FInally, a picture

Of all the yarn I spun during the Tour!

The Tour de Fleece is over...

... and I survived!  So to celebrate, I'm having a sale over at my Ravelry store... 10% off any patterns bought through Ravelry.

So, how did I do on my spinning goals, you may ask.  Well, I finished the CVM roving, which turned out very nicely.  I worked on the silk thread, until I discovered a spot where the roving (neatly wrapped around a pencil) had become one with itself, so I gave up.  I spun my suri alpaca to a very fine lace weight on my favorite spindle, but broke the spindle (it has been dropped one too many times!).  I did not, however, finish the baby alpaca fleece.  This is entirely due to how thin I'm spinning it -- it two plies to a heavy lace weight!  I have finished 1310 yards, and have a bobbin and a half of finished singles, which I think is pretty darn good.  Hopefully I will be able to keep my spinning mojo going and finish it soon!

Did you spin for the Tour?  I'd love to hear about how you did.  I'm already excited for next year!

It's the Tour de FLEECE!

Every year during the Tour de France, spinners everywhere have their own event... the Tour de Fleece!  Me and the Tour have a bit of a history... the first time I tried to participate, I found out a couple days before it started that I was pregnant.  That pregnancy spinning made me nauseous.  The next year, I suddenly had to move two days before the Tour started.  But this year, so help me, THIS YEAR I will spin!  My goal, other than to be hopelessly over committed?  Finish all spinning WIPs.

First off will be this half pound of CVM roving:

Then I will finish this silk thread (probably by transferring it to my wheel, because I HATE the spindle it's currently on):

Then I will start on my uber project:

That's two and three quarters pounds of baby alpaca, which I carded myself, on HANDCARDS.  I have been working on that on and off for nearly a year!  Will I get it all spun?  No idea.  Especially given I plan on spinning it lace weight.

But seriously, get out your wheels, spindles, rocks, potatoes (hey, I've seen it done), and get spinning!  And check in with the Tour de Fleece group on Ravelry -- there are daily prize threads!

Tips for untangling

Awhile back I was gifted some yarn.  Well, sort of.  I was given the yarn because the owner of said yarn got sick and tired of trying to untangle it after its accident with the ball winder.  I however find untangling kind of relaxing, and so thought I would put together a few tips for an enjoyable experience.

• The first thing you should do is see if your tangle separates easily into smaller tangles.  Like this:

 You can see the main chunk of tangle, a smaller loop, a middle tangle, and the ball I'm winding onto.  I had actually been working on it for a little while in this picture.  But still, makes it so it doesn't look so bad.

• If you have any bits that aren't really tangled (like the loop of yarn in the lower left of my picture), put something heavy on them so they don't run away from you.  The last thing you want to do is make more tangles!

• Don't pass the yarn through itself unless you REALLY have to.  A lot of yarn tangles are just loops caught on each other, not knots... but when you pass the end through you can make knots.

• Don't be afraid to start working from the other end, once you find it.

Go from whichever end is easiest!  If you end up with two little balls like I did... just wind the smaller one onto the larger once.  And that is the story of how I got 437 yards of free baby alpaca lace weight yarn.  :)

Hand-dyed cashmere, even

Also, red is my FAVORITE color.

The second review in my cashmere series is a real treat... Sumptuosity Lace by All For Love of Yarn.  Oh.  My.  Goodness.  It is 70% baby alpaca, 20% silk, and 10% cashmere, and hoo nelly, do I love this yarn.  It is a very fine lace weight - there are 1300 yards in 3 oz - and so you need to be careful not to work it at too loose a gauge.  That being said, most lace patterns it's not overwhelmingly important exactly how big the finished object is, so that's easy to work around.  It is a two ply, but I haven't been having issues with splittiness like I do with a lot of two ply lace.

