Preserving Summer

Preserving is something that we do a lot of here chez moi. I love to see a full pantry when we're nearing the end of summer. We have tomato sauce, apricot jam and preserves, applesauce, peach preserves, peach and jalapeno jelly, sweet pickled jalapenos, dehydrated tomatoes, dried peppers (for pepper flakes and powders), and then there's the stuff in the freezer! Basil pesto, ground cherries, peaches for smoothies, roasted tomatoes and onions and garlic...

Ty stays home and makes sure the house doesn't burn down and the fur babies don't bust things (or each other, in some cases involving guarding tomatoes!). He's the farmer. He's the one with the green thumb. I'm just proud to be able to (mostly) support his dream of growing things. He's able to sell produce to local restaurants, trade for things we need or want, and put food on the table all year round.

One thing I struggle with is knowing what to do with all the things we grow. We do sauce, we do pickled, we do dehydrated. What things do you do with preserving? Am I missing out on crazy delicious things?

Desert Knits Episode 17: Local Fair Time

I can't believe it's already been 2 weeks since I recorded my last podcast! I don't feel like I've gotten enough done to justify a recording...

First off, I have to apologize about the cats...

Warrior Camp Prize drawings were done this episode! Winners, please, get in touch with me so that I can mail out your prizes.

My WIPs continue to be combing the Romney fleece. I am making progress, I promise! It just doesn't really look like it anymore because there is so much fiber. I've also spun up a sample card so that I can match the Princess Bride yarn and knit a giant circle shawl.

Some of my DFA peeps at the fair

Also finished a little sample card for a different Romney fleece - it's not as silky feeling as the one I'm combing. I need to get a set of combs with fewer rows of teeth so I can compare how the carded prep compares with the combed prep.

handspun

I reviewed the local fair a little bit. I loved walking around and seeing everything. It was fun to see the sheep, though all of them were primarily meat sheep. I was disappointed to find a couple of my giant shawls folded up. Oh! And on one of my comment sheets the judge didn't realize that my circle shawl was a shawl.. she thought it may have been a tablecloth... It was really fun to see which ribbons I was awarded though!

Zipper

I talked a tiny bit about the trip to Jan's and getting inspired by his wonderful handspun art yarn. (He's going to be selling it, btw. When I learn more about that I'll definitely share!)

Jan's yarn

I have a Schacht Zoom Loom coming from Paradise Fibers. I finally used my birthday gift card! I'm thinking about making a memory blanket from little woven squares... I want to use my handspun samples in the zoom loom to see how my handspun acts. I can see making a throw or a pillowcase or something from all the little squares eventually...

Gadzook the kitten isn't always causing trouble...

Thanks for hanging out this week! Have fun creating! Please share what you're making with me!

A Fibery Trip to Jan's

A trip to Jan's place results in Leslie holding bouquets of handspun art yarns, talking about dyeing fiber and yarn, different yarn structures, and what to do with art yarns.

His spinning experiments are a whole lot of fun to look at and figure out how he did that thing with the spinning and plying or dyeing. 

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I really loved this skein that used strips of silk scarves from thrift stores. 

These two were beauties in the way they were dyed!

And we even got to see some of the samples he's woven up just to see how it looks in a woven piece.

Wordless Wednesday

Breed Study: Romney; First Impressions

While I was at Black Sheep Gathering earlier this summer I picked up three Romney fleeces. Each of the fleeces is different - they are different weights, different colors, different staple lengths, different crimp structures, and different luster. I love how individual sheep are! 

The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook by Deborah Robson & Carol Ekarius (awesome book, btw, even if you only flip through it every once in a while) devote a bit of space in the book for this breed. They have stuff on breeding, characteristics and history, fiber and yarn. Romney is part of the English Longwool family, along with Cotswold, Leicester Longwool, and Lincoln Longwool, just to name a few. 

"Although the annual wool growth is specified as a minimum of 5 inches, some animals are shorn twice a year, so actual spinnable length in an individual fleece can range from 3 1/2 to 8 inches, though 4 to 6 inches is a good, workable average." - The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook

The three fleeces I have range in staple length from about 4 inches to 6 inches, so I have a good variety of staple lengths to play with.

"Romneys produce wool in a range from moderately coarse to fairly fine. The fiber belongs to the Longwool family, but it's enough finer than most of the other Longwools to feel like a cousin, rather than a sibling... The finest Romney fleeces might come from very fine adults or, more likely, lamb or hogget shearings. Romney can be soft enough to be worn next to the skin, although most Romney wool works better in garments that are one layer out from the skin." - The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook

All three of the fleeces that I have feel pretty soft... I haven't spun a sample of each of them yet, but I think I'll probably be able to wear the wool fairly easily. I haven't figured out exactly what my tolerance level is for the "prickle factor" in wool. I have knit a sweater out of Cascade 220 (the non superwash stuff) and, though I love the sweater, I think the inner elbow bits and yoke can be pretty itchy! I also have a cowl that I knit from handspun Alpaca and from time to time that feels too itchy. But I also have a beanie knit from Jameison Shetland wool and it feels just fine on my forehead. I think it's going to take some time and some experimentation to figure out how much prickle I can stand.

