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Category: Alpaca

Two skeins of hand spun alpaca fibre side by side, the one on the left hasn't been washed and the one on the right has.
My wheel gets some maintenance and the alpaca gets a bath

My wheel gets some maintenance and the alpaca gets a bath

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How often do you do maintenance on your craft/hobby/fibre/work-related objects? That is, how often do you oil your wheel, change the needle on your sewing machine, clean your carding brushes? I bet this isn’t a type of question that gets asked much outside woolly circles (although “how often do you wash your hairbrush” really should be a thing in my opinion!)

A while ago, my Lendrum spinning wheel started squeaking a bit. Every rotation, I’d get a “squee, squee, squee” sound that annoyed me to no end. It finally dawned on me that it may be time to show it some love and add a few drops of machine oil onto its metal bits. I pretended I knew what I was doing, hummed and harrumphed a few times (like how I imagined a seasoned mechanic would when looking at an old car) and what do you know? The squeak was gone. Hoorah!

Then it dawned on me that other parts of the wheel might also be in need of some TLC. I bought a WooLee Winder a number of years ago and although that, too, had been subjected to some oiling in the past, I had never once disassembled the thing to do a deep cleaning. To put things in better context, I’ve been spinning raw alpaca… If you know your camelids, you’ll know those adorable guys can get very dusty! My winder had started to stutter and stop in one specific place lately, and I could see dirt accumulating on the outside of the shuttle groove, so I really needed to do something about it.

WooLee Winder on a Lendrum wheel
Photo courtesy of the WooLee Winder website. This one looks pristine, mine looked dirtyyyyy.

Being the independent woman that I am, I forged a plan: watch a couple of YouTube videos, dismantle the thing, clean it thoroughly, drink a well-deserved cup of tea afterwards and enjoy my feminist success.

I did Step One very successfully, then immediately changed tact: I delegated the task to Husband (meaning: I chickened out of playing with an expensive piece of equipment and asked him to do it for me, so I could blame him in case it all went awry).

Two hands are shown in the process of taking apart the WooLee Winder
I was offering useful supervision the whole thing (meaning: I was the backseat driver)

Trust me, the photo doesn’t begin to show how terribly dusty the whole thing was. Once it all came apart, I was aghast at how a piece of shiny metal could actually look dull and brownish. See the amount of fibre I removed from the inside!

Closeup of my hand holding some fluff I removed from the WooLee Winder
This was the fluff that was preventing my winder from working properly. Or so I thought.

Now the plot twist: once the WooLee Winder was reassembled, I was happily back at my wheel and ready to gunk it up with more alpaca; I was spinning away, when the thing kept stopping exactly in the same spot as before it was cleaned. Why, ye gods, why?!

The answer? I only thought I’d cleaned it correctly. Turns out, the amount of fluff you see in the pic was just the tip of the iceberg. Husband, I require your services and tools once again! This time we spent time really looking at every nook and cranny, and managed to remove some more debris. It wasn’t actually much more, but it was enough to prevent the mechanism from moving as it should.

It was finally working like a charm. I felt I went from driving a beaten-up Alfa Romeo to a Ferrari – that thing was faster than I remember and I had to adjust my wheel’s settings because as it turns out, I’d been making my Lendrum work harder than it needed to compensate for my inadequate maintenance efforts.

Now, to illustrate how much dust I’d been adding to the WooLee Winder, I present one of my alpaca skein baths. This was the second wash.

A skein of alpaca hand spun yarn is under very dirty brown, soapy water
Ew.

Is it any wonder my equipment needed some TLC? You’ll be surprised to know I am now planning on cleaning the winder again after I am done spinning this fleece…

Finally, a picture of two skeins of hand spun alpaca side by side. The left one is before washing and the right one is after; notice how the fibre has bloomed. I’m never short of amazed at how much fibres transform after a warm soak.

Two skeins of hand spun alpaca fibre side by side, the one on the left hasn't been washed and the one on the right has.

Next on my cleaning list is coming up with a way to clean my (currently very dusty) wool carders without water. Any ideas? How do you maintain yours?

I hope this post has inspired you to look at your precious tools and offering them some love. They help us be better at our crafts, after all. We need to keep them in top condition! Don’t be like me…

 

The handsome Hector the white alpaca, fleece shaven, looks straight into the camera
My first foray into plant print screening

My first foray into plant print screening

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I just looked up the meaning of “foray” and I must say, I really didn’t plunge into this activity with any violence. Sorry if I mislead you. If anything, my incursion – is that a better word? – begun because of love.

