What greeted us Saturday morning..................
Other than running some errands Saturday I happily got some knitting time in on the weekend. This wip started last week.......
I'm at the stage where I'll be casting off for arm's next.
I just got the phone call this morning that my alpaca fibre is now ready, so I'll post pictures whenever we get over to the mill to pick it up. I'm a little apprehensive about what quality the rovings will be as they wanted to blend it with wool. After getting home and spinning the fibre I bought from them I wasn't happy with it (earlier posts). So I asked to have it processed strictly alpaca. I don't think they were happy about that. I figured that I could always blend it with something when I get it home. So we'll see.
In the meantime I've been spinning up the fibre that I bought at the mill. The brown alpaca/wool blend, 2-ply. The stuff I don't like the feel of.....
Over the weekend I picked up some books from the library on spinning. I found Teach Yourself Visually- Spinning by Judith MacKenzie McCuin. It has a lot of information from picking your fleece to tools to finishing your yarn. This one will be one of my next book purchases. With the above brown alpaca blend I'm going to finish it again with the technique in the book:
Put the skeins in a bucket of hot, soapy water and pound them with a sink plunger. Rinse the yarn in cold water, and then put it back in the hot water and plunge it again. Rinse it thoroughly in clear water, and then spin the excess water out. Hold the skein toward the end and smack it against a counter. This makes the yarn open up and distributes the twist evenly. Page 92.
I'll enjoy the smacking part. There's no way that I'll enjoy wearing any part of this on my body, in the state that it feels now, so I'm hoping it'll soften up a bit. I've been finishing this yarn with kid gloves thinking I'd wreck it somehow, but the gloves are off now.
Speaking of gloves I'll close with one of our kitties paw fluff....I couldn't resist after seeing Wendy's Knits Lucy, I had to copy....
Over the weekend I picked up some books from the library on spinning. I found Teach Yourself Visually- Spinning by Judith MacKenzie McCuin. It has a lot of information from picking your fleece to tools to finishing your yarn. This one will be one of my next book purchases. With the above brown alpaca blend I'm going to finish it again with the technique in the book:Put the skeins in a bucket of hot, soapy water and pound them with a sink plunger. Rinse the yarn in cold water, and then put it back in the hot water and plunge it again. Rinse it thoroughly in clear water, and then spin the excess water out. Hold the skein toward the end and smack it against a counter. This makes the yarn open up and distributes the twist evenly. Page 92.
I'll enjoy the smacking part. There's no way that I'll enjoy wearing any part of this on my body, in the state that it feels now, so I'm hoping it'll soften up a bit. I've been finishing this yarn with kid gloves thinking I'd wreck it somehow, but the gloves are off now.
Speaking of gloves I'll close with one of our kitties paw fluff....I couldn't resist after seeing Wendy's Knits Lucy, I had to copy....
It started out with good intentions, but Anna has nil for patience. There was no harming of animals during this photo session.
How can you not help but love those pink toes!
2 comments:
Can't wait for that update about the roving. I loved your post about Carstairs Mill..it was excellent. I don't understand why they felt the need to blend your alpaca. Too bad about the stuff you bought from them not being very soft. Too often people think alpaca is not soft but I know that just depends on where it came from. Alot of my fleeces are as soft as cashmere. I also have that spinning book...I think it's OK.
Greetings from Jody
Just another note Charlene....you don't need to "full" alpaca. I just wash my skeins in warm or hot water depending on how dirty they are and then rinse in same temp water and roll in a towel to remove water and then hand to dry.
Your skein looks really nice...good spinning!
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