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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.

Thin Felt and Spinning

Thin Felt and Spinning

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Last week at the well-being centre I made a sample of felt that would be suitable for a lampshade cover. We’ve spoken about it there before, and samples usually explain things a lot better than words. I used a blended batt which was mostly Merino, but had some other fibres blended in too. I did two fine layers, then teased out some dyed locks to add, then did another two fine layers, and added embellishments. It was a lot duskier in colour than I expected:

Some of the embellishments I added were from a box listed as ‘silk threads’, I didn’t think they were, so burnt a piece when I got home, and it smelled like cellulose, so I’m going to guess they’re Viscose/Rayon. They’re really nice, whatever. I also used some throwster’s waste, nylon and viscose fibre:

I love holding thin pieces up to the window:

On this one you can see the losks between the layers a bit more clearly:

I mentioned not so long ago, I’d been writing a tutorial about how to make soft wispy felt, and I’ve finally nished it. Funnily enough, it’s called Learn to Make Soft Wispy Felt 🙂 I did a blog post about it the other day, and you can find all the info on the ‘Soft Wispy Felt’ page 🙂
I got my spinning wheel back out this week, I thought I’d finish off the batts I’d made with the ‘superwash’ type yarn to finish off the weaving. Apparently I hadn’t made any more purple, just a purple/blue blend and a multi batt. I span the multi batt first. It’s alright, but looks quite dull in places where there are too many colours:

I unwound some from the bobbin to see how it was looser, I liked how it looked in this photo when it twiddled itself together:

I was reading something for Ruth’s Fauvism challenge which got me thinking, so I made a thinner yarn with the purple/blue batt, really thin in places:

And I wanted something even thinner, so after a bit of a poor start with some green, got what I was after with some turquoise:

Then for some reason, yesterday, everything I tried was ‘bobbins’ as we say up here! (rubbish, from rhyming slang–bobbins of cotton=rotten). I must have put my tension spring thingie back on wrong!