From fleece to fiber art: alpaca like the ocean

A few weeks ago a friend of mine called me up. "Will you spin me some yarn for a Mother's Day gift? Any kind of yarn you want," she said (though, I admit, not in these precise words ;)). "I've never seen you make yarn I haven't liked!"

Once the temporary ego-swelling had subsided, of course, I had to make some decisions. My friend (hello, Ms. Friend! ;D) and her mother are both allergic to wool, so anything but wool would work. Well, I have plenty of alpaca fleeces, so off I went to the stash.

I wanted to pick a fiber good for dyeing, since alpaca doesn't naturally come in blue, green, or purple, the colors I hear Ms. Friend's mom uses the most. ;) This, a fleece from Calypso Farm, from a Suri alpaca named Glass Slipper, seemed perfect:


Suri, by the way, is a rare breed of alpaca known for having silky, warm, lustrous, drapey fiber. Only one percent of the alpacas on the planet are of the Suri breed, so "rare" isn't just hype! ;) (Check out Suri Network for more information on Suri alpacas and Suri fiber specifically.)

So the fleece visited the wash tub and the dye pot, and voila! Oceany alpaca!



Anyway, originally I thought I'd do a lightweight yarn that might work for knitting a shawl, as Ms. Friend mentioned something about a lace book for her mom. Now, maybe you know this already because you have lots of friends who are fibers, but fibers have preferences about what makes them look good and behave well. Some look good in little black dresses, some look good in jeans and a t-shirt — well, okay, I'm really talking about fiber preparation here, like combing vs. carding, but I am so not in a jargony technical mood today, so we'll pretend it's kind of like clothing style. ;)

Point is, since I hadn't worked with this particular fleece before and didn't know its preferences, I experimented with different fiber preparations. I tried preparing it on my hand cards, on my drum carder, and with my hand combs, and I tried spinning yarn from all these preparations as well as spinning the fiber straight from the cloud (meaning without doing more than picking it apart with my fingers a bit).

Some of the results I won't share with you *cough*, but I found that while the different preparations weren't radically different in results, the different processes were different amounts of pain in the butt. ;) (Suri alpaca doesn't look fluffy until you try to run it through a Louet Junior Roving Carder, let me tell you ... and then it flies everywhere. I guess I need a drum carder with finer teeth? Or maybe I need to buckle down and get those cotton hand cards I've been drooling over for years.) Anyway, in the end I end I went with the hand combs — even though I think of them as fairly slow, they seem suited to the Suri's straight, silky fibers ... and they don't make the fiber fly everywhere and stick to everything. ;)


Scary fiber equipment, yay!

I even knit up some of the sample yarn to see how it behaved.



That looks pretty decent, huh? But like I said, different fibers have different preferences, and there was just something about this preparation that didn't seem ideal. Sure, it was functional, but the Suri seemed like it wanted to show off a little more, and not be so traditional. Lots of fibers do traditional perfectly well, and the Suri does have an interesting halo to it when spun like this, but ... well, at the rate I was spinning, it also would have taken me forever and ever to finish the whole batch of fiber at that weight. And I had this possibly odd idea that a Mother's Day gift should probably be ready before Mother's Day, plus, I didn't want to think about pricing a yarn that takes 9 whole hours to spin, not even counting the combing and the dyeing and the washing and, and...

So I decided I'd spin it fatter, since the fatter yarn sample I did seemed to show off the Suri's qualities better. Then I thought again: If I spun it fat, because alpaca tends to be fairly heavy and dense compared to wool, I'd end up with a fat, short skein of yarn, an amount that would make it more of an accent yarn than something Ms. Friend's mom would be able to knit a whole item out of. And that'd be silly, wouldn't it? But the singles alone, with its decent yardage, didn't seem appealing enough — again, it was functional, but I wanted to do something special, not just a plain ol' singles.

Then I remembered thread-plying! And so I went into the part of the stash with the cones of vintage weaving yarn, and I pulled out some white thread, and went to town. Ply, ply you fools! The result:


Ta-da! A little over 100 yards of thread-plied art yarn. (Okay, it's a slightly sedate art yarn, but I didn't want to force anything too wacky on someone I can't remember meeting in person, meaning where she would be in range of my ability to sense wackiness tolerance. ;))

Yeah, I may have fallen victim to making things more complicated than they needed to be, by following my own preferences and treating this project like I would have had it been a present for my mom, but that's not such a horrible thing to do when you're given free rein to make whatever yarn you like, right?


And hey, if the recipient hates it, or if she happens to see this blog post and decides she likes it the traditional, takes-two-gazillion-years-to-spin yarn better than the arty yarn, I do have more of this fiber, and more dye. I can always call a redo! It may even take me slightly less than a gazillion years to spin it next time, since then I'll have had the practice of spinning it this time around. ;)

Of course, I do hope she ends up liking it, maybe even making something out of it that eventually shows up in my inbox in photographic form. That's one of the coolest things that can happen to your handmade stuff — seeing it in happy use, in action.

So here's hoping it's well-received. :D Meantime, I'm off again. There's still more of that gigantic scarf to knit...

