Category: Tweed Chronicles

Tweed Chronicles: Odds & Ends Blends

Published on by Jen6 Comments

I have been in a binge of preparing fiber,  attempting to clear out and make yarn from all the little bits of  fiber odds and ends I have in my closet. With this batch I am refining my “one + one” blending method, where I blend a batt on my blending board, then blended that batt to another batt, and so on (original one + one tutorial)   Also, using hand mix method (original Handmix tutorial) to divide up the batts with new fiber helped me get everything fairly equally portioned, and I just kept adding while the batts were building and then the final brush strokes of accent.  Here’s how it all stacked up and blended together, pretty much exactly . . .

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Techy Stuff for Odds & Ends #2, entirely on blending board.

  1. Beginning with 21g of a BFL hand-dyed braid, I mixed together on the blending board, and the blue, yellow, green, orange, red all turned into a mix of dull dark brown = batt #1 — see color saturated neutral tutorial here.
  2. To the batt#1 color mix I blended with about 30g of some (what I think was) Rambouillet white wool that was in the mystery bag of fiber = 1+1 batt #2 = 51g.
  3. To batt #2 I blended with 97g white alpaca = [1 + 1] + 1 batt #3 = 148g.
  4. To batt #3 I blended with 80g part braid of blue-faced-Leicester/Shetland/Manx blend which was tan and white wools = [[1 + 1] + 1] + 1 batt #4 = 228g — shown in the big fluffy beige batt below. 
  5.  I brushed on to blending board 72g part braid of Malabrigo Nube (Merino) in colorway “Solis” (blues & greens) for a batt to mix in. 
  6. To batt #4 I mixed in the teal batt = [[[1 + 1] + 1] + 1] + 1 batt # 5 = 300g. 
  7. Last brush streaks of ‘turquois veins’ = topaz bamboo. 
  8. Pulled off rolags!

Notes:

  • Making batts of all the fibers first, which is kind of like combing them and making them easier to blend on the blending board with the next fiber, sequencing the process with another fiber, then another, instead of all fibers at once. This homogenizes the first fibers more and more throughout.
  • After batt #3 I decided to not blend in the 30g of white Cheviot or extra (much coarser) 72f BFL blue-green hand-dyed braid, and left it at the 300+ grams batt #5.  Batt #5 got two blendings on my blending board, in attempt to finer homogenize the colors, but it became and overwhelming project at 300g total, and I still had the last brushings of color to do, before drawing off rolags. I am considering getting a wool picker for future big projects! 
  • Final blend I added about 10g of bamboo in color “topaz” for the gold streaking affect, thinking I might end up with a look of veined turquoise. However, I can never tell until the final handspun is finished and plied before I can be certain.  

Watch this space for the spin-up of these lovely rolags. 

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Oh yeah…

the Odds & Ends #1 batch that is all spun up and I almost forgot about!

I actually did forget to post this, from weeks ago the finishing of the project, and it was the first of my Odds & Ends series of stash-busting projects. It is Early Morning Blend from inauguration day. has finally been spun & plied.   This also is the first on-purpose bulky weight yarn I have made that I can remember, in all the years that I’ve been spinning; that is, not accidental or “it is what it wants to be” kind of handspun. I have pretty much a default thickness of yarn I spin now, so, needing some bulky weight yarn to knit up a little something, it occurred to me to ply 3 together of the singles bobbins that were storing in my wool closet. I absolutely am raving about on-purpose 3-ply, as it makes a very balanced round yarn. Which incidentally, is ideal for textured knitting. Hmm, maybe next I shall cast on for the smallest size of my latest Fisher Vest, hoping I don’t run out of yarn!

