My Fun New Toy, the Trindle

Those of you who were following me during the Tour de Fleece know that my favorite spindle biffed it.  Just dropped it one too many times.  I guess that's why it's called a drop spindle.  So I decided it was time to upgrade.  Also, to not make a spindle right now, because I don't have the time or energy to mess with it.

As I was approaching buying a spindle, I encountered one problem over and over again -- short spindle shafts.  Making my own spindles led me to do some pretty intense experimentation, and what I found out is that I like spindles with insanely long shafts.  My old favorite, in fact, had a thirteen inch shaft.  Which I now realize is insane.  I had a hard time finding spindles with shafts over nine inches that weren't boat anchors!

So that was the first thing that drew me to the trindle -- trindle shafts are ten and a half inches long.  The second thing was how customizable they are.  The arms of the trindle stick into a neoprene hub, and since neoprene is so grippy, you don't need to use any glue.  Thus, the arms (which are sold separately from the shaft) are interchangeable, as well as very reasonably priced.  For fifteen dollars, you get a new set of arms and a functionally new spindle!

I was sold right there, however, there's one more thing that I discovered once my trindle arrived -- trindles are freaking fast.  This is definitely a production spindle!  Because it is so extremely rim weighted, it spins forever at high speeds.  I'm not the fastest drafter ever, and I can finger flick my trindle and have it still spinning when it hits the ground.  That being said, a trindle might not be the best first spindle ever because of this.  If you don't draft fast enough, all kinds of wacky things happen, as that spin energy has to go somewhere.

I'm also waiting to see how much fiber I can cram on there.  Because there is no whorl, you can't make a cone shaped cop, you have to make a football shaped cop.  Not what I'm used to.  That being said, it's doing pretty well so far, so I'm hopeful.  I doubt I can cram two ounces onto it like I could the old favorite, but it should be pretty good!

Fiber Thoughts: Rayon

Rayon from sugar cane.

This post will contain information on all kinds of rayon -- bamboo, sugar cane, the regular wood pulp kind.  I can hear a few of you out there saying "ka-whaa? bamboo is rayon?!"  I feel relatively certain of this because of how frequently I see threads on yarn and fabric forums announcing the "secret" of bamboo fiber.  Yes, that silky soft stuff is, in fact, rayon made from bamboo.  There is a non-rayon bamboo fiber out there, however it is more like flax, and doesn't really resemble the more common rayon from bamboo at all.

So, what is rayon?  Rayon is a manufactured fiber made from cellulose.  You can make rayon from just about any plant source, but there are three that I've seen.  The regular old standard rayon that has been around forever is made from wood pulp.  Rayon made from bamboo has been enjoying significant popularity due to it's purported environmental friendliness and antibacterial properties.  I have recently found several yarns made from rayon made from sugar cane, as well.  "Bamboo viscose" and "sugar cane viscose" mean the same as rayon.

All rayon has some properties in common.  It is a smooth, silky fiber.  Rayon has excellent drape, but not so much memory, so it works extremely well for lace applications.  It is also extremely durable, so it works well as a substitute for silk in blends that need that soft silky sheen, but also need to be easier to wash than silk.  Rayon is also (surprisingly) highly absorbent.

The main differences in the rayon types are, quite frankly, questionable.  Bamboo rayon in particular is touted for being environmentally friendly, and it is indeed more environmentally friendly than regular rayon, as bamboo can be grown very quickly with little or no pesticide or fertilizer use.  However, the chemicals used to process the bamboo into rayon are pretty toxic, and the process requires large amounts of water and energy, so it really isn't the Gift to Gaia that it's occasionally billed as.  Bamboo rayon is also claimed to have antibacterial properties.  While bamboo, the plant, is indeed naturally antibacterial, the amount of processing involved in making rayon makes it fairly unlikely that those properties make it to the final fiber.  It is possible, however I have searched extensively for the supposed study showing that bamboo rayon is antimicrobial, and have not been able to find it anywhere.  The best I can come up with are references to a Japanese study... however, the study itself does not seem to be available anywhere.  And I can read and search in Japanese.  Given that the majority of bamboo fabrics are made in China, I deeply suspect that the study is the invention of a manufacturing company.  I could of course be wrong, and if you know of a reference, please point me at it!

