handspun yarn is selling!

[MinorityView]

Perhaps a fluke, but altogether I've sold 12 skeins of handspun yarn in the past two months.

Six at a farmers' market today, five at a yarn store that sells my yarn, 1 at a food co-op that just started carrying it.

I'm so pleased. And now I have an excuse to buy more fiber and spin more yarn:sun::sheep::pleased:

In my copious free time...:juggle:

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

:lol: :previous: what spare time?

:) Do you take commissions?

[MinorityView]

As in spin custom yarn for people? Haven't so far. I've got one set of four skeins to do for a lady--but that is a long and not very interesting story.

Basically, I spin a very standard sort of 2 ply yarn which usually comes out to about 60 yards to 1.5 oz. I can do basic dyeing with chemical dyes in a wide range of colors, but definitely wouldn't guarantee any results. Sometimes people have asked me about handspinning their dog yarn for them, but it would have to be thoroughly washed, as overexposure to dogs makes me sneeze.

I'm purely an amateur who sells her excess production.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

and people who spin tell me its very relaxing. It would only be relaxing for me if the end product was to my satisfaction :D

[MinorityView]

Interesting point. I enjoy spinning more if the fiber is very pleasant, or I really like the color. I'm getting picky about what I'm willing to spin. I'm a good enough spinner now that I can turn out a nice looking yarn even from difficult fiber, but there is no way to make scratchy fiber softer by good spinning!

As with computer programming: Garbage in, garbage out. Which reminds me that textile arts have driven technology throughout history:

the Chinese developed extremely advanced machinery for processing silk, waaaay back.

Jacquard developed a punch card driven technology to weave brocades in the late 1700s.

And going back beyond historical time, the drop spindle was one of the first tools devised. And the loom one of the multiple part human driven machines. And knitting was a very significant technological innovation--I'm still amazed that some human being worked that one out. Apparently the first knitting was done on sticks stuck into the ground, a lot like the child's spool knitting technique. The person who figured out that it could also be done with two sticks and passed back and forth was a genius. Machine knitting moves back to the multiple sticks system, just massively upgraded.

How is that for a digression?

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

In the BBC series in 1976- 1977 (See "Living in the Past" John Percival 1908 ) the girls decided that knitting had to be a much longer art than known, and bucked the specialists, knitting unspun yarn on smoothed sticks. The experts conceded they could be right, because knitted garmens were unlikely to have survived like fabric did....

So what do you like spinning?

[MinorityView]

alpaca, if I can get it carded (it is horrid to card), ditto llama. Mohair or mohair and wool mixes. I've been spinning Leicester which I picked up at the NY Sheep and Wool Festival this last October. Nice stuff and it sells really well.

Basically I prefer soft to scratchy. I like spinning the natural colored fibers, but dyed seems to sell better.

[MinorityView]

Now that is an interesting snippet. One of my favorite books on textile history: http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/review-01.html is
Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times
Elizabeth Wayland Barber,W.W. Norton & Company, 1994


In another book by the same author she remarks that knitting seems to have been discovered once and then spread, whereas weaving and spinning were "invented" over and over in various parts of the world. I bet that also applies to feltmaking.


The fiber factoid I find most amazing is that human beings managed to figure out how to work with flax. Flax is so easy to mess up, and requires so many steps to produce good fiber, I can't see how anyone would keep trying. Trial and error? With flax I'm strongly inclined to favor the mythological version: a divine being appeared and taught human beings. This is also the way the Chinese explained the origins of seroculture: a gift from the gods.


http://www.amazon.com/legacy-great-wheel-traditions-practical/dp/0910458154


one of the books I published back when I used to do that sort of thing. the author had included the westernized version of the Chinese myth and I insisted that the real version wouldn't be even slightly similar. So she went and tracked down a scholar, who provided a translation of the real myth, which is darned weird and ends with a goddess dropping down from heaven with two bolts of silk.









In the BBC series in 1976- 1977 (See "Living in the Past" John Percival 1908 ) the girls decided that knitting had to be a much longer art than known, and bucked the specialists, knitting unspun yarn on smoothed sticks. The experts conceded they could be right, because knitted garmens were unlikely to have survived like fabric did....

So what do you like spinning?

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

BTW Youtube has a six part series about "What happened next" relating to Living in the past.

here are the URLS

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e7ZLWz3UMw

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roenpcLCm2g&feature=related

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-feDsKqUlM&feature=related

Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qih1g09xQM&feature=related

Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99f9MqlohkY&feature=related

Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pKkHoZDGd8&feature=related

[Seaweed]

The fiber factoid I find most amazing is that human beings managed to figure out how to work with flax. Flax is so easy to mess up, and requires so many steps to produce good fiber, I can't see how anyone would keep trying. Trial and error? With flax I'm strongly inclined to favor the mythological version: a divine being appeared and taught human beings.

MV do you mean flax as in linen or flax as in harakeke?

[MinorityView]

Folks in North America have never encountered harakeke. Is it a plant which is processed similar to flax? Soaking and retting and all that?

One of the things that fascinates me about this stuff, is that in different climates the soaking time has to be adjusted. So a method that worked perfectly in Holland would ruin the flax in Russia, for example.

[MinorityView]

Thank you, I'll watch over the next few weeks.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Folks in North America have never encountered harakeke. Is it a plant which is processed similar to flax? Soaking and retting and all that?

One of the things that fascinates me about this stuff, is that in different climates the soaking time has to be adjusted. So a method that worked perfectly in Holland would ruin the flax in Russia, for example.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flax

Why NZ flax was called flax is beyond me, since the two fibres bear no relationship to one another.

