The Thrifty Knitter

Well, for now anyway.

Duran Duran. Mostly wool, a little mohair, about 2.5 ounces.

What do you do with all those bits of fleece, roving & yarn that end up scattered all over your house? You can vacuum them up, sure, but if you gather them all up, wad them into balls, and tie them off in a stocking or pantyhose leg, and toss them in the washing machine with a load of towels, you’ve got yourself some free and much-appreciated pet toys.

All the clean bits that I catch in time get tossed into a bag or bin for recarding, but I often lose track of the bits while they’re still salvagable. Once they’ve drifted into a cobwebby corner or gotten mushed into the carpet with cat hair or dragged around and shredded by the kitten, I’m not super keen on spinning them up. But all the dirty bits are prime for pet toys, since they’ll get a free scouring in the wash!

Step 1: Gather up your yarn and fiber bits. You can include the odd superwash or non-animal fiber scrap, as long as you’re working with about 70% feltable fiber. Curly locks look especially cool.

Step 2: Wad them into balls. Little balls for cats, big balls for doggies. Densely-felted balls have a lot of bounce, great for fetchers. You can make really big balls (or oblongs or snakes) simply by using more fiber. For the densest large balls, start small and build up with additional layers in additional wash loads..

Step 3: Stuff them into a stocking and tie off sections with cotton yarn. I’d advise against a fishnet like I used (the felt works its way into the holes & isn’t as tidy when you have to work them out afterwards–but it’s all I could find and I had ants in my pants). Use tights or pantyhose.

Step 4: Toss in with a load of laundry using a hot wash with a cold rinse (I like towels or rags). Both the hot and cold are important. The hot encourages felting and the cold shocks the wool & further felts it.

Step 5: Untie and peek inside. If necessary, run them through additional cycles. Toss in the dryer then unwrap, or unwrap and air dry. If you want to re-use the stocking, stretch out the length that’s tied off so it’s easy to snip the yarn without cutting the stocking.

Step 6: Playtime!

So as I got ready to work the sleeves on my current sweater, I spread it out for a picture and discovered:

Munchie’s bunchy.

I thought maybe it would go away in the wearing, but no dice:

But instead of my usual “frog now, ask questions later” tack, I decided to ask on the Zimmermania forum on ravelry, and I just might have saved myself some hearthache. Yarnfloozie said her seamless yoke bunchies have blocked out & suggested wetblocking on the needles, and, while I can’t be certain until it’s dry, it looks promising. Those hideous lumps just might block out!

And I’m spinning regularly again, thanks to Spinsters Club and Fiber Friday. I made the assigned Disco yarn last week, and several other skeins, including the January Spinsters Club batt. And I Navajo plied 3 skeins. I *think* I’m improving. All the yarn’s drying on the radiator, so I’ll shoot it tomorrow.

God, I want to post pictures of the February batt. I just love it! And it’s so BIG AND FAT, yay! That will come later.

In the meantime…

Like, Totally (mostly wool, a little mohair)

Donald Draper (superwash merino)

Moxiemix (random 1# felters/spinners assortment made up of itty bits; this is the one I sent Moxie, but each will be a different but balanced assortment of textures & colors, all feltable fibers)

Easter Egg Sock Sack (mostly wool, plus a pinch of mohair, bamboo, sparkle, silk noil, yarn bits)

Little Brother (wool)

Seriously, does it get any cuter than this?

(Jen’s picture.) This is Jimmi getting loved by Carmelita, the freaking adorable sweetiepie llama at Ewephoria Farm, where the Spinsters Club met last Sunday. It was so very very fun, and lucky Jennifer S. went home with two new sheepies! (I’m coveting Daisy’s sister. I think they’re related…) We toured the pastures, met a bunch of friendly, doggy sheep, got to pet and hold day-old lambs, ate Tina’s yummy crumbcake, went shopping, and set to spinning. Very, very fun meeting!

