Ask Tara is a weekly-ish feature in which I attempt to answer your questions about spinning, dyeing or life with a dog that sneaks into your videos. If you have a question, ask it in the comments and I’ll answer it here with either a post or a video!
The question I get asked the most often is pretty much the same thing, from a spinners and non-spinners alike. The wheel, it’s always all about the wheel.
The spinners ask: What wheel do you use?
The non-spinners ask: How does it work?
I give a little spiel on how it works to anyone who looks twice at me spinning at craft shows, but I’ve never shared it with you!
Instead of writing for 1000 years about how I love my wheel and how it works, how about a video?
So now I ask YOU: what kind of wheel do you use? I’d love to hear about it in the comments and if you make your own video, before sure to share the link!
Do you have a question about the wheel I didn’t answer? Just let me know in the comments!
Most everyone knows that fabric comes from yarn or thread which comes from cotton, sheep or synthetics. But how does it really GET there? From farm to cloth? In the past few weeks, I’ve worked through and documented the process. You can read them all here. Today’s the last step: The Spinning.Finally! The exciting part – turning fluff into yarn!
Every time I’ve posted a video about the process of turning this fleece into yarn, I get the question, “But how do you SPIN it?”. Well, here’s the answer. In this video I show I how I spin one of the LocalSpun batts into a Local Spun Yarn:
The finished yarn looks like this, all soft and squooshy:
Now, a question for you: Have you enjoyed see the life of this yarn? Would you like me to continue this series with a different fleece from a different farm?
The Life of Yarn series is my attempt to share the process from fiber (on the animal) to finished yarn. Each is just a glimpse into a moment in the life of yarn and yarnmaker.
The LocalSpun series is my attempt to share the process from fiber (on the animal) to finished yarn. Each is just a glimpse into a moment in the life of yarn and yarnmaker.
Most everyone knows that fabric comes from yarn or thread which comes from cotton, sheep or synthetics. But how does it really GET there? From farm to cloth? In the next few week’s I’ll be working through and documenting this process. Today: The Blending.
The one question I seem to get most often when doing spinning demonstrations is “How do you get the wool like…that” with a gesture to the roving I’m holding in my hand. Most everyone understands that the wool comes from sheep and the fleece gets washed and dyed…but what takes it from a pile of fiber to the fluffy batt in my hands?
The fiber can be combed or carded to make it more spin-able and I chose to card this fleece with my brand new drum carder! (still so excited about it!) You can absolutely spin fiber right from the lock, but I wanted to card it, to make it fluffy and separate the locks. I want to keep some of the inherent “sheepiness” of this yarn, so I’m not carding it until smooth, just until nice and airy, with some of the little curls still intact. What I end up with is a batt (you can read the defintion of fiber terms like roving and batts here) – a pile of fluff with a lot of air and most of the fibers parellel-ish.
Since it’s a simple process that’s sort of hard to explain, I’ll show you how I do it in the following video.
If you’re unfamiliar with this step in fiber processing, the video gives a quick rundown of the general idea. If you’re very experienced with drum carding, I’d love to hear your feedback, as I’m brand new at it!
The batts I’m carding will be available in the Boutique this Friday, October 31, along with the dyed locks (pre-carding). Next Monday I’ll share a video on how I spin these batts and the yarn from this fleece will be available Monday, November 3. The locks, batts and yarn are part of my new LocalSpun line – a collection of yarn and fiber that all come from the same, local fleece. I hope to produce this line each month using a different local fleece, which I’ll wash and dye by hand, share the process and offer the fiber and yarn. Each month I hope to use a different breed of sheep (or alpaca or goat) and share what I discover about the farm, the breed and the process.
Any questions about drum carding? What else in the process would you like to see? What breed should I look for next?
The LocalSpun series is my attempt to share the process from fiber (on the animal) to finished yarn. Each is just a glimpse into a moment in the life of yarn and yarnmaker.
Most everyone knows that fabric comes from yarn or thread which comes from cotton, sheep or synthetics. But how does it really GET there? From farm to cloth? In the next few week’s I’ll be working through and documenting this process. Today: The Color
After the fleece is clean and dry (although, really, I don’t see why it needs to be dry), I dye the fiber. This is hardly the only way to do it. In fact, it’s time for a digression on the creativity of the process.
There are 1000s different way to move fiber from animal to yarn. I’ve been showing how I did it, for this one fleece. If you’re following along, planning for your own fleece, just keep in mind that there are a zillion little chances for creativity. You can dye the fiber in lock form (like I’ll demonstrate), once it’s carded or once you’ve spun it into yarn. You can card it or comb it or send it out to be processed by a mill. You can mix all different colors together into one batts or spin rovings of different colors together. This process is full of little decisions. Don’t get confused or bogged down in choosing one or the other. A fleece is a lot of fiber, plenty to play with, so experiment! Split it up into 1 lb sections and treat each section differently. With this fleece I’m leaving a pound undyed and dyeing the rest in 2 oz (or bigger) sections, then carding together the different colors (by the way, I’m creating a limited edition line of yarn using only the fiber from this one fleece, it’ll be in the Boutique in late October). When this is fleece, I plan on doing it all over again (documenting and sharing it here, of course) using different dyeing, carding and spinning techniques.
Ok, now on to the dyeing.
When it comes out of the microwave it looks like this: I know I say it a few times in the video but by all means, leave it alone and let it cool! Once the fiber is cool and has been rinsed, I put it back outside, on a rug, to dry.
Oooh, such pretty colors! ALL of them from Easter Egg dyes! I’ve achieved different depths of color by pouring off some of the dye liquid into another glass jar and adding water.
Once dry, they get carded and spun, tune in next week for carding!
