Review: Spin-Off Magazine Fall 2014 Issue

And, here we have another issue to talk about! I'm nearly caught up with the Spin-Off magazines, but then I'll need to double back and work on the PLY reviews. This issue had a few interesting articles about mechanics, but I didn't find it to be as strongly a connected theme as the last issue was. If you want to know more about the tools of the trade, and how to fix them when they don't work quite right, this issue is great for that.

The Winding Well article is superb for those who have difficulty understanding how to wind fresh yarn onto a drop spindle, building a firm and stable cop as you go. I learned the hard way; there is a clear best way to wind the yarn onto the shaft so it doesn't get loosey-goosey (or worse, the outside yarns get buried deep within the inside yarns). No matter which spindle type you use (top, bottom, support, etc.), the X wind on will make your spinning experience smooth and problem-free. Additionally, the author discusses the proper way to wind on freshly spun yarn so you neither add nor subtract twist from the yarn. It seems like a simple fact about spinning, but it often gets overlooked. Have you ever had the toilet paper on the roll suddenly start unrolling, only to stop short of completely emptying onto the ground by the glue on the cardboard roll? Right, me neither. Anyway, this picture shows what you're doing when you change the orientation of the spindle when you wind on yarn:

Several people have asked me about blending boards, and I have professed that they fill a specific niche, which lies somewhere between hand cards and drum carders. There are things you can do with a blending board which would be difficult to reproduce with the other tools. It's not just a cheaper version of a drum carder, nor is it an oversized hand card. Blending boards really shine when you want to make several rolags at once, with lots of color blocks and well-placed texture. If you want to know more about the testing process, this article offers an abridged view of all three tools in making these kind of rolags.

Ever since I began weaving, I became more interested in the weaving patterns in the Spin-Off magazines. This Autumn Leaves scarf/shawl is stunning in its simplicity, though I have to admit, I don't really understand how to make an inlay while weaving. Even after reading the instructions twice, I still don't think I comprehend. Oh well, that's why the Internet invented YouTube. Nevertheless, I think this weaving project is within my weaving skills--ie, beginner. I'm still not sure how I feel about the length (it seems a little short), but it does seem like a cuddle-worthy shawl.

In the end, I think this issue is most useful for those who are interested in tools, their use, and reuse (ie, antiques). If you're just getting started with spinning, this article may not be the best reference, though there is a great article about up-take speed and tension for those who are thinking about getting a spinning wheel. Care to share your responses to this issue? Share the discussion below or over on Facebook. 

Playing with my Blending Board

I've nearly owned my blending board for a year now, and I think I finally understand how to use it. And how to make yarn from the rolags it produces (which is very important!). I'll talk a little more about my blending board in other posts in the future, especially when I talk about my most recent attempt at making a true woolen yarn. As you can see in the following pictures, the rolags are a bit smaller than my first attempts at making rolags:

There is always a learning curve to a craft or sport or whatever, and though I am familiar with drum carders, and blending boards seem similar, these tools require different approaches to applying fiber and removing it. The reason these rolags are smaller is two-fold: 1) I used less fiber per board. I put on enough fiber to cover about 1/2-2/3 of the length of the tines, as opposed to covering them 100% as I did for my first rolags; 2) Instead of getting one giant rolag per board, I got 3-4 rolags per board. Making smaller, fluffier roalgs is a necessary step in making rolags which draft easily for making woolen yarns. 

In my first attempts, I was simply trying to figure out how to use the blending board. As a result, I made a few not very good rolags. :) I overpacked fiber into the blending board, partially because I was brand new to the tool, but also because I wanted to know what it could handle. Judging from the rolag I made, the board was able to handle a lot of fiber, but it was a very dense rolag. It was spin-able, and produced some excellent art yarns:

To make those rolags, I applied the fiber, filled it with yummy goodies--angelina, locks, silk, etc.--then rolled the whole bit of fiber into a giant jelly roll rolag. By constructing the rolag this way, all of the goodies were in the center of the rolag. Each rolag I made this way weighed about 40-50g, and after I attenuated the fibers (pre-drafted), it was a very textured bit of roving. The results were gorgeous...but it wasn't the easiest thing to spin. It wasn't so bad when I was spinning an art yarn, since keeping lots of texture was my goal, but I knew it would have given my hands cramps if I wanted to spin a smooth yarn.