[MinorityView]

The articles are interesting though, and there are some similarities in the processing. As far as I know, cotton is the only plant fiber where you don't have to do a huge amount of processing to get a usable fiber. The problem with cotton, is, of course, those damn seeds.

I've only once tried spinning some linen thread. The technique is totally different from wool and I didn't have a lot of success. I think I'd have to take a class to learn to make good thread. (This is probably the origin of the story of the girl being commanded to spin straw into gold. Spinning flax into beautiful thread requires a lot of skilled work.)

With wool, even with fairly awful wool, a person with reasonable manual dexterity and a primitive tool, can learn to produce usable (if not lovely) yarn in a few minutes. Producing really high quality yarn takes a bit longer.

[Seaweed]

Harakeke is phormium tenax. I think they called it flax as the early settlers made rope out of it. Well I am even sure at one point in time the entire royal navy sailed with rope made from harakeke. There was a flax mill which made fibre from harakeke out near us. You can still see the remains of the old posts the line across the inlet sat on to truck the fibre out. The harakeke from there dries a nice almost banana yellow colour in some parts if you weave with it but it is quite hard so I think is more rope-like. I will look later to see if I can find anything online but to get nice fibre ( muka ) out of harakeke, you need a mussel shell. You need to ply it & then wash it & pound it with a stone to make it really supple. It is more labour intensive than complex. Harakeke is a truly amazing plant as you can make lace or rope out of it & pretty much anything inbetween depending on the variety of harakeke you get the fibre from.

[MinorityView]

Thanks, Seaweed. It isn't complex if you know what you are doing, but imagine wandering around in total ignorance trying to figure out a way to go from plant to clothing :)

To get really high quality linen requires more processing, so I guess there are some similarities.

[Seaweed]

I found this about harakeke
http://www.landcareresearch.co.nz/research/biosystematics/plants/weaving/harakeke.asp
I found some photos on another site that I could tell what they were doing coz I know what they are doing but probably not much good to you! It does amaze me how people worked these things out. I guess from weaving with harakeke, you would know there was fibre in it. You can pull the fibre out manually. It is amazing how silky & strong it is. So I guess using a shell to extract it is just a natural progression from there as it is easier than doing it with your fingers.

[MinorityView]

I guess I'd have to actually handle some leaves. From the pictures it isn't obvious that there is usable fiber there.

Figuring out flax would have been a lot harder, though, I guess.

The shell does sound like an obvious tool for the job. I bet people were already using shells for other stuff, in fact I'm sure of it. Shells must have been one of the first tools.

[Seaweed]

I guess I'd have to actually handle some leaves. From the pictures it isn't obvious that there is usable fiber there.
You need to come here on holiday & check them out! I actually weave with a librarian who is really cool.


Shells must have been one of the first tools I have used a shell on the beach to cut harakeke when I have left my good knife in the car. It took a few extra stokes but was doable.

[MinorityView]

I'd love to visit NZ. But I work at a small, rural library and the pay is sort of, well, low. So it isn't likely. Here is hoping!

[Seaweed]

The head honcho of our library recently visited the US to investigate sustainable libraries. Maybe you could see if they do librarians work exchanges ?

[MinorityView]

Now that would be an interesting idea!

We use a library catalog system which originated in NZ: Koha.

Here is our catalog: http://69.54.27.21:81/

and some pictures (http://warrenlibrary.com/Pictures%20of%20the%20new%20library.htm) of our library in its "new" (actually historic old) location.

And here is a picture of the outside of the building: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3034/2903837529_e9868b0f8c.jpg

it looks slightly different right now: there is a small building attached on the left with access to the new elevator from ground level, the front steps have been painted, and there is lots of snow.

[Seaweed]

Yeah koha is a maori word. We use it here generally to mean a donation. So you will say that the fee for something is a koha & the person needs to decide what they can afford or feel is approriate to give as a koha.
What a beautiful library you have! I will ask the librarian I know if there is such a thing as library exchanges. Or even I will ask the big boss when I run into him next as I know his wife & son.

[MinorityView]

Okay, let me know what you find out. I can only take prolonged vacations in the summer (as in two to three weeks), and it would probably have to wait until 2011 for me to save up enough money for airfare. I've got to finish paying for my new roof, first.

[MinorityView]

460461

Wow, it worked. The one on the left shows my two grandchildren with their snow lady and the one on the right is my grandson wearing a hat I originally knitted for his big sister.

[MinorityView]

I thought you folks down under might be in the mood to chill out a bit. You must be in the middle of summer.

We just had a big dump of snow in the last week. There was 5 feet of it up on the "mountain" which made the ski resort folks very happy. There was about 3 feet down in the valley, which made people like me, who had to shovel it, very tired.

[MinorityView]

And, to return to the topic of the thread, the yarn store sold another 7 skeins of my yarn.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Love the right hand hat. Do you still have the pattern for that hat? Can I please have it ??? also like the one with the ear flaps :D

[MinorityView]

I can find the pattern. It is from a book which is called, I think, Domino Knitting. You knit little squares, but they are attached to each other as you knit them. It is quite a neat technique.

The other hat, with the ear flaps, turned up outside of my former apartment. I was right next door to a real estate office that specialized in apartment rentals, so there was a lot of foot traffic. One day I found the hat draped over a driveway marker (before it starts snowing, smart people put sticks into the ground to mark the edge of the driveway). I left it there for several days in case the owner turned up and then gave it to my granddaughter. It looks cute on her, with the braids, because she usually wears her hair in braids, too.

The book is domino knitting by Vivian Hoxbro. See if you can get it through your local library, because you will need the basic technique to follow the pattern directions.