General Craft & DIY discussion

Do you spin your own yarn or thread? What type of fiber do you spin? What do you use to do it; drop spindle, spinning wheel (what sort?) or something else?

I hand carded & spun an entire bobbin full of Alpaca FIBERS in the past 2 days. It's not perfect, but not horrible. I was more uneven today, forgetting to go slow. While I probably should do another of the same for practice, I'm starting to card Alpaca & Speedy's fur together instead. His hair is too coarse to make good yarn on its own, but a mix seems to be pretty good. I haven't tried spinning any of it yet. It's taking a long time since his fur is full of mud & hay. Lots of picking to do before I can get some to card with.

My spinning is coming along. I managed to do 2 half bobbins of Speedy/Alpaca thread that I plied back together. It came out pretty good.

I've spun up over a dozen skeins of yarn so far, but only 1 was plied twice & yesterday was the first time I did 3. I had to make a couple more bobbins & modify my spinning wheel to hold the extras - plural because I was planning on making 4 plies, but decided that was too thick. The orifice would accept it, but it was close, so I dropped back to 3.

This is pure Alpaca yarn, so I have no plans on what to do with it at the moment. I think I spun it all too tight, so I'm not sure if it what it will be good for. Maybe a scarf or hat, the only two things I seem to be any good at knitting. I still have a fair amount left on 2 bobbins, so I guess I'll spin up some more & do one more skein at 3 plies & see if I can't get it softer.

DST got me again. I was careful to reset all my clocks on Sunday, except the one in the shop. I meant to change it, but have to step up on a bench to do it & it was full of Alpaca fur I was carding so I put it off - and forgot. Last night I was almost at the end of Sharpe's Rifles & almost had the 3d bobbin full enough when my wife called me & asked if I realized it was 8:30. Whoops! No I hadn't. Thought it was 7:30. Damn.

So, tonight I should finish up the 3d bobbin & be able to make up my 3d skein of 3 ply Alpaca yarn. It's straight from the beast, no washing or dye. I think I'll look into dying some. I've never done that before. Has anyone else?

I guess I need to wash it good before I dye it or else the natural oil won't let the dye get in there well. Should that be done before I card it, as I do with Speedy's fur or should I wait until it is spun up? Do I need to bleach it first or can I just dye it if I'm going for a medium brown?

I have a new project, Husky hair. A friend of mine here on GR (We've talked by phone, exchanged books by mail, but never met IRL.) has a beloved Husky named Juneau. She's been brushing him & saving his undercoat. She sent me 2 plastic grocery bags of this & I'm planning to spin it into 2 or 3 ply yarn, then knit her a scarf & possibly a hat.

It's interesting fur. There aren't many long hairs in it & they're easily distinguished from the undercoat, but even that has a wide range of thickness. Some of it is so fine it's hard to card. It turns into bits of felt. Even when I discard that or think I've gotten it all carded well, there is an uneveness to the rolag that makes feeding it difficult. Hopefully I'll get the hang of it soon.

A friend of mine sent me cat hair to spin up into thread she could use to braid a bracelet. It was very soft, fine, & too short to spin properly. I found that out after I spun it all up & tried to pull it off the bobbin on to the niddy noddy. I'd get a few feet & then it would break, so I pulled it all off & carded it back out. Then I carded in just a bit of Alpaca & spun it again. That made a huge difference. The Alpaca gave it a lot more tensile strength & I kept it pretty thin. It was a fun project.

I got more of the Husky Malmute hair. That project came out very well. I made a huge scarf out of it & sent it to the owner. She's been getting complimented on it ever since. She sent me another bag, so I think I'll spin that up & make her a hat, too. She says it's really, really warm.

Neat!

I always thought my Shiba Inu would make a great scarf. Her fur was like a husky's.
:)

Unfortunately, she is not with me anymore.
:(
To bad I can get the bags of fur she gave me.

That is a shame, but it's tough work collecting enough fur, even off a dog like a Husky. It took my friend an entire shedding season on spring to get me enough - at least a well packed plastic grocery bag full is needed for a scarf. Then she spent another year getting me another bag.

The amount varies a lot depending on how thick I make the yarn & the size needles I use to knit or crochet it. The thickness varies how many lineal feet I can ply back together per batch & short ones mean more yarn wasted in overlap, too. IOW, I'm never sure how much I'll need for a scarf. It varies with the store-bought yarn as well, although I usually stick to worsted weight so I have a slightly better idea. A hat takes less yarn than one of my scarfs, but I haven't done enough yet to really get a feel for it. I should write it down. I keep meaning to, but that's one more thing to do & I'm awful about keeping journals of any sort.

I decided to try dyeing some of the Alpaca yarn I spun up. That's been an interesting project. I've never dyed anything before, but found a group through Google+ & some web sites. There was a lot to learn.

Animal hair yarn is best dyed with an acid dye which comes in a lot of colors.
http://www.jacquardproducts.com/acid-...
The acid is just vinegar, so nothing horrible. I don't think it's easy to put too much in, but too little & they dye isn't as colorfast - it doesn't fix & stay. Some colors seem to stick better than others. Blue seems to be particularly bad about sticking while yellow sticks great.

I used the stove top method for acid dyes as 'explained' here:
http://www.jacquardproducts.com/asset...
I did it out in my shop using my old pots heated with a propane heater on a 30lb bottle that I use for emergency heat when the power goes out. It worked great.