To learn more about blending boards, I observed how other people made their rolags. There still aren't too many tutorials on the Internet which showcase the variety of ways to use blending boards, just the basics. Still, it's useful to know what's out there, and you never know when you'll learn something enlightening. I got some useful ideas, but I didn't want to read every tutorial out there and do what everyone else was doing--sometimes I like to discover things on my own. Personally, this helps me figure out how to fix my blending board related problems and explore my own creativity.

Since blending boards and drum carders can be used in similar ways, I used some of my own techniques on the blending board. As a result, I now have a method of making rolags so they're smaller and easier to spin smoothly, without sacrificing too much of the goodies. As you can probably identify in the following pictures, these rolags have angelina, bamboo, mulberry silk, and firestar blended in with the merino fiber:

I haven't quite decided what I'll make with these rolags. I have about 20-30 of them, for a total of about 6 oz of fiber. I was considering plying these with another color/fiber and making a bulky yarn for a hooded capelet. I love the idea of having a cape going over my coat--makes me feel all snuggly. I still have some of the blue fiber I used for the base color, so I might use that to make more rolags. Maybe I'll dye up some cashmere and throw that into the mix too! Who knows what I'll do when I have warm thoughts on the brain. :)

I'm nearly to the point of making beginner tutorials with my blending board. I still have some things to figure out beforehand, and what to do if something goes wrong, but they'll be coming soon. Particularly, I'm trying to figure out the best way to make textured rolags for making art yarn which will spin easily. The biggest lesson I learned was that you can't overload a blending board. Less is more, and you'll have a happier spinning experience if you make many fluffy rolags rather than few compact rolags. What fibery things have you been doing? Share with us on Facebook--we love seeing all of the yummy things you all make.

Review: Spin-Off Spring 2014 Issue

Like the Autumn 2013 issue of PLY magazine, this issue of Spin-Off features colorwork as its primary theme. It has been interesting to see how these particular issues differ, since the PLY issue seems to focus on the well-rounded approach to colorwork--blending, spinning, plying--whereas this issue seems to focus primarily on dyeing and blending to achieve a variety of colors. Both issues work very well in tandem, so if you're really interested in building your colorwork arsenal, these two issues are wonderful resources to have in your library.

Stepping into a new world, color blending can seem very daunting. I have to admit that I encountered some timidity when performing my first color experiments. I kept in mind the color rules of my high school art class...blue and red make purple, yellow and blue make green. But this is a very limiting way of experimenting with color. Luckily, I had two great resources on hand right after I started combining colors on my borrowed drum carder. I had a Munsell color chart (from my school library) which helped me identify hue, saturation, and value of my archaeological surrogate samples I made for the experiments for my master's dissertation. That color chart help me understand how to identify whether a color was bright or dark, and now I can identify the value of a color without a color chart on hand. Now, I know that most people won't have this kind of chart in their home library, but if you're very serious about understanding color, it would be worth looking for it through your local library (and probably interlibrary loan). However, it isn't necessary to have used it to understand color--but it it'll take more time and experimentation to really understand those three indicators of color: hue, saturation, and value. Hue refers to the specific color, saturation refers to the intensity, and value refers to the lightness/darkness.

