Fiber Musings

My sister and I called a moratorium on gift giving several years ago. We both have a lot more “stuff” than we really need. And I have a nasty habit of just getting things that I want when I want it, especially since I don’t have to save some for Martin to buy for me.

It’s been great. But, that doesn’t prevent me from thinking, “oh, this would be really great for…” and get overly optimistic.

Last week, I had this great idea of spinning a little something, knit up a few “quick” little items, and have them ready as Christmas presents. Oh, and perhaps knit a few of mini-Christmas stockings and fill it will small stocking stuffers for the ladies at card night.  After all, if I didn’t hit the malls and buy anything (use stash only), it doesn’t count, does it?

Thankfully, sanity hit before I got sucked into that rabbit hole of time pressure. It takes the fun out of it. Before you know it, you resent the giftee before you finish your project.

So, I’m saying “No!” to the insanity of handmade Christmas/Hanukkah presents.

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I love spinning silk. I especially enjoy spinning hand painted silk top. There is something very soothing about spinning silk. And I really love watching the movement of color in a well painted silk top.

Here’s how I prepare a hand painted silk top for spinning.

This is hand painted silk top from Earthues. The silk top is somewhat matted in appearance and texture. Not unlike paper that had been wetted, wrung out, and left to dry in the wrung out state. Silk top in this state is not easy to spin.

I’ve often referred to my own hand painted silk top a “drowned cat” because that’s what my Ellie looks like when she gets out of a bath. This painted top from Earthues looks much better than ones that just came out of my own drying rack, so it’s likely to have been neatened up somewhat. But it still needs a little preparation before it can be spun.

Strip the silk top along the full length.

I like to just shake the top a little bit before I start stripping it. Once shaken, you’ll start to see the natural breaks in the top. This is where the top wants to pull apart into smaller strips. I strip it in half first, if I will be making a 2 ply yarn. Then I take one of these “breaks” and start stripping a thin strip along the full length of the top. I like these strips to be about pencil or little finger width.

Note: How thin your strips are is completely dependent on how thin/thick you want the final yarn to be and how long/short the color repeats you want to have. I generally spin my silk to be lace weight, so I strip it down fairly thin so the repeats don’t go on forever. If I am going to chain ply the yarn, then I may have wider strips because that will also shorten my color repeats.

Lightly draft the strip.From left to right: the full top, a single strip from the top, and lightly drafted top.

Start from one end and hold the strip of silk between your hands, about 3-4″ apart (just shy of fiber length). Lightly snap the silk between your hands. You’ll see the silk between your hands open up. Move down the strip and repeat until you’ve fluffed up the entire length of the strip.

You’ll notice the shift of color from the original top, which is more intense, to a softer color in the drafted strip. The original top is closer to real color of the spun yarn because you’ll be compressing the fiber again, thereby intensifying the color.

Left: Silk top (unstripped)
Right: Stripped and lightly drafted top.

The pile of silk top on the left will be stripped down and drafted into at least 4 more of the drafted balls of silk like the one on the right. This will represent 1/2 of the original top. See how much the fiber fluffs up?

Amazing, isn’t it? I’m always fascinated by this transformation. I can do this all day. But then, I’m easily amused.

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I created a new blog category for finished objects and went back through the archives to tag all appropriate entries with the FO tag.  I realized a few things.  For a blog that is supposed to track my fiber pursuits, I am really bad at documenting my completed objects, let alone actually taking and posting pictures of the said objects.  According to my posts, I only have about 53 finished objects in the 5 years since I started my blog.  I know that can’t be true.  I also noted that there are several mentions of finished objects without photo documentation. Sigh.  I’ll need to do better from that perspective.

But it also caused me to question the definition of “finished object” especially in light of someone who dabbles in various stages of fiber prep.  Is a finished object only in terms of the final wearable piece of object?  What if that object was made of fiber that was spun?  Can the spun fiber (yarn) stand on its own as a finished object?  What if you dyed the fiber?  Does the dyed fiber constitute as a completed object?  Can each stage along the way from your purchase to the final object be considered as a finished object?

No, stay with me here.