Serenity, attachment and growth; enlightenment through crafting

The Pearl cat woke me up this morning by being loudly disturbed about the first mate locking him outside last night, so I'm awake with the respectable people for once, sitting on the floor with my laptop, drinking mint tea and reflecting on all kinds of deep things. This is apparently a natural consequence of my being sleep-deprived in a way that involves being up far too early. (At least, the reflecting part is natural for sleep deprivation. The mint tea and sitting on the floor are less common side effects.)

So far, aside from making tea, renewing a couple of shop items, and chatting with people on Twitter, I've used my unexpected morning to work on spinning some batts I've had stashed for a little over two years.


Gypsy batts from Enchanted Knoll Farm
See all that lovely texture and variation? I'd forgotten, in my quest to spin smoother and thinner yarn, what it was like to spin solely for the sake of spinning. This morning, in making spun order out of that seeming chaos, I rediscovered it. That's a testament to how well-prepared these batts really are — they're not uniform, so I have to pay attention to what I'm doing to spin them reasonably evenly, but they're easy to spin, without stuck-together clumps that distract me from the purity of adding twist, drafting, feeding yarn onto bobbin, repeating. For the first time in a long time, I wanted to keep spinning past my allotted time, never mind if the tea got cold.

Interestingly enough, this fiber was in my stash last year during my first Tour de Fleece, and I stared at it quite a few times without bringing myself to try spinning it. I didn't trust myself last year to do it justice; I also didn't want to let go of that bit of treasure in my stash. Today — or really, yesterday, which was when I started spinning the first batt — I was finally ready. I was no longer attached to it being just as it was; it, and I, were ready to transform.

And this is why attachment is forbidden to Jedi (so quoth Anakin Skywalker). Attachment obstructs change, progress and growth, and it certainly obstructs one's ability to promote peace and justice in the galaxy. ;)

Anakin's not my favorite Jedi by a long shot, or even a great example of how one should behave (uh, yeah — being whiny, melodramatic, dishonest, and having rage issues doesn't exactly make one a prime candidate for Best Jedi of the Year OR Best Person of the Year...), but the point behind the "attachment is forbidden" policy is still solid, in pretty much every area of life — at least, in mine.

Now, it's extremely important to differentiate between attachment and passion. Attachment may be potentially bad, but passion can be very good. True, it's also on the list of Jedi no-no's, but IMO, to some extent it's okay even if you're a Jedi, no matter what the letter of the law says. Being passionate about justice, for instance, but not letting that passion control you, would be great if you were a Jedi because it would probably inspire dedication. The key is not letting passion control you. Letting your passions inspire and motivate you is the positive side of passion, but when they start to control you, things veer back into the irrational attachment category.

Of course, if you're not a Jedi, you have a lot of leeway for letting your passions control you, since your attachment is pretty unlikely to be a matter of life and death if your passion is, say, cooking, making yarn, designing jewelry, or offering great customer service. ;)

Still, you get the point. Reason plus passion can equal creativity, but attachment plus creative desire can equal creative block.

That also occurred to me the other day when I was doing some lovely lovely math related to new spinning fiber plans (see, math IS useful — it should be required that math teachers provide a variety of concrete, real-life examples as to why kids might want to use their math skills in the future). I had two pounds of fiber waiting to be split up, imbued with colors, and carded into nom nom nom batts, and even after rechecking my math to correct all the ludicrous errors, I found that two pounds was an ample amount for what I want to do. Amazing!

Why amazing? Because two months ago, two pounds of fiber seemed like nowhere near enough. And that was because I was attached to my stash.


Getting un-attached help me turn this around-two-pounds of fiber into...


...THIS glittery pile of happy fiber! ;D
The point of my babbling becomes clear now, I hope. ;) Even two months ago, my attachment was driving me to hoard my precious spinning fiber, even the stuff I had bought specifically to dye and blend and spin for the shop. Like, uhhh ... my attachments were literally keeping me from producing what I need to produce to have money to feed me and my cats and my boyfriend, and nice things like, you know, a house to live in.

So where the heck did my attachment go?

I think the real answer has multiple parts. For one thing, I've been slowly untangling my brain, even by setting goals and failing to meet them. (I read somewhere recently that truly successful business people don't go into business expecting to succeed — they go into business expecting to fail and to learn how to succeed. I doubt it's universally true, but the idea has a truthful ring to it...) Untangling my brain inherently means letting go of ingrained, unhealthy ideas, so naturally a lot of random attachments are getting loosened in the process.

For another thing, I've reached a financial turning point. I hate to admit my hard-won savings are looking thin, but there it is; they are. However, I'm not even a little sad about using that financial cushion to give myself time to untangle my head and really figure out where I want to go with my business and my self. It's something I should have done a long time ago and didn't because I bowed to the ill-considered opinion of a figure of some authority, who really should have known better — and now I have proof that I should listen to myself first, then to others only if what they're saying jives with what my heart and soul say. But having less money to work with now gives me more incentive to look at what attachments I'm being silly about, and what things I own really contribute positively to my life.

