It's the Little Things: Soap

I don't know about you but all the events in the world are getting me down, all the politics, the heath crisis, inevitible family issues, work deadlines and travel. One thing or even two would be ok, but all of it, and the relentless pace that it's unendingly shoved at us has me feeling ground down.

To help lift my mood I've started noticing little things that make me happy. I can't be the only one feeling this way, so I'm going to share some of my little things with you every once in a while.

I've been traveling quite a bit the past three years, and the feeling that comes with living in and out of hotel rooms is hard. I bring jammies, my essential oils, and other things that make a ultiliatrian room feel homey. But it's the soap that really lifts my spirits.

My friend Greg once said to me that when he travels the first thing he does is buy himself delicious smelling soap to use in the hotel. I've been doing this for a couple of years and it make such a difference to my stays.

I don't smell like a hotel, I can buy super moisurizing soap, the smell of the soap permiates my whole room, and greets me at the end of long days.

Right now I'm a fan of Zum soap sandalwood-citrus and Dr. Bronner's almond.

What's fun is the hunt for soap. There's always a friend at any event that's willing to go shopping for snacks and soap. It makes me happy to connect with a friend as well as feel pampered by my new soap.

I've Been On the Road

I have been on the the road since the beginning of the year. I’ve criss-crossed the country and taught some amazing students in some great places.

In January I taught for Weavers and Spinners Society of Austin. We spun lots of color and built intentional yarns. I had students that were excited to do all the things, and one even knitted her drafted together samples into a color work swatch.

The folks in Austin showed me the town. It’s changed a lot since I lived there ten years ago, but still feels homey. I ate brisket and mole, may have bought a pair of boots, and hung out at Hill Country. There was a lot of talk about weaving over the weekend; I’ve really got the itch, now I need the time.

I taught at Vogue Knitting Live! Those are words I never thought I’d say, and it was a blast.

My students spun a lot of fiber and asked the most detailed questions. I want to come back (maybe next year) and teach for several groups in the city and Long Island.

The marketplace was huge, it was hard to get around to see all of booths. There were displays, fashion shows, talks, and the best informal gatherings.

I wandered the city with friends. I ate a lot of pastry, went to a weaving show at the MOMA and might have bought a new fountain pen in Soho.

Red Alder Fiber Arts Retreat was this past weekend. Red Alder is in the same space, at the same time of year that Madrona used to be, but is 100% it’s own unique event. Everyone was excited to be there, and participate to the fullest. Please check out the Red Alder account on Instagram to see the Disco for charity.

My students were curious about so many things, they spun and knit, and asked enough questions that we had to take field trips into the Marketplace to clarify fiber things.

More people poured words into my ears about weaving. I think I need to go to a weaving retreat or bootcamp next year. I spent my down time with Janine Bajus, Rebecca Mezoff, Judith Makenzie, and Clara Parkes. There’s one thing for sure, when teachers get together they plan things. I’ve got many new things coming up and slow cooking. I’ll let you know as soon as I can.

Now I need to rest a bit before I start teaching again. Be sure to check out my teaching calendar for the rest of the year, and come and take a class!

Teaching for the Rest of 2020

Folks have been asking where I'm teaching this year. Here are the dates and events I can talk about.

• March 28-29: Buffalo, New York Spinning Guild
• April 14-18: PLY Away 5, Kansas City, Missouri
• April 29- May 1: Maryland Sheep & Wool
• May 8-9: Great Basin Fiber Arts Fair, Salt Lake City, Utah
• June 22-26: Spinning and Tapestry with Rebecca Mezoff, Colorado State Mountain Campus
• July 15- 19: This one is still a secret
• August 2-8: Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts
• September 25-25: Prairie Handspinners Fiber Fest, Billings, Montana
• October 13-15 Hudson Valley Workshops, Kingston, New York

Plus I teach knitting classes locally at SPUN in Ann Arbor.

I have updated my teaching calendar here on my site, and I'll update any class information there.

In 2021 I won't be teaching as much, probably half of what I've done the past few years. I'm planning some good stuff and need time to work on it.

I hope to spin with you this year!

