Saturday was the monthly meeting of the Tennessee Valley Handspinners Guild in Knoxville. (tnvalleyhandspinners.org)  I had agreed to pick up a wheel to give it a service/clean/tune-up for a member.  Kiwiweave does a routine clean/service for $30.  This is a ‘Wee Peggy’ wheel made in 1980 by Rappard (of Dunedin, New Zealand – my home town).  Rappard exported a huge number of these kitset wheels to the US in the 1970-1990 timeframe.  It’s the wheel on the left and is directly related to my wheel the ‘Little Peggy’ (to the right) which was made in 1974 and is very similar but as it came fully assembled isn’t quite as common here in the US.  During the meeting the guild decided to purchase an antique Saxony style wheel that could be used at future demonstrations especially if emphasizing the historical nature of spinning.  It’s the wheel at the back.  I volunteered to take it home and give it a tune-up and light cleaning.  It’s fully functional so no real maintenance is needed.

The wheel was likely built in the early 1800s and while it doesn’t have any makers marks, the style of wheel construction, number of turned spokes, chipped table edges and maiden style suggest it could be of Shaker origin.  The cleaning work will maintain the patina that has built up over the last 200 or so years and nothing needs replacement.  It is interesting to note that at some stage the spokes have been reset about an inch away from their original place.  It looks like one part of the wheel rim cracked, releasing the spoke, so rather than fixing the wheel rim the owner just moved all the other spokes to match the new.  I’ll put photo’s of these details in another post.

Rappard Wee Peggy, before

Rappard Little Peggy

As my wheel was one of the demonstration wheels at the Guild meeting – the program was an opportunity to try other styles of wheels. Everything from e-spinners, to bulk spinners, to antiques, double drives, and Scotch tension models – I gave it a good clean!  That’s my wheel to the right above, and to the left is the ‘Wee Peggy’ that I have for cleaning/tune-up.  It is missing a couple of minor parts so will have to get creative to make those.

As we have a few days of rain forecast I think I will have some suitable indoor work over the next few days.  I’m due to deliver the ‘Wee Peggy’ on the 10th and the Saxony wheel at the next monthly meeting.

Saturday saw us taking a trip up to the 2018 Tennessee Valley Fair in Knoxville.  The Tennessee Valley Handspinners Guild supply spinners to demonstrate on 4 days of the week long fair.  This year was my first and  I volunteered for just one 3 hour shift, from 12 to 3 pm.

Anne and I arrived at about 11 so we could unpack the car (wheel, wool, chairs, etc) and then have a quick look around before starting. Once set up with two other spinners at one side of the main display area I had nothing else to do other than watch the various sheep class judging events and chat about any and all things spinning.

Anne spent some more time wandering around the fair before joining me at the demo area.  The plan next year will be to arrive earlier to look around a little more, especially some of the tractor and craft displays – the multitude of ‘buy our product at greatly reduced ‘fair special’ rates’ are the same the world over, and not really worth a second visit.

The trip up and back were both painless. We visited briefly with Anne’s younger brother and family and did some ‘big city’ shopping before returning to the valley. I’ve signed up for next year as this is another show that is worth the effort to represent the guild.

Time to get back to the alpaca processing.  I have two fleeces: Neme and Isabeta. I have processed Neme before – very nice two-tone (brown and white) long locks.  Isabeta is all tan and has more coarse fibers mixed in.

The first step is to pick through the fleece and removed as much vegetable matter as possible and any other dirt and dust.

The rational is to remove anything that won’t eventually be spun as there’s no point in washing wool that will then be sorted/thrown away.  A fair bit of dust and dirt stay in the pile as it is fairly deeply ingrained, but after further processing most of this drops out.

The locks also have quite a bit of ‘second cuts’ where the shearer has taken two cuts at a lock and consequently left parts too short to process.  These are removed too.  Once a pile of wool is ready it is put into laundry bags and hung from the washing line out the back.  I then take the petrol leaf blower and blow the heck out of the bags which removes a large percentage of the dust on the locks.  Alpaca has no grease so it is not ‘stuck’ to the fibers like wool from sheep.  The bags are then put into hot water with a little Dawn dishwashing detergent and some gently agitation.  Two rinses follow and then they are rolled up in some large beach towels to remove surplus water.

Layed out overnight on some netting under a ceiling fan – the locks are dry enough for the next stage which is to further blend the colors together in the picker before carding on the drum carder to make roving then finally spinning.  I will be demonstrating spinning in Knoxville next weekend so intend to take a fair amount of roving with me.

I received a request to weave some towels to match some woven back in 2015.  That presented a couple of problems, not least of which was that the warp and weft were 4.5/4 cotton which is not a standard size cotton.  Originally sourced as an end of line/job lot from the carpet industry it does make very nice absorbent dish towels (or bread cloths) and because of the thickness it is very quick to weave.  The good news is I found I still had a cone of the yarn.  Very good news actually as I did a search around all the normal sources and couldn’t find any currently for sale.