So, is there any difference between the types of rayon?  I like to think there is.  It feels to me that bamboo rayon and sugar cane rayon are smoother and more silk-like than wood pulp rayon.  Sugar cane rayon, in particular, has a delightful sheen to it.  This may, however, merely be a manufacturing difference, and not a material difference.  So seriously?  Know the basic properties of rayon, then use your own fingers and eyes to pick an individual yarn.  That will probably serve you better than knowing the plant source of the fiber.

Kids + Summer + Kool Aid =

YARN!  Here at Casa Driggs we have been having some fun with Kool Aid and wool.  I really enjoy dying, but not enough to buy a separate set of pots for it (check the labels of commercial dyes some time -- even the "green" ones are pretty toxic!).  So the solution is food grade wool dyeing.  Other advantage?  It won't hurt my kids if they decide to sample the dye pot.  This is our most recent creation:

That's 200 g of wool, dyed with five packets of sugar free Kool Aid (three orange, on cherry, one lemonade).  It really is great fun for everyone!  With that in mind, I have some tips:

• A general rule of thumb for a saturated color is one packet of Kool Aid per ounce of yarn or fiber.
• If you are kettle dying, make sure to heat until the dye bath is CLEAR -- if you're hand painting and microwaving/steaming, the run off when you're done should be clear too.
• If you're dyeing with kids, it's extra fun to play changing colors -- when you mix the packets together, and then again as you're watching the dye bath go to clear.  This is especially fun with purple, as red dye strikes at a lower temperature than blue, so your purple water will turn blue before it goes clear.

Acrylic - it doesn't melt babies

Enjoying her acrylic blankie.

I have never heard so much hate for a fiber as I have for acrylic.  I am going to have to break this down if I want to come out even remotely coherent.  So, the main complaints about acrylic are:

• it doesn't breathe.
• it doesn't actually insulate you, it just makes you sweaty. 
• it melts when it gets hot.
• it feels like plastic.
• it is really staticy.
• it is impossible to block, at all. 

Now, the idea that acrylic doesn't breathe is kind of silly.  It is not like wrapping yourself in plastic wrap, as some have claimed.  Look at any knit fabric -- there are holes!  It just doesn't breathe as well as wool or cotton do.  Which brings me to point two -- acrylic does so insulate you.  Just, again, not as well as wool does.  Acrylic does in fact melt, but only when it is very, VERY hot... if you are hot enough that your acrylic sweater/baby blanket/whatever is melting, you have bigger problems than melty plastic stuff.  The feel of acrylic is a little more involved.  Some of it does indeed feel plasticy.  Some of it is scratchy.  But some wool is scratchy and unpleasant, too, and there are MANY textures of acrylic.  To pick two at random, Bernat Softee Baby is soft enough for premies... Red Heart Super Saver is, shall we say, NOT.  As for the static, it depends, really.  Man made fiber + man made fiber does indeed generate a ton of static.  But it's not going to set off sparks against your cotton sheets.

Blocking acrylic gets it's own paragraph.  You CAN block it.  To do it, you have to get it hot enough that it JUST begins to melt.  I do this by shooting it with jets of steam with my iron.  Blocking acrylic is irrevocable.  Because you are actually changing the structure of the fibers, it will never go back the way wool does.  This can be a good thing (you never have to block it again) or a bad thing (if you screw up, you're stuck with it).