Sample Along Week Six: What Happened and How to Use It

First let me say thank you to everyone that spun and knit along in our Sample Along! I hope you found it fun, interesting and a mellow way to get into the spin of 2020.

This is my last post for this Sample Along, unless you have specific questions for me.

So, what happened with our colors when we divided and spun our braid in different ways, and how can we use what we see to help predict futire braid spinning?

First look back at your original braid opened and lined up with the colors matching. Do they match up? If they do then your braid was dyed in a pattern. For this Sample Along, it doesn't matter what type of a pattern (there are several, but that's for a deeper dig into braid spinning), if there is a pattern you can do some predicting. If the dye is put on the braid randomly, the color on your yarn and knitting will come out randomly.

Now look at your colors. When I look at mine I see that there is a lot more blue and gold than red and green, and there is more gold than blue, so those colors will dominate my yarn. There is a vareity of colors, rather than just a braid dyed lighter or darker versions of one color, say shades of purple from lavender to violet. When your colors are shades of the same color, a range of purples, your yarn and knitting will look more semi solid.

When we divide our braids in different ways and ply them together we’re rearranging how the colors line up. That’s all. But you can predict generally what will happen, if you start noticing what happens in your spinning (and swatching!).

Look at my swatches, top to bottom, As It Comes, Flipped, Fractal, and Drafted Together.

I know my As It Comes will be the most matched up color-wise of my samples. Sometimes I make this one match all the way, by breaking out colors that are going on too long. The matching depends on how evenly you split your fiber and how consistently you spin. I am neither even, nor consistent, so I break and splice my colors when they are uneven, if I want a match.

My Flipped lines up my colors so they marl (barber pole) throughout. Usually I get some solid striping thrown in too, but not this time.

Fractal is a gem of a spin. One ply keeps the size of each color in the pattern long, and the second ply with stripped fiber has short runs of color. When plied together the colors match up occasionally, and more narrowly than if you were matching.

The knitted fabric looks like stripes within stripes. I think it’s exciting and a more sophisticated (for lack of a better word) look than matched striping.

Drafted Together creates a double marl. The colors are marled in the single as you draft them together, and then again when you ply them. The effect is tweedy, speckled. Because my fiber is heavy on two colors, it is tweedy, but still striped. When the colors are more evenly weighted the striping can all but disappear like in this red, pink, green sample.

Notice a couple of things in these samples and yours. The more different colors touch, the more the overall color brightness gets turned down. Your eyes are trying to make new colors where colors touch.

The other thing to notice is all of these samples look different, but similar, and would go together marvelously in a single project. That is something I really want to explore this year.

Did any of your feel like swatching was fun? If not fun, useful? There’s no real way to see how a yarn will look knitted, unless you knit it.

These four yarns are just scratching the surface of what can be done with a braid, we haven’t even talked about more than two plies or combining a braid with other colors or other braids.

Let me know what you learned from the Sample Along, and which yarn was your favorite spin.

Do you want to do this again later in the year? Shoot me your ideas for topics.

Happy spinning!

Sample Along Week Five: Swatches

Top to bottom: As It Comes, Flipped, Fractal, and Drafted Together (Combo Drafting).

If you have spun your yarn and finished it in your favorite way, it's time to knit.

Yes, yes I know swatching is the worst, but you really can't see what's going on with your yarn until your knit it.

Take a look at my samples. I like to knit mine in a long strip, or connectting squares, so I don't lose them.

Top to bottom: As It Comes, Flipped, Fractal, and Drafted Together (Combo Drafting).

If you don't want to knit squares, (mine strip is 30 stitches with 2 on each edge knit in garter) you could do what Joanne of Slatedstitches on Insta is doing, knit four fraternal socks!

Knit your swatches, and look at the different ways that the colors match up or don't. Some you will like more than others; I'm sure there will be one that you are very excited about.

Very few folk's yarns in the Sample Along will match. How the colors line up have to do with the dyes pattern on the fiber, the size of your yarn and the consistancy of your spinning.

I'll walk through my yarns and swatches next week in our Sample Along wrap up.

I hope you are having fun with our Sample Along!

Sample Along Week Four: Last Spinning

Has everyone caught up with their spinning?

Fractal Spin, L, and Draft Together, R.