The dye comes as a powder in 2.5oz lots. This needs to be put into a solution first, so I bought some 8oz containers, but found some colors didn't dissolve well unless I went up to 12oz, so I did for all of them to keep the same proportions. That leaves room in the containers to shake them well before using, too.

Then I had to look at the chart to see the recommended amount of dye to use per pound since some, like the 602-yellow need far less than others like the 632-chestnut. Mind you, I needed to figure out how much powdered dye was in each ounce of my liquid & some skeins are individual threads, so only 2 to 3 oz each - a small portion of a pound. The icing on the cake is that the amount of water used to soak the thread is 'enough'. Oy!

I spent some time figuring it all out & then wound up using 3 tablespoons of the 602-yellow solution. I'm not really sure how I arrived at that figure any more, but it came out great, so I used that as a baseline. According to the chart on page 2 of the above document, the 638-gray was supposed to use the same amount, but I had to dye it twice & I used twice as much dye the second time. It's OK, but still not as gray as I would have liked. Both the 622-blue & 629-emerald came out bright with just 3 tablespoons, even though they were supposed to need 4 - 6 times as much!

Metric units would have made all of this a LOT easier. 16 oz to a pound with 3 tablespoons per oz in a dilution of 2.5 oz to 12 oz just made my head hurt. I've decided that dyeing things is more a matter of luck & experience than science. I won't rule out magic yet, either.
;)

In some cases, I dyed a 3 or 4 ply skein. In others, I dyed individual threads & plied them together into yarn afterward. Both came out pretty well, although this was when I really noticed how colorfast the dyes were. As the blue or green slipped through my fingers, it left a blue streak. None of the other colors did that.

Dyeing individual threads brought up another issue - how to get them back on the bobbin so I could ply them together on the spinning wheel. Typically, I'd leave the threads on the bobbin until I could do so, but the dye won't penetrate unless the thread is loose, so I had to wind it from the bobbin to the niddy noddy, wet & dry it so it wouldn't unravel, & then dye it. Once it had dried, I made up different kind of swift (skein winder) that allowed me to spin the bobbin with a cordless drill to wind the thread back on to the bobbin. It worked well!

All told, I was quite pleased with how it all came out & it was an interesting experiment.

I have had great success with Welsh black sheep and Maine coon hair. The ratio is not exact but about 60/40. I spin on an antique wheel from Lithuania or Ireland area.
I haven't dyed anything at this point and prefer the natural colours but I am wanting to experiment with the Maine coon hair since I have a constant supply. The under coat is very downy and the outer coat very smooth and is a variety of lengths up to 3.5-4".
I am wondering if you have dyed cat hair at all?

I haven't, Syl. Don't know that I would. I've only spun up a tiny amount of cat fur as I mentioned in #7, so I'm obviously no expert. I've never seen a white or light colored Maine Coon cat & I would only dye light colored fiber. I don't even do that often. Like you, I prefer natural most of the time. I'll be interested in reading how it goes for you, though.

I'm not sure how well dyes would work on darker colors. My daughter was just telling me about dying her own hair which is a dark brown & it seems to be an issue. I have no idea how similar human hair dyes & fabric dyes are, either.

I got some good info from The Knitting Lodge, a Google+ community, & on Ravelry.com. I believe the former was the best.

What sort of spinning wheel do you have? Is it single or double drive? I've only used the former. That makes the most sense to me & I would guess it would have the most tension range, but I don't know anything about double drive wheels. The concept just seems complex to me.

How many cats do you have? Mom used to have a Maine Coon & my daughter & her husband have 2 cats with hair about as long. While a fair amount is shed, I'd think a lot of patience would be needed.

Hi Jim
Sorry life got in the way and my health and moving blah blah. I have three cats and though I have only recently got the spinning going again I haven't done much. I did collect a lot of fur and separated it.
I have three cats and I collect by brushing once a week. Maine coons have an undercoat something like some dogs. The hair/fur is downy on the under coat and the top coat is much thicker, straight and darker. The undercoat is what I am hoping to work with because it is very light grey. It feels a bit like baby alpaca. I haven't decided what I will mix it will for my experiment. But just letting you know I am still here on earth and back at it.
How has your dying and spinning going. Oh I have a single drive and so far I have been figuring it out on my own. It is an antique wheel, I think some call it an upright wheel. I have sent pictures and some say its Irish and some say it is Lithuanian. When I got it, it still have a big bundle of flax or linen tied on the distaff. Also it was tied on with an old woven ribbon with green and red. I then started thinking that might be the colours of the country it is from? The old fiber is very old. I will try to spin that some day but it is very fine and I need to probably be better. I can not tell if it is linen or flax but it is over 100 years old, possibly twice that. I guess wetting it will decide if it is flax. I might need an expert to advise me. If you are still spinning you are probably an expert by now..

Glad to see you back! No, I'm not much advanced from where I was. Too many other projects & not enough interest in spinning. I am still doing it. Just tonight, in fact. I'm working on a bag of wool I got a couple of years ago. It's already been carded, so I can just pull out chunks, separate them a bit, & spin away. Much faster than that nasty fleece I bought at the same time. It's very coarse wool & filthy, so it takes a long time to process. I still have over half of it left, but plan to put it aside & work on something else. I have some alpaca left to fiddle with, too.

I found a great site for beginning spinners & I guess more advanced one. http://abbysyarns.com/2008/12/ is all about getting started including a fantastic discussion on the types of wheels & what will work best for what.