Retreat! part 1
November 5th, 2008 - Posted in crafts, self-sufficiency, sheep, sustainable living - by Sarah|
It may be raining on the West Coast but I am relaxing in sunny Ashburton after a hard couple of days tussling with some fantastic fibre at the Ashford Retreat. Yesterday was devoted to carding and blending and we began by using the traditional carding combs. The single flick carder (the smaller one at the top of this photo) is used to open the ends of a staple before spinning as these tend to stick together. This is much simpler than using the pair of hand carders at the bottom of this photo. It’s almost impossible to explain the process of using these in a few words without pictures alongside but… You lay a few staples onto one carder and then brush with the second until about half the fibre has transferred to the second carder. Then you put the fibres all back on the first carder again – by placing them top to toe and flicking the first upwards. Then you repeat from the start. Next you swap the carders between your hands and go through the cycle again, carding the other side of the fibre. At the end you brush top to toe twice in a row and hey presto you have a loose batt of carded fiber that you can roll up into a rolag ready for spinning (my two rolags are above the pair of hand carders) . As you can see, the ‘must have’ item for an aspiring fibre worker is not a spinning wheel but a glossary!
Then we moved on to the drum carder and had a chance to experiment blending colours and types of fibre. We were given a great selection of coloured corriedale sliver as well as some exotics (silk, angora, alpaca) for blending. I started with these colours…
…blended them on the drum carder…
…created a new blended sliver to spin from and then I spun it and plyed it using the Navahoe ply technique which creates a three ply yarn from a single bobbin.
Jo Reeve (our tutor) gave us an overview of the colour wheel and the effects of using primary, secondary and analogous colours etc. It was fascinating seeing new colours appear as you turned the drum on the carder and the motion blurred the individual colours together. As you can see from my finished skein of wool you can actually end up with new colours rather than just stripy or splotchy patches.
Yesterday (day 2) we moved on to wool with the wool lady herself, Cindy Begg (Cindy was the lady in wool in the NZ equivalent of the UK WI nude calendar as featured in the book and movie Calendar Girls).
She started by showing us how to skirt a coloured and a white fleece and then talked us through the different kinds of wool you get from different breeds of sheep. I had taken Mittens’ fleece along for some feedback and as expected she essentially told me it might make good compost. She did have a few useful suggestions for improving the wool quality for us to try.
Next we all had a go at novelty yarn using some rainbow dyed English Leicester plyed with cotton. To spin this we got the flick carders out again to loosen the fibres. I have almost bought some of this wool several times in the past so really enjoyed the opportunity to have a go at working with it. Ashford sell a dye kit of the 3 primary colours with instructions on how to dye like this for yourself which I am also very tempted by.
Next came my biggest challenge so far. I have never spun really fine yarn – until today. I got someone to take a picture of me spinning this so that I could prove to Brendhan that it was really me who made it. (And yes, I do have longer hair than Brendhan now.)
Cindy gave us some beautiful white merino and instructions to spin it as fine as possible. It was bizarrely nerve-wracking as I kept expecting it to break every time I moved my hands. The trick is lots of spin and almost no tension as the thread is made really strong by the twist in it. You also need to start off with a quality fleece. I was really pleased with my effort given that the thinnest yarn I had spun before this was about ten times the diameter. I am still pleased but made the mistake of having a look at some of the other ladies’ work. Some of their yarns were as thin as sewing thread, even after plying! Oh well, I can’t imagine what I would actually do with something that fine anyway…
My fine yarn with some of the spun wool remaining on the bobbin above.
