12.19.06
Posted in Tutorial Tuesday, spinning at 2:09 am by wendy
How to turn this:
into this:
I’ve wanted to do a tailspun yarn for a long time.
I have so many little packets of mohair locks, a whole bunch of yearling Lincoln locks, in so many pretty colors, just waiting to be tailspun yarn (or a a light airy and soft bouclé) but I was intimidated, and now of course, I can’t think why.
Tailspun yarn is a yarn that has whole locks of wool hanging off a core, like a big ol’ eyelash yarn.
A lock of wool has a butt end and a tip, the butt being the cut end or skin side of the lock, and the tip being the sproingy curly tapered bit.
You can do tailspinning using just the locks themselves, by just drafting them a bit, then catching the next butt end up and letting the twist run up to it, then another butt end, always keeping the twist one butt end behind and leaving the locks hanging out…but I used the corespinning method.
Corespinning is just using one yarn as a core and wrapping another yarn around it.
By holding the second yarn at an angle (angle depends on desired effect) to wrap around the core yarn you can get a beehive/coil yarn look, and by holding a fiber at an angle (roughly 90 degrees) and using the grabbing action of the core yarn being spun as resistance to draft back on, you get a really fluffy soft looking yarn with a strong solid core.
Tailspinning creates a really unique looking yarn, maybe not terribly practical for knitting (you can keep the curls to the front of the work by purling on the right side) but I really dig it, and it looks really cool in weaving too.
It is pretty labor intensive though–you have to flick open the lock ends and treadle rather slowly. In the 25 minutes I was messing around with it and trying to film a tutorial, I only ended up with 6 yards (1.5 oz).
For a similar effect with less work for knitting, look at the cuffs Brooke made at SOAR.
You can use an overspun single or a plied yarn, the important thing is to execute the tailspinning by spinning the wheel/spindle in the opposite direction of the last direction that the core yarn was last spun (so if you are using a plied yarn, odds are you’ll tailspin clockwise, if you’re using an overspun single, odds are you’ll be spinning counterclockwise).
So, you hold the core yarn right out in front of you, as you might with any other drafting or plying, but in another hand you lay the butt end of the lock on top of the core as you treadle and the twist travels along the core and grabs the lock (use a flicker, or slicker brush from a pet store, or a regular hair/tick/flea comb to open the butt end of the lock into a fanning of fiber and it makes it grab incredibly easily) and you move onto the next lock. You can slide the locks up together along the core to pack them densely or you can space them loosely, with separations of wrapped soft fluff.
The more tension, the tighter you tug or wrap the locks, the less soft the resulting yarn will be.
I don’t have pictures in progress of the spinning because I made video, but it is taking forever to upload. I will embed them and you’ll have a choice between Pomona-packed and Pomona free Quicktime video that you can download to your video ipod (Hi Mary-Kay!) if you want to see it in action.
Tailspinning quicktime video:
I’ve removed it from being embedded, I guess it’s so huge it just doesn’t want to load.
Over a year later, I found a way to upload it to youtube (it was too big before) sou you can now find the not so great tutorial video right here.
If I can do it, you can do it. ;p
The hardest thing might be letting go of expectations of exactly how it should look and just enjoy the serendipity of the way the locks wrap the yarn.
Diane Varney (does anyone know if this is the same Diane Varney?) describes this as Curly Locks in her Spinning Designer Yarns. She says that an advantage is that you can use a perfectly hideous commercial yarn, as you’ll be covering it up, but I don’t have any hideous yarn in my stash anymore.
I don’t think.
I did have a beautiully dyed yarn from Siri, with colors that seemed meant to be mated with the locks I’d dyed way back when. Just in case the core peeked through after all, and plus I like having all parts be pretty, even if they aren’t to be seen. Kind of like wearing pretty panties.
This is my view when I started writing this post:
Everyone on the couch!Pomona/Angelina was in a silly mood earlier; she kept stealing wads of locks and I kept having to go retrieve them before they were too thoroughly killed and subdued. But could I be mad?Not with the silly girl with such a face, no.
Wait, are you sure you’re not mad at me?
A quick note about the locks–they’re from a yearling Lincoln fleece I bought from Lorraine Powell of Powell Sheep Co (
PO Box 183 - Ramona, CA 92065 760/789-1758, she’s also an Ashford Dealer). in Ramona.
