MadScientistK

I don't even know, but look! A cat!

[madscientistk]

Two and a half pairs of slipper socks from a vintage Workbasket magazine pattern. Where's the missing slipper? Ask my 3 year old. on Flickr.

Two and a half pairs of slipper socks from a vintage Workbasket magazine pattern. Where's the missing slipper? Ask my 3 year old.

[madscientistk]

From fleece to yarn part 2

For washing, I use the same basic procedure as Deb Robson, with what amounts to a strainer for the wool and hot tap water. I use a mesh pop-up laundry basket in my bathtub for ease of draining and refilling. It’s very important to control the factors that can contribute to felting, particularly agitation and temperature changes. It’s also helpful to prepare a place for the fleece to dry while the fleece is soaking.

Step 1: Unroll fleece into mesh basket. 

I like to have the basket already sitting in the tub, that makes it easy to clean up any dirt or VM that falls out in the process. 

Step 2: Rinse. Fill the tub enough to cover the wool in the basket, about a quarter of the way full or 5 gallons in my tub. This can be cold water, it’s just to get as much loose dirt out as possible. The wool has to be gently pressed down into the water to get it wet, often a few times. I let it sit for about 30 minutes, and it can be left overnight since it’s cold water to begin with. 

As you can see, that can be a lot of dirt! Some of the suint (basically sheep sweat) also comes out, and a little lanolin after soaking. I gently swish the basket in the water and press the wool down under the water at least once. Then I lift out the wool and drain the tub.

One of the advantages of the laundry basket is that since it has a flexible frame, I can use it to gently squeeze some of the water out of the wool by just picking up the handles.

At this point, you may choose to do another rinse, but I chose to move on to step 3.

Step 3: Washing. Fill the tub back to the same level with the hottest water you can get from your tap and add detergent. Press the wool gently into the soapy water.

There are special detergents made for washing, or “scouring” raw wool, but I have been using cheap clear shampoo. It does take more shampoo than scouring agent, like about a cup of shampoo as opposed to a quarter cup of the scouring agent. Unicorn Power Scour is one of the more commonly available and recommended. In fact, I just ordered samples of all 3 Unicorn Fibre products for just the cost of shipping to try on the other two fleeces I bought this year, because so many people recommend it. 

Still a lot of dirt! And now the lanolin is starting to come out, too. I let the wool sit in the hot soapy water for at least 15 minutes, then very gently squeeze out some of the water and turn the fleece over and press it back into the water for another 15 minutes before draining the tub again.

Step 4: Second wash, same as the first. Not absolutely necessary for a fleece from a blanketed/jacketed sheep, or one that just isn’t that dirty. But I do two washes every time after having to re-wash an alpaca fleece that didn’t seem dirty at all after the first wash, but was turning my wooden spindle brown. Drain the tub.

Step 5: Rinse out the detergent. I put in a little more water for this rinse, and it should be as hot as you can get it. I soak for at least 15 minutes, squish the wool into the water a few times, and gently swish the basket back and forth a little.

There should be no suds, no grease, and no dirt in the water after this rinse. If there is, you can always add detergent to the water (no draining and refilling for this) and do a third wash cycle, for as many washes as the wool needs.

Step 6: Drying. Drain the tub for the last time. Gently squeeze as much water as possible out of the wool, and let it sit in the empty tub for a while to drip before squeezing out some more water. When the fleece is hopefully just barely dripping, I take the laundry basket full of fleece outside. Lack of indoor drying space is why I only wash fleeces when it will be clear and not too humid for a couple of days in a row. 90%-100% humidity is not very conducive to drying anything!

I let the fleece drip for about 30 minutes with the laundry basket hung on my clothesline post. Then I get out the sheets again, spread one out on the grass by the clothesline, and spread the damp fleece on it as evenly as possible. Air flow is important in letting the fleece dry in a reasonable amount of time, so a drying rack would be best, but I just fold the sheet to cover the wool and turn it over every hour or so. It takes several hours in 80-90 degree F weather and about 70% humidity for the wool to dry.

The fleece doesn’t look too different, but it feels different and of course smells different too. There is some slight felting in the finer belly wool, but nothing a good carding won’t fix!

And that’s part 3 - preparing the wool for spinning.

[madscientistk]

From fleece to yarn and beyond

Part 1 of a new project! I recently bought 3 naturally colored Shetland fleeces from a local shepherd, so I decided to document the process of getting them ready to spin and then turning the wool into yarn with lots of photos, some of which are pretty horrible. Today, skirting and washing.

Step 0 was to scrub out the tub, so there is no soap or conditioner residue or hidden fungus. Any of that stuff could make it harder to wash the fleece or contaminate the fleece, causing damage over time.

