I’ve been spinning along for this year’s Tour de Fleece, and thought I’d share my progress. This is 4 oz of Merino/Bamboo/Nylon that I bought at last year’s Wisconsin Sheep & Wool Festival. Pretty, isn’t it?!
The braid you see wrapped around these two bobbins is Merino/Bamboo/Tussah that I dyed to compliment the original braid. I plan to ply the two together, and then make an amazing (and probably big) shawl from it.
How’s your Tour going? Stop by Team Painted Tiger and show off your stuff!
Summer brings to mind one of my favorite lunch pleasures….the BLT with fresh ripe tomatoes. Yum, yum.
I hope you find this new fiber to be equally yummy….it’s a blend of 50% Merino wool, 25% Bamboo (rayon), and 25% Tussah Silk. It makes for a shiny and super soft blend that can spin up nice and drapey using worsted short draw for shawls, or a nice soft stretchy sock yarn with extra durability if spun from the fold then plied tightly (cabling would be even better!) There are 5 pretty colors, snatch yours up before they are gone!
If you were unable to attend this year’s Midwest Fiber and Folk Festival, well…..you missed an amazing time! The family hitched a ride with me (Chicago, yay!), and we enjoyed a beautiful day at Six Flags Great America on Friday. The American Eagle is still my favorite roller coaster ever. Our next favorite was Buccaneer Bay, where you ride a lazy boat around and shoot at targets with your water cannon. Trick is that random spectators have access to their own water cannons! We manned cannons from outside and inside the ride, and it was very fun.
After that fun day, we split ways. Mr. Tiger took the kids down to Navy Pier to the children’s museum there, and I found the fairgrounds to take my first class. I got there very early, but there’s a great porch area with benches all along the side, so I sat down to spin on my Golding. After a while the coffee kicked in and conversations began with those around me. I met a fan (how exciting…I’m still blushing!), and it turned out that I ‘knew’ the gal next to me from Ravelry, AND she was taking the same class.
We let the wheel people hang out in the line, and dodged in just before class started. Stephanie Gaustad taught us how to spin cotton. What a lovely and gracious lady. She gently guided us through how to draft the cotton using a hooked stick, and then proceeded to the tahkli, which is a short metal shaft with a coin for a whorl, and is traditionally spun in a shallow ceramic bowl.
After an hour, we switched to the Ahka, which is a wooden spindle with the whorl near the middle. This spindle is semi-supported…..spin in the hand until the thread has integrity, then it can be twirled horizontally-ish by supporting one end on the thread and the other in your hand.
The third hour, we used a bead whorl spindle, which is a bamboo skewer with a bead on it (a special bead where the hole is larger on one side than the other). Stephanie says that zillions of these beads have been found in various cultures and it is just now being realized that many of them are spindle whorls instead of jewelry or trading tokens.
Stephanie so impressed me with her amazing stories, stupendous textiles (!!!eleventy!!!), and gentle spirit. She was able to guide all of us with little fuss into getting actual cotton yarn in no time at all. I would highly recommend this class to anyone who has the opportunity to take it. Being able to spindle spin is a suggested pre-requisite, as the spinner will already have the muscle control for flicking with one hand and drafting with the other. If you don’t have the opportunity to take a class with Stephanie directly, I suggest you purchase her video, Spinning Cotton, which I will watch and review in a future blog post. I purchased my copy from the Woolery.
My new friend and I purchased yummy smoked BBQ sliders for lunch, and scored a picnic table to eat and talk. Not too long later, Jacey Boggs comes by looking for a place to snarf some food before she needed to be back in class. It was fun to meet her, and I look forward to learning to make boucle from her at Wisconsin Sheep & Wool.
After lunch, I wandered around the market for two hours looking at the bunnies and buttons and felted things (and things to make felted things) and fiber (phooey, I hesitated too long and didn’t get any cormo fleece!) and fiber and fiber and fibery tools and books and books and DVDs and yarn and yarn and wheels and so on. Oh my.
