pixie takes a hike (or, samplings of samplings)

I have a spindolyn sitting by almost every place I sit down in my cabin. I call them my little “head clearers”
They are “in progress” testing of two things, a sort of sampling and sampling. Some are sampling the spindolyn prototype itself, some are sampling the fleece or blend.

I like to make blends, blends of fiber even more than blends of color, and that is a lot. I am very blendy, I guess, and so could call my spindles “mind blenders”

Anyway, sometimes the samples become part of a big project, sometimes they become part of the little balls of fibery goodness sitting around in baskets, calling out wistfully as I pass my glance over them, “if there were only more of me, you could make a shawl or a sweater”.

And sometimes, I hear them singing in soulful voices “all of me, why not take all of me”

hmmmm.

So when all of me is not very much, you have to think small. Pixie size small.

So, here is a sampled blend of cotswold and jacob rump fleece for pixie hair and beard. A sampled blend of space dyed merino and nylon for the hat and a sampled blend of gray romney and overdyed gray romney for the little sweater.

This pixie himself is a hiker pixie, I carved his little face, and body (the body is cedar) and his arms and legs are a bendable wire armature and tennessee river cane. The problem is, he lost his hiking stick, so as time permits, I really need to take him out into the woods to find a new one.

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Look what the stork brought!

Not really, but when you work on and work out a design that takes more time and revision than you expected, when it finally falls together it feels somewhat like a birth. Not all designs are like that. Some you say “yes, that is nice, that works, I like it” and some you say, “wow, this is precious” and you gaze fondly and proudly upon it like a newborn puppy. Ok, so that sounds a little extreme, but I love this new spindolyn design.

I had thought about calling it the “Rubato” staying with the musical theme, but then I reconsidered presenting it as a restricted “type” because I like this base the best and then it occured to me that it would be nice to offer all the bases and spindles mix and match. So I will be revising the website soon to reflect that…but back to the new spindle.

The base is called the cubio style, the spindolyn is the new “mezzo” it is a nice size and weight in between the tenor and the soprano, and spins lovely. They are seen here in walnut.

Unlike the other spindle base styles, which are lap only, and not table top. This new cube base allows you to use it on the table, at an angle. The angle is a trade off, it slows down the spin, but gives you a longer and more comfortable draft angle for your arm. This cube style allows you to draft out to the side, reducing arm fatigue and overhead clearance. The square base can be set at a variety of angles in the crook of your lap; straight up for faster spinning, at an angle for more leisurely spinning.

Wheeeeeee!!!

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Work, the curse of the dyeing woman!

It happens every year at this time (at least for the last 30)

I start to notice all kinds of natural dye sources around the farm or wherever I be outdoors. The golden rod is in full bloom, the pokeberries are ripe, as are the elderberries. The morning glories are wound around every spent cornstalk and the marigolds are just flat out loaded.

I want to start collecting, and stuffing gallon jars, and mordanting wool, and generally making a mess of the tiny back porch and tiny kitchen. But this is also a busy time for getting ready for winter in more practical areas, firewood, hay, hoof trimming, manure spreading, garden bed clean up, row cover repair and so forth. Not to mention getting things ready for festivals, harvesting spindle making and trying to make a living.

But really, it makes sense that the color lust would peak just when the natural dye materials are ready to harvest, because there is a whole winter of spinning and knitting ahead and it would be nice to have our colors already dyed and ready at hand.

It strikes me so hard, that even when I am doing something else, like getting firewood, I think about it…as here

…this piece of bark that I peeled off of a black oak log, to save the inner bark for a bright yellow dye, or this shelf fungus growing on it…does it make a dye, too, I wonder?

But there is not really time to experiment with it, and these things will just pile up around the porch, little aborted projects to be swept off the porch come spring time.

This year, I have succumbed to the calling of color with a 5 minute dash around the yard clipboard and paper in hand, to get a quickie fix of natural color.

I visited the red cypress vine, dark purple morning glories, pokeberries, goldenrod, pink butterfly bush, marigolds and giant knotweed.

I grabbed a flower from each and rubbed a smudge of it on the paper, and this is what I got.

Now what I find interesting about this is that, it is kinda what you would expect. ‘Course, there is no mordant, no heating, etc, but see how the knotweed flowers, which where bright pink, yielded blue (indicating the indigo in this species) and the pink butterfly bush flowers, did not make pink, but made a green/yellow streak, which is what they would dye, and the orange marigold flowers made a bright yellow.

No, no time for wool, but it was a fun 5 minute color fix!

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autumn creeping in

Funny how fall is at once a really busy time, festivals, harvest, school starting back, and yet it has a kind of slow and lazy overtone to it.

I am trying to get my fall garden in and the last of my summer things put up, but on the side table are 3 almost full spindolyns with a different fiber on each (cotswold, gray angora, and brown alpaca.

When I come in for a rest and a glass of water, one or the other fiber calls to me and I spin a wee little while, just enjoying the process. It is like I am not in any particular hurry to get enough of one thing or another spun, but just enjoying the process in the gradually slanting sun.

