Combing some Suri Alpaca

Way back in 2015 I bought 200g of Suri Alpaca fleece from someone in Gloucestershire.  The fleece came from a female Suri Alpaca called Shimmy.  She must have sent me more than 200g because even after washing the dust and dirt out it still weighed 208g once it was dry.

I've put off working on this because I've never worked with fibre this long, silky and slippery before, most of it is between 5 and 8 inches in length.  Time to stop being scared of it and just get on and at least prepare it.

There are lots of different shades in this fleece and most of it could be easily separated from the other shades and so I kept it this way as I combed it so that I would have hand combed nests in different colours which gives me more options than just blending it all together.

At the end of combing I have 160g left.  Its incredibly soft and silky, very much like long human hair in terms of texture and apparently incredibly difficult to spin on its own as there is no memory to this fibre, no elasticity and you need plenty of twist to keep it together but not too much else it very quickly turns rough and rope textured, but not enough and it will stretch and fall apart. 

From doing some research Suri Alpaca is OK on its own if you want to weave with it but not so much for knitting or spinning, it has good drape but is likely to loose shape completely quite quickly so is better blended with something that will provide grip and elasticity, like wool, merino perhaps.  I do have some small amounts of merino in similar shades of brown so I will compare those and order more if necessarily and then make a gradient yarn in a blend of Suri Alpaca and Merino but I will have to cut the Alpaca fibres in half to make them similar length to Merino so that they will blend.  By blending with Merino it not only will it improve the finished yarn but will make the gradient go further meaning that I can make a much bigger shawl from this.

Spinning up Peak District

This is one of last years monthly fibres, Peak District, that I have on subscription.  I have 100g a month of a surprise fibre, which pushes the boundaries on what fibres blends I spin and also the colours that I spin.  If I only ever spun my favourite colours then I would only ever spin greens, turquoise/aqua/teal blues and purples.

With this one, the opportunity arose to buy some additional fibre and so I bought an extra 300g making the amount of this I have up 400g.  This is a textured fibre braid and coupled with the fibre content the advice is to spin this one from the fold to trap more air in and make it a bouncier and softer than if you were to spin it worsted, which is my usual spin method, and that it would be lovely as a thicker yarn, around about aran weight.  I've been spinning 10 years and never spun from the fold but I've been reading up a bit lately and watching some short  instructional videos to try to increase my repertoire of spinning skills as its easy to fall into a rut.  So the result is a thicker than usual yarn with bounce, and that is why I made sure to get extra of this fibre as 100g of thick yarn won't go very far, a hat if you're lucky.

This was measuring up at aran weight before I gave it a bath and then it plumped up to Super Bulky/Chunky weight and I've already picked something out that I will knit with this.  It totals 385g/320m, I managed to lose 15g somewhere, no idea!

February's monthly fibre is here!

After the letter arrived and I Googled the drink I was expecting something a lot darker but you know what?  Despite the fact that is in the "pink range" of colours, I actually don't mind this one.  I think its because it's not a pink pink, its not a "Barbie" pink, its a coral pink and I can live with that.

This is Singapore Sling and its 50% Merino, 25% Rambouillet and 25% Baby Camel and is nice and soft.

Blending again

A few days ago I combed some yellow Jacob wool and today I have finally made my choices using colour choice tools to help me make that decision and blended some extra bits and pieces into it.

Main photo is Jacob Wool with sunshine yellow merino, a blend of four greens merino and purple angelina underneath and then Elderberry merino, Saffron hemp and Caiprinha trilobal nylon (firestar) down the right hand side.

 I've not worked out the final fibre content just yet, would be pretty high on the Jacob and Merino though.  I didn't use all of the trilobal nylon in this as a little goes a long way and that is what is giving the fibre the shimmery glow.

Spinning up Slate & Chalk

Last week I had a bit of fun with the blending hackle and I have finally finished spinning it.  Its pretty, not as pretty and sparkly as I'd hoped for but there is colour in there amongst all that dark slate grey-blue.

