Archive for the 'Fibre' Category

The Mill on the… dirt road.

Published
by
Deb
on July 5, 2008
in Events, Fibre and Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

Once upon a time an intrepid band of hookers (rug-hookers, that is) ventured into the wilds of Markhamville to explore the workings of a fibre mill. OK, Markhamville isn’t exactly “the wilds”, but it is out in the countryside. And we only had to travel the gravel road for a few yards. Still, we were intrepid.

The Legacy Lane Fibre Mill is owned by two sisters, Alyson Scott and Amy Tonning. They process all kinds of fibre, including their own alpaca, raised on their farm nearby.

fleece going into the picker
Alyson took us through the process of preparing the fleece and spinning the yarn. We started with the picker awhere the fleece is opened up.

picked fleece

Here’s the fibre turned into loose fluff. After the fibre is taken from this room, they’re able to take the heavy, coarse fibres that fall to the floor right to the felting machine, since the floor and the table of the felter are the same size!

I didn’t get a picture of the de-hairer, where coarse fibres and vegetable matter are removed. Some fibres, like buffalo, need to go through the process several times to get to the good stuff.

prepped fleece going into the carder
After the fibres are dehaired and blended, it’s off to the big carding machine. Fluff goes in, batts or roving come out. Colors or different fibres can be laid side by side or alternated to acheive different effects in the batt or roving.

making roving

To spin yarn, the roving has to be drafted some more. This machine also measures the roving so equal lengths can be produced for spinning multiple plies.

bucket of roving


Here, Amy takes us through spinning
spinning machine
spinning

and plying.
plying

They can produce a wide range of yarn weights as well as batts, roving and felt. They make rugs from the felt, and insoles. I have a mat of their felt on my bedroom floor, it’s soft and warm, and the cat and dog love to lay on it.
They had a selction of their products laid out for us and I brought home a bag of roving. It’s an alpaca/soy/merino mix. Should be interesting to spin. I’ve never tried to spin alpaca before and I’m looking forward to that adventure.
goodies

Speaking of alpaca, we headed over to the farm for a bit. Unfortunately, it was raining and I din’t take my camera out, but here’s a couple of shots of the yearlings they had up at the mill.

yoo hoo!
hello there!

(I have some more pics taken by Anita, but I can’t seem to uplaod them at the moment)

How doth the little busy Bee

Published
by
Deb
on May 6, 2008
in Fibre, Rug Hooking, Spinning and Uncategorized
. 2 Comments

What a busy month April was! A bunch of different fibre events, a birthday and some shopping, too.

My birthday was last month, and my parents gave me a wonderful present — a Golding Ringspindle! It’s fabulous and beautiful. I fluffed up some wool and spun up some amazingly fine yarn. A little more practice and I’ll give that polwarth I got at London-Wul a go. I’ll post a photo as soon as I can find the basket I put it in…

The third Saturday of April (and of every month if you want to join us) was the second Anything Fibre gathering at the Sussx Artist’s Co-Op. I took a couple of bits to work on. My “Birds of a Feather” mat has reached the background filling stage and I’ve decided to embroider it instead of hooking.
birds of a feather
I also took a lace knitting piece, but I won’t be doing that again — I had to reknit a row and then I found a stitch that had dropped several rows. It was a small group this week so we sat in the cafe and enjoyed the sunshine. I really enjoy this group since there are many different crafts going on and so many things to talk about. I would like to see it happen more often, even if it’s only a small group that gathers.