This morning I brought my Jenkins Turkish drop spindle with me to work. I had a little bit of time before work and during my breaks, so I spun a tiny bit of the Romney that I've been working on combing. I really enjoy the spinning so far, though I think I've only spun a couple grams! I'll keep working on it through the week and make some notes, get a sample card done, and write an update next Tuesday!

Desert Knits Episode 16: A Super Short One!

Wordless Thursday (again a day late...)

Natural Dyeing: The Mordanting Process

I've not dabbled very much in playing with dye, let alone playing with natural dyes! The concept is interesting to me, and I know that there are plenty of things that I either grow already or can collect very easily. I've read a few things about dyeing online, Ty gave me a book about natural dye plants, & I've checked books out from the library a few times. Right now I have A Dyer's Garden by Rita Buchanan, A Weaver's Garden by Rita Buchanan, and Dyes from American Native Plants by Lynne Richards and Ronald J. Tyrl.

I am mordanting some of my handspun yarn (a skein of Merino and that skein of Coopworth that I just finished) to dye them with some of the things growing in my yard! Or in a park that isn't too far away. I'm using alum and cream of tartar as my mordants. They seem to be the easiest mordants to find - both you can find in the baking aisle of the grocery store with all the spices.

I'll be using some Black Eyed Susan flowers to dye the Coopworth, and sunflowers to dye the Merino. The Black Eyed Susans are from a local park. I filled a grocery bag with flower heads and I'm pretty sure that there's no way to tell I was even there... There are bushes of these flowers all over that park! The sunflowers are from my own yard. They are starting to die back a little bit now, like some of the heads are done for the year. They have been great for bee attraction, I want to see how I like them for dyeing too! I also have some marigolds in the garden that I'm itching to use as a natural dye. I actually saved some of the marigold heads from the garden last year to dye with, but I haven't had the courage!

Have any of you done any natural dyeing? Any tips for the whole process for me? Anything I should keep an eye on?

Wordless Wednesday

Breed Study: Coopworth

You can find out a lot by using Google. Unfortunately, you can also find the holes in information online by using Google. Coopworth is a breed that I started out not knowing anything about. What's the heritage of the sheep? What kind of wool is it? What are good traits in a Coopworth sheep? What colors do they come in? 

Did you know that there are different Coopworth registry systems and standards? There's the Coopworth Society of New Zealand, the Coopworth Sheep Society of North America, and the American Coopworth Registry, and the Australian Coopworth standards... lots! And each one has their own ideas of what the breed traits are. Overall, the breed is known for high productivity. Coopworths can have different types of fiber depending on where they're from. Micron count ranges from 30 - 39. Some fleeces might be soft enough to be worn next to the skin for some people, while on the whole it isn't going to be as soft as Merino, BFL, or Cormo. Think harder wearing outerwear type garments for this sheep breed. 

Coopworth sample cards - carded waste on front card, combed top on back card

I began my Coopworth exploration by sampling. Standard staple length is 5 - 8 inches, which is a bit long for carding. I used a set of borrowed combs and combed all the fiber that I had. I started with about 200 grams of washed fleece. I combed and ended up with about 170 grams of combed top. That means that there was about 30 grams of combing waste. I feel like that's a pretty acceptable amount of waste! But, my exploration wasn't over! I decided to card the waste and see how much it changed the feel of the finished yarn from combed top to carded waste. 

carded waste on top, combed top on bottom

The yarn from the combed top is nice and smooth, while the yarn from the carded rolag is all hairy and has a few slubs. It isn't as slubby as I was expecting, but it definitely doesn't feel as nice. For a fiber that has a micron count between 30 and 39, I definitely prefer the yarn from the combed top. The prickle factor is much lower on the yarn from the combed top. 

In my sampling of the combed top, I wrapped a length of singles, a length of 2 ply, and a length of 3 ply around my little sample card. Based on my sampling I decided that I liked the 2 ply the best.

The fiber was a nicely bouncy fiber to comb. I loved the crimp in this bit of fleece, and thought that the fiber was both floofy and spongy at the same time. Spinning the fiber was a pleasure. I think that it would be a good beginner's fiber - there is definitely some toothiness to the fiber, but not enough that it is uncomfortable. I spun the singles with a moderate amount of twist, made a center pull ball, and plied it back on itself with a barely higher than necessary twist than the singles called for. I wanted to make sure that the yarn didn't get rough and ropy. 

I ended up with about 320 yards of heavy fingering/light sport weight yarn out of the 109 grams that I spun. I'll be sending 60 grams of combed top and 25 grams of carded waste rolags to one of my friends so she can experiment with Coopworth too! I can't wait to hear what she thinks of it.