The second valuable resource was a dvd I got for Christmas one year: Color Works for Spinners by Deb Menz. She's a wonderful teacher, and I love her crazy red hair. She's soft spoken, but really knows her stuff. I felt myself listening raptly as she plainly explained hue, saturation, and value, while also demonstrating it on camera. She chose a color she wanted to make, then chose appropriate mixing colors to achieve the hue, saturation, and value for the desired color. She didn't always get it right, but she talked about how to identify what a blend needs to get the right color. The Munsell color chart and Deb's instruction are what really helped me break out of the high school art class mentality regarding color (also, I'm not implying that all high school art teachers are created equal).

Yet, these magazines will send you on your way to blending and creating beautiful colors. The first article I found most salient for budding colorists was the "Never-Ending Blending" article. You start out with a set of primary colors, then blend together the two adjacent colors evenly (evenly = 50/50 blend of the two parent colors). The more you do this kind of blending, the more gradual the gradient between colors will become. For example, if you start blending yellow and red, your first color blend will be orange. If you blend yellow with orange, your second color blend will be a golden orange color. But this is when you need to break the rules of art class. You don't always have to start with the same three primary colors: yellow, red, and blue. Sure, you can get a wide range of colors, but the blending is still limited. As the author attempted, try using a different set of three primary colors. One of the experiments used the three colors of printer cartridges: yellow, cyan, and magenta. Those color blends will be otherwise impossible to make if you started out with yellow, red, and blue.

If you start out with bright colors, you'll get bright blends, and vice versa with dark colors. Experiment with adding in white or black to your blends in increments of 10% (like, 90/10, 80/20) to change the value of your color. For example, if you wanted to darken an orange, you could combine 9g of orange with 1g of black wool. If you wanted to make it very dark, you could combine 5g of orange with 5g of black. You would lighten the orange similarly by combining it with white.

These blending experiments provide an excellent setup for experimenting with making tweed yarns. Tweed can refer to the color of the yarn and it can also refer to the texture of the yarn. For example, tweed the color is made by completely blending together several colors to get one, semi-homogenous color. This yarn would appear to be one color from a distance, but many colors upon closer examination. Tweed the texture is made by adding small noils into the fiber mixture, sometimes in a variety of colors, then spinning it into yarn. This will give the yarn a nubbly appearance. The article "Blending and Spinning Tweed Yarns" introduced me to the proper names for these two types of tweeds: Harris tweed refers to tweed the color, and Donegal tweed refers to tweed the texture (as well as color). Adding the principles behind preparing tweed batts will enhance your colorwork overall, and is a nice way to help mix and match different batts together.

Finally, the article I found very useful for natural dyeing was the article called "Making Dyestock Solutions from Natural Dyes." In a nutshell, it tells you what you need to know to figure out a formula for standardizing your dyestock--which might be challenging given that the extraction of color from natural dye sources can produce a variable yield. With all natural dyes, you won't get 100% consistency from batch to batch. But you can come close. If you keep notes about your dye stock and the depth of shade (DOS) for various saturations, you will produce similar results from batch to batch. As with the above articles on color blending, you can mix and match your naturally dyed fiber to create new colors, and blend them with professionally dyed wool to stretch your naturally dyed colors.

After reading the PLY issue on colorwork, I didn't think I would gain much from reading this issue of Spin-Off. Given their very different approaches on the same theme, I'm happy to have both of these issues in my library. The last thing I need is a shelf full of duplicates.

I hope you enjoyed this review; more reviews will be coming later. I can't do justice to these magazines, so if you find the things I talk about in this review interesting, get your hands on a copy. Hop over to Facebook if you want to share your own personal thoughts about colorwork and your experiences.

Fleece-to-Shrug: We're Ready to Spin!

If you have been following along on YouTube, you'll know that we're ready to start spinning our beautifully carded fleece into a soft, 2-ply yarn. I wanted to take some glamour shots of the batts before I started spinning them for the continuation of the video series so I can illustrate some points.

