Loop Spin-In and the Shetland Who Wants to Be Pretty

A couple weekends ago, a bunch of us headed up to the Loop studio for her monthly spin-in. It's always nice to have a chatty afternoon spinning with friends.



I brought along a Shetland fleece that I had bought at Rhinebeck a couple years ago to have processed.



It was a nice fleece from Longfield Farm, but I wasn't so inspired by it to really get into it. I've been finding that if I feel a fleece is just okay and nothing special, I tend to be unenthusiastic about doing anything with it and it just sits there. It's mostly gray with some brown spots and had a lot of cross-fibering- there were no real clean locks coming out and the fiber had the appearance that it had already been carded while the sheep was still wearing it. It's been hiding packed down in a space bag for over a year now and I've been dreaming of either making it beautiful or giving it away the next chance I got. So I dug around in my stash and pulled up a lot of silk that I had dyed in peaches and blues- both bombyx and tussah. A little more digging found something else I wasn't so enthusiastic about spinning- Angora rabbit fiber. This drastically reduced the amount of fiber I had in my big bag of carding scraps- bits of leftovers or dye jobs that I'm not happy with that I incorporate into batts when I am carding.



Everything gets loaded up onto the belt of the carding machine and fluffed up. The fleece is on the bottom, the silk and angora on top. I actually did this in 3 batches, so this is just the first third of what we did.



A touch of a button sets the machine in motion. All the different sized drums pull the fiber in, blend it all together, and then spit it out as roving.






It's magic. What comes out is airy, so much softer and gorgeous. Steph the Loop Lady is really a glitter girl, so as an additional bonus, it picked up quite a bit of glitter leftover from previous carding sessions on the machine. Let's call it a patina and go with it.



I brought this in to the studio packed into a space bag with all the air sucked out, but I left with it in a huge 20-gallon trash bag. It's so fluffed and airy, and it's really quite fun to spin as soon as the machine spits it out. In fact, I'm getting a little bit nostalgic thinking of spinning it right now while I'm stuck in the office.

The addition of silk really did me some favors here. Shetland can be very silky in texture, but if it's not a fine, soft fleece then it can be kind of "grabby" when you are spinning it. The silk added a subtle pop of color throughout the fleece and it now drafts like butter. I spun up a tiny sample and I'm in love. The total weight came out just under 2 lbs. Depending on my spinning, I could possibly squeeze a sweater out of this. The angora will give the final yarn a slight bloom. I'm suspicious of using any at all...did I ever tell you my purple angora sweater story? I will soon, promise....but just that tiny bit of it doesn't seem so bad at all.

It will have to wait though- I have much plying to do before I start another big spinning project. I have to free up some bobbins from both my wheels and finish a few other projects. I'm currently plying my gorgeous cormo from Foxhill Farm. That should take no time at all...I just need to sit down at home, throw a movie on the projector and get it done. Except I'm almost never home during the week, so plying time is a rarity. I also need to ply the final two bobbins of singles from my BFL fleece.



I already have 3 skeins of it spun up and plied, all of them over 240 yards a piece. It's very rustic- lots of beautiful lumps and bumps with this yarn no matter how hard I tried. So I stopped trying and let it be, and I'm pretty happy with it. It's worsted weight, and once I have the final bobbins finished up, I will have enough for a sweater. I have a pattern in my head that I am in the process of getting down on graph paper. It's going to be warm and cozy, with a small amount of Noro worked in to give it just a small pop of color.

I also got something that UPS brought me last week that is slightly traumatizing me, but that is a story for another day...

Warming Myself the Best Way I Know How- With Booze and Knitwear

Wintertime is a great time for warming yourself in front of a fireplace (even if it's only a metaphorical fireplace) with a snifter in hand. Last night, we did just that over at the Brandy Library in Tribeca. We were there for a Cognac tasting. I'm a whisky drinker and I have never really tried Cognac or knew anything about them, but I'm always happy to discover new and exotic ways to get my drink on.

Because I am willing to sacrifice my morning after alertness for the sake of an educational experience, I found a couple of Congnacs that I really liked. Several more I deemed drinkable, and there were a couple that I wouldn't want to repeat the experience- they burned going down, had a harsh acidic aftertaste, or just tasted like the sour grapes they came from. Overall, I felt very warm and relaxed and fuzzy once the buzz settled in, which was really nice.

I think my favorite of the evening was a Bache Hors d'Age. It was a rather staggering $200 a bottle, but so pleasant and drinkable. I also had the pleasure of trying a couple precious sips of Louis XIII. This usually sell between $1800-$2500 a bottle. It was the most flavorful and mellow of everything I tried, but I don't have a palate for it enough to tell you more. I spent the rest of the evening telling the Wall Street bankers at the bar, "Yes darlings, I just simply can not have a productive week of social affairs if I haven't had my Louis on Monday evening." à votre santé!

Afterward was a pleasant stroll across Chinatown to warm ourselves with the wonderful Joe's Shanghai for soup dumplings. If you've never had them, I feel very sorry for you.

Other than continuing my hedonistic binge, I've been knitting away.



