis. The better the scouring technique, the better the shape your fibers are in, and the easier the combing is.

Hiccup.


Will end with two pics of the lovebirds. The first pic is at the Bridge of Flowers. Below, Emi is wearing the scarf I spun and knitted for her. I'm so glad she likes it!

'til next time! Oh...did you notice I have started a second blog? Please check my left sidebar for a link. Yes, it's very different from Spinning Spider Jenny. Very different, indeed!!