FF: Tour de wool, Part I

Earlier this spring I decided that the easiest way to get a bunch of different fibers to spin would be to get a sampler pack. Off to Woodland Woolworks went my busy little typing fingers, and I ordered their Natural Colored Wool sampler pack: 0.5 oz of 16 different wools. Over the course of the last couple of months I've been spinning up these little samples, and I've pulled together some thoughts about them that may be of interest to other spinners out there. There are other reviews of these wools out there, but maybe I can contribute some further information.

All the fibers were spun under (more-or-less) the same conditions. I stripped each top in half lengthwise and spun from the end with a short-forward draw, smoothing the fibers as the twist entered (worsted spun). Samples were spun on a ST Lendrum folding wheel at 8:1 (I'm still a beginner!) and plied at 6:1 immediately after spinning the singles. Twist was set by submerging the skeins in very hot water, and skeins were agitated slightly as the water cooled. Finally, the skeins were dried hanging without weight. All of the samples were easy to draft and spin.

The samples in the pack broke down into softer and coarser wools. In this post I'll talk about the coarser wools, and save the softies for the second installment.

(left to right - Grey Swalesdale, Romney and Jacob Brown)

1) Grey Swalesdale - 4" staple, didn't make note of the crimp. This stuff was probably the coarsest of the samples, and even after washing only really feels suitable for heavy outerwear. The final sample ended up at 8 wpi, about 11 yds from 0.5 oz.

2) Romney sliver - 6" staple, some crimp. Had to keep my hands farther apart then with the Swalesdale, which took some getting used to, but aside from that this was easy to spin. It feels ok in the skein - a bit coarse, but much softer then the Swalesdale. It has a nice sheen to it as well. 8 wpi, about yds/0.5 oz.

3) Jacob Brown - 4-4.5" staple, crimpy. A beautiful dark brown color. This was the only sample that had any real amount of VM, and even that was minor and easy to pick out as I was spinning. The fiber felt sort of clumpy - it was harder to draft evenly, and ended up being much thicker. The final stats were 6 wpi, only 8 yds/0.5 oz.

(from left to right - Finnsheep, Grey Icelandic, Wensleydale and Corriedale Cross)

4) Finnsheep - >6" staple, no (low) crimp. This was particularly easy to draft, and I found myself doing quite a bit of backdrafting with this. Spun up quite similar to the Romney, and also had a bit of a sheen (maybe a function of the longer staple?). 8 wpi, 10 yds/0.5 oz.

5) Grey Icelandic - 6" staple, medium crimp. Slightly coarse fiber, slightly fuzzy when spun up. Good for sturdy outerwear. 8 wpi, 11 yds/0.5 oz.

6) Wensleydale Longwool - 7+ inch staple. Slightly coarse but spun up beautiful. Nice and smooth, it softened up after setting the twist and has a beautiful sheen to it. 8 wpi, 9+ yds/0.5 oz.

7) Corriedale Cross - 4" staple, medium crimp. Coarse as fiber, but felt much nicer in the skein. And such a pretty chocolate brown! 9 wpi, 12 yds/0.5 oz

That's it for this installment - next week the softer samples.

Uh oh!

Here comes Humberto! Think dry thoughts for us down here in Space City, and the rest of the Gulf Coast if you would please...

It's September, and the young knitter's thoughts turn to

Tank tops apparently. While everyone else is thinking about fall knitting, and cozy sweaters to wear to Rhinebeck (

grrrr!

), I was inspired to cast on for another sleeveless sweater. Granted, winter in southeast Texas starts on or about December 15th, and ends on January 31st, but still - do I need another tank top?

Regardless of whether or not I need it, I've recently become obsessed with Norah Gaughan's Basalt tank, and am screaming through it. OK, maybe not screaming through it, but it's moving fairly quickly for this time-deprived knitter. This sweater is just so clever. The entire thing is made modularly by knitting hexagons and attaching them in appropriate ways. The front is one big hexagon, and you pick up stitches along the edges to knit the rest of the pieces. The armholes are made by omitting one sixth of the hexagon, and the back is raised by adding a half hexagon. This is also a good stashbuster - I'm using some of the Brown Sheep Cotton Top

my aunt sent me

a while back.