As you can see, I top loaded the batt with the lovely add-ins (silk, angelina, sari silk, and icicle nylon). If you look through the Part 5 video again, you'll see me make a fiber/add-in sandwich before I removed the batt from the carder. This technique does a few things. First, it prevents the add-ins from simply sticking to the licker. It takes a bit more practice and experience to make this doesn't happen, making this stage a little easier for beginners.

It also makes the spinning process slightly easier. By being sandwiched with fiber, the add-ins are less likely to fall off the batt. Now, there are plenty of wonderful reasons to put the bling on the very top, but if you're still a beginner, the characteristics of the fiber will help you manage the bling on the batt a little better. Last, it'll subdue the impact of the bling slightly, which will be helpful when you're knitting with the yarn (ie, you won't have areas of intense color, which might overpower the cable pattern otherwise).

Here, you can see the very thin layer of fiber over the bling. It's subtle, but you can crank the throttle more or less if you want, and the more fiber you pack on the very top of the batt, the more subdued the add-ins will look in the final yarn. If in the end you didn't add enough bling for your taste, you can always hold your add-ins together with the batt while you're spinning. I use that trick a lot, and I can even do a video about that in the future if I get enough requests. :)

So, how do your batts look? Did you blend your fiber with other tools? Share your pictures and projects with us over on the Expertly Dyed fan page! <3

Batt Photography: A History of Good and Bad Pictures

We collect thousands of images every day and some of those images stay in our permanent collection: our brains. When we lie awake in bed because we aren't sure if that guy likes us or not, we conjure images of him smiling and being near us.Those in retail understand the power of a product display. For example, there is a display showing us a young 20-something mannequin wearing business separates and standing in a powerful, yet seductive pose. We try on (and buy) those separates and matching accessories because we want to look as good as the mannequin. When we're at home, we try on all of the clothes and accessories and arrange ourselves to look like the image of the mannequin at the store.

But then the internet was invented. And we began posting pictures of ourselves and e-commerce came into existence. Then began the struggle for us to not only learn how the internet and e-commerce works, but we also needed to actually learn how to use our cameras. Those who chose photography as a hobby or career already had a leg up on the rest of us. We knew that family-photo-around-the-dinner-table wasn't going to do our products justice, but we used it anyway. Until about 2006, photos on the internet were so-so. The digital camera explosion didn't come until around then. I remember getting my first digital camera around Christmas 2004..and that's the one I used for taking photos of my products in 2010.

The following post is a tongue-in-cheek mockery of my once 'pretty good' pictures. It's fun looking back at old pictures to see how far you've come. The pressure to keep photos interesting, high quality, and remarkable is ever-present for businesses. And doubly so for the small business (we do everything ourselves and we often don't have the right tools for the job). That said, a halfway decent camera, a lightbox, and some tips about composition and you'll have gorgeous images worthy of being curated in our permanent brain collections.

Originally posted on January 30, 2013:

Alright, let's face it. I'm not a photographer. I'm only as good as my camera, and my first camera was terrible. It was a digital camera which was already 5 years too old when compared to modern models. I built a light box to keep my pictures from sucking a big lemon, but as you can see from the picture below, it sucked a lemon anyway:

Okay, so that's not a picture of a batt. I didn't have a drum carder when I first started, so I didn't sell batts when I first launched. However, the dyed tussah silk lying limp and dull in front of the wine is what I had to photograph with my horrible digital camera. Don't worry, that wine has long been consumed. Waste not for the sake of picture taking. And the glass? A present to my husband for our first year anniversary--while we were still dating. Cute, huh? Clunky looking, but sturdy. I drop everything. And I trail off on tangents...

Pity the tussah. Also, pity the lost potential. I could have done a much better job presenting the materials in my pictures to make them mouth-watering, though a little fuzzy. I mean, I researched the photographs of other fiber artists, but I also had to balance what I wanted with what I was capable of doing. Which wasn't much.

