My small swatch of hand-spun merino/alpaca dyed yarn experienced a small amount of shrinkage after I rinsed it and let it dry.
The good news is that there was no visible bleed when I blocked the swatch. I was concerned that the beautiful dark red would bleed.
I spun up nearly a whole bag of alpaca/merino roving, filled up six small bobbins of singles, and two large bobbins of three ply yarn. The roving that remained was not enough to fill three more small bobbins, so I weighed it and divided by three.
Dividing the roving worked well, but I still had one bobbin run out of single spun before the other two when I was plying. To use up all the singles, I chain plied the last bits. Since chain plying creates a slightly different yarn than plying from three bobbins (there are U bends in the yarn, but it is still three ply), I knit up my swatch with this last bit of yarn. So I didn’t loose track of which part was chain plied, I knit straight off the spinning wheel. The yarn was nicely balanced, so this wasn’t difficult.
My spinning and plying created a “bulky” yarn, about 8 wraps per inch (wpi), so I knit with size 11 needles by Prym.
I’ve wanted to try finger weaving since I heard about it on a Sprang group (it was misidentified as Sprang). In Sprang, there are no weft threads, the vertical warp threads are overlapped consecutively. In finger weaving the warp threads become the weft threads, similar to braiding, but with more threads. I watched video after video before I found this video showing the weaving going out from the center, which made sense to me, and seemed balanced.
I wasn’t sure how to end the weaving, I’ve seen some bands just knotted at the end, but I want to put it in my fiber book, so the finish needed to be relatively flat. I opted to run two rows of double half hitch knots along the angles of the weave, which I think came out complimentary.
This was an interesting exercise, and finger weaving is a nice addition to my craft repertoire. It is nice that it can be done by anchoring one end, rather than needing a loom, and it comes out thinner and more flexible than macrame. It is more interesting with multiple colors.
Back in February of 2009 I was doing glass fusing in a small Paragon kiln. I was experimenting with fusible glass paint, which is applied with a bottle fitted with a thin steel tube. Colored ground glass is suspended in a liquid medium and placed on the glass, rather than painted with a brush. It is an interesting technique and one that requires a steady hand, a pin to clear the nozzles, and a wipe to clear up the mistakes. I like that these pieces reflect my preference for the Art Nouveau style. After I fused the paint to the clear glass in the kiln, I mounted the glass on acrylic photo frames. (I don’t know why I went this direction, it seems counterintuitive to glue glass to plastic rather than just use a frame. I’m sure there was a reason.)
Chain-plying yarn takes a single spun yarn and makes a three ply yarn from one bobbin or ball. The spinner makes long chain links, like in crochet, but each chain can be the length of an arm. There is no waste as the yarn is always tripled to the end of the length. It is a very useful technique especially if the spinner wants to preserve a color gradient, or doesn’t want to waste any precious material dividing the ball into three and risking running out of one ball before the other two. It does leave its mark, though. Each chain has a bend of yarn, a hiccup in the twist of the ply. This is difficult to see in a finished piece, but in a half-woven swatch, the chain loop ends are more obvious in the warp.
These chain bumps are more of a concern if the weaver wants to leave a fringe. I wove in the ends and trimmed them. To fix the missed warp in the weave, I took a small piece of yarn and sewed it over the warp and tied it in the back.
The chain bumps are not readily visible in the end piece, but the edges are uneven, and I pushed the weft into the loops left by the loom, arcing the bottom of the swatch. Which is why I swatch, I learn so much from each piece.
Critters and Craft 