Love, you ask? Yes, my undying love for Hector! My husband knows he is only second to Hector and is alright with it. You’d understand if you saw him. In fact, let me add a photo of that handsome chap for your enjoyment, and then you tell me if you’re not equally in love.

*drumroll, please*

The handsome Hector the white alpaca, fleece shaven, looks straight into the camera

Isn’t he the most handsomest chap ever? Wouldn’t you sign up to an eco printing workshop if you got to spend some time with this beautiful alpaca? That’s exactly what I did.

Allow me to backtrack just a bit: Hector lives in Birkhill House, and I’ve met up with his human Lara on a few yarn festivals to chat and peruse her wares. I bought a few batts from her, and by coincidence they were all from Hector. Coincidence… or fate? I decided it was fate and from then on decided this was the love of my life and I’d do anything to one day meet the grower of the only alpaca fibre I’ve ever genuinely loved (the others I’ve spun/wore feel itchy!)

Fast forward to the day I bought a full Hector blanket to wash, process and spin. No, fast forward a bit more, to the day Birkhill decided to debut their eco printing workshop. I was so keen to finally meet him! I could thank Hector for the amazing yarns I’ve gotten out of his fibre so far.

First things first, I needed to actually participate in the workshop. Fine, I’ll make that terrible sacrifice. In I go to the working shed and play with plants, merino fabric and wallpaper base.

Plants used for eco dyeing on plastic trays
Plants ready to be chosen and laid out
A strip of fabric with plants on top in an "aesthetic" way
My flimsy efforts. Knowing what I know now, I’d definitely have filled the negative space with more plant material.

Like I said, this was my first time playing with eco printing. I had no idea what I was doing. I was well instructed by Sunshine, our tutor! Love her name, very fitting to her personality.

After we had our plants properly squished between the layer of paper and fabric, and tied up, it was time to add them to the dye bath for a bit. Intermission to look at Birkhill’s plant garden.

Wait, did I mention this workshop was a two-parter? After we looked at the plant garden, there was more fun to be had in the form of solar dyeing. I confess I had a little knee-jerk chuckle at the notion of sunshine dyeing anything in Scotland, but then I remembered I get more sunshine here than I ever did in London and shut up.

It was time to peruse the vast sample of plant dyes available for us to play with. Although I’m familiar with acid dyes, it being my bread and butter and all, I’m very ignorant of natural dyes – so I appreciated the labels for me to read and see what colours they’d yield.

We were given two silk and silk-and-merino micro skeins to add to our jars (mine used to house caviar, how fancy) and were given full freedom to choose which colours and how many to add. I chose three in the red-purple family. After arriving home I placed it by the window and waited.

At the time of writing my micro skeins are almost finished soaking up the dyes and are looking properly red and purple. Unfortunately, also at the time of writing, I have a cat on my lap and we all know it’s illegal to move them, so you’ll just have to imagine how lovely it’s looking at the moment.

Now comes the best part of my visit: alpacas! Have you ever booped an alpaca’s nose? They have no cartilage there and it’s like booping a velvety marshmallow; it feels magic. The next best thing? Feeding an alpaca.

Leonor feeds Hector the alpaca through the fence and has a very goofy smile whilst doing so
Thank you Lara for the photo! My happiness is very real.

I heart Hector!

After all this, our eco printing was ready to unravel and dry.

And that was my half day at the farm with eco printing and alpacas. I hope you enjoyed reading it, thanks for letting me share my love of Hector. I’ll leave you with some Hector skeins I’ve spun so far, all with different techniques. My favourite so far is definitely the semi-woollen using rolags, the yarn is so fluffy.

From left to right: spun semi-worsted from batt, 2-ply; spun semi-worsted from batt, chain-plied; spun semi-woollen from rolags, 2-ply; spun semi-woollen from textured batt turned into rolags, 2-ply (my favourite).

Four skeins of alpaca yarn, hand spun from Hector
I hope you like my cat socks, I left them in for your enjoyment.

Thanks for reading!

Wrestling with the horns of a dilemma – Art Yarn!

Wrestling with the horns of a dilemma – Art Yarn!