If you haven't, it's 100% ok, this is a go-at-you-own-speed Sample Along. You can spin whenever you have time, or not at all. Even if you just follow along looking at folks process pictures and yarns, you will learn about spinning braids.

These posts will stay on my blog if you ever want to go back and do the Sample Along at your own pace.

This week I'm talking about our last two yarns, Fractal and Draft Together (or Combo Drafting).

I first heard about Fractal spinning in an article in Spin Off in 2007, The Fractal Stripe, by Janel Laidman. Spinners had been using the technique, but she gave it a cool name and really broke it down.

Fractal spinning brings two ideas together.

One from nature (and math), a fractal is a pattern that stays the same as it gets smaller. My favorite example is a tree branch. A branch starts thick and gets smaller and smaller, with the pattern of the branch looking the same, as it brances out.

The other idea is from spinning. When you have a painted braid, every time it's divided vertically (longways) the color gets shorter (smaller). So a braid dyed in a pattern, divided vertically, becomes a fractal.

It becomes lovely yarn and knitted fabric, when we juxapose, through plying, a long color repeat, with a short one. It creates stripes within stripes, breaking up the hard striping of many painted braids.

Here's an easy way to do it in a 2-ply yarn. There are many, many ways to play with fractals in spinning, varied fiber divisions, different dye patterns, different numbers of plys. This is a starter fractal, just to get an idea of how it works.

Take one of your fiber nests and split it in half longways (vertically). Set one half aside, this is going to be one ply, spun from one end to the other.

The second helf of your nest gets divided further, longways, into four strips. The length of each color in these strips is much shorter in the than the half that was kept intact. These strips get spun, end to end, one after another on the same bobbin starting with the same color.

Anytime I want it indicate to myself "start here" when I want ot start with a particular end of a braid, I knot it. I use a loose overhand knot, it has saved me so much time and raking through my mind to trying to figure out what it is I wanted to do.

My absolutle favorite color manipulation for a braid is Drafting Together, also called Combo Drafting. I first heard about this from Felicia Lo and have been doing it for years, I just can't stop.

It makes a braid that would be striped in knitted fabric, if you spun it to match or As It Comes into a tweedy looking fabric. If you spin your yarn very fine it takes the tweedy bits to heather, much more blended.

Here’s how I do it. I divide the fiber vertically into strips about one finger wide. I hold 2 strips together with each starting at a different spot in the colorway. Set up the colors like we did for flipped, but narrower strips to help the drafting process.

When I spin, I overlap strips of fiber slightly and draft together as one fiber. It may take a little practice, but the results are worth it. It's ok if one of the strips falls away. Just pick it up and start where you are. The whole point of this is to mix up the colors.

What happens is a marl is created in the singles.

You can see the difference looking at a regularly spun bobbin on the left and a Drafted Together bobbin on the right, and in the close up of the Drafted Together bobbin, far right.

When you ply two Drafted Together bobbins together you are creating a double marl with lots of speckles.

This technique is infinate, it's the one thing most everyone in my color classes loves. You can draft together, solids, braids and solids, neutrals, two or more different braids, and add as many plies as you like.

Let's spin!

Fractal Spin, L, and Draft Together, R.

Remember you can ask any questions here or email me.

Next week, we'll talk swatches, and look at the differences between the yarns in knitting.

Sample Along Week Three: Keeping Track

Have you peeked at all of the gorgeous fiber and yarn that’s on Instagram #samplealong?

Everyone seems to be having fun!

This week I’m going to talk a little about how I keep track of sampling. Sample Along spinners can spin their second yarn at a leisurely pace, or new spinners can join in if they haven’t started.

I don’t plan to take these blog posts down, so you can always reference them, and it ‘s never too late to join the #samplealong.

I have some favorite tools I use to keep track when I sample, but they may not work for you. The best advice I can give about keeping track is - find something that works for you.

I aspire to keeping track in a clean minimalist way, with spread sheets, and elegant binders. It will never happen. I’m a sharpie, tag, ziploc bag kind of woman. Once I figured that out, I actually started keeping better track of my yarns and spins.

I will never be without, sharpies, hangtags, and Tyvek.