Oh, I'm not a glowing Zen icon of perfect emotional balance (...yet? ;)), and I still feel cranky or disappointed or negative some days, but I can see myself shedding more attachments as the summer goes by. I'm walking without my emotional crutches more often now.

And that's what attachments are, really, not just for me, but for many people — a crutch; a poor substitute for true balance and an impediment to self-reliance. Interestingly enough, letting go of personal crutches is making me more creative, more productive, and maybe even a better business owner. And all this personal growth is coming out of my decision to be a crafter, to use my savings, to take a risk, to follow my dreams, to stop letting fear-based advice sound like a reasonable choice for my life. Funny how it works like that. ;)

"Attachment is forbidden. Possession is forbidden. Compassion, which I would define as unconditional love, is essential to a Jedi's life. So, you might say that we are encouraged to love." Anakin Skywalker, Star Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Clones

Day of the Batts

Most of today belonged to one of the resident torture instruments — the drum carder of dooooooooom! (I just like to call it that because it seriously looks like an instrument of pain — not to imply that I don't like carding...)

I spent several hours this afternoon digging through bits and pieces of hand-dyed wool in a bunch of different colors, throwing it onto the drum carder, and watching the little metal teeth go nom nom nom and produce these:




They all have Blue-Faced Leicester wool, mystery wool that I got from someone's destash, and a bit of nylon firestar. I think the purple ones may have a bit of Rambouillet or Rambouillet X that I got in the fleece and dyed myself, but I'm not completely sure that's what it was, so "mystery wool" fits. ;)

Carding is hot work. It seems like it was worth it, but we'll really see tomorrow at the Etsy Craft Party, when my fresh little fiber buns (don't they look like buns to you, too? ;)) will have their debut.

Does anyone else always feel like they're eternally just a little bit behind where they think they should be? I need to sleep less and work more. Don't think it's just me who thinks so — the bills say so, too...

Giveaway drawing coming soon ... and some more fluffy stuff

A big thank-you to everyone who entered the hurricane shawl pin giveaway — I'll be collecting all the entries from my various inboxes and the comment stream and putting them into a spreadsheet, checking them for duplicates, etc., in the next couple of days, so watch out for the drawing for the winners to be done later this week ... and an extra thanks for your patience. ;)

So what have you been doing this week? I successfully found Tempus Projects (where Tampa's Etsy Craft Party is going to be) yesterday after driving by it about fifteen times, as it was tucked away in a gray building behind a church with a big sign ... but my charm pins for the goodie bags have been safely delivered. WHEW.

And today I finally listed some spinning fiber I created for the June Phat Fiber theme. Meet the moody Robin Goodfellow, a.k.a. Puck, Mr. Mischievous himself:


Playful Robin Goodfellow roving (Merino wool and Tussah silk)


Kindly Robin Goodfellow batts (BFL wool, Merino wool, Tussah silk, with dabs of nylon firestar in yellow and purple
And I still have about 80,000 things to do before Friday. I leave you with further proof of my hard work from yesterday — a photo of one of the charm pins someone will get in their goodie bag soon:


The first mate done did good yesterday, too. He's not a fiber person, but he wove in all the tails on all the tiny squares I made, so that I could cut and label and glue and package in time to make it to the dropoff at Tempus. It seems that having helpers is actually useful, after all — once you get them trained properly. ;)

Insanity, fluff, and endless tiny squares

Today it felt like I wove a million tiny squares on my 2-inch Weavette. It was really only 25, but I think I've discovered the limit of how many minuscule handwoven squares I can make in four slightly brainless hours. ;)


Why the tiny-square-weaving insanity? Well, I'm going to the Etsy Craft Party in Tampa on Friday, and the little squares will be showing up in a goodie bag near you. Near you if you're near Tampa. Which, okay, hardly applies to any of you. ;) Quick, look at squishy fiber to make you feel better!


Mini batts containing BFL wool, Merino wool, Tussah silk and nylon firestar. The sparkly stuff really is in there somewhere.
Those are some of the samples that are going to be in the Phat Fiber sampler box this month, and guess what that means? Any item you buy from the Star and Crossbones Etsy shop this month gets you an entry into the superbox giveaway on the Phat Fiber Ravelry group! Yayyy! The thread for posting your purchases isn't up yet, but keep watching. It'll go up after this month's sampler box goes on sale, I think.

Anyway, enough talk. More fluffies!


More samples that will be in the Phat Fiber box. This is hand-dyed Merino wool and Tussah silk, no sparkles.
And look how cutely I packaged everything up this month, too:




...had enough? ;)

In other news, my first official spinning demo did indeed occur on Friday, and despite some, er, unfortunate events that prevented me from actually appearing on time, I had fun, and I hope all the people who showed up also had fun. Thank you very kindly if you're reading this and you were there — I really appreciated your support as I sorted my brain out from the Quite Weird events of the day. I'm still recovering from said events, which is the real reason for the use of the word "insanity" in the title of this post. Wish me better luck for this Friday as I make my debut as the host of the local Etsy party's fiber arts station!