Author: Mary

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Processing Wool In The Desert

I discovered early into my adventures in spinning, I wanted to spin every fiber I could get my hands on. But with a tight budget I was going to have to work for it. So I started to look into purchasing raw fleece and how to process or clean it. I knew it would be work but it would give me enough fiber for each breed to have room to make mistakes. My first fleece was a 4lbs Cormo and fairly clean. Very little VM and grease so it was a cake walk to clean. With it I experimented with Kool-Aid and food coloring dye pots and making batts on a drum carder. I got a taste and wanted more. Along came my girlfriend, who said she had two big Rambouillet fleece that had sat for years boxes in her garage and would I be interested in processing them for her. Sure Why not! These were very dirty, loaded w VM, heavy in grease, and perfectly formed to the square shape from the box from sitting in the Vegas heat. So I set out to clean these bad boys. Three big black bins of hot water from the tap, a bottle of soap and a mess of mesh bags. It’s took days just to get through one and a lot of back pain, but I ended up with close to 8lbs of lovely white fleece from just one. 15lbs in total from both and days of back wrenching work.       

Through the process I learned my scouring process used entirely too much water for were I lived. Living the Las Vegas Valley, in Southern Nevada water is a precious commodity and your neighbors notice when you are pouring buckets of dirty mucky water into your plants. I needed to find a better way. Processing raw wool was a happy place for me, but it would take me days to recover just from washing. So I went searching the internet and found the Suint Fermentation Method. It seamed pretty easy, get a good size dark opaque plastic tub with lid, fill with rain water or from the hose, add a raw fleece, and ignore for a few weeks. Too easy, and extremely stinky, revolting in fact, but it works. Suint works by using the natural salts in the sweat left in the fleece and bacteria to eat away at the dirt n lanolin. Medium grease seems to be best and allow one to clean an entire fleece at once, plus you can use the same tub of water 3 or 4 times. The first fleece I used was a big grey Finn from Sophia. So I waited for a good rain and set my buckets out to fill my tub, it took 20 gallons of rain water.  I bagged my fleece in 2 large mesh wash bags and put them in, adding a layer of black plastic bags between the tub and lid to keep the bugs out and walked away.        

It took about 4 weeks to get a good heat and fermentation going. New tubs take longer I read. I was curious but after reading on a social media group page for SFM just how nasty the smell was, I avoided peaking. When the day came to rinse I did it first thing,  before most of my neighbors were up to avoid offending them with the odor, rinsing with the hose and a good pressure sprayer, over a 15 gallon tub I rinsed the entire fleece and filled the tub. Being early summer my plants enjoy and good drink and since there was no chemicals or soap it was safe for all my garden beds. Next step was to lay it out in the sun it went for a good dry. It still had a light touch of lanolin left so another few days would not have hurt. Seeing it was the first go, with a learning curve, I took it as a successful experience and my back was happy, 3 hours vs. days of hard work.        

Since I only had one fleece at the time to clean but plan to order more I just covered it back up and left it. Next fleece to go in was a cream colored Perendale for my friend Christin. Since my tub had sat outside in the Vegas heat, it need a bit more water. No biggie, a fabulous winter rain topped it off and it was ready to go. So again I split the fleece into to bags put it and walked away. It was still really cool at night still, I have it plenty of time to get nice and nasty smelling, but this time about a week before I planed to rinse I flipped the bags so ensure a even soak. The tub sat for 3 weeks due to weather, we get a lot of wind in the spring and it was a wet spring too. But in the end it was a great success this time.  I added an extra rinse the next day using roughly 15 gallons extra water but it made big difference in the final result and was still ¼ the water I used washing just one Rambouillet fleece.

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Sharing Creativity Cowl

This project started two plus years ago, it is mostly made from homespun chevoit fiber I dyed in my high school colors of green and gold.  But because I was still learning how to dye fiber, I was using food coloring and mostly Kool-aid.  So rather then a beautiful deep green and gold, I have shades of lime green and lemon yellow.  I still love it.  Then in December 2017 the Thomas Fire broke out in the hills above Ventura.  Burning into the foothills of my home town and areas where my school friends and families lived.  So I started spinning my magic, meditating on good memories and keeping them all safe.  I called this colorway Bonnie Pride, it is 200 grams of a sport weight that I spun this on my Spinolution Pollywog. After that I put it in the stash until I could find the right project for it.

Then came covid19 and using my stash to keep busy became “The Thing” to do.  I liked this project because it was open to yarn weight and yardage.  My homespun is so bright, almost dayglow (very appropriate for a 80s high school themed yarn), but it wasn’t enough yardage alone for the size cowl I wanted and needed more so back to my stash.  The black stripe at the top is also a homespun, soft alpaca gifted to me from a friend.  It gives this project and nice edge since I didn’t want to make the Icord edge the project called for.  Plus it gives me a break from the bright colors right next to my pale skin at my neck.  I love cowls shaped like this because I wear lot of v necks so it keeps me nice n toasty in a long sleeve shirt or as a scarf with a coat.  Sharing Creativity cowl is a project designed by Pamela Kay in A Touch Of Hazel and available on Ravelry

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The Stay Home and Knit Shawl

This shawl was designed by Hanna Maciejewska and is called Stay Home and Knit. It was set up as a Knit Along project on her blog and with so many of us being ask or told to stay home during the Covid 19 outbreak she posted it as a free project on Ravelry. Part of my personal goal during this time was to attack my UFO project bin and finish some projects. In my bin was the Dreaded “pizza” shawl. A project I started last spring and quickly saw now matter how beautiful my homespun yarn was I was always going to see a slice of cheese pizza. And so I ripped (frogged) it out and went on the hunt for a new project. The yarn is made from some of my first dyed projects; 3, 2oz braided of Chevoit roving dye with Kool-Aid and food coloring. I called the color way Candy Corn Candy Cane after a cool candy cane my hubby found at Halloween. Two braids were spun on my Spinolution Pollywog in a fingering weight and the third was spun on my Ashford Traveller in a lace weight. This Shawl done with both yarn weights in sections on garter, stockinette, bobble and open lace. I tweaked the pattern a bit to give the sections more dimension by not always using both yarns together. It worked up to be a bright and fun for a springtime Easter shawl and do justice to the yarn, finally.

