Round and around & around & around…….…

[osodecanela]

It was a great day today.

Once a year the country fiber community has a gathering in a picturesque vineyard right on the Russian River near Healdsburg. About 100 spinners from around the bay show up each year, wheels in tow. Fibers from merino to alpaca, bamboo to silk, raw fleece to finished yarn gets sold, and spinners crank away under the shade of stately oaks just yards from the rivers edge, green grape vines shimmering in the sun nearby.

Dan came down from Ukiah. We nosed through the sellers stalls checking out their wares. There was some gorgeous stuff for sale, but I resisted temptation. I have more stuff in my fiber stash than I could spin up in a year, even if I spent a couple of hours each day processing it. Dan has no where near the stash and he added some alpaca silk roving to his. He got about a pound to work with in varying shades of grey and white with lovely sheen, but then that is the glory of silk.

After cruising through the vendors, we settled in to craft. Men were in the minority and about half that were seemed to be hangers on - guys who were accompanying their wives or girlfriends. Now I'm a fairly proficient spinner, and Dan is bloody meticulous at it. We sat and shot the shit, had some lunch and played with fiber. I did 2.5 ounces of merino today, a roving I got several years ago, teal green accented with colors you'd find on a mallard. It's beautiful stuff, and I'm doing it up as a sport weight 2-ply. Not sure what I'll make with the yarn as of yet, but it will be fun to work with. Dan opted not to bring his wheel today. He's in knit mode at the moment, working up a sport weight 3-ply, 1 strand of beige bombyx silk & 2 strands of forest green merino tencel blend. It's simple and simply beautiful. He's turning it into a fisherman's scarf. Very impressive. It's his second knitting project, but as meticulous as he is, & as mechanical as his mind is, you'd think he's been doing this for years, but that's Dan. I gave him my old wheel x-mas before last. Eight months later he took best of show at the Booneville fair. He entered a bombyx silk yarn that beat out not only every other yarn entered, but every last fiber project other than raw fleeces entered in the fair. I've been spinning 30 years and I've never had a yard place higher than 3rd. My finished projects are well received. I've even taken a blue ribbon, but best of show? In my dreams!

A number of women drifted past, many stopping to shmooz and check out our work. I seem to attract the little ones. Today it was a 7 year old, who's mom was one of the vendors. I'm fairly certain her mom could have answered everything she wanted know. I think it may have been the colors I was working with. Her mom's stuff were all natural colors, high end raw and processed fibers like alpaca and blue faced leiscester, nothing dyed and certainly the not in the shades of a mallard.

I've babbled enough; time for bed. With luck, perhaps I'll get laid.

Comments

[yarram.livejournal.com]

...that teal with mallard accents sounds gorgeous! *hands twitching to knit something with that*

[osodecanela.livejournal.com]

It is lovely & I'm afraid that my iPhone camera doesn't do it justice, but here goes.

these are two skeins of the yarn. The larger skien was completed today. I had one ply done previously. I made the second strand today and then plied them.

[westwind-mv.livejournal.com]

I had no idea bamboo could be spun! Posts like yours are why I read LiveJournal: keeping up with friends' doings, and learning new things.

Cheers!

[osodecanela.livejournal.com]

Dave, bamboo is an interesting fiber to work with, and there's an argument in the fiber community on how to classify it. Is it a natural fiber or not? My understanding (not that I've ever prepared it as a bast fiber) is that there's a way to manually break or rettle it into spinnable fiber, sort of like flax (linen), hemp or ramie. However, most often it's chemically broken into a sticky soup of cellulose, which is then extruded through a spinneret. They've been doing this from wood pulp to make rayon. Within the past decade many spinners have been playing with bamboo, soy silk and ingeo (aka corn silk). These fibers have a silky feel to them as well as a silk-like sheen and they take dyes, both synthetic analine and natural plant dyes, something synthetic fibers like acylic, & polyester won't do.

[tilia-tomentosa.livejournal.com]

So did you get lucky in bed? :P

Now I'm curious about your friend's silk-and-merino combination.

Not that I'd have the patience to spin anything myself. I'm still more interested in the silkworms themselves than the silk. :)

[osodecanela.livejournal.com]

I did. I trust you're not asking for details.

[osodecanela.livejournal.com]

As for the merino-silk blend, it's gorgeous stuff. It handles mostly like wool when spinning, but then that's no surprise. It's 70% merino. There are multiple glints of light within the mass of white were the silk catches and plays with the light, standing out from the surrounding animal fiber like ice crystals embedded in snow. The triangular shape of silk fibers may share the pure whiteness of the merino, but the fibers are so different in what they do with light.