It’s a great fleece, well skirted and relatively clean, with great luster and actually quite soft.
Updated: I meant to say something about spinning this on a wheel.
My orifice for my Victoria was way to small for this, and my s17 has hooks which would snag it.
I used the Jumbo head on my Lendrum and still had to feed the yarn manually onto the bobbin.
If you have a Country Spinner, this type of yarn would probably be no problem for doing a big ol’ skein on a wheel…but otherwise, this might actually be most easily done on a spindle…
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12.12.06
Posted in Tutorial Tuesday, Tutorials, knitting, socks at 12:08 am by wendy
So, one thing I’ve learned lately is doing a short row heel, without holes. It started of course with Wendy’s knitty.com toes tutorial. But I guess I just didn’t get it, I kept making a holey toe. After ripping and reknitting and ripping and reknitting, I figured it out and thought I’d share it. Because I know I’m not alone in this.
But of course, Google shows me a slew of results that looks like they might have helped me out. But nobody did it the way I did it, right? Hermmm….Nope. She does. Well, sort of. Not exactly. But her pictures are excellent and her method works for her.
But I took pictures, and wrote down directions, and made the world’s cruddiest tutorial video (dog interrupted) so dang it! I wanna do it. But the bottom line is: pick up and knit the wraps from the purl direction, from the front of the stitch, from right to left, however you’d like to phrase it, and purl the wraps that same way…you won’t get holes, and while my sides don’t look exactly the same on both sides, they look close enough and no holes, so I’m happy.
Here’s the long version though:
Step 1:
With waste yarn and a crochet hook, chain several more stitches than half the total number you’ll be using in a round for your sock.
Meaning, say I want to knit a sock that’s 42 stitches around. So I chain 21 stitches (half of 42 for those math wizards out there. Also, it’s easier if this “half of total” number is divisible by three, you’ll see why in bit) plus three, four, five more stitches, for no more reason than insurance that I have all the little back loops I want and then some to choose from.
What do I mean by back loops? These are back loops:
The same view without my awful Photoshop interference:
The other side, the smooth side looks like this:
(If all this is buggin’ your eyes out, you can always cast on stitches with a contrast yarn, knit a row, then change to the yarn you really want to use, knit across and go to
step 3, where you’ll purl across that row and then begin
step 4.)
Step 2:
Pick up and knit those back loops, picking up and knitting half as many as the total stitches in the sock round as thou heart desires. (For our example, 21.)(Pick up and knit just means you insert your needle into a back loop, wrapped your yarn around the needle in a knitwise [clockwise, left to right] direction, then moved on and repeated the process with the next back loops in just the same way.)
Okely-dokely?So, after you’ve picked up and knit through the back loops, you’ll see something like this:
When you turn it around, it’ll look something like this:
Step 3:
At this point, pick up a second double point needle and purl across that row of picked up stitches. And thusly, the short row madness begins.
Step 4:
For this example, we have 21 stitches.
So, this next step, on the knit side, is to knit across 20 stitches. (If you are using a different number, say, 36, than make this number less one, as in 35)
Bring your yarn between the needles to the front, as if you were going to purl the next stitch.
Slip the next stitch purlwise. (from the front, from the purl direction, from right to left, however you prefer to phrase it.)
Turn your work, slip the just slipped stitch (so with all this slipping, the stitch is never twisted, the orientation/directions of the legs of the stitch does not change) from left to right needle, and move the yarn so the yarn is now held in front of the work. You have now wrapped the stitch and are ready to purl 19 stitches across the row, or rather, stopping with just one stitch left on the left hand needle.
Step 5:
Having purled across the row to the stitch before the last slipped and wrapped stitch, bring yarn from the front of the work to the back, as if you were going to knit the next stitch. Instead, slip it purlwise. Turn the work, and slip the just slipped stitch back to the right needle and bring the yarn from the front to the back, wrapping the slipped stitch.
Knit across to one stitch before the last slipped & wrapped stitch (18 sts for our example) and repeat the yarn movement, slipping and wrapping as outlined in Step 4.
Repeat steps 4 & 5, each time wrapping the stitch before the last wrapped stitch, (wrapping is the word to concisely describe that moving the yarn, slipping & yarn moving process) and you will notice a lovely wedge forming, with the wraps around the base of the slipped stitches on the needle:
Repeat these steps 4&5 until two-thirds of the original stitch number have been slipped and wrapped, that is to say, one third on each side. For this example, that means 7 slipped and wrapped stitches on each side, with 7 perfectly normal, perfectly innocent looking stitches in the middle. If your number is 36, it will mean 12 slipped and wrapped stitches on each side and 12 in the middle.
