Shenanigans! - Rope Bridge Challenge, and Slow-Lane Sprint

 This should be my last set of entries for the current Shenanigans, as we're running out of submission time.

First up, the Rope Bridge Challenge - make cordage from found materials where you are... well, I cheated a little, and 'found' my materials in my apartment. 

First, I was spelunking in the depths of the Stash Cave, and found a bag of really untidily stowed line flax, that I know I never purchased - I suspect it's yet another Yarn Orphanage item (IIRC, it's from someone in my Community Knitting group, from a prior volunteer placement - she gave me a biggish paper gift bag, half-full of random fibre stuff, and this was near the bottom.)

In the process of tidying the flax up into pretty stricks, so it wouldn't tangle further, there was a bit of loose waste. I hesitate to call it tow, because it was still quite long - but it wasn't going back in the bag, so I made a bit of fine cordage with it...

There's less than a yard, and I found a different medium to use, so this isn't my formal entry - but I'll post a pic here, because it's the first cordage I *ever* made.

I've already found a use for it - it's the cord on my 'Sow's Ear' bag.

Then I looked around some more, and spotted the biggish bag of horsehair, that's been languishing around waiting for me to use it as weft for tabletweaving. ...AHA!

Now, it's not grass, and a lot of it is mane, not tail - but there was a smaller bag with a sampling of tail hair - so I got started during another Office Hours, and worked until my hands cramped... and then some.

Horsehair is _tough_ to work with, because its wiry nature makes it want to spring back to its previous state... which isn't 'twisted tightly into small rope'... so it was rough going, and I didn't get very far. but there are several joins, so hopefully it counts. I was adding a few hairs in every few inches by the end, to maintain about the same thickness throughout.

*This* one is the actual entry... such as it is.

I plan to make a bit more of this, so I have a bit of horsehair line for random historic camping use. The live end is clamped between a piece of metal and a magnet, so it won't unravel while it waits.

I'm still debating a small 'trial by fire' - to see whether taking a lighter to the pokey bits helps it any.

                                                    ------------------------------------------------------

Up Next: a small handful of items from prior homework.

I decided I wasn't going to be *too* systematic about this one, but I did want to tidy up a loose end or two... The first two were started during the Tour de Fleece, but hadn't been finished.

I turned a mix of 2 colours of wool, white alpaca, and some Tencel, into this:

One lightly-filled board, 3 passes, third pass pulled off into boardworms.

The ratios were 50/25/25 wool, alpaca, Tencel - with bright red and purple wool (5g of each element). I debated a fourth pass, but decided I liked the depth the variation provided, so I stopped at 3, then rolled everything off on a pair of dowels.

Spindles in the foreground, and one of the top skeins, are mentioned in this post.

...and there it sat, until Shenanigans started up, and I got it completed.

Still needs wet-finishing, but that's nothing new, around here...

I also wanted to spin a 'pop quiz' art batt for multi-element practice - where drafting style has to change a bit, due to sudden changes in fibre content - and one of my SpinTogether prizes worked out perfectly. It's mostly merino, with alpaca and baby camel, with a sprinkling of glitz... and it's minimally processed, so all the diverse fibre types, and the various colours, are in chunks, rather than smooth (art batt from Purple Lamb).

Skein 1 done, plying skein 2, spinning skein 3 - it's nice to have reasonably-matched spindles! (they're the same size, and 1g weight difference)

With this particular combination being fine wool and camelids, I was still able to spin smooth laceweight yarn with no issues, so I now have over 880 yards to play with. I'll take my time figuring out which skein order, and finding a GREAT pattern.

Top-to-bottom, in spinning order, self-plied. Still deciding the order I'll use to knit them up.

I worked in strips, from one edge of the batt to the other, figuring I'd take the colours as they came, ply each on itself from the spindle ball, and sort the order later.

I also got to thinking about useful things to do with samples from earlier classes... so I broke out my rarely-used triangle loom, and started on some meditative weaving. I can piece these together into squares, or make the hypotenuse the outside edges of a scarf, or do something else entirely - but first, I need more than 2!

Just plainweave at this point, but using most pegs 2-3 times each. I don't want it too open, so I press each new end into place, then assess whether the next pass goes on the same peg, or the next one.

I've had this loom for years, and only made 1 other triangle on it - about time it saw a bit of use.


...And that concludes the stuff I actually got done THIS Shenanigans - I got too involved in other things, including a charity ride here.

I've met my fundraising goal, and have almost hit my distance goal - both are pretty modest, but I'm not getting out much ;)

I even did a bit of plying while on the stationary bike!