My favorite hangtags are these giant ones from Avery. They list them as : Avery® Shipping Tags, Reinforced Hole, Manila, 4-3/4" x 2-3/8", 100 Tags (11005).

I like them because I can keep a whole lot of information in one place, including a sample of my single and a ply-back sample.

I hang my tag on my wheel and periodically check my singles, instead of using a wpi gauge or spinner’s control card, and my twist with the ply-back sample.

These are not water resistant and can’t go through the finishing process with your yarn.

I write all kinds of things on my tags, front and back. The project or what I’m sampling for, wheel, whorl, draft, fiber, dyer, colorway, any color manipulation, and a wpi range.

I’ve started listing what I’m watching when I spin becasue when friends ask, ‘What are you watching?’ I can’t remember the name, but I remember my spin. FYI Discovery of Witches is as slow as the book, and the actors have little chemistry. Avatar: The Last Airbender (animated) is as great on the 15th watch as it was on the first.

When I finish plying a yarn, I tag it before i take it off of the niddy noddy, or I’ll forget. I use Tyvek wrist bands. I get mine from Wrsitco.

It varies how much information I put on the these tags. Definitely the project, and the particular spin. I sometimes go back and add other information like wpi and yards per pound.

These will not come off even through a hard finish or dyeing. I even leave these on when I knit my swatches.

Eventually my samples and swatches end up in a ziploc bag(s), and then all of the samples for a project get put together in a cardboard box, that gets marked and stored in my basement.

For me, everything is easy to find for referencing.

How do you keep track of your sampling?

Next week I’ll be walking through our last two yarns, a Fractal, and a Drafted Together.

Sample Along Week Two: Let's Spin!

As It Comes, L; Flipped, R

Yay, it's time to start spinning!

Over the next two weeks find some time to spin two yarns, As It Comes and Flipped. I'll talk about both of them this week, and you can decide when (and if) you want to spin them.

The first yarn is one that I call As It Comes. If you have a better name for this let me know, it seems to make sense only to me.

Grab one of your nests of fiber, split it longways into two strips. Spin each piece on it's own bobbin, starting with the same color, and then ply them together.

This one is just a relaxing spin. It's the way I spin most freqently, I split my braid, spin two singles and ply them. I don't worry about the colors matching up or not. I'm just spinning the fiber as it comes - that's where the name comes from.

Be sure to finish and tag your yarn.

The colors match in some places and not in others, and I quite like it. This yarn is like wearing my favorite baggy linen pants, comfy and suitable for all occasions.

If you are a very consistant spinning (I'm not) your colors may match the whole length of the yarn, and that's ok too.

This yarn is the baseline for our samples, we'll compare the others to this one.

Go, spin a mellow yarn. Are you watching anything good? Or wonderfully bad?

The second yarn is Flipped. Take fiber nest number two, split it in half lengthwise. Spin one piece starting with the color at one end, spin the second piece starting with a different color in the colorway.

What works for me a lot of the time is to flip the second piece of fiber. When you hold the fiber in your hands to divide it, let's call the end you start with the top, and the end you finsh the strip with is the tail. Spin one single starting with the top and one starting with the tail, the second single is flipped color-wise.

If I'm working with a colorway that starts and ends with the same color, I break off the top color of the second strip, and start that single with the second color in the colorway. Sometimes I add the broken off color randomly in between other colors, sometimes I put it in my batt making pile.

Then ply your singles together, finsih and tag them.

What the Flipped style of spining does to your yarn is shift the colors, so they come together in a different pattern than the As It Comes yarn.

As It Comes. L; Flipped, R

Here's a close up of the two yarns side by side. When they are knit, they will look similar, but not quite the same, which I like.

Notice that the Flipped yarn is more speckled, but notice that it also seems a little duller, color-wise than As It Comes yarn. The more frequently different colors touch, the more it turns down the over all color volume.

Next week here on the blog I'm going to talk about how I keep track, when I'm sampling. Office supplies and markers are my special friends.

I'm out and about teaching over the next two weeks. If you see me at the Austin Weaving and Spinning Guild or at Vogue Knitting Live NYC, tell me about your Sample Along.

I'm checking these posts and Instagram for any questions you have, or you can always email me.

Don't forget to tag your yarns #samplealong when you post them on Instagram.