Advantages of acrylic?  It is incredibly easy care.  The only way I've figured out to ruin it by washing is to put it in the "sanitize" cycle on my washing machine, which basically blocked it for me.  Would have been nice if it were a shawl, baby blankets not so much.  Because of this, it's GREAT for baby stuff.  Seriously, babies have gooey stuff coming out from all ends, and it's nice to just be able to throw it in the washing machine and not worry about it.  It is fairly hypoallergenic, as well, and comes in a wide range of textures to suit just about anybody's preference.  But for me, the biggest advantage is it's general indestructibility.  As an example, I have an afghan that was made by my great-grandmother when acrylic was the hot new thing.  It is in PERFECT condition, in spite of years of use followed by years in an attic in California.  Wool would have attracted moths or carpet beetles, or simply succumbed to the temperature extremes, years ago.

So, do I like acrylic as much as I do wool?  Personally, no.  But I will always craft with acrylic and acrylic blends.  The unique properties of the fiber mean that there are some things that are just better made from a nice acrylic.  There are also some things that are just better made from Red Heart Super Saver (seriously, it is FAB for toys).  All yarn has a place!

Wool, part 1

Wool is going to be impossible to cover in one post, because not all wool is the same.  There are, in fact, eleventy bajillion and one (or something... I can't find a definitive number) different breeds of sheep.  Not all of them are wool sheep -- many are what is called a hair sheep, which are raised exclusively for meat, and do not need to be sheared because they shed their coats in the spring.  The wool sheep all produce different wool.  Some is coarse and scratchy, some is buttery soft, and everything in between!  There are, however, a few things that all wools have in common.

Wool felts.  Soft wools are generally easier to felt than course wools, but under the right conditions, all wools do felt.  The only exception is superwash wool, which has been treated specially to prevent felting.  Even then, though, some superwash wools will felt if conditions are extreme enough.  The recipe for felting: agitation, water, heat, soap.  Basically what happens is the tiny scales on the fiber's surface open up, interlock, then close up again.  Felting shrinks wool severely and makes it denser.  Felting is permanent.

Wool can be dyed with acid dyes.  This means no icky mordants for the home dyer -- you can dye wool by microwaving it in a bowl of Kool-Aid!  This means it takes minimal equipment to set up and try, which is always good in my book.

Wool has memory.  That basically means that whatever position the fibers dry in, they want to stay in, until they get wet again.  This is good for things like ribbing (it will stretch and spring back) and also for lace (when it dries stretched out it will stay stretched out).  Some wools have more memory than others.

Many yarns just say "wool" on the label.  This means that the company has a standard blend of sheep breeds for consistency within the line, but it's impossible to know the exact properties of generic wool without either touching it or more descriptors.  For example, Patons Soy Wool Stripes is ridiculously itchy.  Patons Classic Wool, on the other hand, is fairly soft.  Both are labeled simply as "wool."

As this is becomming quite a long post already, part 2 will come later, and will discuss the relative benefits of soft wool and coarse wool.  Yes, you may sometimes want to use coarse wool!

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.

Silk, glorious silk!

Silk is, without question, one of my very favorite fibers.  Nothing quite says "luxury" like a little silk  Which is funny, given that silk is basically caterpillar spit.  It is made from the cocoons of the silk worm, a little caterpillar that eats mulberry leaves.  It is not a vegan fiber.  The first step in the process of turning cocoons into yarn is dropping them into BOILING WATER!  Needless to say, the little larva isn't coming out of this one alive.  After that, either an end is picked up and the cocoon is unreeled from there (reeled silk), or the cocoon is stretched out over a frame.  If you're a spinner you may recognize this part -- it's where we get silk hankies, caps, and bells.

The biggest misunderstanding about silk, I think, is that everyone thinks of it as an extremely fragile fiber, handle with care.  This is both true and false.  Individual silk fibers are actually incredibly strong, as long as they are dry.  They are just incredibly fine, so they catch on things easily, and shockingly fragile when wet... especially if it's hot water.  That's why they dunk the cocoons in boiling water before they unwind it.  It opens up the fibers and softens them.