You will have the same number of slipped and wrapped stitches on the right and left of your sexy stockinette toe wedge and be ready to knit on the right side.
YOU WILL. I COMMAND THIS FOR THE SAKE OF THIS TUTORIAL. There are pictures below these steps of working double wrapped stitches, but for the sake of seeing direction clarification, you might find them helpful.)
Knit across to slipped and wrapped stitch. With yarn held in back, insert needle tip from purl direction, first through the stitch on needle then (still from purl direction) into the wrap laying down around the base of that stitch. Knit these two together as one stitch. Bring yarn to front, slip the next stitch purlwise, and turn the work (the just slipped stitch now has two wraps). Bring yarn to front and slip the just slipped stitch from the left to right needle.
Purl across the work. The first wrapped stitch you come to, insert your needle tip from the purl direction into the stitch on the needle, then down into the wrap, again from the purl direction, just like Step 6 but this time your yarn is held in front. Purl the wrap and the slipped stitch together as one.
Bring yarn to back of work, slip next stitch, and turn work.
Slip just slipped stitch to right needle and bring the yarn to the back in preparation for knitting across the row to next wrapped (now double wrapped) stitch.
Knit across row to double wrapped slipped stitch.
To avoid holes, here’s how I pick up the double wrapped slipped stitches:
I pick up that slipped stitch which is on the needle, and then I insert my right needle tip from the purl direction into the wraps laying around its base and spear them with the left hand needle to knit them all three together through the front:
After knitting the two wraps and slipped stitch together through the front, or from the purl direction, bring the yarn to the front of the work, slip the next stitch, turn the work.
Step 9:
(on purl side) Bring the yarn to the front, slip the just slipped stitch, and purl across to the double wrapped stitch. Insert needle tip from right to left/from purl direction/through front of all three stitches and purl all three together.
This picture has a single wrap being lifted to be purled with the slipped stitch, instead of two wraps, but it is essentially the same ol’ thang:
Bring yarn to rear of work, slip next stitch, turn work.
Repeat steps 8 & 9 until all stitches have been worked.
Now you should have a really cool toe cup in your hands, with half of your total desired sock stitches on a needle, and the other half held at bay by your provisional cast on.
Unzip the the crochet cast on or otherwise undo your temporary cast on to get to those active loops, knitting across them, and placing a marker to indicate the beginning/end of the round, joining them to their long lost brethren on the other needle(s).
If you have a tendency toward hole-iness in these matters, you may wish to m1 or increase by knitting in the front and back of a stitch or otherwise create a stitch at each side between the two halves and knit the extra stitch together with another stitch from the toe halves.
From there on you’re on you’re own.
You can go wild with stockinette stitch and then when you are two inches shy (this number depends on the gauge you are knitting at, measure the depth of your own toe cap and plug that number in where the “two inches” was) of the length you want the foot of your sock to be and just repeat the short row toe process for your heel.
Then you can do stockinette stitch up to where you’d like to start the ribbing. Dead easy mindless knitting sock, and there should be no running out of yarn if you make sure you don’t use more than half of what you have available.
I hope this helps someone save some time, somewhere. If you’ve spotted mistakes, give me a shout so I can fix it/them, por favor.
Also, if anyone can reccommend a text editor for blogging–I love almost everything about Wordpress except for this crappy text editor. Rich text editor keeps deleting my spaces and paragraph breaks, and it seems like every time I fix something, something else will pop up that I didn’t even put in. And when I go to fix that, previous formatting gets lost. I use the rich text editor and tweak it in the html screen, and between the two…I’m seriously ******.
I just wasted a ton of time deleting strong tags. And I dread to hit the update button because I know it’s just going to get worse. The formatting of this entry is ridiculous and barely readable. I’m sorry. And why are strong tags in a post affecting my sidebar?
I give up on this for tonight. Maybe I’ll rewrite it in blogger and repost it. This has just become a farce, as I’ve spent more time trying to fix the formatting and having it get worse every time than I did in writing the post, and I have to get up at 5.30am to work, so that’s it. Ya basta.
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