I go to rug hooking twice a week most weeks, and a good thing too because for a while that was the only time I spent hooking. This month, though, there were a couple of other opprtunites to get some work in on the mats.
sjh1.jpg
First was the annual demo at the Saint John City Market. The Sussex Tea Toom Hookers and the Carnegie Hookers from Saint John go and spend a few days talking and demonstrationg and having lots of fun. I went on Thursday with D and L and we took Olive, our mascot with us. Olive is a wonderful carving my uncle Peter made of a hooker hard at work over her frame.
sjh2.jpgThere were some Carnigie hookers with us and Sande Gunning brought in lots of lovely things from her shop in Glenwood. She got in another bolt of the lovely heathered green I missed last time around so I picked up some of that along with some other beautiful wool fabrics. Of course, I had to draw up a new piece to work on that required some actual hooking.
sj-dg2.jpg
I also managed to fit in some shopping at Cricket Cove ;) I picked up some Malabrigo laceweight, and now I really get what peoople are talking about when they say this stuff is soft. Knitting with kittens, indeed! I wish I’d picked up another skein though. The price was really good, and I’m a big girl, so what I have will only make a shoulder shawl for me. I also got a skein of Kreyon sock yarn. No plans for that yet, but I’m thinking some colourwork might be nice. And I got another bamboo circular, 3mm. I passed Coles bookstore on the way back and founda couple of items on the discount table, the
Little Box of Scarves, and Hip Knits. I know a couple of people who will love the patterns in these.

sugarcamp005.jpgOne Tuesday we went to the Trites family sugar camp for some hooking. My friend Joy arranges this each year with her husband’s family, and both times I’ve gone its been an absolutely gorgeous day. There were hookers from Moncton, Saint John, Sussex, Fredericton, and Dorchester.Quite a mix for there being only about 30 of us!

sugarcamp017.jpg sugarcamp016.jpg

After walking in to the camp (it’s a bit of a walk, but a lovely one), we spent the morning hooking and chatting and having an all around good time. The Trites boys served us up a delicious lunch of buckwheat pancakes, maple baked beans, sausages and, of course, maple syrup. I picked up some maple cream for my parents (which they seem to be enjoying despite the squashing it got on the way home!), too.
sugarcamp020.jpg

You can see all the photos from the Sugar Camp here

I’ve been working on some knitting as well, but that’ll have to wait for the next post :)

So Nice I Knit It Twice

Published
by
Deb
on April 6, 2008
in Fibre, Uncategorized and knitting
. 0 Comments

 auntyl_scarf.jpg

Mirasol Sulka. Divinely soft, unbelievably smooth, serenity in a skein. I could knit with this yarn forever.

Simple mistake rib scarf for my Aunty L, knit the first time on 6mm needles. It wasn’t as soft as it could be, plus it seemed a little short, so I frogged and reknit the whole thing on 7mm needles. In the usual run of things having to do something twice would bug the hell out of me and, in fact, I would have stopped and restarted at a much earlier stage. But I was very reluctant to stop knitting with that dreamy strip of cloud.

I really want to make something big out of this. Big Girl Knits advises that a person my size should not wear garments made of chunky yarn, but I don’t really care. I want a complete set of garments, including underwear, all made of Sulka.

I’m thinking everybody I know needs some of this stuff in their life.
And I’m the girl to knit it for them :D

Yea, Verity

Published
by
Deb
on March 30, 2008
in Design Junkie, Fibre and knitting
. 1 Comment

I’ve been admiring Ysolda’s berets for some time now. I knit up a couple of Urchins (Ravelink) last fall for gifts, and Kelly has been sporting the lovely Gretel for most of the winter. As soon as I saw this pattern I knew I it was the one for me. Luckily I had some yarn in may stash that would work, because I decided I really shouldn’t buy any yarn this month (that only stuck for about half the month, but at least it kept me from going nuts, what with Kathmandu tweed close-out at Webs, odd lots and super deals at Colourmart, and a great sale at Pick-Up Sticks). It’s the same yarn I used for my silver beret, in a different colour, Georga 100% wool, this time in Aran. I really do love a yarn that knits up easily and evens out amazingly after blocking :)

veritybutton.jpg

Because it’s not as heavy as an aran-weight yarn I got slightly more stitches to the inch than the called-for gauge. I didn’t want to use a larger needle, though, as I really prefer a somewhat tightly knit fabric for most things (I used this same yarn with a 4mm needle for my silver beret). So I simply used one larger size instructions and that worked out very well for me.

verityback.jpg

The first part of the hat whipped right along. I love the petal shaping. I had one false start on the band, casting on too loosely. The linen stitch really snugs up the fabric and makes a nice dense band and that left me with a sloppy end. I restarted and joined it to the hat stitches. This part took a little longer to knit, being a slip-stitch pattern, but well worth it. Picking out the button was almost as much fun as knitting the hat! After digging through 3 generations of buttons, I found a lovely mother of pearl flat button, lovely in itself, but it doesn’t overtake the hat.