As for texture... I cannot stop patting this yarn.  It is beautifully soft and smooth.  It is also, however, extremely slippery.  One of my attempted swatches, I did on nickle plated needles (it was the only US4 I had!), and let me just say that it was a good thing the kids were already in bed.  My husband now jokes that I only swear when I'm in labor, and when I'm knitting lace.  It behaved itself quite well on my Harmony wood needles, however, so it's just an issue of the right needle for the right yarn.  On the note of swatches, this yarn really doesn't like to be frogged.  That fine baby alpaca halo just grabs.  That's a good thing tho if you happen to drop a stitch - if you catch it right away, it doesn't seem to run too far, which makes for much easier fixes.

Angela's yarns all have fabulous color.  The high silk content of this yarn in particular means it just DRINKS dye... the color is rich and saturated and glossy.  The kettle dye is very subtle, just enough to add some depth to the color, without distracting from the pretty stitch work at all.  It does have some halo to it, but not much.  A suggestion of a halo, perhaps.  In short?  I very much recommend this yarn.  It's absolutely delightful.

Do you have something you want me to review? Needles? Yarn? Notions? Drop me a line! marusempai at gmail dot com Put "Maru reviews" in the subject line.

Thoughts on fiber: Alpaca

Yup, I got tired of coming up with cute titles for these.  Blame the children... they have been throwing up on me all weekend, and I am exhausted!

Alpaca is currently a very popular fiber.  This is understandable, as alpaca is (generally speaking) delightful to work with.  It is soft and smooth.  If you like natural colors, alpaca can be your friend, as the beasties come in about fifteen kajillion different colors.

The downside of alpaca is it has absolutely no memory.  Seriously, look at South American fashions from back in the day... see any ribbing?  Cables?  Nope, not a chance.  Ribbing done in alpaca just sort of sags out of shape, and doesn't do any of the things ribbing is supposed to do, except maybe look cute.  Even for lace, many knitters complain that 100% alpaca is too saggy to properly show the pattern.  Of course, this isn't necessarily a BAD thing... you just have to figure out how to use it.  One of the easiest ways is to just mix your alpaca with a nice, springy wool, like merino.  That makes you loose some of the unique alpaca qualities though.  My advice is simply to choose your patterns very carefully.  Crochet edgings can lend your work support.  Make something that's supposed to be soft and drapey, and it will work just fine!

The other big deal with alpaca is that it is supposedly hypoallergenic.  This is true, but not the way most people think it is.  Hypoallergenic simply means that something is less likely to cause an allergic reaction than similar substances, not that it's impossible to be allergic to it.  Believe me, you can be allergic to alpaca!  It is simply less common than wool allergies.  In addition, alpaca contains no lanolin, which eliminates lanolin allergies entirely.  So if you're allergic to wool, it is certainly worth a try.  But don't pin all your hopes and dreams on it.

Thoughts on fiber

I've noticed that a lot of people tend to have one go to, fail safe fiber.  For most, this is either wool or acrylic.  I've been thinking about that lately, and am slowly coming to the conclusion that it is because, as fiber artists, we simply have too many choices.  I mean, there was a time when you were pretty much limited to your flock, and maybe your neighbor's flock.  No more.  Now you can get alpaca, six kinds of wool, silk, a couple kinds of cotton, acrylic, nylon, a few flavors of rayon... just by going to your local yarn store, or even closer, the internet.  This is a good thing.  But it is difficult to know or predict how each of these fibers will behave, alone or in blends, so we tend to have a go to.

And it is true that a good wool yarn can be made to do just about anything, as can acrylic if you know what you're doing.  But it might not be the best answer.  So I've decided that I'm going to do some posts on fiber types.  Because once you know the basics, it becomes so much easier to get the effect that you want.  Now, it is of course possible to just always get the same yarn (or a comparable blend) as the designer used to make their pattern.  I encourage this, frankly, however it's not always going to be what you want to do.  Sometimes the recommended yarn is unavailable.  Sometimes it's too expensive.  And sometimes you just want a bit of a different effect than the designer got.  All perfectly valid reasons for a substitution... and if you know your fiber, there will be fewer unpleasant surprises along the way.