Art Yarn 101: Core Spinning

They say core spinning is the "work horse" of the art yarn world, and indeed it does allow for lots of manipulation of your fibers.  One of the beauties of core spinning is that it allows you to stretch your fibers farther and farther to end up, ultimately, with more yardage.  A yarn needs structure so that it doesn't drift apart and leave you sweaterless, naked and cold.  When spinning the vintage way, part of your fiber gets twisted into the center of your yarn, giving it that necessary structure and strength.  But if you are spinning with expensive luxury fibers like angora, cashmere or buffalo down, you don't want it to disappear into the center of the yarn, never to be seen again.  In core-spinning, you wrap your fiber around a pre-spun core so you don't lose any of your precious gold.  And all fiber is precious gold in it's own way.  

My first experience with core spinning was a really, really fun disaster.  First I learned the basics of spinning in a 2-hour class at the Friends & Fiberworks Winter Retreat 2012.  Then an hour later, I took a class in core spinning with Melissa Yoder Ricks of Wild Hare Fiber Studio.  Was I ready to learn core spinning?  No, I think not.  I couldn't even spin the vintage way.  But I had fun cramming all those bits & bobs onto my core--ribbon, beads, fiber, sequins, mohair locks.  It still makes me smile to look at it today and to remember how I was so awed by Melissa's control and dexterity as she demonstrated at her wheel, wondering if my hands would spin magic like that.  I was intimidated, I'll admit it.  I mean, look at this hot mess.

If you've been following my blog, you know I've been working through Jacey Boggs Spin Art, one technique at a time.  I've been stuck on core-spinning for a few weeks.  And I don't mean stuck as in practicing until I got it right.  I mean stuck as in afraid to dive in.  Afraid to dive in, I realize, because I've been holding on to those "I'm not good enough...I'll never be able to spin like that" judgments left over from that first core-spinning class.  And it wasn't even a bad experience.  As I recall, I was exhilarated with the experience and thrilled with my yarn.  Does this ever happen to you?  That sometime in the interim between the first thrill of discovery and the moment of getting down to work to hone your skill, the little voice of unreasonable expectations in your head starts whispering its disheartening messages and, if you are not careful, it wins.  It wins and then, if you are not paying attention, you give up.  But if you are vigilant and looking out for that part of you that wants to lay down on the sofa with a bag of funyuns (good lord!) and the undertow of Facebook or Etsy or Seinfeld reruns ready to suck you down, you recognize that you have a choice.  And sometimes you choose wisely.  You choose to go to your studio, pick up your tools, make something even if it is bad, relish the making of the thing without regard for the end product.  And you win.  And tomorrow your choice is easier, and you win again.  And every time you choose to go to your studio, that little voice gets smaller and smaller and smaller until it just gives up.  And you keep winning like that...one victory at at time.

Thus ends the philosophical part of my post.  Now for some pictures!

A page from the book....

Jacey Boggs:  Spin Art, Mastering the Art of Spinning Textured Yarn

Raw materials...hand painted polwarth, kettle dyed silk noil, sparkle (not shown but always present in my projects)

Raw materials hand carded into rolags.  I was going for yarn that, when knit, ir reminiscent of confetti.

The core is a commercially produced cotton boucle thing that came on a cone, and that I prepared by spinning counter clockwise ("S"), so that when I spun my yarn clockwise ("Z"), it would wind up balanced.  It ended up still a little twisted, so next time I'll put more Z twist in the core.  

Pinch a little fiber in your spinning hand and draft a bit, then let it wind on the core at about a 90 degree angle.

Notice how the fibers, instead of being parallel to the length of the yarn as in traditional spinning, are perpendicular to the core--a signature of core spun yarn.

It's pretty.

And a little like confetti.

 This is the same combination of fibers spun the traditional way, then plied.

 It's pretty, too.

Here they are side by side.  The 2-ply is fluffy and springy.  The thickness of the core spun yarn depends on the thickness of your core.  Mine was thin.  As I was core spinning, it felt out of control and I thought that my yarn would be inconsistent and bumpy.  But it evened out nicely after washing it and setting the twist.

I plan to knit some swatches today to see if it really looks like confetti.  Meanwhile...I can't decide.  I love them both!

"Your will is free, it is deliberately left free and you have to choose."   

                                                                            --The Mother

Art Yarn 101: Tornado!!!!!!!

Jacey Boggs' Spin Art:  Mastering the Craft of Spinning Textured Yarn

Last week I hand carded and spun thin a little mohair and a little alpaca, then used them, with some gold Guterman thread and carded Jacob roving, for my next Art Yarn 101 project...the Tornado.  It's a lot like the Autowrap in that you wrap something around the core that you are spinning. But the tornado is fussy and fiddly.  A little temperamental. With a dash of recalcitrance.  But with perseverance come great rewards, and in the end the tornado spun yarn is complex, and a little wild.  

Here I am fiddling with all the parts:

Depending on your materials, the possibilities are truly endless.  But I'm finding that true for so many of these spinning techniques.  Every one is richer and more interesting than the last.  I think this yarn would be festive with some beads strung in along the way.

If you can persevere long enough to make 900 yards of tornados, this yarn would make a stunning vest that you could wear almost like a piece of jewelry.  I persevered long enough to make enough for this small swatch.  (Did I mention that it's fiddly?  And slow?)  

But after I knit the swatch and recognized the possibilities, I carried on.  Do I have enough for a vest?  No.  No I don't.  But it's all knit up and fabulous in my imagination and that will have to do for now.