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For a long time, I have been promising myself that I would take a workshop to get some sort of grip on how to use a spinning wheel.  My friend Trish Kerr runs Irish Alpaca Yarns and she has for a long time been offering me a space on one of her spinning workshops – the stars never aligned as, invariably I was busy on the day.  Then, in December, the offer was once again made and, I was actually free!  The beautiful venue was not far away, Cornstown House (https://cornstownhouse.ie/) which was not far away from me.  Happy days!  Unfortunately there was a huge storm the night before but, despite fallen trees, we awoke to a clear bright day and I negotiated my way to the venue.

We were spinning using alpaca fibre.  I hadn’t realised it until then but some people who have an allergy to wool fibre can wear alpaca.  The irritant in wool apparently is the scales and alpaca does not have scales.

There were 5 students and some had previous experience.  Luckily Trish is an amazing teacher. I had warned her that, given my hideous coordination when learning something new, that this could put a serious strain on our friendship.  She laughed it off.  Trish has great patience which she got to draw on in bucket loads when it came to teaching yours truly!

We were working off Louet wheels which she supplied.  She is quite an expert on the older more traditional wheels too, and she was able to offer good advice on how to get an old wheel which a student had brought, back working again.

  • A traditional wheel one of the students brought in for some advice
  • What a beauty, owned I think by our host Fionnuala
  • All she wanted were cuddles

Trish got us all set up and was very attentive throughout the morning.   The first skill we worked on was treadling, as a first timer it took a lot of effort but after a while I had the wheel moving in a clockwise direction.  She set us up with alpaca fibre and soon we were all spinning.  Some (by this I mean most) much better than yours truly here.  But I was having fun.

Trish started us all off drafting setting us up with Alpaca yarn

The morning flew and we stopped for a delicious lunch and tour of the farm, both supplied by our most gracious hosts, Fionnuala and Dominic.  The tour was great fun, featuring  lots of Alpacas, some rare breed sheep (including one that loved to be patted, a cow and donkeys.  The farm offers Alpaca Trekking and workshops along with other events. When I explained that I primarily was a feltmaker and showed an interest in the Teeswater, Dominic disappeared for a few minutes and arrived back with some raw fleece for me to play with when I got home.

  • I had to include this photo. The pumpkin was still going strong!
  • She just wanted cuddles
  • Chatting up the girls!
  • The donkeys were very friendly, and happy out if you had a carrot in hand!
  • Just look at that pretty face!
  • What a beauty!
  • Those eyes!

When we returned from our tour, Trish gave us a presentation on alpaca fleeces which was very interesting.

  • So soft and of course no lanolin!
  • Trish showed us what to expect from a quality fleece

We plied our yarn in the afternoon.  Now that I had ‘mastered’ the clockwise, introducing the ‘counter-clockwise’ was, let’s say, interesting.  This is what I produced.  It is, I believe, kindly referred to as ‘Art Yarn’.  Now, I am in the horns of a dilemma.  I want to spin more but I don’t want to ever spin a nice even ply.  The general consensus in the room was that once you perfect the spin you can’t return to the Art Yarn.  Now, while I appreciate that at my learning speed, perfection is a long way down the road.  I don’t want to get there but I would like to spin more art yard and, if I’m honest, I would love a new toy in a spinning wheel.  Any ideas?

My plied alpaca art yarn

I played with the Teeswater when I got home.  Here is the result:

  • Scouring the teeswater
  • Final view
  • another view,lit by LED
  • A view of my experiment with Teeswater

Last year, I wrote up a number of posts about various dyeing  workshops I had attended.  In one I dyed a lot of fabric samples and wondered what I should do with them.  I think it may have been Ruth who suggested that I could think about stitching into some.  I have never embroidered by hand before but decided to give it a try over Christmas.  Here is my first effort.  I was inspired by a photo online.  Once completed, I padded it with some cotton batting and backed it with linen.  I might frame it  at some stage but I will need to find a suitable frame.

Using the dyed fabric samples, I tried my hand at embroidery over Christmas

I totally enjoyed my day spinning, even though I was pretty dreadful at it. But I love the result and for once, I really don’t want to improve greatly at this. Long live Art Yarn!

Do you agree? Any hints and tips on how I can retain my current standard? All suggestions will be very gratefully taken on board. I’m just looking for an excuse to buy a wheel.