Tweed Chronicles: The Hand Mix (2)

Published on by Jen9 Comments

Revisiting one of my original Tweed Chronicles recipes,  posted four years ago nearly to the day, before I even thought of doing a fiber blending series and calling it Tweed Chronicles.  But this time I wanted to expand the project up to at least 300g of fiber so that I could make something from the spun yarn (oh, like a small vest).   Admittedly this time of year brings heartful memories from that time of intense creative discovery I ascended to with fiber & color on my newly made blending board. The time was just before the wildfire, so I suppose that it feels good to return and pick up where I left off , celebrating Tweed Chronicles and the coming of Autumn. I am especially keen on refining ” the hand-mix ” recipe,  a preparation of multiple  fiber & colors and textures, which uses mostly hand manipulation and minimal work on the teeth of the blending board or carders. Its actually quite satisfying to split a color into halves, then half again, and again, quite relaxing, and works so well to homogenize everything. So from the original tutorial, which has the slide show and I recommend checking out, in this post I am merely refining the method.  Here is what I did…

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Nep Clouds 4

Published on by Jen3 Comments

spun nep clouds

The final plied woolen spun skein, washed & dried, and my nep cloud experiment is finished !

The neps were so subtle and very difficult to get to show on the camera, so I had to intensify the color saturation of the photo just so that you could see them, the blue and green neps. The whole skein looks rather seafoam color when hanging out on the line.

This time of year the Black Oak leaves are budding out a soft fuzzy beautiful crimson velvet!

The landscape by the way, is healing slowly from the wildfire. We’ve had to cut down so many dead & dying old Black Oaks around the house, and since I was outside photographing yarn drying on the clothes line, I want to show you how the young shoots are vigorously growing from their parent trees, from root systems perhaps a hundred years old. I have been shaping the new growth, and now the tallest of these young oak trees is almost 10 feet tall. I’m so proud of these young darlings!

I was thinking of trying another variation of the technique I posted in my first Nep Clouds Recipe on my new hand-carders, but I don’t think I can really improve it, for it seems to do best I think , to achieve the affect of the traditional woollen spun rustic tweed, so drawing off the rolags from the blending board work very nicely ( I have made some more notes in the original Nep Clouds Recipe for those who don’t own hand-carders ). Alternatively one could spin from the batt, worsted technique. Anyway, this method suits me just fine, and I will look forward to blending up some more neppy colorways just as I did this skein, and that about wraps up this nep clouds experiment!

See all posts Nep Clouds.

See all posts Tweed Chronicles.

Nep Clouds 3

Published on by Jen6 Comments

I am having a lot of fun documenting every step of my Nep Clouds “recipe” .  However, I think the improvement I will make on my next nep cloud experiment, I will avoid using bulky weight yarns for the snippet neps ( see first post Nep Clouds ) as I struggled with some of the neps being too stiff and unmalleable, so instead I’ll try fingering, sport, or dk weight. These are the single ply bobbins, and I wanted to show how present the blue and green neps are even at this stage. Next will be plied, skeined, and washed finale!

See all posts Nep Clouds.

See all posts Tweed Chronicles.

Nep Clouds 2

Published on by Jen5 Comments

jenjoycedesign© nep-rolags

Nep clouds from last post have been layered on the blending board with more wool, then rolled off into lovely speckled neppy rolags! You can barely see the imbedded blue and green neps in the white cormo wool, but I know when I begin to spin they are going to pop! 

jenjoycedesign© nep-rolags3

Next is the spinning, but first, what I did . . .

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Techy Stuff . . .

I layered twice, actually with a different wool (undyed white Cormo) layered in-between nep clouds (see last post for how I made nep clouds ), wanting to be sure the neps were well homogenized. It would have been a good idea to use a light grey , to show the blending steps separate from the nep clouds. Next time! 

  • Layered first wool, then blue nep cloud, then wool, then green nep cloud, then wool — taking opportunity to evenly disperse with my hands, clumps of neps, and then l lifted batt off of board.
  • Layered handfuls of the batt again, to get all nice and well blended.
  • Drew rolags off with large knitting needles in a slightly tensioned  ” combing ” motion. 
  • Rolags ready to spin!  (click the 1st image below to go to slideshow) 
  • See Blending For Tweed Simplified for my basic blending board slideshow how-to.

See all posts Nep Clouds.

See all posts Tweed Chronicles.