I called out to my facebook friends to see if I could scam a better camera, and luckily, I was offered an excellent camera for sale instead. I bought a Canon Rebel for an embarrassingly cheap price (thank you amazon.com for your low-ball pricing schemes!), and thus began my entire photograph revamp. And only 2 months after I initially launched. I had just taken all of my pictures, and here I was doing it all over again. But, the results were much better:

Oh yes, I was an instant pro. My old digital camera had its battery compartment emptied and sealed in its eternal tomb after I had this photo session. What stunning photos I could take now! I was zooming in like crazy to get ultra detailed shots of the individual fibers. I was essentially taking glamour shots of my products, and they certainly played up the star role.

Even my yarn got to take center stage. Now I could be like everyone else I had admired up to this point. However, I still had one problem. Though I could take accurate and clear pictures, I still was unable to capture that Je ne sais quois. Did I get the French right? It's been a while. Here are some more attempts I made to photograph batts:

I went back and looked at what others were doing more recently with their batt photos. I realized that photography for batts had reached a new level of sophistication. And that also meant rolling up the batts in a different way. So, I headed back to the table with batt in hand and snapped some shots from a new perspective:

Ooo, nicely done! What gorgeous colors and textures, and even the rolling of the batt impacts the ultimate outcome of the picture too. I have triumphed--for now. My goals for the near future are to begin taking pictures of the batts in new ways and be a trendsetter rather than a season-late trend follower.

I'm trying to focus on one feature of the batt, as in this example where I zoom in on the pulled sari silk which is off-center. I like how the rest fizzles into a clump of sparkly orange without concrete definition.

Or in this example where the folds are stacked on top of one another.

Or this one which is essentially a tube a fiber and only a small section in the middle of the fiber is in sharp focus. Whenever I sell the fiber, I'll surely post "normal" pictures, but for that eye-catching, wheel-whetting impact, I think I may be on to something. Time shall see.

Update: January 21, 2013

I wanted to show you another idea I had for taking pictures of multiple batts. I sometimes make limited edition batts where there are between 2 and 4 in a collection, but they aren't repeatable. I think it really points out how consistent I am when I make batts! :)

Photo Tutorial: Adventures in Drum Carding

This is an old tutorial post that I created to help others learn how to use a drum carder. This information was tough to find all in one place, since I have a love/hate relationship with the forums on ravelry. What you're seeing here is the fruitful labor of combining the information from several sources into one, while also adding personal insight from a beginner. Since writing this particular tutorial back in March of 2011, I've become a drum carding connoisseur and made several drum carder tutorials on youtube. To keep the content of this post reasonable and focused, I'm going to just repost the photo tutorial here (with a bit of fine tuning).

Original Post from March 15, 2011:

I am currently renting a drum carder from my local guild. Prior to using one, I watched a bunch of videos on youtube, but there are few "drum carding tutorials." The drum carder I rented is a Pat Green, but since it's kind of old, no one remembers which model it is. I've found several similar models on their website.

There are some basic things to know about drum carders before you get started.

1. Never try to add too much fiber all at once. It will bend the metal tines and break the fibers, resulting in a major expense to replace the carding cloth and batts which have many weak, broken fibers.
2. Never try to add more fiber than the drum carder can hold. You might receive specs from the company regarding your specific drum carder, or if you're borrowing one, be sure to slowly add on more fiber until it looks full.
3. If yours has a handcrank, be sure to turn it slowly. If you try to card the fibers quickly, it may result in broken fibers and a batt full of nepps.
4. Unless your drum carder specs say otherwise, I suggest that the longest staple length that should be carded is 6 inches. Longer fibers will wrap around the drum, making it difficult to successfully lift the batt from the drum.

Now, on to the pictures! I've been carding for a couple of months, but I am by no means an expert, nor do I know everything there is to know about the various ways you can apply fiber and color to a drum carder. First, I'll show you a few tools that I use to make a hand-pulled roving from a drum carder.

