Indigo

Published by Leslie on September 20th, 2011 - in Feature, Spinning, sustainability, writing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Several months back I bought this braid of merino/yak blend fiber from A Verb for Keeping Warm. The faint blue tinge is a light indigo overdye, and while the fiber has sat pretty much untouched since my original purchase, I’m much more inclined to spin it up now that the new Colorways is out. I contributed an article on indigo-bearing plants around the world, an assignment that gave me a much greater appreciation for the indigo dyeing process as well as tested my French skills (a primary source for my information was Dominique Cardon’s excellent Le monde de teintures naturelles, and impossible to find in an English translation in Ottawa).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looks like nice stuff, doesn’t it? If it turns out well I might send it to Rhinebeck.

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McCall’s 3341 – A-line skirt

Published by Leslie on August 17th, 2011 - in Feature, sewing, sustainability



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For my first non-bag/not-made-in-a-class sewing project, I picked McCall’s 3341, View C, a simple knee-length A-line skirt. At first I wanted to take a class on making a lined skirt, but thanks to the multitude of blogs and online tutorials on the subject I decided to jump in on my own. I certainly learned a lot with this project: how to make a lining (the pattern is for an unlined skirt), how to put in darts, and how to grade seams and clip curves so my facings would lie flatter. Not that I was entirely successful in all of this; here you’ll see my control of straight lines leaves something to be desired:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I did get a bit sloppy with my seams and didn’t finish the edges. Nor was I aware of understitching, and instead I sewed the facing directly to the lining. I’m actually quite happy with the result, but I’ll try understitching on my next project.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I also learned that, as with knitting, sewing your own clothes does not save you any money. The prevalence of cheap, likely unethically produced clothing ensures that one can almost always buy a ready-made product for much less than the cost of making it from scratch. The fabric for this project–quilting cotton for the skirt itself, and cotton voile for the lining–was at least discounted, having been found after a few good digs through the cramped bargain basements of local fabric shops. Because of the nature of mass textile production, it’s much harder to stick to ideals of sustainability when it comes to sewing, at least if you can’t afford to spend $50/m on organic, minimally processed cotton. Compromise is inevitable, unless you have the time to spin and weave your own fabric (not likely to happen, at least with my current lifestyle).

My next project may involve drafting my own pattern. The size 14 (that’s a dressmaker’s size, mind, not a rack size) fit well enough, but it’s still made for a generic body type and could of course fit better. Being short, I should have made View D, as View C originally came pretty far down my calves and was subject to some rather severe hemming. There are a couple of Burda and Vogue patterns I’d like to make as well, but I’ll probably alter them. What I’d really like is to take a class or two in tailoring and learn how to make truly well-fitting clothes for myself. After all, if I’m going to go to all the trouble of making something myself, it at least ought to fit better than a piece off the rack, right?

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Best Handspun Yarn at Pagosa Springs

Published by Leslie on August 1st, 2011 - in Awards, competition, Feature, skein competition how-to, Spinning

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This past May I entered the skein competition at the Pagosa Springs Fiber Festival in Colorado. Pagosa is a small festival but they run an excellent skein competition with prestigious judges. This year was no exception, featuring Joan Ruane and Ric Rao at the judging table. I was thrilled not only to receive very thoughtful and detailed comments for my entry, but the Best Handspun Yarn award as well:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Both the skein and garment competitions award a pewter medal and a braided horsehair necklace to the top entries. It’s a beautiful piece and lists the honors on the reverse:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m really happy with the outcome, but I also learned a lesson about cross-border shipping. Although I included return USPS postage, the competition organizers decided to ship it back to me via UPS, presumably to reduce the chance it would be lost in the mail or sit for ages in a warehouse during the Canada Post lockout. While I appreciate the intention, I ended up paying an exorbitant brokerage fee to UPS to get my package delivered. Next time, and for any future competitions, I’m including a note asking the organizer to send my skeins back via USPS only.

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WWKIP at The Purple Purl

Published by Leslie on June 23rd, 2011 - in Knitting, Spinning, travel, yarn stores

In a few short weeks, I’ll be moving to Toronto. This past weekend I did a quick trip there and back (swearing for most of the 5+ hour drive that my next car will have air conditioning) to look at apartments, and I’m happy to say I found one. I also stopped by The Purple Purl, whose annual Knit in Public event coincided with my arrival in the GTA. I brought a knitting project and a drop spindle, of course, and joined the gathering in a nice park in Leslieville.

I was the only one spinning, as most of the attendees were working on projects to benefit Streetknit. I had to decline because I couldn’t meet the project deadline (thanks again for the convenient strike, Canada Post), but got a fair bit of work done on my started-last-winter-legwarmers and some spinning up of a Projekt B roving I picked up in Montreal in December. I’d been wanting to spin a really high-quality Merino since I finished my Focused-and-Distracted skein last fall, and Projekt B fit the bill.

I had a lot of fun interacting with the Purple Purl regulars, not to mention the lovely owners. We talked about vintage magazines, spinning (of course), neighbourhoods in Toronto, and I’m fairly sure Battlestar Galatica got a mention in there too. There were also some door prizes, one of which I picked up for being the furthest travelled of the group:

I was almost out of Soak anyway, so score. Thanks, Purple Purl… can’t wait to come back in a few weeks!

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Let’s call it a learning experience

Published by Leslie on May 28th, 2011 - in Feature, spindle, Spinning, supported spindle

I’ve been spending some time working with my Russian-style spindle. The more I use it, the more I like spinning in the supported style. It didn’t take long before I was able to spin a consistent yarn, the key being not too add to much twist too soon: add a little twist, draft, add a little more, draft. Putting into too much twist at first (which you can get away with if you’re using a short worsted draw) results in thick and weak slubs.