Shenanigans! - I Can't Even, and New-to-Me Fibre

 Hey again - now we start with the flurry of info (I hope)

One of my other FFS projects was an 'attempt' to spin Highland Cattle. First, it needed a bath - and by the colour of the water, it REALLY needed one... (no pictures - but it was a very unappealing dark urine yellow-brown)

It looked like a pretty dubious prospect at first, so I flagged it for the 'I can't EVEN' challenge, then realized it's also the first time I've spun cattle hair, so it also qualifies as an entry for the 'New-to-You/Breed Study' as well. I like it when I can have things do double-duty!

Here's a photo of a sample 'lock' - it's not terribly long, but workable. On average, it's right around the 2", or 5cm mark... I'd bet a bunch of it is shorter.

2 very distinct textures!

For my first attempt, I carded the fibres together with my dog slickers, thinking it might be okay for a small bag, or something. The undercoat is very soft, and not unlike yak down, buffalo, qiviuq, or cashmere - though qiviuq and cashmere are generally longer. (I haven't spun any buffalo yet, but helped the guild dehair some for a class a few years back.)

I think it's what helped the initial yarn hold together. The coarser fibres are pretty slippery, but the finer ones made up for some of that.

It wasn't an *easy* spin, but went better than I anticipated. (still not something I'd recommend to beginners)

I did most of this first sample during an Office Hours - and Pimmie said it looked on-camera like I was spinning barbed wire... not entirely inaccurate! It's pretty bristly, and a fair amount of the hair fibre tried to shed out while I was drafting.

Usable yarn... sort of. (Who knew?)

That got me thinking: what would happen if I separated BOTH textures, and spun them individually? ("What happened when you tried?" - will echo in the back of my mind forever, I think)

...So I split them out, and did the following 2 samples entirely via hand-processing. These were going to be SMALL samples, and it wasn't worth trying to load even a dog slicker brush. It has also been awhile since I did fingers-only fibre prep - it would have been a nice change of pace, if it hadn't been THIS stuff.

The hardest part about the dehairing process was that the fibres aren't that different in length - and the hair portion is ABUNDANT. With the other similar fibres I've handled raw, the guard hair component was a bit more sparse, so the separation seemed to go more quickly... and it was generally from shed winter undercoat, so the worst of the hair remained on the animal.

This is ALL about getting enough twist into slippery, short, hair fibres to force them to hold together - it was considerably harder to make into a usable yarn, and kept drifting apart, or snapping on me - there was some mild cursing at this sample. I like the colour - shame it seems to only be in the hair, and not the undercoat.

THIS is the true 'barbed wire' yarn! Nothin' but prickles!

...and then, the only NICE part of this spin! As you can see, I missed a couple hairs, but overall, this is very soft, and was pleasant to spin. The 2 hairs beside the yarn are for texture comparison, because you can clearly see the finer-textured halo on this one.

I wasn't really trying for something super-consistent, but this was quite happy to be a fair bit finer than the first 2 samples. With no coarse hair fighting for dominance, this drafted more readily into a laceweight 2-ply - whereas the other 2 yarns are closer to a light fingering, after plying.

Totally wearable, and actually pretty nice - but VERY labour intensive!

So if I were stranded somewhere, with only Highland Cattle, or some other 'wooly coo' to spin, I wouldn't freeze, and might be pretty comfortable - but it's not the quickest process. I might even repeat that final exercise with the rest of the cattle fibre I have... eventually... for my own use only, most likely.

I suppose this means that someday, I'll have to do this again - if only for the bragging rights. (Now where can I find some Curly Horse? lol)

Shenanigans! - Sow's Ear, and Tying it All Together

 Franquemont Fibre Shenanigans (FFS) is upon us again, and I've been slowly worrying away at a few things.

The biggest one is my Sow's Ear Challenge/Tying it All Together - I went with some 'well matured' fibres, that have been in my stash since rocks were soft.

The dyed silk noil came from the Fiber Hut in Calgary (closed 'mumble' years ago) The label's pretty faded, but I originally paid $2.50 for 20g - used a bunch, then stowed the remainder.

There were a LOT of bug bits in this stuff - but it was fun to use, and the first noil I ever tried.

The dark green wool came from the 'fibre orphanage' - something a friend passed on to me, probably 10-15 years ago, and the rest was all from a Birkeland Bros Mystery Fibre grab bag, or two... that I got before they moved to Abbotsford. To the best of my knowledge, it's mohair/silk - but being from a grab bag, I don't have a clue what else might be there...

Yarn stew - my fibre *before* the blending begins.

I liked all the colours well enough - but there wasn't a huge amount of any one fibre, and the mohair had begun to compact, and felt, even before I spun any of the items that arrived with it (several of which are _still_ in my stash, but not as semi-felted).

Because it's such a variety of lengths, combing wasn't really an option, and I don't have a drum carder at home - so off to the blending board I went - intending to BLEND this stuff, and not just fling it onto the board in one pass. It's in 5 piles, because I've found that 15-20g is about what works well on my blending board, without cramming on so much it's unwieldy, or having too little to hold together well. 

