Back to Work

We dropped in to see our llama/alpaca customer on our way to Knoville to visit Anne's brother and family.  The demo skein of llama and the short 48-ply 'rope' were both huge hits so not surprisingly we came away with an order to finish the llama into skeins and reserve all the separated guard hair so that I can work out a way to make longer lengths of rope/cable.  Having grown up playing sport at a park next to Dunedin's rope works - the rope walk being a very long low building on one side of the field (although the memory is somewhat hazy!) I understand the theory, and was able to use tools I have to make a short length of laid up cable. The trick will be extending that.  There is about 3 lb of llama to process, so by the time it is sorted and guard hair removed it will be a little over 2 lb of wool to spin and about a month of part time work.

Llama in the front bag - Clun Forest washed locks behind

The other work is to supply a spinner in Townsend, TN with 'as many Clun Forest batts as I have'.  Currently that is zero, as I sold the last 6 I had at the last Knoxville guild meeting I went to.  So last night when we arrived home from Knoxville Anne and I began flicking Clun Forest locks that we have had stored for quite some time.  Flicking the locks open makes the job of drum carding very easy.  Another alternative is to tease them open by hand or put them through the picker.  These locks being quite long they are best flicked.  I do have even longer locks (the best) that were sorted after the original cleaning.  They are reserved for combing into top.

Flicked locks and the tools of the trade

An hour of flicking produced enough for the first batt.  The guild meeting is coming up next weekend so we should be able to produce a good supply for my customer.

Mug Rug/Coaster challenge 2

The Scenic Valley Handspinner challenge for October is another (in the series) mug rug/coaster.  This time it is to use complementary (from the color wheel) colors and weave with tabby and twill.

This morning I dragged out my large box of odds and ends of wool.  Most of it a legacy from my Father's weaving days when he would buy the leftover 'ends of line' balls of wool from my Mother's wool shop. I felt reasonably sure there would be something appropriate and was not disappointed.  I had to wind skeins to measure the lengths of the yarn I found and it turned out to be 240 yards of both blue and organge.

The chosen yarns (colors didn't reproduce well)

The challenge calls for mixing tabby and twill which, of course, could be simple stripes.  I thought I would try something a little more complicated and put boxes of twill inside tabby surrounds.  Here's the computer simulation:

WeaveDesign simulation

The mix of twill and tabby will be interesting to see in the completed coaster, with the epi/ppi figures somewhere between a perfect twill and a perfect tabby.  More photo's as I warp and then dress the loom.

Llama spinning

It's been over 5 years since I last spun llama.  I think my technique is just a little better!  This time differs a little in that the order was to spin not just a sample of a llama wool, but also make something out of the guard hair that we removed before spinning the very fine fiber.  With the last llama we didn't keep the guard hair so this was certainly a first.

This fleece had a lot less guard hair (the course '2nd coat' that protects the softer inner fiber).  Some llama have it, others don't and it isn't found throughout the fleece, but for best results it should be removed as the soft fiber is every bit as good as alpaca, but would feel more coarse if it was left in.  There may very well be machines to do this, but at the amount I will ever likely have to process that is not an option so it is removed by hand, lock by lock.  Luckily for me, Anne doesn't mind this fairly tedious task.  As it turns out with this particular fleece the guard hairs can be seen easily and by grasping them in one hand and the lock base at the other they simply pull apart.  Without needing to be too fussy.

The result of a quick trail of some of the white (it is a white and brown fleece) resulted in a nice 2.3 oz skein of very soft 2-ply super-fine, and a very short segment of 48-ply 'rope'.

Llama trial and some tools.

The rope section was made by spinning singles from the guard hair which had been collected in a bag.  I took handfuls and teased it out slightly before spinning it with a short forward draw.  3 singles into 3 ply, then dividing the resultant yarn into 4 and using the fringe twister making a 12 ply.  That was again divided by 4 and twisted again to make the 48-ply.

'Fuzzy' 48-ply rope.

There's no comparison to the 2-ply yarn...

Soft 2-ply super-fine.

My customer wants to be able to show different product that come from her animals. Hopefully this does the trick.  It was interesting to make the rope, but there's no way it would ever be worth making more given a) the smaller percentage of guard hair to fine fiber, and b) the complicated process that I can get to work in small amounts but would be defeated if any longer.

Wedding Gifts

With a little time to spare (although not much!) I finished the weaving of the shawl and scarf wedding presents.

Finished and celebratory wine.

This only left the fringe twisting...   at one stage I had visions of Anne sitting in the car on the way up to DC for the wedding, busy twisting fringes on the finished weaving, but as it turned out that was not necessary as with a couple of half day sessions I was able to finish the job, give them a final wash to set the fabric and then after drying, package them ready for the wedding.

Shawl ready to go.

Scarf ready to go.

We had a great time in DC, MD, VA for the wedding and managed to catch up with many friends and family.  We were on the go the whole time so it took a couple of days on return, to wind down, unpack, and get back into valley life.  The garden largely survived and our hummingbirds had not deserted us. 

Moving on now to the next project to spin a sample of llama wool and also spin some of the removed guard hairs and then ply/cable them into cord.  More to follow.