Pictures of Pinero's Yarn

It's the end of January and I haven't finished spinning Pinero's fiber yet. But, I have pictures.



Here's a picture showing a single on my spinning wheel.



And two singles under slightly different lighting.

Note the natural variation in this fleece. Pinero is a medium to dark gray alpaca with some darker areas on his back -- as well as a few white spots. If you look at the yarn, you will notice darker and not so dark sections as well as occasional flecks of white. This is the natural variation in gray alpacas that I find so much fun to work with.

I took a bunch of pictures of Pinero's fiber, but none of them really turned out. Taking good pictures of fiber is hard -- and my antique digital camera doesn't help.

On the wheel: Pinero and I'm close to finished.
On the needles: The practice project I'm once again avoiding
Nothing else in progress.

Naming Skeins

If you read a lot of knitting and spinning blogs, you will learn that projects have names. "Are you making an Emily?", or how's your "Frederick coming along?". "Do you think I should change the increases on the sleeves of my Annabelle?" Typically, these are names of patterns, but the point is that knit-bloggers understand the concept of a project having a name.

We name some of our skeins, too. Actually, we don't so much name the skein as call the skein by the name of the alpaca it came from. If we hand you a skein or a scarf and say, "This is Georgia." we're not talking about the pattern or the spinning technique. We're talking about Georgia, our herd-boss female alpaca -- the dark brown one with the soft fiber. The yarn has been spun from Georgia's fiber and the scarf has been crocheted from that yarn (my knitting isn't to the point I'm willing to touch handspun alpaca with a knitting needle).

When we go to craft fairs -- and even fiber shows -- our customers don't necessarily understand that projects have names. If you hand somebody a skein and say, "This is Georgia." you can sort of watch the gears turn in their head. Some will be looking at the identical dark brown skein, and you can almost hear them thinking, "Is that skein named Mabel?" Others will catch on a little more quickly and ask, "Is that also Georgia?" Still others will stand there, rather slack-jawed, and you can just imagine them thinking, "You named the skein. What are you, wacko? It's a skein of yarn for gosh sakes!"

So, if you ever meet us at a show -- and we hope you do -- and we hand you a skein and say with great pride, "This is Georgia." Please remember that we're proud of our alpacas and what we are really doing is showing off what we have done with the fiber shorn from our alpaca named Georgia. After all, she's a wonderful dark brown alpaca with rich red tones and she's still soft even after three cria. We think Georgia is a pretty special alpaca.

No Progress

Other than a few minutes spinning, I have no progress to report on any fiber activities. While I have made some progress on our fence, the alpacas will not be enjoying their new pasture this weekend.

So, what have I been making?

Firewood.

Actually, I spent much of Monday recovering from Sunday and Tuesday working on the fence and other priorities. Yesterday we hired somebody to cut up all the down trees in our yard into firewood and I spent all day helping. Today was spent recovering from yesterday, although I did split some firewood.

It all started with a tree falling on our roof in a windstorm almost a year ago. After the roof was replaced, we took the time to carefully examine the large trees around the house. An arborist was called in and ultimately about fifteen trees were removed. The logs have been lying in the yard since summer and are now firewood length. All that is left is for me to split the big pieces and stack something between three and six cords of firewood into the woodshed.

I hope you'll forgive me if my shoulders are too sore for knitting and my legs too tired for spinning.

Re-creating the hole

In yesterday's post, I mentioned a mysterious hole in my stockinette stitch. I played around a bit, and I think I can explain the hole. I'm not sure I can explain the whole reason, but I've got part of it figured out. Since the scarf I'm working on is really just a practice piece bound to be ripped again and again, I went ahead and tried out some theories on the scarf.

I took the apparent extra stitch as a clue to my hole and played with ways to make an extra stitch. First I tried knitting a stitch, passing the new stitch back to my left needle, and knitting that stitch again. Then, I tried the same thing in a purl -- purl one, pass the stitch back to my left needle and purl it again. Both of these produced some distortion in the nice neat vertical rows of V's and horizontal rows of stitches, but neither produced the hole I sought to repeat.

I then tried knitting an extra knit on two stitches in a row. I'm sure there is a fancy knitting word for the technique, but what I did was knit a stitch, pass it back to my left needle, and knit that stitch again, then repeat the process on the next stitch. This produced the hole and some distortion of the column of V's. While the symptoms aren't exactly the same as my original mysterious hole, I am satisfied -- for now -- that I am close to the explanation.

Now, how did I make that extra stitch? I'm a very inexperienced knitter, so anything is possible. My favorite theory is that I was ripping back and picking up loops and two completed stitches ended up on my left needle somehow -- except wouldn't that leave my yarn feeding into the piece in the wrong place? I'm a very novice knitter, but I think I would notice the feed yarn in the wrong place.