I did restrain myself and picked up only a few things on Saturday. I finally got a ‘real’ diz, beautiful cherry with a green stone diz hook. And some felting needles (yes, I know, another rabbit hole….but the booth was just hopping with people learning to felt little flowers and it looked so fun. Gotta try it!)
And one can never have too many spindles! I wanted an extra to have around, since all mine have projects currently. Nothing fancy really spoke to me, so I just picked up a Greensleeves Bare Bonesie.
And remember I mentioned that the Tahkli is spun in a ceramic bowl, but I showed pictures above in a wooden bowl? That’s because I didn’t see any little bowls from the 4-5 people there selling ceramics. I stopped in to chat with my friend Catherine of Knitting Notions, knowing that her husband turns bowls. Sure enough, just the perfect thing! The ‘bottom’ of the bowl has an indent from the chuck used to turn it, but it is the perfect size and shape for the tahkli. Then when I’m done spinning, I can turn the thing over, and rest it all in the cup. Lovely!
After all this shopping, I went to pick up the family at the train station, and we all went to the beach of Lake Michigan to check it out for their planned outing there on Sunday. It was neat to see the water blend into the sky at the horizon, the sailboats, the crashing surf, and to be kid again hunting for cool rocks (um, I filled my crocs with them!!), and wading in the freezing cold water….rejuvenating for tired tootsies and legs.
More about Midwest Fiber and Folk in my next post!
Remember that yarn I made for my vStringtopia? No? Well, go look, I’ll wait!
The next step for this yarn was to weave it. Weaving does amazing things for even the most interesting yarn. For this project, I used my new Schacht Cricket loom, with a 10 dent reed. For warp, I have some New Zealand wool rug warp that I dyed black.
I wove each color for about an inch, then broke the yarn and wound off to the next color change. I tucked the ends in as I went, and the weaving went quickly.
But then……I had more yarn AND more warp…..so I kept going! I made a collection of the cool colors….
and the warm colors….
And wouldn’t you know it…..I had just enough warp to use up all the yarn bits. Yay! Here it is all together.
I’ve wet finished it, and will cut it apart and make the pieces into bags. The jury is still out on whether I’ll fold the pieces, or use other fabric for the back of the bag. It might be a combination of each as I try them out for functional size. My goal was to make a tall skinny bag for my Trindle, the other bits of fabric are pure bonus!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!
Ok, so perhaps I got a little carried away with the pirate theme, having been inspired a bit by Cap’n Jack Sparrow. So meet the May Tiger Club, Squall, on Panda Sock Yarn and Merino/Tencel combed top.
Want in on June’s club? I’m still taking new subscriptions until June 15. Just click here to go to the Tiger Club page for your options. (And thanks for stopping by, I promise I won’t make you walk the plank!)
It’s that time of year again…..for summer picnics, days at the pool, and fireworks. Tuck this project in your bag for easy and stunning socks:
Stars & Stripes, Forever is a self-patterning yarn that knits up into a United States flag pattern. Here are some customer projects, details on Ravelry.
Get ’em soon, I only make these in the summer months, so supply is limited!
It’s reveal day! As many of you know, I’m a former science teacher, with a degree in Biology. Since I can remember I’ve been interested in insects. One that I find especially captivating is the dragonfly. These are true fierce beauties. This fellow is the Common Green Darner Dragonfly (Anax junius). Dunno about you, but I don’t see much common about this creature at all.
Colors like this need some striping, so for our sock yarn, I knit up a bundle of Fillet of Soles (double stranded sock blanks). This will make skinny 2 row stripes alternating between the colors on each side.
Darner Dragonfly on Safari (SW Corriedale & Nylon)
The fiber club brings back a favorite…Polwarth. If you remember the last time I did Polwarth for Tiger Club, it was in flaming colors of red orange and gold. So fitting to do the cool part of the rainbow.
