#cj gladback

I went to a fiber festival for the second time this weekend! Same place, Hoosier Hills Fiber Festival, two years after my first visit. The first day was without a doubt the highlight, from starting out early afternoon (celebrating my vacation by sleeping in a little and enjoying some TV mysteries after breakfast before embarking on a beautiful drive) to get there with time to see everything and shop before my volunteer shift, which in turn had a luxurious hour to swap out some things and touch base with some people before the 2+ hrs social crafting time in the evening.

That social crafting time was something they started last year, the big thing I'd been missing from the first time I went. I did feel less helpful with the timing of my volunteer shift being in a bit of a dead-air-conditioner afternoon lull in what turned out to be the hottest building that day, but my covolunteer there was a lovely person to chat with in those empty spaces between visitors.

And between the generous raffling to make sure every attendee to the social time had at least one gift (I got a Turkish drop spindle!), the kind volunteer goodie bag (including stitch markers, the item I'd planned for my in-case-of-needing-to-buy-something), and my having a class the next morning that would include unknown amounts of fluff--my only shopping to cross off was actually a super easy choice I'd made in that earlier exploring time. I didn't expect any supported spindles but there was one vendor selling some (Cardinal Woodwork) and one of them was exactly my comfort zone but denser and sturdier than I'd dare hope. Something I wouldn't have braved without getting to spin it and feel the slight grippiness of the shaft with the wood's open grain (it's padauk wood--red, dense, not smooth); all of the pros of the 3D printed spindle @dangerphd gifted me to learn on, but hopefully longer lasting as that one's slowly losing material from both ends via friction and layers snapping.

The next day started off getting to the grounds before 9 and asking a kind volunteer at the welcome tent to take my photo at the community art project arch (I'd added my two tiny green butterflies on arrival the first day) while I wasn't having to squint much or be in a crowd's way. I was there for a class called Gettin' Batty with It, instructed by The Foldout Cat. I don't know that my learning style meshed well with the approach, between not really knowing what any of the fiber was we were grabbing or the goals when grabbing it. The second part was lessened by the fiber remaining available throughout the class, but all I really know about the fiber content at this point is that it will dye my hands while working with it. And some of the locks were obviously wool and one labeled bag was recycled silk thread.

We worked up from optical blending on a dog brush (fun!) to unblended layered batts on a hand carder (like half of my usual process but some practice using the dog brush to burnish? feel like that wasn't the term used but press the fiber down the teeth between layers, which I will absolutely be incorporating in my regular workflow since that brush was a take-home item) to doing the same thing but rolling the batt off with dowels and drafting as one rolag per carder full. My first carder to convert to rolag was overstuffed but drafted well. The second one in theory should've been better but fell apart a little because it had a section that didn't seem to have as much long-stapled fiber so I couldn't get a good grip on it to draft at the same time as the rest and what should've been the final pull popped off before it could draft. But the last carder rolag and the three from the blending board went more smoothly, so perhaps some skills were built! And finally, with about thirty minutes left of the class, we were granted access to the drum carders for what I'd set as my personal goal of getting a *bigger* gradient in hopes of being able to divide it for a fractal spin with a bit less organization than doing everything on my hand carders at home would require. That should be fun, and since it's not like I have specific patterns in mind for my other spinning plots it might happen relatively soon, but first I'll be trying out the Turkish spindle on regular wool and then trying to get a 3-ply out of the three rolags from the one blending board, plied from turtles if that's a possibility.

First first, though, I've already spun the single hand carder mini batt in the same way I did all of the skeins for my recycled fingerless gloves, to test out my new spindle and check how drafting with those silk threads feels--it's just a touch trickier than when I didn't successfully fluff and blend recycled yarn pieces.

I went to my first fiber festival this past weekend! Hoosier Hills Fiber Festival; if I'm still in this state come June next year, I'll probably be back and would love to meet anybody else there. Socializing/hanging out/talking to people without feeling like I was obstructing Real Customers was the one thing I missed, though I didn't really get to any of the free lectures so maybe that's where I could've met some people. Since it was an unknown situation with a lot of people and nearly an hour drive each way, I strategized to make sure I'd go:

First day, I signed up for a couple volunteer shifts. Absolutely a recommended strategy.

Got to be helpful!