What does this mean for us silk users?  Well, silk does have to be washed very carefully, lest it break.  I treat silk like I do fine wool that I'm afraid will felt.  No agitation, no wringing!  The other option is to get it dry cleaned.  Once it dries (flat!), however, silk is pretty durable.  I think that silk blends are great, for example, for a very special baby item that you wouldn't mind hand washing.  My youngest's coming home sweater, for example, is a silk blend.

Pure silk is also very expensive, generally speaking.  There are some exceptions.  If you were to say order your silk from eBay, where there are a number of sellers from overseas who carry 100% silk yarns, you can get a real steal.  That being said, it's difficult to say if it's really silk, or if it's actually rayon.  Of course if you conclusively proved it to be rayon, eBay's fraud department would help you out, but it's difficult to prove one way or the other.  That being said, there are a number of very affordable silk blends.  I'm very fond of Misti Alpaca Pima Cotton and Silk, and of Crystal Palace Yarns Panda silk.  Both give you that sheen and silky hand, without the crazy price tag.

Cotton -- not just for dish rags

For the first post in my thoughts on fiber series, I'd like to look at cotton.  Cotton tends to get a bad rap.  It is scratchy, it is inelastic, it pills.  Banish the "scratchy" assumption right now.  It is a misconception started because for most of us, the only 100% cotton yarn we encounter on a regular basis is Peaches and Creme or Sugar and Creme.  Don't get me wrong, these are great yarns for kitchen and bathroom items.  They are durable and absorbent, and come in a wide range of attractive colors.  But they are not all cotton can be.  Knitpicks Simply Cotton, for example, is like working with a soft fluffy cloud.  Another factor in the softness of cotton is what kind of cotton it is.  You wouldn't expect all wools to feel the same, and cotton is no different.  My personal favorite for softness is pima cotton.  Soft, soft, soft!  I have also found it to be less pilly than some other cultivars, which is a double bonus.

Which brings me to the other complaint about cotton: it pills.  Unfortunately this is a fact of life when working with very soft fibers.  Because cotton fibers on their own really are soft -- comparable to very fine wool.  The difference with cotton is that those fibers are also very short.  It takes a lot of twist to get all the teeny tiny ends bound tightly into the yarn, and all that twist tends to make the yarn feel hard, like Peaches and Creme.  When it is spun more loosely, the fibers have a tendency to escape a little, forming those irritating little pills.  Of course wool does this too -- a very fine merino, for example, will pill just as much as any cotton yarn.  This is where a sweater shaver comes in handy... most yarns, regardless of fiber content, pill like crazy for a little while, then stop.  Shave off the pills, and it's good to go.

An important thing to remember about cotton is that when you block it, it will GROW.  Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, depending on the stitch and blend.  In my experience, it gains much more length than width, especially if you encourage it to do so.  I like to take advantage of this, personally... it gains a lot of length when washed that first time, so I don't have to work as many rows!

Another common complaint about cotton is that it's inelastic.  This is true!  It's only a downside, though, if you expect cotton to behave like wool.  Yes, ribbing in cotton will stretch out and never go back.  Cotton socks do not stay up well without the addition of elastic.  But cotton lace is virtually self blocking.  Yeah, if you make a big ol' cabled sweater out of cotton, it will grow and stretch and sag under it's own weight.  But it makes great baby clothes, and again... lace that stays blocked.

Another advantage of cotton is how incredibly well it breathes.  It doesn't insulate the way wool does, which makes it fabulous for summer knits.  It does insulate some though, especially some of the fluffier yarns, which makes it great for transitional weather, as well.  My very favorite hand made sweater is in fact a cotton/silk blend.  It is soft and scrummy, and keeps the chill off without overheating me.  The drape of it (it is a lace sweater) is also very flattering, whether I can fit into my skinny pants that day or not!

So in conclusion, cotton is great as long as you don't expect it to behave like wool does.  It won't.  But it has it's own properties that make it a great fiber in its own right, as well as having a lot to bring to blends.  It's not just for dishcloths!

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.