This is a diz that I cut out of cardboard. It doesn't have to be round, so I made it more complicated than it needed to be. The point is, you don't have to spend $15 on a diz unless you want to (or maybe someone bought you a nice diz as a gift?). Also, my husband giggles whenever I tell him about spinning/knitting/weaving terminology--"diz" is no exception!

This is a doffer pin. This usually comes with a carder, but you could easily use a long knitting needle if you're in a pinch. (Voice of experience here: don't use a metal knitting needle every time. It'll bend and warp over time, and the tip will become sharper than a nail.)

Most importantly, you need fiber! I'm using hand dyed (by me ^^): Suffolk top, dyed firestar, and dyed tussah silk. Roughly, there are 20 grams of the Suffolk, 1.5 grams of tussah silk, and 0.5 grams firestar.

Apply the fiber to the carder in any fashion you choose. In a future post, I'll hopefully be able to talk about the different ways to apply fiber for different results.

Here is a nice, close-up shot of the fibers on the main drum:

Depending on how blended you want the fibers to be will dictate how many passes you make with the carder. If you start with a dyed, combed top, for example, you may just want to layer the colors on the drum and produce a batt which exhibits color chunks. The spinner can choose to spin the batt however s/he chooses, and s/he might produce a yarn that looks something like this.

In my case, I wanted to make an evenly blended batt, so the color streaks were less defined. I achieved this by sending the carded batt I made through the carder a total of 3 times. In the next 3 photos, I'll show you how I remove a carded batt from a drum carder.

There is a groove where the carding cloth has been stapled to the main drum, which will allow you to remove the fiber from the carder as a batt (a giant rectangle of carded fibers). Insert the doffer pin into this groove, making sure to slide it underneath the fibers.

Once the pin is through, gently lift it at a 45 degree angle from the drum. Continue sliding the doffer pin across this groove and gently lifting the fibers at a 45 degree angle. The fibers over the groove will draft apart, making a clean break from each other. If they don't make a clean break, just work in sections. (If you're confused by this, let me know!)

There are many ways to remove the batt without leaving fibers on the drum carder. To remove the fiber as a batt, I just pinch the fiber between my first and second fingers, and gently pull away from the carder. After I've pulled about 2-3 inches, I scoot my fingers back down to the tines and do it again. Rinse and repeat.

After the batt has been released from the drum, split the batt into 4 or 6 pieces, and recard the batt you just made (if you want it to be more blended, that is). Since my batt was less than 1 ounce, I split it into 4, roughly equal pieces. When you're carding, be sure that you can see through your fiber. Here's what I mean:

When you're ready to remove the batt from the carder for the last time, you can follow the above directions and remove it as a batt, or you can remove it into a roving. I'll show you how I pull the batt into a roving in the following pictures.

Insert the doffer pin into a section of the groove equal to about 1 inch. Lift up, and you'll have a small opening to get started with.

Twist these fibers and push through the opening of your diz. You can also use a small crochet hook to pull the fibers through.

Using a "pull-push" motion, push the diz towards the drum while pulling back on the fiber that has been threaded through the hole in the diz. Do this process while also rotating the drum between the "pull-push" motion, until all of the fiber has been turned into a roving.

After the fiber has been removed, it should look light and airy, and should draft smoothly. If you start with a washed fleece, you can get a very nice preparation for a longdraw method of spinning. If your chosen method of spinning is semi-worsted (like me, at least until I'm better at the long draw), you can still get a loftier worsted spun yarn than if you began with a combed top.

You can wind the roving into a pretty little nest until you're ready to use it.

Carding is time intensive, and can also require more labor if you begin with a washed fleece. Don't expect to produce multiple carded batts per hour, because if you're doing it correctly, you'll probably only manage to get 1 or 2 made in an hour. So, whenever you buy carded batts on Etsy, be sure to thank the seller and offer great feedback. They are a labor of love, much like most products in the fiber world. :)