The final fibre content is 65% Jacob Wool, 19% Merino Wool, 10% Corriedale Wool, 3.5% Other Fibres, 1.5% Silk, 1% Trilobal Nylon.  Its a Double Knit weight and there is 161g/371m of it and its lovely, not overly soft like Merino but its not really scratchy either.  I've not yet decided what to make with this but it won't take me long to decide.

Combing more of the natural dyed Jacob

After that spinning session I just needed a day to do something different so I combed the Jacob that I dyed using carrot tops last year.   I started out with 160g and ended up with 78g of combed top, quite nice but not nice enough as it is right now.  It needs something adding to it but I need to sleep on it and make some choices.

Spinning the Aqua and Pink Falkland

I blended this fibre last week and now I have finished spinning it up.  I've got two skeins of double knit weight yarn and one smaller skein of worsted weight yarn from this.

The double knit yarns are 107g/308m and 106g/311m, lovely and soft and slightly sparkly and was spun short forward draw. The final fibre content worked out at 70% Falkland, 12% Other wool and fibres, 11.5% Merino, 3% Silk Noil, 2% Silk, 1.5% Angelina.  So now you're probably thinking "Other wool and fibres?", yes, there were some elements that went into the recipe that I didn't know for sure what fibres they included and that is one of the downfalls of buying bags of leftovers/oddments/botany lap waste from fibre producers/sellers but in my opinion the positives outweigh the negatives when you buy that stuff.

The worsted weight skein was spun using the blending hackle waste and I have 73g/153m.  I spun this semi-worsted/semi longdraw just as it come which has produced a slightly thick and thin slightly slubby yarn.  The fibre content is a little different on this one due to the fact that there is no silk noil in it but its not all that different at 70% Falkland, 15% Other wool and fibres, 11.5% Merino, 2% Silk, 1.5% Angelina.

February's Fibre Club Letter

February's Fibre club letter has arrived and to begin with, as I started to read it, I was a little perplexed as to where it was going but as I read on it began to make sense.  The item for the colour inspiration has a very tentative link to the anniversary that she has picked but I know how difficult these kinds of things can be.

The letter reads:

February 2020 is the anniversary of the collapse of the UK’s oldest investment banking institute; Barings bank. In 1995 a trader called Nick Leeson lost $1.4 billion by speculating on the Singapore International Monetary Exchange. 

Now that doesn’t sound too promising for colour inspiration, however, if we take a slightly sideways jump we end up at something that I did manage to use to inspire your fibre this month. Singapore is one of the major centres in the global economic marketplace, and is a modern thriving city state. Historically however it was part of the British Empire, the origins of the present day city date back to 1819 when it was founded by Sir Stamford Raffles. The country was occupied by Japan during the Second World War, but was returned to British control in 1945. Singapore gained self governance in 1959. 

Now the one thing that I have no wish to do is to glorify the days of the British Empire, the actions of the British government in many countries was shameful. The narrative of the founding of Singapore is one of Raffles in the role of white saviour. The popular story is that Singapore was just a sleepy fishing village until he came long and transformed it in to a global port. It is true that he established Singapore as a thriving port, and important link in trade between Asia and Europe. But in the 17th century it was the site of Johor (a state formed of modern day Malaysia and Singapore) Sultanate’s naval base, and a busy trading port. The arrival of the British did bring prosperity for the Europeans, but the local people didn’t benefit from that prosperity, in fact their standard of living declined. 

Raffles now gives his name to many plants and animals, he has a reputation as being a naturalist, and in the Victorian style he collected a great deal, relying on the work of locals, secretaries and other naturalists to form a huge collection. Unfortunately much of this was lost when the ship taking him back to England, Fame, set alight. Alas it wasn’t just his collections that were lost, in his time in Asia he had collected many Malay books and manuscripts. Raffles own secretary wrote the following after the burning of Fame- 

'When I heard this news I was breathless,' wrote his secretary, 'remembering all the Malay books of ancient date collected from various countries...The books could not be recovered for none of them were printed but in manuscript... ' 

