I have been spinning. I really enjoy spinning – so much that sometimes after a long day at the computer – my new day job – I don’t feel like blogging. I just spin. And the next day, I’m working on all these intense problems at the day job and when I get off the computer – I just spin. Then, a week goes by – I just spin. And, another week, and suddenly it’s a month since I’ve posted.

But look, I’ve been spinning and look what I made!

Here are three skeins of handspun alpaca yarn. I’ve been playing with color. The base fiber in all three skeins is what alpaca people call dark fawn. You can see this in the center skein which is a two-ply with both strands spun from the same fiber. This particular fleece is a little on the cool side of the fawn color spectrum – not that fawn alpaca is ever really a cold color – I’m talking subtleties here.

The skeins on the left and right are “barberpole” yarns. That is, they are two ply yarns with each ply a different color. The black and tan on the right is very obvious. Even though the fawn looks darker in the black and tan skein that it does in the middle skein, it is exactly the same color, exactly the same source, same animal, etc.

I took these pictures by handing the skeins from a coat hanger and hanging the coat hanger from a hook on the apartment deck. It’s a good way to get accurate color by handing the skeins in full sun. I’ve got to wonder, though, what the neighbors thought of the objects – and the photo process.

The skeins are about 100-150 yards each, and fairly fat. The fiber is soft. The yarn is squishy. I’m thinking this yarn will make some wonderful hats or maybe short, thick scarves. I don’t have a project in mind, I’ve just been spinning.

I’ve got another skein in process. I’m working with some very smooth black fiber – tremendous texture, but a little slow because it’s rather short and slick.

Anna’s fiber is in process and I think that may be my next spinning project. I’ll have to vacuum everything thoroughly as I switch from black to bright white.

As Ron and Tara at Ambriel Acres Alpacas have noted on their blog, I am currently in the middle of a spinning project. I wasn’t going to talk about the project, but since it’s on their blog, I feel like I can go ahead and do so. I’m spinning Anna’s 2007 fleece and I’m really looking forward to doing so.

Originally, this was going to be a complete fiber processing project – wash, card, spin – just like I did back in the house in Oregon. Anna’s fleece arrived and I started the project. Then reality hit.

The fleece wasn’t skirted. Normally, I would spread the fleece out on the skirting board to skirt it (remove the vegetable matter). We left the skirting board in Oregon, and due to a lack of space in the apartment, I haven’t build a new one. I couldn’t skirt the fleece in the usual way, so I spread an old sheet – long ago designated a fiber sheet – out on the floor and skirted the fleece clump by clump. I sat over a trash and combed the vegetable matter out of the fleece with a metal dog comb. (Plastic combs have little pieces of flashing that catch the fiber. Metal combs generally don’t.)

After skirting, the next steps are washing and carding the fleece. The house in Oregon has a nice, deep, laundry sink – ideal for washing fiber. I’ve described my washing process in the old blog. The laundry sink is wonderful. Unfortunately, the apartment doesn’t have a laundry sink. I’m left with my choice of a bathtub or the kitchen sink. I suppose I could use either in a pinch, but they’re both a long way from ideal. I thought about how I was going to wash the fleece.

Then I thought about where I would use the drum carder. Right now, my drum carder is still in a box. It’s not a good place for the drum carder, but it’s a safe place. I don’t have a good place to store it or use it in the apartment. I explored several options, but I really don’t want to use the drum carder indoors and rigging the carder on the little tiny porch … Well, lets simply say I think I can make it work, but I’m not particularly happy with the idea. That other option is clamping my carder to one of the picnic tables on the grounds, which is functional, but not really ideal.

I thought about all this, and I decided to outsource the carding and washing to Mette. I feel bad sending the fleece off for processing, but it’s just not feasible in this apartment. I’ll still spin the fleece which is the fun part – and the important part.

And, I’m still really looking forward to spinning that fleece!

For the past almost a week, I’ve been working on finishing up a project last summer. I’ve been spinning up the remaining Mocha Swirl blend. This is a blend I created two or three years ago, but I’ve never worked with more than a sample.