That whole heap is a bit over 4oz, I think it weighed about 113g before I got started - and that was the only time I measured things. Because I don't know the fibre content of most of this pile, there wasn't any real point in getting accurate % numbers for each item.

Here's what it looked like after the first pass, lifted off the pins. I'm fairly picky, so it got a more thorough mixing than might have happened. This stuff is, at a minimum, almost old enough to drive - taking a little extra time with it can't hurt anything NOW.

The noil is barely visible, as it's buried in an inside layer at this stage. The copper and greens are behaving nicely.

I loaded the board in a second pass, pausing to burnish everything down about 4-5 times during the process.

...and finally, the noil appears!

That looked like it was more-or-less where I wanted it to be, so I pulled it off into some boardworms. A bit more blending happens as you draft onto the sticks, but I'd consider this 2 passes.

No flash, and the weird daylight colour we've had lately didn't help... but I thought these looked quite a bit better than when I started.

Then I repeated the process 4 more times, until I had 25 boardworms in the box. Took another pic, with the flash, to see whether the SHINE would be visible... they *really* gleamed.

Aziz - LIGHT! ;)

Then came the spinning, and I could REALLY see things taking shape.

Truer colour on the flash photos, so that's what I went with, sometimes...

I decided on a 3-ply, to help even out any inconsistencies from the chunks of noil, and so there could be a bit firmer plying twist without the yarn getting harsh. I also did it because I usually don't - Shenanigans is about breaking a few 'rules' and habits along the way! (ETA: longdraw, with a fair amount of double-drafting, when the silk noil got clumpy)

I wound a plying ball - again, because I usually don't - I have several tool-based solutions, and often choose those... lots of bobbins, and a tensioned Kate mean that I don't _have_ to wind a ball... but it's a workflow that is used in many cultures, even with the availability of other tools. It's also meditative, in its own way.

Plied the leftover bit into a few yards of 2-ply. More on that later.

Filled a bobbin - I was aiming for, or just past, twist stasis on this - I wanted to keep the hand and drape, even with a fairly firm ply - and it's a pretty dense yarn, because I decided not to fight for anything *too* lofty... I wanted the shine more than 'squish' - and some heavy-feeling, slinky drape.

I may have lost count - but it came up just shy of 300 yards. I'll update here if it changes after wet-finishing.

Wound the skein on my 2-yard niddy, because I didn't want it too short and compact to show off the finished yarn.

...and then I just *had* to address all the comments I've been seeing about making a Silk Purse out of my Sow's Ear... so I wet-finished that tiny sample skein, then grabbed my 4" double-pointed knitting needles... and made a... mess. ;)

Pinned out on the underside of a therapy cushion - because it was the right size... and with my fine linen cordage through the live stitches in place of a bind-off.
This photo REALLY shows off the coppery elements in the yarn, and the shine it kept.

Once it was dry, my other 'studio assistant' helped me with a tutorial on how to close up the purse. It might work out really well for knitting or tatting from tiny sample balls!

...from flat circle...

...gather it up...

Tada! One tiny purse, closed around my tatting thread.

Plodding along, or why being a Process Person isn't a Bad Thing...

As I write this, I haven't done any spinning yet today - which might put me behind schedule. You see, I made another decision that might end poorly - I opted for contiguous yardage over speed. Here's how far I've gotten, in 8 days.

(I might be halfway through this HALF of the braid... this is not ideal.)

What makes it worse, is that I need to spin some of the contrasting colour too - so that I can make the intended 4-ply. This braid will be chained, and I'll combine it with a similar-grist singles in a coordinating polwarth/silk.

It's a different ratio wool/silk, but getting a reasonable match should be do-able.

I'm fighting my own physical limitations and stamina on this, as much as anything else. There's just enough strain, even with Scotch Tension, that my hands are feeling the hours of drafting required to add a few new 'hills' to the bobbin. 

I'm trying to mix it up a bit, and do some exercises to help, but this is a BIG departure from the last few months' spindle spinning - and my body doesn't like all the 'sameness' as much as the variety of movements required for spindling. I can *definitely* marathon spindle better than wheel-spin.

This is a good thing to know - especially if I plan to work up to more spinning this year. I'll have to look at the decisions I make, and decide whether the result is worth the cost of admission. I think it mostly is - I'm certainly learning a few things about my body, and its limits.

Now, the GOOD part of being a process person, is that I'm not finding ALL this time 'boring'. I'm reveling in the look and feel of this colourway, and it's a very bright spot in a dreary 'January grey' existence. I'm hoping the same will be true - eventually - when I get to cast this on, and start knitting the planned shawl.