I spent most of today stretching fence. In the future, I am going to measure my pastures more carefully. All sections of fence will be 99' long so they can be fenced with a single 100 foot roll of wire. No trying to stretch a 100' roll to cover 105' of distance. My northeast pasture is almost complete. I have one very short section to finish -- and no splicing. When I went to help Chip with his fence, we encountered a number of problems, so we only got a little over 300' stretched.

In Tuesday's post, I said my goal was a new pasture by the end of the weekend. Outdoor work for the weekend has ended, and the new pasture is incomplete. Maybe Wednesday we'll move the alpacas in.

On the knitting needles: a practice scarf in cheap acrylic
On the spinning wheel: Pinero's fleece.
Nothing else in progress.

S - t - r - e - t - c - h

No, that's not the sound of a fence being tightened. It's the sound I'm going to make getting out of bed Monday morning. Rather, when I attempt to get out of bed Monday morning.

I made arrangements with Chip of Tranquility Meadows Farm to borrow his fence stretching equipment this afternoon. He's going to come over tomorrow to help me stretch some fence. In return, I'm going to help him stretch his fence tomorrow as well.

I pulled about 150 feet of fence this afternoon, and I have maybe twice that to pull in the morning.

I think Chip has close to a mile of fence to stretch.

On the knitting front, I added several rows to my practice scarf last night. It was starting to curl badly along the edges, so I put in four rows of garter stitch before going back to stockinette. I have discovered a mysterious hole in my knitting. I'm not quite sure what happened -- or how it happened. When I look at the right side -- the side where the knit makes all the V's, there is a hole between two of the vertical columns of V's as if two knits made side by side are somehow not joined. The column of V's to the left of the hole appears to veer left away from the hole while the column of V's to the right of the hole is perfectly straight. In addition -- and I can't tell for sure -- it appears the column of V's to the left of the hole has three stitches (V's) in the space the one to the left has two.

My interpretation is that I somehow added a stitch, but how the heck did I add it so that it added a vertical V rather than an extra stitch in my row? This seems like a rather useful technique if I can figure out how to repeat it.

In the meantime, I'm completely puzzled as to how I got this hole in my knitting.

On the needles: stockinette practice scarf with random stretches of garter stitch. At least, that is what it is at the moment. It may morph as I try to repeat my error and create more holes.
On the wheel: Pinero -- and I should finish a bobbin of singles this evening.
On the carder, skirting board, and crochet hooks: Nothing until I get some alpacas into their new pasture.

Weaving Fence

I'm trying to figure out a knitting analogy for weaving or splicing fence. There probably is one, but I'm not a sufficiently skilled knitter yet to explain it. Therefore, I will fall back on a weaving analogy. Imagine you have woven two panels and cut the warp from the loom. Now, you're task is to join the panels by tying the warp ends together. The knots need strong enough that you can put the joined piece back on the loom and under tension again. The tool you are to use in all this is a size J crochet hook -- on closely woven lace-weight yarn. Now, do this all without reaching to the back side of the piece.

Oh, and instead of thread, use a stiff wire with sharp, pointy, ends.

I've got the first two rolls of wire spliced and in place, ready to stretch. There are three more rolls I can put in place, but I don't know how hard it will be to stretch the wire if I splice everything in advance. I might have help stretching wire this weekend, so it would be nice to have all the splices finished. On the other hand, each roll of wire weighs something over 100 pounds, so I don't want to splice on more weight than I can handle.

On the Knitting needles: practice piece
On the wheel: Pinero's yarn.

Del, Donovan & Fences

It became quite obvious yesterday that separating Del and Donovan from Ipo -- in fact from all of our female alpacas -- needs to happen fairly soon. The "little" boys just aren't as little as they once were. In fact, my fencing project for yesterday was to divide one of the sheds with cattle panel so we can separate Chloe, Percy, and Ipo from the not-quite weanling boys.

We started this morning by separating the boys from Georgia and Jubilee for an hour. After last year's experience with the stress of cold-turkey weaning, we decided to try a more gradual approach. For the moment, we're using a corridor area as our third pasture. The good news is that I was able to finish the braces and brace wires on the new Northeast pasture today. All that remains is to stretch the wire and hang the gate. My current goal is to have a new pasture by the end of the weekend.

I frogged my practice piece again yesterday -- that's what practice pieces are for isn't it? This time, I'm knitting a stockinette scarf with about 10 rows of K1-P1 ruffle at the end. I had some problems bringing the yarn to the front of the work for the purls and then moving it to the back of the work for the knits. I kept losing tension and I even dropped the yarn a few times. Is this normal for learning ruffles? Any suggestions?

Other than my difficulty with the ruffles, I think I might be starting to get the hang of stockinette stitch.

I'm still spinning Pinero's fleece and still making a little progress most days. I'm starting to want to work on something new. In fact, it was a beautiful day today and I could have done some carding if I'd had something ready to go.

On the spinning wheel: Pinero's fleece -- natural gray huacaya alpaca
On the knitting needles: A practice "scarf" in cheap acrylic
No other projects in progress.