This blend is 60% suri alpaca and 40% huacaya alpaca. The suri is not particularly good fiber – in fact the first time I spun the suri, my yarn approximated baling twine in texture, color, and oder. I have since learned to work with this batch of fiber. I wash it more. I make sure it’s well carded. I try to avoid folding the fiber because when it folds, it really pokes. In addition, there are buzzy bits in the suri – weak spots or partial shedding or something. I can’t card those out, so I have to work with them. One of the things I have discovered over the years is that this fiber does well when blended with huacaya. I can take not-very-good suri fiber, not-very-soft huacaya fiber, and achieve a yarn that feels softer than either of the input fibers.

I finished spinning the singles Thursday evening, and started plying. I kept plying and plying and plying. My legs started getting sore. The bobbin kept getting full. I did really well, not breaking a strand in plying.

The bobbin got really full. I wasn’t sure the yarn would all fit, but then one bobbin of singles ran out.

And I did a pretty good job of balancing the singles between the two bobbins.

I almost didn’t get the whole thing on one bobbin. If you look close, you can see light between the flyer and the yarn – in places. It was that close!

This evening, I pulled the yarn off the bobbin into a skein. Make that two skeins. After being so careful in the spinning and so careful in the plying and not breaking a strand, I broke the yarn while skeining it off the bobbin.

1132 yards. 12.4 ounces. Yes, I got it all on a single Louet bobbin and I almost got it all into one skein.

It’s spun fairly fine. As you can see in some of the pictures, it’s a rather hairy yarn. That’s a function of the fiber – and this yarn is a case of taking what the fiber gave me. I’m looking for a good project for the yarn. The yarn is uneven and has slubs, bumps, and a lot of hair. The project must work with those terms. You can see from the picture that the yarn is fairly fine. The suri content means the yarn won’t have a lot of memory, but ought to have great drape. I don’t want to be trying to rip this yarn back very much, so if it’s a knit project, it needs to be simple enough I don’t make a lot of mistakes. Any thoughts?

Mark the mocha swirl roving out of the stash. It’s yarn in need of a project. I spun one bobbin of singles and did all the plying in 2008, so I’ll credit myself with 6.2 ounces of spinning for the year.

I’ve got an excuse!

I was here:

and here:

I rode the metro and walked a lot.

I saw this:

and that:

and the national mall …

At the zoo, I saw these prezewalski’s horses

I’ve never seen them before. I remember them fondly from my graduate school days when I became quite familiar with their geneology. One of the professors I worked with was studying them and trying to help conserve all the available genes in the small population. They were fascinating to me – yet nothing more than squares (males), circles (females) and lines on a piece of paper. this is the real animal.

My new job is near Washington, DC – and while I mostly work from home in Alabama, I do travel to the area quite frequently. The Smithsonian has long been the most interesting part of Washington, DC to me. Here’s the Smithsonian castle

And another view.

Pam came with me this trip, and we took some time to see the sights including the Smithsonian Native American museum.

Personally, I found the architecture more impressive than the displays – there are some impressive displays, but the building is just plain cool!

The George Washington Masonic Temple in Alexandria from the hotel.

The trip kept us busy. Early flight on Saturday morning. Touristing Saturday and Sunday, a hard week of work followed by another weekend of the tourist gig. The late flight home Sunday evening dropped us into bed in time for me to wake up and work Monday morning. Somehow, it’s
Friday night already and I haven’t touched yarn since before we left.

We got to the National Zoo, the Mall, Old Town Alexandria, the Smithsonian Castle, the Smithsonian Native American Museum and the National Archives before the batteries (camera and ours) quit. We also visited the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery (across the street from the White House) and walked past the White House and Treasury.

Of all the places we visited, I was most impressed with the Renwick – and I couldn’t decide if the art or architecture was more impressive.

I also found the National Archives interesting. It’s rather like a big bookstore, but theyr’e all old and interesting books. I kept wanting to open up the books and touch them. I found national history on display that intersected with family. The logbook from the USS Nevada was on display, open to Dec. 7, 1941 – famous national history, but I wanted to turn the page to see if my uncle was mentioned.

While we were away, a blog reader asked if we had T-shirts with our logo available. While we were flattered at the request, we had no logo apparel. After some research, however, we discovered Cafe Press and remedied the situation. Therefore, in the best spirit of blatant advertising, I direct you to the new button on the sidebar.

I get a three day weekend this weekend and we’re not going anywhere because it’s supposed to snow. Maybe I’ll touch some fiber.