(All the pictures are Jen’s…)

Here are two of the black Romneys. Jennifer took one home, along with a sweet shetland wether.

This guy’s a real Cassanova, nuzzling all the ladies. His fleece is scrumpy and… all mine! I also reserved another spotted merino, yay! And Laura’s getting a dreamy white merino fleece, from the lady across the barn from her:

(I had dibs on this one, but it turns out her fleece was already spoken for. I’ll probably have my hands full with the other two, anyway!) Look at the little baby, with it’s long, wiggly tail!

Chocolate merino babies! There were some even younger, darker ones I wanted to run off with. Maybe next time! We’re trying to set a time for Ron to go visit as part of a brainwashing plan.

This one I call Piggy. Couldn’t you just eat him up? He’s a little shy, though.

Oh! And I’m going to help out on shearing day both at Ewephoria Farm and Alpacas in Wildcat Hollow! Yay! I expect I’ll learn a ton. Vocation vacation! Vocation vacation!

I spent almost an hour today cleaning out a carder with a 0 knitting needle. At the January Spinsters Club, someone carded some very short raw fleece that seems like it must’ve been just handfuls of second cuts, because I had to pry a million sticky neps out. I dusted it with baby poweder and ran a ton of cheap top through it to clean it out, but I’m still picking out tiny bits of fluff. What a nightmare. I will be putting NO RAW FLEECE signs on all the carders for Yarn school.

I’m also trying to figure out what exactly to order for Yarn School. I ordered all the fiber last week, but I haven’t yet settled on what extra equipment to get.  Definitely more Frickes, and I’m getting Ashford equipment, but I haven’t decided what yet. And maybe some Louet stuff.  This year, I’ll probably sell off all the old and one of a kind wheels for cheap and transition to newer wheels that are easier for upkeep. I don’t know whether to sell them before or during.

I’ve been carding the last couple of days & just added a few new items to etsy, but I’ll hopefully finish a few more batts in progress and post all the fiber porn tonight or tomorrow. Which reminds me: I want a new camera. But I want other things more, so not yet.

On a personal note, I am rocking a really bad Princess Di mullet-in-progress right now. I want to grow my hair out (long again), but this phase is pretty heinous. How do extensions work? Are they totally creepy?

Been so busy, I almost forgot to post!

KC/Lawrence/Topeka spinners who what to join the club: This month’s meeting is at Ewephoria Farm in Lawrence, KS, where we’ll spin and meet the brand-new lambs! Tina (shepherd) has lots of beautiful fiber for sale from the critters on site if you want to take home a wooly souvenir. They have Shetlands, moorit Merinos, Romneys, and Llamas, all with luscious fiber.

Enjoy some fiber camaraderie, or learn about keeping sheep yourself (my plan).

New people are welcome, but please RSVP so I can let Tina know if there are a lot more coming. Bring your current spinning, your spindle or wheel, and a snack or beverage to share!

Here’s the map: http://ewephoria.net/location.html

Here’s the Videnovich Yarn CSA link.

Yay! I pestered Vera (she of the yarn for my Skinny Cat Sweater) about starting a fiber CSA program (she already has a veggie CSA–if you live in Chicago, you can get in on that action this summer), and she obliged with a homegrown handspun CSA. Of course, bought my share, which gives me until April to destash a fuckload of yarn so that I won’t be breaking my destash rules! I’m also going to get a share of the MV fiber CSA. I’ll bet a lot of small fiber producers will start doing this. I certainly hope so. It’s excellent knowing the source of your fiber, and anything that supports micro-agriculture is fine by me!

[Here’s the haul I brought back from YarnCon. The sport stuff went into my Skinny sweater; the light bulky stuff on the left is going into a little cardigan, along with some crazy StoneLeafMoon handspun (crappy picture; I should replace that!).]

But that April deadline means look for a destash sale coming up soon!