Kim

Knitting

I've picked up my knitting the last couple days. First, I frogged the practice square I was working on. Then I started another practice piece. This piece was going to be a garter stitch scarf. After a while, I decided it was going to be a garter stitch scarf with some stockinette in the middle and garter along the edges. From there, it added some garter stitch sections in the middle of the stockinette for, um, decorative purposes. Then it started some patterns and increasing and decreasing.

The good news is that I can now make knit stitches pretty well -- at least most of the time they no more than twice, nor less than half, the size of the average stitch and they are almost recognizable. My purls -- well -- let's just say my stockinette is usually recognizable as such. I'm having serious tension issues, and they're worse with my purl than with my knit. My stitches at the ends of the row -- particularly the very last stitch -- are very loose. However, by the middle of the row, they're very tight -- the purls almost too tight to work.

I made pasture progress yesterday. The last two posts are cemented and hardening. I won't brace them before tomorrow -- and possibly the next day. I suppose if I get really ambitious, I might hang a gate today.

On the wheel: Pinero -- little or no progress since the last post.
On the needles: Practice piece as described above
On the hook, carder, & skirting board: nothing.

Kim

After yesterday's experience, I checked the pasture as soon as it was light. As expected, I found an alpaca embryo. It's a setback for us and a real emotional blow.

If there is any good news in the whole experience, it's that Chloe appears to be healthy. She's one of our favorites. (Actually, we have nine alpacas and nine favorites!)

I finished plying the second batch of Pinero's yarn last night and I pulled it off into a skein this morning. So far, I have 1654 yards and 15.8 ounces of lovely 2-ply yarn from Pinero's fleece. I'll probably spin more today.

One the spinning wheel: More Pinero.
On the knitting needles: practice swatch
Crochet Hooks, Skirting Board, & Drum Carder: nothing
On Deck: a gray huacaya & black suri blend

Kim

Be careful what you wish for ...

What a day. What a day.

I started by writing about the seven false starts on my blog that I've made in the past two days and how I should have saved one of the two posts I made in the same day back on the 8th. I went on to write about four paragraphs on the fence -- mostly complaining-type verbiage. I mentioned I was making good progress on Pinero's fiber and that I was probably going to start plying the next bunch today.

Then, I made the mistake of writing the following phrase ... "Of course, I could actually go and do something interesting so I have something to write about, too. This spending half the day in front of the computer trying to compose something erudite isn't necessarily that conducive to writing anything other than a blog about writer's block."

At the time, I thought nothing of it and I happily started plying until I got a double-strand break (that phrase had a different meaning in grad school) at which point I pulled a skein onto my niddy-noddy and happily started plying again.

One must be very careful what one wishes for when one mentions "interesting" days without specifying a definition of "interesting" -- particularly when one owns livestock -- particularly when said livestock are very expensive and border on being pets.

We think Chloe had a miscarriage today.

Chloe is the gray alpaca in the picture on our homepage and the model for our logo. There are more pictures of her on her Alpacanation page.

It all started sometime before lunch when Pam said Chloe was acting funny. I looked at Chloe and I didn't see anything -- if you ask me, Chloe's always acting funny.

That's one of our differences. Pam see things in our alpacas that catch her eye as being out of the ordinary, while I just see alpacas acting funny like they always do. Pam can watch the dog walk a dozen steps and know if she has to pee or poo or both -- with something better than 90% accuracy. She's the same way about the alpacas. With her coaching, I can begin to see some of what she points out to me, but I'm not in her league. And, that's part of the reason Pam does much of the animal care and I do the spinning.

One of the hard things about raising alpacas is that they are very stoic animals. Because they're prey animals, they work very hard to cover up any sign of illness, injury, or vulnerability. So, you have to stand there and watch. And, you have to stand there and watch something bad happening -- just to make sure it follows the expected course instead of turning into something worse.

Did I mention that Chloe is bred to a very expensive sire a six hour drive from here? Not only did the breeding cost a fortune, the gas just to get her to and from the sire cost a fortune as well. We had to send Chloe away for almost two months to get bred -- and Percy went with her because he's nursing. It's the first time we sent an alpaca off farm for breeding. It's the first time we've had a cria off the farm. Percy was gone during the cutest part of his life. The whole thing was very stressful -- and now it looks like it will all have to be repeated.

Don't let those cuddly-cute ads on TV fool you. Alpacas are livestock -- fun livestock, relatively easy livestock, cute livestock, but livestock. Anything that can go wrong raising livestock will happen to you if you raise alpacas -- probably sooner rather than later and almost certainly when it is most financially inconvenient.

It was warm enough and dry enough to use the drum carder outside today, set up on the front porch where I could keep an occasional eye on Chloe. I re-carded the Puppies in the Wool Room blend. It took two additional passes through the carder to get all the batts uniform, but the blend is finished.

I spoke with our regular camelid vet this evening. He says he thinks it's a miscarriage, but from the symptoms, he can't be sure and that he has seen a few cases turn out fine with exactly the symptoms we are seeing. There's nothing he can do at this point. Now we monitor Chloe's attitude and temperature for two weeks. Then, three weeks from now, we can start pregnancy testing her.