Darner Dragonfly on Polwarth Top
As always, thank you for being a part of Tiger Club. If you aren’t ‘in’, I’d like to invite you to join us. May Club is open until the 15th. No big commitment, you can even just try one month.
*Sigh* Yes, I admit it, I’m an overly thrifty person. See….here are all the scraps (of mill end wool, no less!) that I tossed in a bag from cleaning Big Tom, my Fancy Kitty drum carder.
I really don’t know what I planned to *do* with this stuff, but I kept it. I think my plan was felting, but I haven’t been sucked into that vortex yet. Anyway, this weekend was a new retreat, Stringtopia, with Abby Franquemont, Jacie Boggs, and Morgaine from Carolina Homespun. Unfortunately, it did not work out for me to go this year (we’re hoping it will become annual, and perhaps ‘traveling’). So some online friends and I are conducting a Virtual Stringtopia this weekend. Our first challenge was to do something crazy on Friday night (ice breakers and all that good stuff). A couple people spun their spindles off bridges or their apartment building roof, and I had planned to spin from my balcony, but a last minute errand prevented that. Guess that is a hazard of virtual events….real life forgets you are ‘away’. Anyway, the other part of my Friday Night Crazy was to do something with this bag of scraps. So here it is all sorted out, and I supplemented a bit to fill in color gaps.
Hmmm…..looks like something. So my FNC turned into my Super Specific Spinning for Something class, my art yarn class, and soon my rigid heddle class.
I decided to do the whole rainbow (uh, yeah, I like rainbows if you haven’t noticed!), and make the little batts all tweedy and blended colors and bits and bobs. So I mixed up some pure colors, then tossed in a bit of this and that from the rest of the pile. I carded using two pet brushes, which I have to say was less than effective. I think I put more blobs in the fiber than I straightened out. Ah well!
I set my trusty Pocket Wheel at about 5:1, and spun each batt-let in order as best I could. I didn’t worry about noils and snarls and such, just let them through. My result is this highly textured yarn, 98 yards worth.
After spinning, I wound it, tied in four places, and subjected it to a bit of abuse. Hot and cold shocking baths, several times, then a good thwacking. It hangs nearly open, pretty good for being a single.
Now off to warp my cute little Cricket loom and make something functional from this fun yarn!
Link to the weaving post: https://thepaintedtiger.com/blog/2011/06/08/weaving-the-scrappy-yarn/
The Bird’s Nest by John Drinkwater
I know a place, in the ivy on a tree
Where a bird’s nest is and the eggs are three
And the bird is brown, and the eggs are blue
And the twigs are old but the moss is new
And I go quite near, though I think I should have heard
The sound of me watching, if I had been a bird
______________________________________________
This little poem inspired the March Tiger Club, entitled Nesting. The soft hand dyed shades of blue, grey, brown, and green tell of the co-mingled dreariness and hope of early spring.
The fiber is a lovely Romney wool that was grown by sheep in Michigan, and processed by Zeilinger’s. It is quite lovely to spin, I know I grabbed some as soon as the boxes arrived. I have some new colors of this in the dyepot now, look for Romney to be in the shop in about 2 weeks.
And what yarn would take the colors just as prettily? Well, it had to be Bengal Twist. It loves pale colors, and lend them the beautiful luster of the BFL (Blue Faced Leicester) wool that it is made of.
Did you miss out? Stop by and sign up for April’s Sock Yarn or Fiber club! There’s a new fiber every month
Hey, it’s April Fool’s Day, and I think it is a great time to have a sale! If you put code ‘Fool’ into the cart, you’ll get 15% off. (Good April 1 only.)
I’m trying to put out a newsletter, but am having some technical difficulties, so if you don’t get a newsletter by about noon on April 1, check my Facebook fan page for more fun. Become a fan on FB anyway, there’ll be some foolishness there either way!