Step 1: Set up a wool processing station. 

It includes a big table of reasonable height, an old mattress pad and some old fitted sheets, a comfy chair, and of course a furry assistant. The old sheets go on top of the mattress pad to bundle up the fleece and lug it around after  skirting, and the kid size table to put the bags of wool, my phone, and a nice big insulated cup of iced tea is a bonus.

Step 2: Dump out the fleece and spread it flat so the lock tips are up.

This is a light grey lamb fleece from a yearling. You can see there’s some sun bleaching on the tips and some much darker wool at the legs. It didn’t have much VM (vegetable matter, usually mostly hay), so it only took a minute to pull out the big pieces of that. It had also already been skirted once at shearing, so there weren’t any really messy pieces from the back end to remove either. 

Step 3: Check the cut side of the fleece for VM and second cuts. I do this by rolling the fleece up a little at a time and basically petting the cut ends. 

Second cuts are where the shearer didn’t or couldn’t get right next to the skin with the blade and had to go back over the area. They’re most common around the legs. With a good shearer, there aren’t many and you end up with just a tiny pile of wool that has been cut on both ends, like at left. I save those pieces for the centers of felt balls and stuffing.

Here’s where the old fitted sheets come in handy. 

When the fleece is all rolled up from checking for second cuts, I just roll it so the corner pockets contain the ends of the roll. Then I can just fold the rest of the sheet over the wool and lug it around.

See how greasy my hand is?! Raw lanolin! 

On to washing! That will be part 2. 

[madscientistk]

Progress pics: top, Gingko shawl in handspun alpaca and bamboo rayon or silk yarn I made during Spinzilla last year. This is part of a knit along. Also, Butter the cat. ^_^

Bottom, a swatch for a Tunisian crochet scarf or shawlette I’m designing in wedges for a nice curved shape. The first wedge is simple stitch, and the second is lacy simple stitch, which is taller than the regular simple stitch and is causing some ruffling. I think I’m going to try another openwork stitch on the next wedge. 

[madscientistk]

Thrift score: 1.5 yards gray double knit with one ribbed side, 1.75 yards pink, periwinkle, and white bicycle jacquard knit, and 1 yard teal, crimson? maroon?, and white prospectors and cacti jacquard knit.  They are most likely polyester, and the colors make me suspect that they are 1980s vintage. I usually only collect 1970s polyester knits, but the bicycles were too cute!

[madscientistk]

Tradition, and a finish!

The Le Challenge theme was tradition, and I have two things for that. 

First, the products of a family tradition. I have to admit that I’m not sure they count, since I had a lot of help! 5 little girls and I used the leftover Easter egg dye on about 10 oz. of Corriedale cross wool roving. 

The youngest is not quite 3 years old, and surprisingly, hers is not the brown piece, lol. The brown is from an experiment in mixing all the colors to see if we could get black.

The second thing is the finish - the vintage boudoir jacket for the Revive-A-Vintage contest. 

I feel that it fits the theme because even though this pattern was written around 1920, it uses stitches and a cropped shape that are still commonly used today. Taking the time to make something for yourself and the people around you who can appreciate your work has become a sort of tradition, too.

[madscientistk]

MadScientistK turned 4 today!

The rows of kid-dyed corriedale cross look a little like a cake, right? They used leftover Easter egg dyes, and dunked the roving or poured the dye onto it. The example on the left is what you get when one packet of tablets was crushed and dumped into a cup with a couple of tablespoons of vinegar. The eggs turned out almost black with some greenish or purplish blotches, but the wool is a nice brown with reddish and greenish areas.

[madscientistk]

Oh poor, neglected Tumblr

March has been busier than I expected! I’m still spinning away at the 5.5 oz of hand dyed cotton (only 1.5 oz left!), and I've also been spindle spinning fluffy Young Man Cat’s blown undercoat into a chain plied yarn with a lovely halo. I decided to knit the art batt yarn from January, so I plan to spin up the Ocean Blue domestic wool to ply with that when I get to the end of the cotton.

The new Le Challenge theme is “tradition”, and I’m going to sew this time. It’s a relatively new tradition, but I have sewn a bag of some kind for my nieces and daughters and sometimes myself as well for Easter. I’ll post my inspiration picks in another post.

I picked the boudoir jacket for my Revive A Vintage project. 

I started with Omega Sinfonia in Azul Nordico, and quickly realized that I would barely get the body from the two balls I had. That solid blue section is one ball. Of course it’s a discontinued color, so I added in Oxford. Ok, I just found more Azul online, but it isn’t available locally. The original pattern calls for blue and white, but I just felt like the dark gray looked more modern. 