Just be careful if you wish for a day more interesting than sitting and spinning.

Kim

What's a Micron?

And why is it important to alpacas.

If you've visited very many alpaca booths at fiber festivals, you have probably heard alpaca breeders talk about microns, or AFD, or micron counts or all of the above. Unless you are also an alpaca breeder, or measure fiber diameters for some other fiber-producing mammal, chances are pretty good your eyes glazed over. Fiber analysis is a very technical way of describing fiber. If you understand what the analysis means, it can help you purchase really good alpaca fiber.

A micron is a unit of length equivalent to 1/1000 of a millimeter or about 1/25,400 of an inch. A micron is important in the alpaca business because the diameter of an alpaca fiber is measured in microns. Good alpaca fleeces have an average fiber diameter under 25 microns and the best are well under 20 microns.

Alpaca fiber grades vary with the country and company producing the fiber. Most grading schemes begin with Royal Baby as the very finest grade and progress through baby, superfine, adult, strong to extra strong. That's right, baby and adult are grades of alpaca fiber. Babies can produces adult fiber and an occasional adult will produce baby fiber. Royal Baby, Baby, and Superfine are fairly standard names for fiber grades. Some producers will use other names for adult, strong, and extra strong -- nobody actually calls the rug-grade fiber coarse.

Royal Baby is alpaca is everything less than 18 microns -- or 17.5 or 20 or whatever depending on where the producer sets their standard. Baby alpaca is everything from the top end of royal baby to a cutoff between 20 and 22.5 microns. Baby alpaca is a grade of fiber and while it often comes from an alpaca's first shearing, some adults produce baby grade fiber and some babies produce adult grade fiber. Superfine alpaca runs from baby up to 25-27.5 microns depending on the producer. Twenty-five micron alpaca fiber is still nice soft fiber, but by thirty microns, most people notice prickle. I find the region between 25 and 30 microns a rather unpredictable. Some fleeces in that range are wonderfully soft, while others just aren't that nice.

If you're buying yarn or fiber and can't feel the fiber yourself, the information above may be useful. If yarn is labeled baby alpaca, it will be reliably soft. If it is labeled superfine, chances are very good it will be soft. Similarly, if you are buying raw fleece, you shouldn't be disappointed by a fiber under 25 microns and chances are you will be thrilled with anything below 20 microns.

Your tactile senses are still the best judge of fiber. After all, your skin doesn't know the micron count. If it feels prickly when you first touch the fiber, it is unlikely to feel better when you wear it for hours. The best way to evaluate and alpaca fleece is to stick your hands in the fleece. If it feels good, stick your head in -- or hold a handful under your chin or down the back of your neck. Your skin will tell you how soft the fiber is.

Fence Progress: 2 cross braces and 6 brace wires today.
On the Wheel: Pinero. I'm working on the second set of singles. One bobbin is full and I have a good start on the other one.
Knitting, carding, crochet: no change and no progress

Kim

More Snow

I wrote the previous entry while watching our young alpacas explore their first real snow. Yesterday morning, we started with perhaps an inch on the ground -- mostly slush -- and while the grass was whitened, there was grass available. By noon yesterday, the snow had melted and we were back to muddy, muddy, pasture.

Today is very different. We probably had five or six inches of snow overnight which means we have two or three inches of wet, slushy, snow on the ground at the moment. The tall hills across the river have real snow cover on them -- of course they're 1000 feet higher elevation than we are. Mt. Scott to the east (elevation 4000'+) is really covered, but then Mt. Scott gets lots of snow every winter.

Last night, when we went to check on the alpacas, it was snowing furiously with some of the largest, wettest, snowflakes I have ever seen. I'm a Wisconsin farm boy and I have seen snow. I don't know that I've seen snow that heavy and that wet fall that fast very many times in my life. Our tracks were getting covered up in a matter of minutes. I figure if it had snowed half that hard all night long, we'd be knee-deep at the moment. We didn't get that much snow at our elevation, but we got enough I heard a snow plow out on the highway while I was de-icing the water buckets this morning. It's not every year snow gets plowed on the valley floor in this part of Western Oregon.

Drake and Sindre hadn't gone into their shed, and they each had about an inch of snow on their backs -- and poor Drake was shivering. Alpaca fiber is a really good insulator. Alpacas can accumulate snow on their back and it won't necessarily melt because the fiber insulates the warm body of the animal from the outside world. The snow's on the outside and it stays cold. What was happening with poor Drake, however, was that the wet snow was melting and the water was running down into his fiber along his spine and he was getting cold from that. Sindre wasn't in much better shape, but his fiber is a little longer than Drake's -- it grows faster -- so he has more insulation. The big boys have a shed with nice straw bedding and plenty of hay to eat. They can go in that shed and we know they know the shed is safe because we see them go into the shed. They don't have to lie on cold, wet, ground and get snowed upon to the point they are cold and shivering -- that shed is an option. It's really frustrating for us when they won't go in their shed, but there isn't much we can do.