The current plan is to get through this half of the fibre, and see how long THAT takes... if it's past the 15th, then I'll *have* to ply the first half, so I can start knitting the shawl. I think that's a good tradeoff - because I can't spin full-time, so it'll be nice to have the option of switching gears.

I've also committed to tracking for the #15forSCA challenge - so every day I work on an SCA-related project, I can count it... Apparently there are going to be coins minted for participants who get over 30 days tracked.

It's a good way to get a couple motifs done on the purple tape. Here's the one session I got done this past week.

I may be eating some elephants, but at least they're pygmy elephants - so the 'one bite at a time' stretches a bit further.

Three steps forward, two back...

 ...or, just use the right tool for the job, already!

When I started the #SMAL (that's the SpinTogether group's Selfish Make-along), I was feeling lazy, and used the wheel that was closest, even though it wasn't ideal.

It was working - mostly.

Only the Thumbelina is a low-ratio, double-drive wheel, that pulls like a small pony, even at a tension low enough to make it occasionally throw the driveband... so my hands were crampy and unhappy, and the yarn was a bit undertwisted in places... and I was concerned it might drift apart if I wasn't super careful with handling it.

...So I took a deep breath, grabbed a handy spice jar, and gently rolled the contents of that bobbin onto it. 

It only drifted apart twice at that stage, but there were some dodgy bits, and I expected it to be... interesting. It was! In all the ways implied by the old curse. I know it doesn't look like much, but the process of winding it off, and adding twist as I ran it onto my Lendrum (joining it together a few EXTRA times, of course) - took several hours. I was being fussy about trying to get a good foundation on the bobbin, so took more time than I could have - but the first couple layers are the most crucial to how a bobbin fills.

...Ended up with this:

 My Lendrum is OLD - like, it has a bolt holding the footman on, old... and I'm at least the 4th owner - I haven't invested in the newer fast flyer - so I'm using the ancient, hooked (rather than sliding hook), 'fast' flyer - with ratios of 10 and 12:1. This makes it about twice as fast as the previous wheel - which should help. It also has offset hooks on both sides, so I have more control over how to fill the bobbins.

I also own the Very Fast Flyer, but I'm spinning this for a shawl, and figured I would get as much of it in one piece as I can - the VFF bobbins are comparatively tiny. 

With that done, I settled in to my second Zoom meeting of the day, and got this far before I needed a break. My hands were still tired from the work of spinning everything on the wee pony, and I was getting sloppy with my technique.

I'm hypermobile, and I got into the TERRIBLE habit years ago, of rolling my thumb back when managing twist. I'm working on changing that habit, but it's always gotten me results, and it became somewhat ingrained.

I stopped for the night because my thumb knuckle was getting grumpy, and I wasn't having a lot of success focusing on NOT hyperextending it, because my hands were fatigued. Making it worse wasn't going to help things proceed. (it's a part of my process that needs to change, because it's going to be harmful in the long run)

Now I get to see what sort of progress I can make on a better tool. I hope there's time to do what I want - this will be a lovely yarn when I'm done. (most of the credit goes to SweetGeorgia Yarns though - it's one of their old Club Braids)

Resolutions, or another idea? (Word of the Year, 2021)

 One of my friends has inspired me (after another too-long hiatus from blogging)... 

Here's her post:
http://blog.cayswann.com/word-of-the-year-2021/?fbclid=IwAR1SGWBPyy4KM9qmtLgRP9O-KgOcFRAsVmbS3WAnQj9jDX9-0J4glh0gbuo

I love the idea, and when she started talking about it over the past while, I realized that maybe this would work better than traditional goal-setting, or resolutions, for me too.

I keep paying for my business license, I keep plodding along making things - but I don't document things enough, and I don't finish what I start - almost ever. A lot of GREAT words that I might use are already on her list - so for this, first go, I'll make sure I find something that doesn't duplicate hers (but still fits).

I know, that whether or not the things I envision and create get done - there can be no product, no end result without

PROCESS

There's a process to building physical strength and stamina - and I'm re-starting a 100-day movement challenge today.
There's a process to getting enough inventory together for the web storefront I keep dreaming about - and it starts with more than just opening the webpage.
There's a process to growing my core textile skills - and I'm grateful for the opportunity to study with Abby Franquemont, and chat with the other students on her Discord.
There's even a process to getting my scattered thoughts onto some page, somewhere - whether it's here, or my Facebook business page, or some other venue. I've started, slowly, by trying to post more on the Loomacy and Lace Facebook page. 

...and once there's more widespread vaccination, and the world opens up? There will be a process to that, too.

I have thoughts, and goals, and dreams - I always have. Maybe by recognizing that I'm a PROCESS person, and honouring that, I'll get further than I have by ignoring it.

I did finish a small item or three last year, and started some that were real firsts for me. Here are some pics.