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Making Masks

The day PPE became so vital and impossible to find, the sewists around the world stepped up. We revved up our machines, depleted our stashes, and bought up every inch of elastic and fabric available. Read up on what the CDC and WHO said was best style and what the Nurses and Doctors said they needed. We burned our fingers making ties, pricked ourselves on pins but never stopped. Donations of masks went out with love day after day. Myself I have sent masks to a Ronald McDonald home, friends, family, handed them out local post workers and more. Some friends bought masks from me just to keep me in supplies. THANK YOU.

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My Quarantine Socks

         The story of a pair a socks created during a self quarantine, Stay at Home order, during the Covid19 outbreak  This pair of sock was originally started a year ago but after major issues with my stitches I frogged it and tossed into the UFO bin. So when the governor shut down Las Vegas I started pulling out UFO projects to finish. This is the Twisted Flower sock pattern by Cookie A, I found in her book, Knit. Sock. Love. and of course on Ravelry. She designed it as a tessellation sock, meaning the pattern on the leg shifts during the repeat of the chart. I had never done raised cables so new stitches there plus because the pattern carries down the heal there was new stitches there too. I was determined to get every stitch, every row right. I normally stitch up socks using a magic loop method but found the chart and shifts worked better on my DPN sets. The pattern calls for 2.25mm but I have large calves so I went to a 2.5mm. I used Premier Serenity sock yarn in Grey Flannel colorway from my stash and You tube was my friend for the new stitches. So slowly and methodical I worked and two weeks later I have a sock. Now on to the Dreaded second Sock. 

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Busy Day Spinning

        Week one of a 30 day stay home order is down. My life is oddly the same and yet the difference is apparent in a big metropolitan area like the Las Vegas Valley. It’s much quieter in our area, lots of song birds to enjoy. The oddest thing is not to see the planes landing one after another and the strip is not as bright. Yes it’s still has the lights on for the most, but its empty. I have set this time to finish projects. So my wheel is out more regularly in the morning with afternoons used to concentrate on UFO. My unfinished project box is going through a purge.  This means those projects that were hopelessly tossed in for later, either get scraped completely for something new or tossed out if they are beyond all hope. But for those that remain, they are getting laid out to finish. On my wheel I have two spins going at the moment. A beautiful 4oz purple braid from Corgi Hill Farms of BFL and Tussah silk 75/25 blend named Lavender Tea. This is an UFO started in November and Friday night I finished the first bobbin, roughly 2oz. Then for a change up during my LYS virtual meeting I broke out a beautiful dark spooky 4oz braid of Falkland from Desert Panda Fiber Arts named Haunted House from my stash. This is wonderful shades of brown, grey and stark black. Both are wonderful to work with.

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Huacaya and Suri

The first post I did was on my Turkish spindle, as part of that I want to discuss the different fibers I am using in that spin. Last fiber post was on Merino, which is roughly 40% of that blend. Next fiber I want to discuss is Alpaca, again roughly 40% of the blend. I used two colors, fawn and bay black. So let’s talk Alpaca.

Fun facts about this fluffy animal:
• Two breeds: Huacaya and Suri. Huacaya is the most commonly know. It looks fluffy (crazy fluffy sometime) and most toys are made to resemble this breed. Suri on the other hand is about 10% of the population bred and it’s locks grow in long silky ropes, kind of like a sheep dog or dreadlocks.
• Characteristics: Soft, durable, lightweight yet super warm, water resistant, silky, fire resistant, a natural shinny luster, no lanolin so its hypoallergenic and considered by some as a luxury fiber. Suri fiber has a draw back, very little memory or elasticity. So some spinners and yarn companies blend a bit of wool in to help with that. It does how ever lend well to woven pieces.
• Comes in 22 natural colors from white to black. But of those, shades and tones can be in the hundreds, cream and white being predominantly used for dye purposes.
• Both breeds can be found in top, sometimes referred to as sliver. Huacaya also lends itself well to being carded.
• Quality fiber runs between 18 to 25 microns
• Staple; Huacaya a fiber is 2-6 inches and Suri is up to 11 inches

My experience with alpaca has been Huacaya seconds, the neck and belly mostly, but still lovely to work with. I soaked for 12 to 18 hours in a tub of rain water, no soap needed, to remove the dust. Good grief was it dusty, then out to dry in the sun. After that I picked through to remove the VM bits and carded away. They seem to be as much VM as fiber, so if you are doing large amounts or blankets, I would look into a tumbler or willowing your fiber to get a head start on VM removal. So far I have only spun it on my spindles to keep my twist under control. To much twist will produce a stiff yarn and not as pleasing to work with. My fiber did not have guard hairs to remove but some do. So if need be pull all guard hairs first but hang on to those buggers, they make great garden twine or rug weaving yarns. I found it fairly easy drafting not as slick as merino but close. I got a nice fine single with most of the super fine pieces of VM falling out as I drafted. I have not tried dying with it as of yet since I really enjoy the natural shades of brown to black I have in my stash to blend with my dyed wool. I hope you found this information interesting and that I have sparked an interest to try spinning Alpaca.