They happened to have goodie bags, to help me justify the gas and time (I now have a nice tape measure to replace the one that's been vacationing with a missing sewing kit for a couple years and a lasercut wood two-inch gauge window that might help me with consistency versus my suboptimal practice of just trying to knit perfect squares when swatching in pattern)

I got to learn things about the layout and schedule I wouldn't know to ask when answering questions and acting as a gofer -- especially true working two different locations

And of course, some people were pretty much guaranteed to be happy to see me!

Second day, I signed up for a workshop in the morning so I'd be there and able to shop for anything I needed at the end. Ombre yarn dyeing was the class! It's acid dyes, something I'm several years off from wanting to get into enough to commit to dedicated cookware, full pots of dye powder, etc. The room with the workshop was a barn that had plenty of outlets--but they did not represent plenty of breakers. So there weren't quite enough functional heating elements for the class to have sufficiently cooked our yarn before leaving, and I did need to risk a giant stock pot at home for three batches of four jars, almost-simmering in a water bath for thirty minutes each, of the yarn that hadn't proven it was done (all but the two palest greens). I was a little worried the delay/drawn out heat situation would affect the results but if it did it wasn't much; I got pretty much exactly what I was hoping for with my two color gradient and the single is great too!

The single dye gradient is the color Moss, which did some interesting things with the red portion separating out once they were heated. Every skein has redder blotches, so I'm not bothered about any inconsistency -- if anything it'll help my finished product camouflage stains. Though it was definitely a surprise for me and the other Moss user in the class when our first yarn to have exhausted the dye was the complementary color to what it went in as.

The two color gradient used Rhodamine Red on one end, which was one end of one of our instructor's samples where she chose a cool-green for the other end to show how multi-component dyes mix less predictably than most paint. (It was kinda like shading with markers where you can still see washes of the pink and green in what you squint at and call a grey-brown.) The other end was Cantaloupe, which was one of the maybe three colors she didn't have a sample cut of yarn for. But she described it as the flesh of a perfect ripe cantaloupe and obviously I had to see that, and it sounded like it would be fairly guaranteed to combine nicely with the magenta while being just enough around a bend in the color wheel to be interesting--warm orange versus cool pink. As I said, it turned out pretty much exactly as I was picturing. Not anticipated was how much the jars looked like they were full of some delicious dragonfruit-mango beverage. Were I still a barista I'd be trying to recreate this for my shift drink.

Image descriptions under the cut.

[ID: Animated gif progress of a digital drawing on a narrow vertical canvas, still only a sketch at its most complete form. The picture is three characters from the Starkid Hatchetfield series, one (Ethan Green) wearing a leather jacket and supporting another (Hannah Foster) with a large overshirt and backwards baseball cap, foot on his shoulder as she climbs a trellis to the third (Lex Foster) wearing an oversized denim jacket with a hood, leaning out of a window at the top of the composition. The initial sketch layers included the words "do as I say" at the top and "not as I do" at the bottom, and notes of color for different sections: a blue light shining from the direction Hannah is looking, white wood on the trellis and window frame, and green vines tangling around Ethan's legs and arm he's braced against the wall. The second image is the most recent stage alone. End ID]

So this blocking thing! It's good for more than just nuisances. I haven't knit a lot of garments yet with fiber that responds to blocking, and what I have has been like...socks where it seems unnecessary because the whole thing will be in tension while worn. But also I just don't have large pinnable surfaces, as one typically needs when the point is to soak a piece of fabric and then stretch it out to pose in the shape you want it to be until next soaking. What do I have? The ability to stack waterproof objects on a small patch of flat counter space. And thank goodness because that definitely saved this hat.

Anyway! I am happy to have used my extremely inconsistent first skeins of support-spindled yarn (see the post with them all laid out here) for a project I'll probably actually use once it's chilly again. It is comfortable, even if I'm a bit disappointed in the colorwork legibility. This is how the chart looks:

But I didn't quite manage matching gauge yarns, I'm low on practice/experience keeping tension for stranded colorwork, and probably just aiming for too loose a fabric anyway (should've found a path to increasing stitches and using smaller needles on that section) so it's very blobby.