This morning, the world is white and it's really the first time our young alpacas have seen enough snow that they can't see the pasture. It's a totally new experience and it's fun to see them explore the pasture and try to figure this white stuff out. Del very cautiously followed his mother around, taking twice as long to sniff at everything as Jubilee did. Donovan hopped and jumped at everything, and stood on his back legs, and played with the snow -- and slipped a couple times. Poor motherless Ipo -- actually her mom is just fine and living at another farm -- walked about looking for grass. Usually Donovan follows Ipo about, but this time Ipo was the follower.

Little Percy didn't come out very far for very long. Chloe, Percy's mom, is rather no-nonsense about snow -- it's a food thing for her. If the snow is deep enough to cover the grass, Chloe stays by the hay bin. Percy is normally quite inquisitive and independent, but the snow is new enough he decided to stay next to mom. He hopped about a little when Chloe came out to the water bucket and he ran around in the snow briefly. The moment mom headed for the shed, little Percy ran back in with her.

Everybody is back in the shed at the moment. It's morning grazing time and without grass to graze on, they're grazing from the hay bins. The snow will probably melt by noon and we'll be back to our normal muddy winter.

Spinning Techniques to Preserve Fiber Memory in Alpaca Fiber

I mentioned in my January 2, 2005 post entitled Alpacas Do Bounce" that I would write someday about spinning techniques to preserve fiber memory in alpaca fiber. Today's post is a first attempt to impart that knowledge. The title sounds really impressive and it sounds like I know what I'm talking about. I'll be honest. I picked up some tips from a book that I don't remember the title of, and I think they've worked on three fleeces.

I went through a phase of spinning with the brake off. It started innocently enough with a very short staple cria fleece shorn from a three month old alpaca. The fleece was incredibly soft, but the staple very short and highly variable. I found the best way to spin the fleece was to remove the brake completely, overspin, and ply. This isn't a bad approach for a difficult cria fleece when the objective is simply to produce yarn and the fleece is so soft your yarn is guaranteed to be soft.

Given my success with spinning fine without the break, I continued to spin fine with the break off. Some of the next fiber I spun was some very long-staple (7"+) suri alpaca. I was able to spin this as a single-ply, lace weight yarn and have it hold together. The yarn had wonderful drape as suri is supposed to, and the yarn was softer than the roving and fiber that it came from.

My success with the suri encouraged me to leave the brake off when I went back to spinning huacaya. Eventually, I noticed my huacaya yarn didn't have as much life as earlier huacaya yarn. Oh, it was wonderfully soft and it had good drape, but it felt just a little lifeless in a way.

About this time, I read a book about merino and spinning merino. It was from the library and I don't recall the title or the author. I do recall the author was from New Zealand and she was writing about making a christening shawl for one of the English princes from handspun New Zealand merino wool.

The author mentioned several things she did differently in her spinning. Among the things she mentioned were making sure she spun with a lot of tension so the fibers were straight and under tension when they entered the drafting triangle. She said that if the fibers are under tension and enter the drafting triangle straight, then they can relax to give the yarn elasticity and body.

I thought about this and it made a lot of sense to me. When I had the brake off, my fiber was entering the drafting triangle in a relaxed state. I was getting excellent drape in my yarn, but it was rather limp. If my fiber entered the drafting triangle in a tensioned state, it could relax to give the yarn some loft, but it would also have room to stretch -- go back into tension -- within the thread because it entered the thread under tension.

I put the brake band back on my wheel with my next batch of huacaya fiber and worked very hard to ensure the fibers were under tension when they entered the drafting triangle. I had difficulty spinning for about a pound of fiber because I wasn't used to the wheel pulling on my fiber so hard. In fact, I had to start with a fairly light brake and then increase it as I re-trained myself to draft against the brake. I believe I'm seeing the differences, however. My yarns are loftier and livelier than they were when I was spinning without the brake.

What I think I've learned here is a valuable technique. I now know that I can take that brake off any time I need to, if that is what it takes to make a very difficult fiber into yarn. I have a cria fleece -- essentially short-staple fluff -- in the stash and I have an idea how I might be able to spin that fleece now. I also know that I'm going to experiment further with taking the brake off while spinning very fine suri alpaca yarn. There are times when taking the brake off is a good thing to do.

My other lesson is that there is a reason why spinning wheels have brake bands.

I'm spinning Pinero's fiber with a lot of tension and I'm getting good tension in the drafting triangle. The resulting yarn has life, it's lofty, and I'm really pleased with it. In fact, I'm much happier with all the huacaya yarn I've spun since I put the brake band back on.

Snow

I'm nestled in my nice warm bed. Sleeping. Something stirs the back of my mind. As I drift back toward deep sleep Pam says, "The dog is whining."

I groan.

The dog whining means one of two things. Either the cat has wandered over to the dog's area and the dog wants to play, or the dog thinks she needs to go out.