Now I just have to decide whether I want the gray to be a small stripe like above, or a large one like below. I think I’ll do the side panels in the gray either way, then use both colors in the edging.

[madscientistk]

Made a new friend today. I think she escaped from one of our neighbors and went on walkabout. :) 

[madscientistk]

Revive A Vintage! 

Here are my top online picks for the Revive A Vintage contest, all from the Antique Pattern Library archives. The front runner is the crocheted Boudoir Jacket from Corticelli Lessons in Crochet no 5, for my own summer wardrobe. Then there’s the Crochet Work Bag from Manual of Crochet no. 5 by Fitch (PDF), which would make a great sock knitting project bag or maybe even a spindle spinning bag. Then there’s the Butterfly Boudoir Set, with filet crochet butterfly nightgown yoke and boudoir cap from Corticelli Lessons in Crochet no. 13 (PDF). I think the boudoir cap might work for “plopping” in the Curly Girl method of curl care if I lined it with cotton knit, so a boudoir cap is definitely on my to make list this year even if I don’t make it for the contest. 

[madscientistk]

I was browsing my vintage Workbasket magazines trying to decide on a pattern for the Revive A Vintage contest, and the aprons in the mail order pattern ads kept catching my eye. I want a cobbler's apron! And this pattern is in my stash. :)

Photo from the Vintage Pattern Wiki, because the cover of mine is in much worse shape. 

[madscientistk]

Here are those hand blended wool rolags, split in half, arranged in a rondo pattern to have blue at either end and orange in the middle. Then I spun and plied it with salvaged textured nylon thread on my Honeybee wheel. 1.6 oz of rolags yielded 260 yards of more or less sport weight thick and thin yarn. 

This yarn is my entry for the Le Challenge theme of "passion". It has the colors of a gas flame, which, like passion, is fueled by an invisible source that can burn very hot and either give warmth and light or obliterate everything in its path. I put my passion for blending colors and fibers as well as spinning into it as well. ;) It turned out surprisingly soft, so plan to make a cowl with it. I haven't decided if it will be knit or woven yet, though.

[rovingcrafters]

Some patterns are timeless, or they should be. Making things by hand is a wonderful way to connect to the past. We hope that you’ll join us at the Roving Crafters and keep that connection alive by reviving a vintage item. Keep an oldie but goodie from sliding forgotten into the past while challenging your crafting know-how. So welcome to the REVIVE A VINTAGE contest from the Roving Crafters!

Above you can see a wide variety of prizes we have. Of course there’s a prize for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd but we also have weekly drawing prizes!

For further information information on the contest check out the link on our tumblr or by going to the Roving Crafters’ wordpress.

[madscientistk]

Not that I *need* another craft challenge in my life, but how could I resist? I love vintage patterns! I'm looking at crocheted chemise and nightgown yokes, but will probably end up making slippers or a doily, lol.

[madscientistk]

Remember my inspiration photo from yesterday? I think I nailed it. Hand carded wool rolags, with domestic commercially dyed wool, Romney, and Cheviot, 1.6 oz total.

[madscientistk]

Inspiration photo from The Rusty Skillet. 

I was thinking about the Le Challenge "passion" theme for this month. The reds and purples and pinks that are often considered to be passionate colors weren't really inspiring me. So I decided that rather than the "amore" kind of passion, I wanted a more general passion, the fire that drives people to explore and experiment. That naturally led to actual fire in my mind for the colors. There is a little purple in there, but the main colors are the blue and yellow/orange. Blue because that's my favorite, and orange and yellow to represent heat. 

Time to go pull fibers from my stash! Maybe I'll try corespinning this time.

[madscientistk]

February total

This is kind of sad, y'all. For February, I have spun 3.28 oz of a 5.5 oz bump of cotton sliver, a hundred yards or so on spindles, and that 100 yard hank of Twilight Sparkle (wool, cotton, recycled sari silk, and rayon art blend) that I posted recently. I do think the yardage on the cotton will be decent, since I'm spinning it pretty thin:

But I'm going to have to get with it for March!

[madscientistk]

Sometimes, the simplest tools are just soothing to work with. This is a simple wooden toy wheel and dowel hand spindle, and I turned that lavender to pink gradient art blend into singles on it. Then I plied it with upcycled textured nylon thread.

Here's the finished yarn: 

It's more...My Little Pony than I intended, lol. In fact, I'm calling it Twilight Sparkle! I didn't ply out all the twist, so it's on the energetic side. There's only 100 yards, so I may use it as weft or as a jewelry cord.