In other semi-destashing news, I’ve been busting my hump getting all the fiber together for these combed tops I’m getting made with all my odds and ends. I sent of the fiber for the Local Color mix last week, which is all Kansas fiber grown within an hour of my home. I’d guesstimate it’s about 2/3 alpaca, with the remainder llama and shetland. I am VERY excited about what should be a beautiful heathered natural brown.

I’ve also got a Kansas Snow (local whites) mix and a local light colored mix I’m tentatively calling Oh How I Love My Oatmeal, but that might change depending on how it turns out. Like the Local Color, it’s from within an hour of here. The white mix is about 45/45/10 alpaca/MerinoX/llama, and the light mix is actually in about that same proportion, but with the sheep contributor a very soft RomneyX instead of MerinoX.

I’ve been washing and dyeing all the stuff, because the washed minimums are much lower than the raw minimums. I am so very happy to be done now. I would vow against any new raw fiber for the rest of the year, but I know myself. But I can vow against anything new until I meet my destash goals. So there’s that.

Now, in the non-local category, I’ve got 2 dyed lots: a violet-blue blend and a vibrant green blend (I hope–it’s hard to know how all the colors will combine).

The blue-violet blend hopes to be both soft and sturdy. It includes a wool contribution from Suffolk, Cheviot (originally in my Moody roving, but I wasn’t ever fully satisfied with the color, so I overdyed dark and threw it into the kitty), overdyed soft Romney and colored Lincoln, plus dyed alpaca and kid mohair. I’d put it at about 50% wool, 35% alpaca, 15% kid mohair.

Then we’ve got a very soft, bouncy green mix (again, fingers crossed–there’s a fair amount of blue in there, but I’ve tried to balance it with a lot of yellower green) that will work out to about 1/3 each Rambouillet, Merino, and alpaca.

Here’s the roving that started me on the whole combed tops mission. It’s hand-dyed Rambouillet with a tiny bit of hand-dyed nylon icicle sparkle. I love the color, but the roving is really neppy and rife with VM. Every time I’d get to spinning it, I’d be cursing it within a few minute and move on to something else. But I’m conceptually in love with the stuff, so I couldn’t just write it off. And after the miracle Zeilinger worked on my other neppy, VMy rovings, it was really just a matter of time. But there wasn’t nearly enough to meet the tops minimum. At first, I dyed up and planned to blend it with some medium wool & nylon roving I had made for socks, but I decided that throwing 1/3 cush into 2/3 tough wasn’t giving the deserved love to my cush. (But I’m going to make some fabulous sock batts with the stuff I held back, maybe blended with a little bamboo…)

So instead I dyed up some white alpaca fleece I had, and made up the minimum in hand dyed commercial merino. I feel a little dopey paying to re-process a bunch of commercial merino, but what can you do? I expect a dreamy bounce and softy softness, but I’m less secure about the color. I’m worried I don’t have enough yellowy green to neutralize the blues (which you can really see below). I already have a teal blue roving (Blue Lagoon), so I want it to be very distinct and hopefully, complex and a little on the retina-burning side.

I’ve also been reusing the unexhausted dye to dye lots of other random fiber for batts. And aside from washing and washing and dyeing and dyeing, I’ve also been spinning and spinning!

I’ve finished up a bunch of YIP (just one more to do and I’ll have everything off the bobbin!):

The light one was spun from a random batt that was used to pack a spinning wheel I bought from Holland. It’s sturdy! The little skein is a test of some hand-pulled alpaca roving I’m working on. And the other 3 are for my Stockholm souvenir sweater, made of batts I bought on my vacation last summer. I plied each of the colorful batts with Beaverslide natural black to tone and unify them a bit.

Here’s all the yarn for the sweater, which is looking like my April sweater, unless I finish a second February sweater, very unlikely. I’m planning a cardigan that goes from blue to green to yellow, trimmed with brown. But I haven’t picked a pattern. The default of course is top-down raglan, my favorite snoozer sweater; but maybe I’ll try something new.

This is just brilliant. I hope more small farms start doing this!