I glance at the clock. 3:00 AM. The dog whines again. It isn't the play-with-the-cat whine.

I groan.

Pam says, "Kim, the dog's whining."

I listen carefully. I can hear the cat snoring. The cat must be eighteen or nineteen years old and she snores a lot on cold nights.

My brain struggles to awaken. I'm slowly coming to the recognition that if the cat is snoring …

"Kim, are you going to do something about the dog?"

"Mrumph!" I say.

If the cat is snoring, she probably isn't over by the dog. That means …

"Kim, I think the dog needs to go out."

Oh, yes, right. If the cat is snoring, she's not playing with the dog. That means that either the dog wants to go out and chase something or she needs to go out for other reasons.

I sit up in bed, then slowly stand up. The house is cold. I shiver my way into my clothes. It's far to cold outside to make a run for it in my bathrobe.

Pam starts to snore softly.

Why do I have a dog that must be escorted outside? Why can't I just open the door, let her out, wait five minutes, then let her back in like a normal dog?

I make my way to the door and begin to put on my outside clothing. The dog starts bouncing. It's pretty clear she needs to go out.

I open the door to be greeted by a blast of frigid air. It's colder than I thought it was. I step outside. What's this? Snow?

Yup. Snow. Slushy, sleeting snow that has blown into place and frozen. Oh, 95% of the grass is still visible and green, but there is snow on the ground.

The dog charges out and drops to a squat. Yup, it's probably a good thing I got out of bed.

I notice the precipitation. It's not liquid.

It's a Skein!

I started plying the first two bobbin's of Pinero's yarn yesterday, and I finished this morning. As it turns out, I could have spun a little more single onto the second bobbin as I didn't come out evenly -- not a big deal when I probably have a pound of fiber remaining.

The first skein was a full bobbin and came in at 730 yards and 6.8 ounces. The second skein came in at 136 yards and 1.4 ounces.

Together, the first two skeins total 866 yards and weigh in at 8.2 ounces. That works out to 1700 yards/lb for a 2-ply yarn -- no wonder it is taking so long.

The yarn is soft and beautiful. I overspun the singles and they relaxed wonderfully in the plying process. The yarn is softer and slightly loftier than I expected -- both good things.

I've got skeins. I'm excited.

Kim

Fixing the "Puppies" Blend

I'm still reading that book on pasture. Notice how little else is getting done. I'm betting nobody else understands my fascination with that book -- certainly Pam doesn't. I guess you just have to be a nerdy (or geeky?) former scientist with grazing animals to be fascinated with the concept of growing more and better pasture.

A question has come up about how I let the different batts of the Puppies in the Wool Room blend end up different colors and what I'm going to do to fix the problem. I didn't get the opportunity to fix the problem today, but I'm happy to write about how I plan to do so.

There is a short answer and a long answer. The short answer is that I was getting really cold, I couldn't feel my fingers, and I probably wasn't paying attention.

The long answer is, well, longer. I plan to describe the blending process in greater detail in the future. Different fleeces card very differently. Some can be spun after the first pass through the carder. Others take as many as four or five passes. My normal approach is to card each fleece separately prior to starting to blend colors and textures.

With the "Puppies" blend, the fiber arrived pre-stirred. You may also recall that when I first started to card the blend, I discovered some of the fiber wasn't carding because it was still damp. Most of this damp fiber was the darker suri fiber.

Even dry, this darker suri fiber would have taken three passes through the drum carder to be spinnable. Wet, it just didn't card. The white and beige huacaya fiber in the mix, however, carded almost to completion on the first pass. Thus, when I picked up the fiber to finish carding, I had white batts with dark patches of suri fiber in them -- very much a calico appearance. I couldn’t tell that some of the dark patches contained a lot more fiber than others.

And, as I said, I probably wasn't paying as much attention as I should have been because I was cold.

Thus, I picked up each batt, carded it two or three times until it felt ready to spin, then put it into the finished bag. It was only when I was finished that I noticed the differences in color.

To correct the color difference, I will tear a thin strip off each batt, and card those strips together to make a new batt. It will take one or two passes of doing this to achieve the desired color uniformity. What I try to do is to take equal amounts of fiber from the old batts and combine those to a single new batt. It's exactly the same process I go through when I'm doing large blends the usual way.

Marilyn got a look at the "Puppies" blend today -- it's her fiber and the culprits are her dogs. She is quite pleased and she likes how soft the blend is. I'm pleased that she likes what I have done with her fiber.

Fence progress: none since my last post.
On the Spinning Wheel: Pinero. Second bobbin is getting full.
On the Knitting Needles: A practice piece I'm avoiding.
On the Crochet Hooks: Nothing
On the Drum Carder: Puppies in the Wool Room Blend (and no dry weather forecast for a week)
On the Skirting Board: nothing.
On Deck: no change -- gray huacaya / black suri blend.

Sunshine -- chance to card some fiber.