Raffles name is now used in the latin names of many Asian plants and animals, and his name is also used at the famous Raffles Hotel in Singapore. The hotel itself wasn’t built until 1887, long after the death of Raffles. However it became synonymous with a certain level of luxury that the European traveller expected when travelling in Asia. The Long Bar in the hotel is the birthplace of the Singapore Sling cocktail. It’s origin story may possibly owe more to mythology than truth, but we do know it was created by Ngiam Tong Boon, a Hainanese bar tender sometime before 1915. At that time women drinking in public was not socially acceptable, and the rumour has it that the Singapore Sling was invented to give them a drink that looked like fruit punch, but still with a kick of alcohol. Another rumour is that it was created in reposes to a request to “make a drink the same colour as that lady’s lips”. Either way, it’s a fabulously vibrant drink and is our colour inspiration for this month.

Looking at the links to photos of the drink it seems that this month's fibre is going to be somewhere in the red colour scheme.  Some photos depict the drink as a dark red colour whilst others look more like strawberries and cream.  I don't mind, as long as its not too pink, I'm not a huge fan of pink.  The fibre isn't going to be dispatched until Thursday so won't be here with me until at least next weekend.

Playing with the blending hackle again

Back in September I dyed some Jacob fleece using Logwood and the result was a mix of dark blue and dark grey.  I've combed that wool over the past couple of days and ended up with blue fingers and a lot of mess.  I discovered that an amount of it had felted or partially felted in the dye pot and so some of it was unusable but I still managed to get 111g of combed fibre out of the 247g.  It was a mixture of dark blue and dark grey, and me being me, I totally forgot to take photos of the combed fibre before I put it through the blending hackle today.  I did think about leaving as it was and spinning a plain-ish yarn but it really needed something, at the very least the grey and blue needed blending together again to even it out.

Using a colour grid tool that I have to help identify what colours work together I had a rummage through my "ingredients box" and picked out a number of small bumps of fibre that I felt would work with my Jacob and its mostly Corriedale and Merino fibres, I have no idea what the fibre is in the top middle.

Whilst I was loading up the blending hackle I had a couple of moments of doubt about my colour selections but once I dizzed it off the hackle and looked at it my doubts disappeared and I came up with a great name for it, Slate & Chalk, given that its a kind of slate grey, I used chalk in the dye-pot and the other colours look a like chalk on a blackboard .

Aqua and Pink Falkland

I've been playing with the blending hackle again.  This time I've been playing with 200g of aqua coloured Falkland fibre that I bought back in November 2013.  It doesn't seem that long ago but I'm glad that I chose to blend it rather than just spin it because it had started to compact slightly which would have made it a little tough to spin as it was.

Once again I have chosen a whole load of bits and pieces to put with this to give it a bit p'zazz, including Merino, Silk Noil and Angelina.

I first of all split everything equally into 4 lots and loaded the blending hackle up quite finely as I only wanted to do each quarter only once.  The wool fibres lay on top of each other really nicely but the Silk Noil had to be pulled apart into small pieces and just placed on top of the layers of fibre as putting it through the tines of the hackle would have meant that it stuck there and it would have been the same with the Angelina.  I dizzed each of the lots off the hackle and had 4 large bumps of fibre ready to spin.

I had a lot of waste stay at the back of the hackle with each lot that was blended so I removed this at the end of each lot and lay it to one side.  At the end of the blending I had 4 decent sized amounts of fibre to spin by another method if needs be.

Jacobs Gold

I am thrilled with how this has turned out and I am having trouble capturing the sparkles and shimmers that this yarn contains.  It positively glows in real life due to the Angelina and the Firestar (Trilobal Nylon) content in this yarn.

I blended it just a few days ago and now it is finished, soaked, snapped and dried.  I have 95g/246m of double knit weight yarn and its lovely and soft.  The final fibre content is: 75.5% Jacob Wool, 10.5% Trilobal Nylon, 5% Corriedale Wool, 5% Silk, 2% Merino, 2% Stellina/Angelina.