I picked up some 50/50 camel/yak roving in Vancouver a few weeks ago, the blend being the only short-stapled fibre at Birkeland Brothers. As you can see, it really is quite short (sorry metric fans, I still measure staples in inches):

I carded the roving into light, airy rolags and spun from them. I was initially pretty pleased with the two-ply skein I made:

It’s feather-light and very soft. Unfortunately, it’s also very weak. Even the plied yarn pulls apart with little effort, meaning that I need to add way more twist in both spinning and plying. I’ve been told supported spindling of short fibres requires a lot of twist, but I hesitated to add too much more after drafting for fear of it becoming harsh and wiry. Lesson learned there. I started to knit a small swatch and made an interesting discovery:

This is what’s left of my swatch after I frogged it in frustration. See how each stitch looks like it’s knit from two strands held together? That’s the ply untwisting as it’s being knit. The action of knitting adds twist to yarn and depending which direction the yarn is plied (and which way you knit, Continental versus English or other methods), the plies will either tighten up or become looser with each stitch. Backing up a bit here, yarn can be spun in one of two directions: S or Z, so named because the twist will align with the middle part of each letter. Plying is done in the opposite direction, so if you spin S, you will ply Z. I don’t usually pay attention to whether I’m spinning S and plying Z or vice versa, but in this weak yarn it really made a difference. Although it’s a little hard to tell in the photo, you can see the ply twist in this yarn is S:

Which means that I originally spun it Z. If I were to make another yarn like this one, I’d spin S and ply Z, and add a lot more twist overall!

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New (old) toy

Published by Leslie on April 12th, 2011 - in Feature, spindle, Spinning, supported spindle

It’s been a busy few weeks. Between graduate school interviews and the accompanying travel, not to mention work and more work, I haven’t exactly had time to update the blog. I have been getting some spinning in, however, especially on my supported spindles. Yes, plural. Technically I have three now, between the Grippingyarn Russian-style, the brass takhli, and now an antique Bulgarian number I got for a pittance on eBay:

(Somewhat diminished photo capabilities at the moment. My DIY lightbox, which consists of a cardboard box, tissue paper, and a sheet of Bristol board, suffered an attack by the small carnivores I keep in my house. It’ll be rebuilt soon.)

It’s pretty big, maybe as long as my hand and forearm, but surprisingly light. No idea what kind of wood it is, but like most Bulgarian spindles it has painted green, red, and blue stripes. I’m not sure if they serve a purpose other than decoration, but it’s possible they indicate how far to build up the cop of spun yarn. Interesting too is the little knob on the end:

Some supported spindles have grooves cut into the knob for the yarn to sit in as one spins, but not this one. It may still be a means of keeping the yarn in place as the spindle turns. I’m really starting to get the hang of supported spindling now, whereas before I really struggled with it. The epiphany moment was realizing I shouldn’t add so much twist before I begin drafting. With a short worsted draw on a drop spindle or a wheel, I might pack in a lot of twist at first, then let it into my drafted fiber a little at a time. The one-handed drafting needed for a support spindle doesn’t allow for this, and the fiber drafts much more easily if only a little twist is going into it at a time. Now I know to twirl the spindle a bit, draft a little, twirl some more, draft a bit more, etc.

Fiber preparation also matters a lot if you want a smooth yarn. Smooth prep equals a consistent yarn, anything yields lumps and slubs and thin spots. I really prefer prepping the fiber myself, but I’ve managed with a heavily predrafted commercial Coopworth roving:

All in all, I really enjoy supported spindling. Possibly even more than drop spindling. Perhaps a little more than spinning with a wheel!

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Sewing Techniques class

Published by Leslie on March 16th, 2011 - in sewing

Given that I’ve had my sewing machine for just over two months, I was really looking forward to my class on basic techniques at a quilting store in Orleans. My main interest in sewing is making clothes, but most classes on making a garment fall well outside my price range. I’m at the point in sewing that I was in knitting about eleven years ago: everything is new and intimidating and seems beyond my ability. I just can’t afford to pay $300 to learn to make a skirt, though, so I figured the next best thing was to learn some common techniques and then take a stab at a simple pattern myself.

It was an all-day class on a slushy wet day, so I was grateful to pull off my boots and sit down with my coffee and get started. Although the class was based on the step-by-step exercises in a published workbook, the instructor brought so much more to the course than I could ever have gotten out of a DIY book. Carol Voyer-Terrien has over forty years of sewing experience and seemed to have a tip or shortcut for everything, whether it was buttonholes or working with stretchy fabric or certain stitches.


Carol demonstrating a technique on my machine

As is frequently the case in Ottawa, we had a mix of English- and French-speakers in the class. Most of the instruction was in English but I was able to learn some sewing and textile vocabulary in French by listening to Carol converse with the Francophones. I also learned that you can’t use Janome’s overlock foot with a straight stitch:

At the end of the day I’d amassed a stack of successful and sort-of successful samples. I need more work on a few things, but now I can confidently put in a zipper (my main goal), make buttonholes, create gathers, and sew ribbing to knit fabric on a curve:

I picked up some cotton on sale after the class, and an A-line skirt pattern the next day. I also encouraged Carol to consider offering classes on sewing clothing–there was definitely interest among the students, and I’d love to learn more from someone with her kind of training and experience. Once I pick up some cotton voile for the lining (possibly on a trip to NY this weekend), I’ll get started on that skirt.

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