I’ve received many compliments on it, and I may just have to make another in some different yarn :)

verityflat2.jpg

pattern: Verity, by Ysolda Teague
yarn: Geoga 100% wool, Aran
needles: 4.5 mm 16″ KnitPick’s nickel circ, Aero circ, Bryspun dpns
Simple and ingenious shaping, the main portion in stockinette, fast and fun to work. As an aside, the yarn changed colour after washing. It had a definite pinkish cast to it in the ball, but that’s not visible at all now.

In search of Bamboo

Published
by
Deb
on February 24, 2008
in Fibre
. 2 Comments

I spent the day yesterday running around with Kelly and fondling yarn. Kelly had never been to London-Wul and Heidi is having a sale this weekend so we drove up (Kelly drove, I apparently just babbled for the entire day. Kelly probably knows more about me and my family than she ever wanted to.) to see if there were any goodies to be found. I made my little wishlist before we left with a few special projects in mind.

We left a little early, so I navigated us downtown to Reid’s magazine shop. Kelly had never been to this magical emporium either (actually, come to think of it, she’d never been to any of the places we went yesterday) and I think she was quite pleased witht the selection. I have loved Reid’s since my Dad first took me there in the early 80’s. They’ve always had the best magazine selection in the city, and certainly much better than any magazine shop around here. I forced myself to stop after I had 5 mags in my hand but I did pick up a yummy chocolate bar (they’ve also always had a great selection of candy bars, and were the first and only place downtown to carry Zero bars for years. Yum.). I got the new FiberArts, a Marie Claire idées (the Christmas one was surprisingly still on the stand so I grabbed it) Sandra and Jewelry Arts mag. I also found the latest Polymer Café for Mom.

When we got to London-Wul there were several people wandering around the shop already. I looked around for a while, chatted with Heidi, helped Kelly find some black roving and picked up a skein or two I liked. I ended up putting them back, though when I discovered the shelves of odd-lots. Lots of beautiful stuff to choose from. I found a gorgeous fluffy mohair in powder blue and some wool/silk 3-ply hand-dyed in sweet pastels. And, cof couse I got some of Heidi’s hand-dyed roving in a very spring-time colourway. I also got to meet Kelly’s friend and fellow knit-blogger, Jennifer, in town for a mini-vacation.

We headed off to Jean’s Restaurant for lunch. This place has been there for as long as I can remember, and that’s a while ago since I lived in Moncton through all of my teen years. I’ts not very big, has several booths and lunch-counter in the middle and is one of those working-man’s diners that every city has and cherishes. I think it was probably the best place to take Kelly who is a big fan of the Big Stop. We had hot turkey sandwiches and I couldn’t finish half of mine (I never can, they come on those big platters. I should really learn to ask for just half the food).

After we waddled out of the restaurant, I once again displayed my superb navigational skills by managing to get us to Cricket Cove. I did, however, not point out the parking lot until we were passing it… oops. Yeah, those navigational skills? Not so much. This was the second time I had managed to lead us beyond our intended destination. Anyhooo… We ran into Jennifer again coming out of the shop. She showed us some bamboo yarn she had gotten in a lovely pink colour, Sirdar Snuggly Baby Bamboo. This looked like exactly what I needed for one of the items on my list, to make a pair of booties for a brand-new wee cousin in Florida. Inside, I looked around and found lots of the bamboo yarn… but Jennifer had apparently bought every ball of pink! Oh, well, Cherie had said everybody had given her yellow and green stuff, so the green would do. Then Kelly, who is much taller than both me and the clerk at the shop, found one last ball of pink tucked in behind the others up on a top shelf. Yay, Kelly! You’re my hero! I managed to check another item of mylist with some Marisol Sulka, and left very happy with both the pink and green babybamboo.

After a quick trip to the Corn Crib (whole foods store) for some gluten free oatmeal for my aunties and dark chocolate for my mother, we headed back out and I proceeded to talk us back home (I mentioned the babbling, right?).

I made it home with all my swag and took off my shoes and relaxed. You know it’s a good day when you need a nap afterwards.

Loot