The alpaca came from KY at a farmers swap meet. It is lovely and wonderful to spin…

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plying on the spindolyn (a little more about)

A customer recently sent me this email (thank you Judy for asking and prompting me to post)

“I am wondering if anyone has tried plying with two spindolyns. I'm thinking that I could spin singles on both spindolyns and then ply directly from them onto another spindle. That would eliminate winding the singles off the spindolyn. I would probably need to have beanbags for both spindolyns so that they wouldn't tip over. It seems so simple that I'm sure someone must have tried it. Do you know if this would work well? “

Thanks,
Judy

The answer is yes, it can be done and is a method I use often, but I have not talked about it much because I assume that most people don’t have 3 spindolyn bases and a beanbag for each (though many spinners do have one base and two or more extra spindles to go with it) Also, plying is one of those “best practices vs. whatever get’s it done” skills, and I don’t want to advocate a method that might get the “plying police” after me. So with disclaimers included (and following) here is one way that I ply off of the spindolyns.

In the picture above, I have placed the spindles on a chair in front of me, so that you can see them in the photo, but normally, they would be on the floor in front or to the side of me. The more distance you have between your source of singles, and the plying spindle, the more you will be able to use your hands to control the twist of the yarns coming together. The bases are sitting propped in the beanbags so that they lean on an angle and the yarn can feed off of the cop without getting caught on the hook. Also, I normally spin in a kicked back position, with the spindle more stuck in the crook of my knee, but in order to juggle the camera in one hand and get everything else in the view finder, I have to sort of place things awkwardly.

Another disclaimer, yes, that is a high whorl spindolyn you see in the photo. It is a prototype that I have been testing, to be called the “Octavia” It does spin nicely, but it’s drawback is does not feed off as nicely in this arrangement as the other spindolyn you see in the picture, which is also another prototype I am testing (possibly to be called the “piccolo”) But y’all aren’t supposed to notice those yet<g>

Here you can see how I hold my hand when plying, with each strand tensioned as you see, to give me control of the angle and amount of twist in the ply.

Now for the other disclaimers: "best practices in plying" encourage you to wind off your singles so that you can rewind them in a tidy and consistent fashion to better prepare them for proper plying. Also, some even wind, then re-wind one again, so that the two sources have two different directions of end presentation imitate the "ply back upon itself" natural tendency of overspun.

But, sometimes, you are not after perfection, you are after the "git er done" satisfaction.

With that approach in mind, I also have been working on a lazy kate type base to put the spindles in for plying so that you don’t have to have multiple bases, sort of like this.

But it still needs the following: for me to find an affordable and nearby source for wider wood. The wooden base has to compromise between stability and portability, as well as shipping weight. It needs more experimentation on the correct angle, and some sort of wire guide (which might not be as necessary, if i don’t release the high whorl spindolyn, it is the recalcitrant one that really needs a guide.)

And you thought I was just laying around on the beach idle this summer?

Meanwhile, all the R and D has been conducted with some old (maybe 9 years?) drum carded Romney fleece I found in a bag in the bottom of an antique trunk of mine. It is from my old favorite sheep of my long ago and misty past “Maggie” and I still like spinning her the best.

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pic-a-nic, spin-a-nic and a knit-a-nic surprise

So several weeks back (well before the independence holiday) we decided that what we badly needed was a getaway, a quick overnight vacation. Camping, on the Cumberland River, and a day of rest, relaxation and kayaking. We threw tent, food, bedding and the inflatable kayaks in the back of the station wagon, checked the availability of our chosen campground from the Army Corp of Engineers website and headed out.

I did not have any particular spinning or knitting project in progress that I was emotionally involved in, and didn’t know what to take, so spur of the moment, I distractedly tossed in some stuff off of the shelf of my office into the closest available vessel, which happened to be an insulated cooler/picnic tote and tossed it in with the lifejackets and snorkels.

.

I won’t get in to the horrors of bureaucracy, ill mannered people and corrupted campground hosts, but the bottom line was that the hosts were illegally saving all the “good spots” for friends of theirs and even though we had chosen a “no reservation, walk in only, first come first serve day” to camp, we did not end up staying.

It was all for the best, as we spent a leisurely afternoon kayaking in an isolated cove, bird-watching, instead, and we were able to get back home and get up early to start back to work refreshed, which was the point, anyway.

Just as quickly as we packed, I tossed all of the camping gear back into the barn and the small stuff back into the corner of the cabin, and there sat the cooler with the fiber supplies in it, forgotten. Until yesterday. While looking for my tall, snake and chigger deterring rubber berry picking boots, I noticed the cooler and said to myself…hey, maybe I could pick blackberries into this, wonder if the stains would wash out…

Imagine my surprise upon opening the zipper only to find this great stash of fiber fun possibilities!

I set the cooler beside my evening chair, and last night, I had this lovely toy box all ready to dive into.

Maybe I should hide my projects intentionally from myself (instead of accidentally) because I got a lot of “cheap thrill” mileage out of the re-discovery of the contents.

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