I do have some of that green and "matching" oyster skein left, as well as a little of the finest oyster yarn I used for the ribbing. So if I use them together again, I'll probably hold the two oyster threads as one. Speaking of, I had way too much of the underplied lace yarn and wasn't happy with my first run at an even more open lace panel, so ended up frogging that back and making these sections with the lace yarn held double. Worth it! Much happier with this result. And I can see why underplied yarn has been said to do lace well; was cool how open it already was before blocking.

Image descriptions below:

[ID: Three photos of a purple to pink to orange gradient yarn sitting on weathered wood planks in direct sunlight. In the first, the yarn is a single, unplied twist wrapped into a ball around a disc shaped core (the cardboard of an empty masking tape roll).

In the second, it is a loosely tied hank of three-ply yarn; it has been chain-plied, so neighboring segments of yarn are wrapped together, preserving the color change with minimal variegation.

The third photo features the hank laid with the opposite side up next to a shallow dark-orange mug with a spindle resting in it at a 40 degree angle. The spindle was 3D printed horizontally with a rainbow colored filament, from a spot of orange on one side through red, purple, blue, and to green on the other side. It is about nine and a half inches or twenty-four and a half centimeters long. The spindle is a supported Russian style, its base an inverted teardrop shape before a waist and the shaft of the spindle that's widest just above the waist and tapers down to as thin a spike at the top as possible. End ID]

I spun yarn! And plied it! This spindle and spinnable fluff were an incredibly generous gift from @dangerphd amid excess from 3D printing experiments! I'd previously spun one skein on a drop spindle in high school -- and I loved it for the process and made a chunky shawl of the Stephen West Spectra scarf design with it, but boy was it an uncontrolled thick and thin mess. Whether due to actually carrying over that learning more than a decade later, or the lighter (supported) spindle, or marginally more patience with age, this went way better!

I was definitely struggling with repeated breaks at the start and compromised my intention to go as thin as possible, but by the end I felt like I got decent control and consistency in my single's weight. And seeing how much less fragile those once-broken sock-weight singles are once plied should help me keep up the confidence with future fiber to really push for the thinner threads that I want to use. I had just learned about chain plying and wanted to try it when Danger sent the gradient fluff, so it wasn't a problem when there were several spots that I was sure would need plying for strength--and overall it's still less chunky than the thicker parts of the single I had made before! And much more even than I expected.

[ID: A 3D rendered wooden dragon toy rolling in place on a flat tan background with a large C-clamp made of black cast iron and copper pieces laying in the foreground. The toy has articulated legs that "walk" and wings pushed upward by a scotch yoke mechanism, all powered by the turning wheels, while a three-pieced hinged tail swings slowly side to side. End ID]

And that's a wrap! On the first 100 grams of this oyster-colored Wool of the Andes roving. I'm very happy as my yarn quality and understanding continue improving; definitely getting to those consistent thin yarns I wanted. The green skein is absolutely the favored child, but I swear it is actually better than everything else, not just green. Which gives me some hope for all the wool I intend to card, actually.

My rambles got extra long, as were the image descriptions, so please enjoy this cut:

[ID: A photo of prepared wool fiber and wool yarn on a wooden tabletop. A multicolored spindle rests in an orange mug; orange and grey wool is in the process of being spun onto it, with a small amount wound onto the spindle's shaft as a fine single and the majority still wrapped loosely around the top as something like roving. Around the base of the mug lies a trail of more roving, wrapped into nests and threaded onto some yarn, all grey but with a gradient of colors mixed in. In order: lighter orange, pale peach, rose pink, purplish pink, light purple, and medium purple. On the table next to the garland is a small skein of sock yarn spun from the same gradient, somewhat overplied and tied with a length of bright mint green yarn. End ID]

One down, most of one to go! I executed my plot: carded up bonus thrift store lanolin wool, reclaimed the gradient fiber from my first support-spindle-spun skein and carded it into seven gradient steps, blended those two fibers together, and divided the whole progression into two equal sequences for socks or mitts or...something. I've heard of spinners working hard to avoid muddying up their fiber colors, meanwhile I'm over here splashing in the mud puddles! The above photo was taken in the overcast afternoon light from our kitchen windows, so it's even more grey, but as a reminder this is what the colorful half of this looked like in its previous form:

[ID: The same spindle in the same orange mug, this time on weathered wood in direct sunlight with a very chunky skein of safety-vest-orange yarn fading to pale orange and pink with white patches and finally a bright purple. End ID]