 What would you create with a few yards of tornados?  Cuffs and a collar on a Chanel-inspired jacket?  A necklace made from several strands of yarn hung with a pendant that you found at a flea market?

Art Yarn 101: Thick and Thin

I've been making my way through Jacey Boggs' book, Spin Art: Mastering the Craft of Spinning Textured Yarn, one project at a time.  We've done the Racing Stripe and the Auto Wrap.  Next up--Thick and Thin.  

Which is exactly what I spun (right?) when I sat down at the wheel lo those many months ago (eleven) in the middle of Biltmore Square Mall during the Friends & Fiberworks Winter Retreat, which, by the way, is coming round again January 18-20, 2013.  I took a 2 hour workshop with the lovely Julie Wilson of Jehovah Raah Farm.  I wouldn't exactly call it spinning, what I did that day.  It was more like cramming fiber into the orifice and twisting it up in bunches of fat and skinny loops and then joking at the end of the workshop about how it was "art yarn."  Not even close.

But you have to start somewhere and keep practicing your craft, and eventually you get to the point where you've got some mastery over the technique.  Once you have mastery over the material and the technique, then you can begin manipulating the material in more creative ways with intention.  Intention is the key.  Without that, it's just an accident.  Sometimes accidents are happy.  But I'm never fully satisfied with happy accidents unless they sing in harmony with the rest of the composition.  

To spin harmonious and well balanced thick and thin yarn, start with a shorter staple fiber like merino.  Short staple is important to the structure, because when you do a little wrist flip to draft out the thick part, you want to see where to pinch it at the end of the fiber.  You trap those ends in the thin part, and voila!  Yarn that has structure and will knit up into a textural masterpiece.

I had Romney fiber on hand, which I'd dyed in my new colorway, High Desert.  Romney staple may be a little long, and the first bobbin was definitely over twisted and pretty kinky.  Got the hang of it, though, by the end of my batch.  Have a look...

The wrist twist

This is how I hold my hand while spinning the thin section.

Then you pinch and turn you hand/wrist as if turning a key in a lock 

to draft out the thick section.

And here is a swatch, knit on US 10 1/2 needles.  I just love the texture of all those bumpy slubs.  I'm thinking hat or cowl.  Something simple to show off the yarn.

'

What I would change

I would spin my thin sections a little shorter to give more balance to the thick and thin sections in the finished yarn.  I would spin this yarn on my plying head in order to accommodate more yarn on the bobbing and to get all those fat slubs through the orifice more easily.  

Art Yarn 101: The AutoWrap

After having fun with the Racing Stripe, it was time to move on to the next lesson in Spin Art by Jacey Boggs, in my autodidactic quest to learn all I can about textured yarns.  The Autowrap, as it turns out, is a really rewarding technique that is also pretty easy.  You can use a variety of materials, getting different results each time depending on what you combine. 

For my first attempt, I chose a stripey Jacob top from Hobby Knob Farm and wrapped it with hand spun mohair carded with a little glitz.  Two things.  One, if you use a hand spun wrap, be sure to spin your yarn in the opposite direction from the handspun.  I spun the mohair counterclockwise, or S, then spun my yarn clockwise, or Z.  Two, it is really, really, really easy to overtwist this yarn, and don't think you'll fix it by spinning it back the other way once you are done.  You will not fix it.

For my second attempt, I dyed a batt of Jacob, also from Hobby Knob Farm but blended to a uniform gray and wrapped it with a commercial mohair blend.  I think I mastered the twist in this trial, and I've got enough for a hat.  YAY!

Art Yarn 101: The Racing Stripe

Now that I've been spinning a while and getting a little more familiar with fibers and the sheep that produce them, I've decided to delve a little farther into the making of "art yarn," or as master spinner Jacey Boggs, aka Insubordiknit, calls them...textured yarns.  (The point being that there is an art to making every yarn, from the thinnest, most evenly spun lace yarn to the chunky thick & thin, crazy-carded, multi-fiber yarn with all kinds of crap thrown in like skull beads and nuts and, I don't know, twigs & leaves.  You name it, it's been thrown into the yarn soup.)

So Jacey has a book called Spin Art, which is just exploding with ideas and photos of beautiful textured yarns she has spun.  Bonus!  There is a DVD so you can spin along with Jacey!  She wears a pinafore!  So worth every cent.  I do hope she will come to Asheville for a course.

  

The book is organized into lessons, and I started working my way through those lessons earlier this week.  First up--Racing Stripe, whereby you hold a second spun fiber in your drafting hand as you draft and spin a singles yarn. I chose some really pretty ugly merino I plucked out of a length of top I'd dyed.  It was hideous and perfect for practicing a new skill. I didn't have high hopes for this practice.  I striped it with a lace weight linen Euroflax linen, which I also dyed green.  It was gonna be ugly!

Here's what I love about making yarn, though.  Through the magic of spinning, these two elements came together into something that is actually pretty beautiful.  Look!

The linen gives yarn a nice sheen and a nice drape, and I'm a little sad that Euroflax is discontinuing their lace weight line.  Oh well...it was fun while it lasted.  For me, there is no end to the yarn fun.  I love this job!

By the way, Jacey is teaching a course, a retreat, really, at the John C. Campbell Folk School, way out in Western North Carolina.  It's in April.  I'm saving my pennies 'cause I really really really want to go.