Yesterday, we went into Roseburg. Among other stops, we went to the library where I got a stack of books. I found a book on pasture maintenance and started reading. Needless to say, no fencing or spinning got done yesterday. You will notice there is no blog entry, either. I could go into detail here about my pasture plans, but since those plans are predicated on completing the current fence project, plus at least one more after that, I should probably save my newfound pasture wisdom for sometime in the future.

Despite the lack of productivity yesterday, there has been progress because on Sunday, after I wrote the blog entry, I went out and installed some braces on the fence, then I did some spinning. I did some more fence braces today -- only four more to go for the new northeast pasture, and only two more I can do at the moment. Unfortunately, it's too cold to cement posts, so I didn't make any progress on that limiting factor. If I force myself to make a little progress on that fence every day, it will get finished.

The sun came out this afternoon, so I got out the drum carder and went to work on my Puppies in the Wool Room blend. I basically froze my fingers doing the carding. It was just barely above freezing with a breeze -- hardly winter to many of you but after twenty years in the northwest, my fingers don't function that cold anymore.

The blend is beautiful -- I was thinking I would end up with sort of a calico roving with patches of black and red-brown in a light or white background. However, to get the distribution of fiber types even -- the white in the mix is huacaya, the darker colors are mostly suri -- I ended up carding to greater color uniformity so the roving has more of a salt and pepper appearance. The blend looks gray in the pictures, but a close-up would show the salt and pepper -- and the yarn will show the salt and pepper appearance more than the roving does.



Due to the puppy-pre-processing, this roving will make a "high character" yarn (or build character in the spinner). This isn't a roving anybody is going to be able to spin into a perfectly smooth and even yarn. There are a lot of second cuts showing up that I didn't see before due to the way the fiber was stirred -- you can see some of those as the black specks in the roving. Some of the huacaya fleece involved is fairly short -- plenty long enough to hand spin, but the variation in staple length within the roving will add to the spinning challenge and the shorter fibers may tend to fuzz just a little bit.

Somebody is going to spin this roving into a soft and beautiful yarn. A spinner willing to accept the imperfections in the preparation and willing to work with what the fiber gives them, will create a very soft, slightly nubby, yarn with not-quite uniform thickness, possibly fuzzy areas, and wonderful color. The yarn will have some fiber memory because of the huacaya fiber, but not a lot because it has a large portion suri fiber. The color will be of variable salt and pepper tones with patches of warm, red-brown highlights and black flecks where the second cuts are. And, because of all the baby suri in the mix, it will be a soft yarn.

I thought I had the blend finished, until I noticed the difference between the first batt and the last batt -- you can see the color disparity in the picture. By the time I noticed the color disparity, my hands were so cold, I couldn't feel what I was doing. Next time I get the opportunity to card, I'll put the fiber back through the carder to get the color uniform.

Fence progress: 2 braces today for a total of five since the last post
On the Spinning Wheel: Pinero. The second bobbin is 1/3 to 1/2 full.
On the Knitting Needles: A practice piece I'm avoiding.
On the Crochet Hooks: Nothing
On the Drum Carder: Puppies in the Wool Room Blend
On the Skirting Board: nothing at the moment
On Deck: no change -- gray huacaya / black suri blend.

Alpacas Do Bounce!

The most common comment we hear about our alpaca fiber and our alpaca yarn at fiber shows is "soft". The other comment we hear a lot is "no bounce".

The visit to our booth goes something like this. Two spinners walk up to the booth, touch the fiber, and audibly ooh and ahh over the softness, usually making a comment to us about how good the alpaca fiber feels. Then, the two spinners walk away and we will hear one of them saying to the other, "no bounce".

We hear it all show long, "no bounce, no bounce, no bounce, no bounce …" At one show, Pam got so frustrated she wanted to stand on a soap box -- actually the table -- and scream, "Alpacas do bounce!"

Just in case you are very worried about the way we treat our alpacas, I'm not talking about the animals bouncing, but about a property of fiber called fiber memory. Fiber memory is what gives garments their shape. Fiber memory is what keeps a (sheep's) wool sweater from simply stretching and stretching and stretching until the hem reaches the floor. A springy, stretchy, (sheep's) wool yarn has lots of fiber memory.

What I don't know and don't understand about fiber memory could fill a textbook. Here is what I do know about alpaca and fiber memory. First, there are two kinds of alpacas -- huacaya alpacas and suri alpacas -- and they have very different fiber. Huacaya alpacas are the commonly seen wooly or fuzzy alpacas that look rather like teddy bears. Huacaya alpaca fiber looks a lot like sheep's wool and is often blended with sheep's wool. Suri alpacas have long, straight, fiber than hangs in pencilled locks that look like dreadlocks. Suri fiber has many properties in common with silk, and is often blended with silk.

Huacaya alpaca fiber has adequate fiber memory. Suri alpaca fiber has no fiber memory. Sheep's wool has much more fiber memory that huacaya alpaca. There is one other critical difference between sheep's wool and alpaca fiber -- depending on the fiber and the preparation, alpaca fiber is four to seven times warmer than an equivalent weight of sheep's wool.

