Before the holidays last year, I was reading the SpinCity Ravelry group and there was a post from Kathe requesting if anyone would be interested in spinning some Qiviut.
I thought how interesting that would be, why wouldn’t anyone want to spin Qiviut?
So I decided to go for it and volunteer to spin it.
It turns out that although Kathe was a knitter, she didn’t spin and her colleague Rebecca who had picked up the Qiviut from the bushes while on a trip to Greenland didn’t knit!
So this was going to end up being the work of three people. Rebecca the fiber collector, CAT the spinner and Kathe the Knitter.
There was no telling what could be knitted from this until I did the spinning, but Rebecca was willing to settle for even a headband or something small.
First thing was that I asked Rebecca if she could remove the guard hairs (thicker course hairs) from the Qiviut fluff.
This is a picture of the lump of fiber before Rebecca removed the guard hairs.
After that, Rebecca and I met in Columbus Circle and she gave me a bag full of the dehaired fluff which I washed and dried as pictured here:
I took the cleaned fiber (as seen on right below) and using my hand cards (cotton cards to be exact) and carded the fiber into rolags (as seen in the middle below)
I started spinning on my laceweight Golding (this stuff really wants to spin fine!)
I got to a spindle full and rolled it onto my makeshift bobbin (aka TP roll)
I haven’t decided yet whether to just make a 3 ply of Qiviut alone or add a strand of silk to add some strength and stretch the yardage a bit.
Any ideas from you all would be welcome!
Monthly Archives: February 2008
Carding?
After waiting for almost 6 weeks, my Louett Drum carder finally arrived from Paradise Fibers. Actually, it was drop shipped from Louett in New Jersey.
I love this new toy! I have all these great ideas now on what kinds of fibers I want to blend together.
There are a couple of reasons to card. (either with a drum carder or hand cards)
Color:
- If you are looking to blend colors to create a new color
- to create a colorway with each color still retaining its original color but striped.
- have the final fiber take on the properties of both (i.e. blend wool with nylon to add stregnth)
- Create an all together different texture than the original fibers.
This was my first attempt at carding on my new Louett:
I took some Lama which I got at the 2006 Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival (Portia!) and blended it with Louett Chestnut Silk/Merino and some gold Angelina
What is pictured here was not the same ratio carded. I used 3 parts Lama to 1 part Wool/Silk and only a pinch of the gold Angelina.
I carded each fiber separately first, then recarded them together to create this batt
My goal was to enhance the Lama’s ability to hold it’s shape by adding wool/silk and then to give it a little sparkle with the Angelina.
This is how it is spinning on my Golding:
I really love the resulting color. Of course now I need to card all the fiber up the same way so that my project will all be consistant, but this was just my first experiment.
Catching up with completed projects
After about a month of knitting, I’ve managed to complete a few projects.
First, I finally finished the Fana Mittens.
In these pictures you can see the cashmere on the inside before I smoothed them all out. These are great when it’s really cold out.
Pattern is from Folk Mittens and I used Patons Classic Wool on size 5 needles.
Next up was a telted hat for Paula, here I am modeling it:
I found this pattern online and I made it with 2 skeins of Cascade 220 held together on size 11 needles.
Then just a few days ago, I finally finished my Selbuvotter!
These still need to be blocked but I was so excited to finally complete them.
I made them with Knitpicks Palette on size 0 needles from the book Selbuvotter by Terri Shea.