The original towel had blue stripes which were indigo dyed here at home.  The second problem was that my indigo pot came to a melted end in the shed fire.  That wasn’t necessarily a problem as I have other dyes for cotton and knew I had suitable blues. But while going through the thought process I decided to check to see if I could make a 4.5/4 cotton. Cotton yarn is made up of plies (the second number, so in this case 4) of a certain thickness (in this case 4.5, with 1 being the thickest).  The first number is multiplied by a standard 840 then divided by the number of plies to give yards per pound.  So in this case (4.5 x 840)/4 which is 945 yards per pound.  I had a suitable 8/2 cotton in the required blue so undertook to ply it twice (first time equals 8/4, then 8/8) which needless to say works out at 840 yards per pound – not a huge difference.

First job was to wind bobbins full of the 8/2 cotton.  Luckily the spinning wheel bobbins fit onto my Leclerc bobbin winder.  The ply two together.  With the tension sent right it is fairly straight forward to keep some tension on the two yarns with the left hand and some final tension with the thumb of my right hand.  I could watch as the plied yarn travelled over my right index finger and see the twists forming. Keeping this at about 10 twists per inch seemed to work.  The wheel Scotch tension was adjusted to pull the yarn through my hands with the slight pressure from either hand slowing that speed and allowing more twist as appropriate.  It turned out to be a pretty smooth process.  Once two full bobbins of the doubles were done I repeated the process to get the 8/8.

By the time the plying was finished I had one and a half bobbins of finished yarn which match the white yarn closely enough.  I wound the yarn from the bobbin to a center pull ball to make the job of winding the warp yarn easier.

Ultimately the process was a lot quicker than if I had dyed the same amount of yarn as I could get on with winding the warp straight away versus the wet dye process then drying time.

Will have photo’s of the next steps in a future blog.

I went along to the Tennessee Valley Handspinners Guild monthly meeting yesterday (https://tnvalleyhandspinners.org/) in Knoxville.  I followed the normal routine:  leave home, drop by the Cleveland Panera for coffee and a bagel (I suspect this really is a routine as one employee now goes straight to the espresso machine to make my double latte even as I wait in line!), then hit the I-75 north for the hour trip from there.  Generally traffic is light at 8:30 in the morning so it is an ideal cruise listening to the NPR Saturday morning radio shows (I don’t have much choice as my truck doesn’t have a CD player, Sirius Radio or an external input – unlike the PT Cruiser).

I arrived in plenty of time to help set up the chairs and tables and start spinning.  I took some wool roving I had purchased quite a while back with the intention of producing yarn to weave cloth for a driving cap.  The wool is from Mangham Manor Wool & Mohair in Charlottesville, VA. (www.wool.us). Anne and I visited on one of our VA tours.

The wool roving is naturally colored, the locks are not!  I’ll spin each color with flecks of the different colored locks and then weave the cloth as twill with warp an weft using the different shades.

Evidently I was talking more than spinning as this is all I managed to get spun.  Normally I can finish a whole bobbin during the meeting.

I have also signed up to volunteer at the Tennessee Valley Fair (Knoxville) in early September.  They have spinners from the guild in the sheep and goat pavilion.  This will be the first time for me, but the guild has been providing this service for a few years.

The trip through to Knoxville for the Tennessee Valley Handspinners Guild meeting went smoothly.  Anne came with me as she wanted to catch up with her youngest brother and his family while I was at the meeting.  We followed the usual routine of picking up some breakfast from Panera for the road and made it in plenty of time for the meeting at 10.

I had carded the washed alpaca with a plan to produce a sample of 3-ply yarn.

The locks were picked open a little by hand before running through the drum carder.  Then the resulting batt was run through two further times to tidy up the fibers.

I split the final batt into three roughly even amounts and spun each to a bobbin and then put the three together to create the 3-ply DK weight yarn.

The next step is to clean and wash larger batches and get into the real spinning task.

While at the meeting I compared my washed East Friesian locks with some another guild member had washed and she encountered the same problems as I did.  Given the fairly high dirt and vegetable matter content this wool will never be super white when clean.  As two-thirds of mine will be dyed anyway I’m not too worried.

After a week of thunderstorms and rain interrupted outdoor work I decided to commit to some indoor work today and wash the first of the alpaca fleece.  Just a small batch as a trial – it should make enough to spin while at the Tennessee Valley Handspinners guild meeting tomorrow.  It will also show me what the blend of two fleeces will look like spun and made into 3-ply.

There are some interesting color contrasts from light to dark which will blend more with the carding and then should show up in the 3-ply as a mottled look.

Also at the guild meeting I will be giving a summary of the Smoky Mountain Fiber Arts Festival wrap up. Needless to say we will use the big city visit to do some shopping at stores that we don’t have down in this corner of TN.