I finished my Land of Oz shawl, but haven't had a chance to get good pictures of it. So there's a teaser.

I cast on for another pair of socks. Yawn. With my very last skein of BMFA Socks that Rock that exists in my stash. Squeee! The color is "Atomic 6" and I love it.



They are going to be the Houdini Socks by Cat Bordhi. They are made toe-up, but you just make a tube for the foot with a toe on each end. Then you cut open the sock to create a place to fit your foot in before continuing on with the cuff. Genius, no? Well, I'm not going to say that quite yet. Let's wait to I actually get to the cutting part to see how badly I sweat this. More Cognac please!

I've also been plugging away at the Placed Cable Aran.



It's a really simple plain pullover that has a series of three O cables that grace both the front in back. It's in good old Cascade 220, that workhorse of a worsted weight yarn.

I've also been chipping away at the mound of fiber in my spinning basket from Cadfael. I can't believe how much space that little fleece puffed up to once it got teased and carded. And shhhh...I still have a huge 1 gallon freezer bag packed with more of the fleece needing to be picked through and carded. I was seriously doubting that I had a sweater-amount of that BFL fleece, but I've already got 3 full 4oz bobbins spun up and I've barely noticed a dent in the pile. I need to throw a movie on the big screen and get through some of that wool already.

Deep Winter is a Cure for Stashbusting of All Sorts

Waking up to less than ideal weather conditions makes me happy to kick around the house in yoga pants and knock things off my to-do list. Every day has been a new craftadventure and I've started so many new projects. It's been fabulous, but I had to rein it in as I was taking over the house in a big way.

I made granola.



Huge batches of it. Ya know, the granola plant might catch fire tomorrow and there will be no more granola in the world for ages but I'll be happily munching away at my own granola stash because I have jars of it. It's easy to make, fun to modify to your liking, and it's much less sweet than commercial brands.

I made pickles.



A trip to the Foodshed Market in Boerum Hill led to the acquisition of some winter treasures. It's an indoor farmer's market that happens every Sunday. There are quite a few food vendors (like Luke's Lobster Rolls, be still my heart) and a few good veggie vendors. Most of the produce consisted of things that loved the cold or could be stored- lots of onions and kale and root veggies. We did find some hothouse cukes and I went to work right away on turning them into spicy pickles. I've made pickled cauliflower a couple of times, but here in New York, they worship the almighty cucumber pickle. I think there are a little sweet, but I added a couple jalapeno peppers in there so they have a pretty hefty kick to them as well.

Despite my constant striving towards vegetarianism, I'm debating signing up for a pork CSA this spring from the Piggery. We do a fruit and vegetable CSA every summer into the fall and we only have to run out to the grocery store for eggs, flour and sugar all summer long. I don't even really cook meat at home, but this is really appealing to me.

Oh, speaking of pigs...I got my AVFKW January club. It's a lovely BFL/silk blend in the most delicate pale pink. And the color is called...Wilbur. I take this as a sign.



What started as a way to repair my own broken bits of jewlery has bloomed into a full-blown beading craze. I've pulled out my bead stash and strung some necklaces, just for fun.



Bry had brought me back these gorgeous stone beads from Tibet years ago. I finally got around to stringing them up and found a labradorite pendant to match. I love when that lightbulb goes off and you realize that something can be stash no more. I'm waiting for an order to come in for toggle clasps so I can make a few more. They are simple once you get the technique down, and I'm fortunate to work close by to several large bead emporiums in the fashion district.

I love glass beads.



There's so many creative possibilities here. I've got a few strands of freshwater pearls that have broken over the years that I've dug up. They are in need of a Chanel-style makeover. I've promised the beau that I wouldn't start getting into metal smithing -yet- but this is a great apartment craft as it requires minimal space and storage.

As for spinning, I've got a huge project going. Remember Cadfael the BFL ram? He's finally getting some attention.



And holy hell, what a pain in my ass he is. It's not a very big fleece, but I've spent more time on this than any other fleece that I've prepped. Not that I'm surprised- I knew this would be like this. Every single little curly lock needs to be pulled apart by hand. It's really time consuming, as there are thousands of tightly-coiled locks in this fleece. If I didn't do this, I would damage the fleece and my carder irreparably. The teeth on my carder would end up looking like Austin Power's in all his toothy glory.

Once I have each lock separated and fluffed, I feed it lock by lock into the carder. Then I card the resulting batt four times to get it smooth as possible.



And it's being spun into a fingering-weight single.



I'm aiming for a worsted-weight 2-ply. I'm clueless on a yardage estimate so far, so I'm not really spinning with a particular project in mind yet.

I've also been knitting. I started a small sock-yarn shawl-


It's the beginnings of the "In the Land of Oz" shawl by Adrienne Fong. It's BMFA Socks that Rock Mediumweight in "Luna Sea". It's very pretty, and not so busy that it will make the lace look like clown barf.

I'm more than halfway done the Spey Valley Socks:



I've also cast on for a sweater, but I don't have pictures yet. Also, I'm upset at myself at my lack of awesome pictures (maybe if I had some daylight and you could actually see things) so I'm taking a photography class just to get accustomed to the bad-ass beast with a lens.