(A note on terminology. Most of the alpacas in the world are huacaya alpacas. Suri is a specialty fiber even among alpacas and alpaca fiber labeling reflects these distinctions. Fiber labeled alpaca is huacaya alpaca. Suri alpaca fiber and suri alpaca yarn will be labeled as suri, although some suri garments will be labeled simply alpaca. Alpaca breeders and fiber processors tend to use the term fiber or alpaca fiber to distinguish alpaca fiber from sheep's wool which is simply called wool.)

Simply put, Suri alpaca should not be used in situations where fiber memory is needed. Suri's strong property is drape. With suri, it is possible to make a warm, lightweight garment with exceptional drape. Suri makes wonderful scarves, shawls, light ponchos, drapes, wraps, and other garments. Because of the warmth properties of alpaca, it is possible to make extremely lightweight -- even lacy -- soft, warm garments from suri alpaca. This is the strength of suri alpaca and in my opinion, it is what this soft and rare fiber should be used for. I'll say no more of suri in this post because we don't own suri alpacas.

Huacaya fiber is much like sheep's wool and spinners often assume they can do anything with huacaya fiber they could with wool. This isn't quite true. Alpaca fiber is not wool. While huacaya has adequate fiber memory, good wools have much, much more fiber memory than alpaca. It is possible -- even easy -- to hand spin huacaya yarns so bulky the weight of the yarn exceeds the fiber memory of the yarn. I've done it -- and the yarn is still wonderful for hats and other garments which are supported when worn.

Even with reasonable weight alpaca yarn, it is possible to knit heavy patterns from huacaya alpaca such that the weight of the garment exceeds the capability of the fiber memory in the yarn to hold the garment. This is where alpaca gets the reputation of "no bounce". These heavy garments generally suffer from another serious problem -- they're too warm to wear. Alpaca is enough warmer than wool, that heavy garments made from alpaca are too hot!

Huacaya alpaca has adequate fiber memory to sustain any garment that isn't too hot to wear!

Every year at fiber shows, I'll have somebody describe to me the wonderful, heavy cabled sweater they're going to make from the alpaca yarn or fiber I'm selling. I have to explain that alpaca makes wonderful sweaters, but not heavy sweaters. (If you have your heart set on a heavy, cabled, sweater, try 80% huacaya, and 20% cormo or merino wool.)

Huacaya fiber's strength is soft, warm, lightweight garments. Huacaya alpaca fiber has adequate fiber memory for these garments. Alpaca is warmer than wool, so you don't need weight to achieve warmth. Alpaca is softer than wool, so it is more comfortable next to the skin. These are the strengths of alpaca and when using alpaca, these strengths should be exploited.

Alpaca fiber can be blended with wool and many other fibers for various purposes. Someday, I will write about my experiences with these blends. In addition, I am beginning to suspect there are spinning techniques that enhance or preserve the fiber memory in alpaca. I might write about those as well.

Kim

Happy New year

Happy New Year to you and yours. Here's to hoping it includes alpacas, fiber, yarn and warmth!

I spun more this morning. I've been having a horrible time filling that first bobbin of Pinero's yarn. This morning, I weighed the bobbin and I weighed an empty bobbin. The reason it's taking me so long to fill the bobbin is I have over five and a half ounces of yarn on the bobbin. I was thinking I had maybe two ounces on the bobbin -- three at the outside. I estimate I spin an ounce an hour when I'm doing singles for medium weight yarn. I couldn't understand why I was still on the first bobbin after six or seven hours of spinning. Now I understand. This yarn is a little slower because it is so fine. I don't know about other handspinners, but my production per hour decreases as the yarn gets finer. I'm actually making pretty good progress on this stuff and I've only got about a pound and a half to go.

At any rate, I have the first bobbin full of Pinero's singles filled up and I've got a good start on the second bobbin. Now that I know how much weight I'm putting on a bobbin, I won't stress so much to fill the second bobbin so quickly. Yesterday I suggested I'd be plying today or tomorrow. Now I say if I start plying by Wednesday, I'll be doing well.

The other thing I did today is I finally got around to baking Christmas cookies. Yes, I know it's New Years Day. I mixed up the dough on Christmas Eve and left it in the fridge to chill. I've baked a couple small batches over the holidays, but I finally did my serious baking today. For some reason, I have to be in the proper frame of mind to bake Christmas cookies and it just hasn't happened this season. Pam won't bake them, either. She says if I want to eat them, I have to make them -- fair enough I guess. Anyhow, I had this dough sitting in the fridge and I either had to use it or throw it away, so I spent the afternoon making cookies rather than spinning.

Fence: No progress
On the spinning wheel: Pinero
On the knitting needles: The same old practice piece I'm avoiding
On the crochet hooks: nothing
On the skirting board: Puppies in the Wool Room Blend.
On Deck: The same gray huacaya / black suri blend that has been on deck for a while.

Kim