I'm having a hard time deciding on the true color of this yarn. In this picture, it looks pretty brown, but under daylight it's more of an olive green. This picture is a bit better:

In my travels around

Ravelry

(love that place!), I found a very appealing modification of this sweater. The original design has hexagons on either side that hang down lower then the front edge of the sweater, conveniently highlight the hips. Or at least, it looks like they might highlight the hips. In any event,

Kelp!

did a great mod on her Basalt tank that I am swiping whole-hog for mine. Instead of knitting whole hexagons for the lower sides, she did half hexagons, so her sweater is straight across at the bottom. Fabulous! She also did some waist shaping on her's which looks great, but since I no longer have a waist, I'm not going to worry about it right now. If need be, once I get more of this thing done, I can go back and do waist shaping. I'm well into the first half hexagon on the sides, thanks to a very long bus trip in from the dentist's this morning. Hopefully I can finish this thing before it "cools down" around here.

A fiber Friday with no fiber

In lieu of posting fiber-related items here today (since I have a multitude of projects ongoing and no pictures of anything to share), and since as of yesterday I am now old enough to run for President, I'm going to discuss my favorite present so far:

The cow print Mukka Express stove top cappuccino/latte maker. Some might be tempted to classify me as a bit of a coffee fiend. As far as I can tell, I am nowhere near as bad as some other people I might name (PWB I'm thinking of you), but fine - when you live with a man who refers to the nectar of the gods as "evil bean water" there's only so much you can do. My at-home coffee making has been sorely limited in the last three years due to my conversion to decaf, since I've been either pregnant or nursing for all but three months of the last 36. And it's a bit tougher these days to sit down and enjoy a nice cup of coffee when the instant my butt hits the chair someone starts a) screaming to be picked up, or b) throwing themselves on the floor in a dramatic show of My-life-is-ending-right-now-because-you-won't-let-me-eat-graham-crackers-until-I-puke. Not exactly relaxing.

In any event, thanks to my mothers-in-law (thank you, thank you!), I am now equiped to grind beans, pour in water and milk, and set on the stove for a brief few minutes before enjoying a lovely cup of cappuccino or latte. Bliss!

Now my only complaint is this: what, they didn't have it in

purple and gold cow print

?

We're baaaack

We have finally returned from our excursions across the globe. Ok, only just across the pond, but when you get on a jumbo jet for 8+ hours with two small children, it does feel a bit like taking on an epic journey on the order of an interstellar expedition. Here is the short, photo-less account of events.

The wee ones did terrifically well on the plane rides - on the way over, Boo fell asleep in her lovely bassinet ten minutes after taking off and stayed that way until an hour before we landed. She promptly made up for this remarkable feat by refusing to sleep longer then 2 hrs since, but hey, she's only six months old. There's only so much we can ask for, right? Devil did well too - she didn't get nearly as much sleep, but she was quite happy to entertain herself with stickers and food and such (my apologies to the cleaning crew in London who had to unpeel seventy-gazillion stickers from her environs). We were picked up at the airport by our soon-to-be-married friend and went off our first staging area, the very lovely town (village?) of Esher.

We spent three days in Esher going to the wedding and reception (very very nice), and various other wedding-related events, as well as checking out the local playground. We then picked up a car (gasp!) and drove out to Somerset to stay with our friend's new inlaws, who, despite never having laid eyes on us before, were extremely gracious about offering us a place to stay for the week. Plus they ended up being perfectly lovely people, and we had a lovely time with them. Typical tourists, we romped around the southwest, looking for fossils, riding steam trains, climbing beacons, all the while marveling at the lovely, extremely "un-English" weather (meaning it didn't rain once while we were there and was mostly sunny and beautiful, if a bit cool for our now delicate southern blood).

The worst part about the whole trip, aside from that pesky driving-on-the-wrong-side-of the road thing (and the fact that our street at home is the equivalent of a two lane road in the UK), was having to come home. I always find the trip back rougher then the trip over - besides being an hour or more longer on the plane, you don't have the excitement of the vacation to look forward to. But we made it home in one piece, and I managed not to fall asleep until past 7 pm, which is pretty good given how little sleep I was getting during the trip. When we've got the pictures uploaded, I'll post more details.