As I’ve stated in the past, I often spin for the sake of spinning — no usage in mind.  So, wouldn’t the spun fiber be considered my finished object?  And if months or years from now, I decided to take that yarn and make something with it, does it become a finished object a second time?  What if I dyed the fiber myself?  How many times can I call something a finished object?  And can you imagine the possibilities if you weave cloth?  Where does it stop?

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This is the sampler I made from Evelyn Clark’s workshop. (Click for big.) It has only had a sauna treatment (steam block) because I bound off just in time for the guild meeting and I wanted to take it for the show and tell. The ends are not yet trimmed because it really needs a nice soak in a hot tub and re-blocked before I can call it finished.

Pattern: my own compilation of Evelyn’s stock lace patterns in her book “Knitting Lace Triangles”
Yarn: 2 ply spindle spun yarn (Lisa Souza’s Superfine Merino in “Bird of Paradise” colorway)
Needles: US #4, 3.50 mm
Size: Depth: 22″; Wingspan: 50″. Just about the perfect shoulder shawl size for me.

I worked the lace patterns from most open to most dense, and worked all the transitions in between. In retrospect, I should have followed Evelyn’s advice that if you are mixing elements, you want to have denser patterns at the top of the triangle. But by the time she dispensed that piece of advice, I had already worked through to the first or second repeat, and I was too lazy (or stubborn) to rip back and start over.

Of course, if I were to completely do this over, I would have chosen a more solid colored yarn. I think the pattern is busy enough and doesn’t need the competition of the variegation.

I close this post with a detail of the tip, complete with the “mistake” I referenced in the last post. Can you find the mistake if I hadn’t already told you where it was? No? Me neither.

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Or, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.

I don’t know if it’s experience or laziness, but I’m finding that I’m less and less willing to rip out mistakes without taking a good hard look at the work before making the decision to rip.

When working short-row heels, sometimes I get uneven number of stitches remaining unworked on either side.  I used to laboriously tink back to the start of the problem, if I can find it.  If not, tink back to the start of the heel.  Now?  I just let it be.  I realized that nobody will notice the off by one count, and it doesn’t affect the fit.  So, why bother?  (If it’s more than one off, I will likely tink back.)

When working heels in general, sometimes I will pick up an extra 1 or 2 stitches along each side to eliminate the gap.  Who cares if the pattern says pick up x stitches?  If x stitches cause a hole to happen, why not pick up x+1? You just need to do an extra set of decreases to get back down to the appropriate number.  Believe me, that will be less noticeable than the hole.  (Okay, this example is the inverse of the original premise of laziness.)

In my entrelac sampler from Kathryn Alexander’s class, there were a few squares that weren’t “square.”  For some reason, instead of picking up y stitches, I picked up z because z seemed to be what was called for.  After working the “square” it’s barely noticeable.

The other day, I was finishing off the triangle shawl I “designed” during Evelyn Clark’s “Designing Lace Triangles” class.  It was a sampler of all the stock lace patterns in the book.  When it was time to start the edging, I realized that I was short 2 stitches in the pattern repeat on either side of the center.  Even under careful scrutiny, I couldn’t figure out where I went wrong.  I don’t like to tink or rip unless I know exactly what I’m trying to fix and how far back it is.  So, what did I do?  Willy nilly picking up of the extra stitches would have been noticeable and unsightly.  So, in the first row of the edging, I just didn’t do the 3-1 decrease on that last pattern repeat.  Voila!  I now have the right number of stitches.  You can’t see the mistake unless you really look for it.

Sleeve increases/decreases.  You know those “increase every 6th row” instructions, and you lose track somewhere between rows 4 and 7.  Occasional slip ups can be made up in the following row.  Really.  It can.  Decrease or increase in the next row.  Honest.  Unless you point it out, chances are that no one will notice.

So, unless the mistakes are structural, I may decide not to fix the mistake.  I make that call as I go along.  This isn’t to say that 20 rows past my decision point, I won’t change my mind again and decide that the mistake really needs to come out.

Right, wrong, laziness or experience.  Call it what you will.  But I will say that experience plays a large part of it.  Only experience will tell me what I can and cannot get away with.  And if I’m wrong, well, it’s more experience, right?

Either all that or I’ve finally learned to ease off a bit on my OC tendencies.

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