Cleaning wool

I had someone on the blog asking about a picture of a fleece drying after being washed, so I thought that would be a good topic for a blog post.  Since I am going to go into disgusting detail, I am providing a warning so people not interested in the details of wool washing can skip this particular post  :)

I had the luck (? heh) of being given several feed buckets of wool when my neighbor had his sheep clipped.  These guys are way too much fun to have around.  While looking for a picture to put here, I realized I have too many cute ones to pick from so I guess there will have to be post another day showing the cuteness in all its glory.  But for now....

 From all that cuteness came several buckets of glory.  None of it was really in a full fleece formation. Because these are 'meat' sheep rather than fiber sheep, the person doing the shearing clipped accordingly and it various piles of wool clipping just ended up on the ground to be picked up and put into the buckets.  It did make for some interesting cleaning since lambs wool washes a bit differently than adult sheep wool.  I think in the future, I probably will try to avoid it for my various 'craft' uses, but it will still be good to use in pantyhose as insulation bundles to help keep the pipes from freezing.

Once I am ready to go, I use 4 5-gallon buckets.  I did not take a picture of the set-up, but basically I just line them up on my porch so I can stand on the ground and they are a bit elevated.   My first idea was to hook a hose up to the tap on the hot water heater, but for some reason, the water just does not come out of that all that hot.  So, I went to filling my canning kettle full of hot water from the sink and carrying it out to the  buckets.  It takes most of two of those to fill the first 5 gallon bucket.  While the kettle is filling again (I am on pump and it runs pretty slow so I have extra time), I go ahead and start putting handfuls into the hot water with a healthy squirt of Dawn in it.  I have tried other soaps, but Dawn really does seem to cut the greasy lanolin better than any of the cheaper options.

I take hold of handfuls of the wool and GENTLY hold them under the water (using heavy duty dish gloves) until it is saturated.  I repeat until the bucket is full of the wool and then I let it soak while I finish filling two more of the buckets with hot water.  I use an old cooking spoon to gently press the wool into the water every few minutes.  I do not actually agitate it, just gently press it down into the water.

 Once the water has started to cool, I transfer it to the next bucket (no soap) by the handful, squeezing as much dirty water out as I can.  You don't want it to cool completely or the lanolin starts to set back up. Once again, it should be handled as gently as possible, avoiding wringing or otherwise agitating it unnecessarily.  Felting happens when there is a combination of heat, soap and friction.  Wool fibers have scales on it that the heat and soap 'open'.  If the fibers 'rub' together, those scales interlock and you get felting.  By limiting the amount of 'rubbing', you help keep it from felting (hopefully).




I let this one sit for about 10 minutes (again not letting it completely cool) and then it gets transferred in the same manner to the third bucket for a second rinse.  As with the other two buckets, you want to gently press the mass up and down in the water to help rinse the soap out, but you don't want to agitate it.

At this point, if I don't feel it is clean enough, I can continue the process with additional buckets of water and even repeat the soap if needed, but at this point, I have not needed more than 1 wash and two rinses.


Once I feel it is clean and well rinsed, I remove it from the water, squeezing as much out as I can by hand.  I like to use mesh laundry bags (usually found in the laundry isle at your favorite general store).  I found ones labeled 'sweater bag' that fit perfectly over the 5-gal bucket that hold just the right amount of wool and have a zippered opening.

If  you have a top load washer, these can go directly into the washer and you can spin a lot of the excess water out of them just by using the 'spin and drain' option setting.  You definitely want to do two batches at once or balance the other side with towels.  I personally did not take my fiber addiction into consideration when I bought my front load washer, so I advertised on Craigslist explaining what I needed and offering to haul someones old washer away for them if they had an old one that they wanted removed.  I actually got a lot of offers... heh.

Once it has been spun, it just needs to be dried. I used some old green fence netting I had around and staple-gunned it to some wood ends to make a drying frame.  I suspend it between two outdoor tables and leave it in the sun for a couple of days, laying a sheet over it at night to keep the dew off.

At that point, it goes into bags to be proceeded in the winter evening when there is nothing else to be done.  I don't have pictures of that at this point, but basically I sit with a sheet on my lap and sit with a brush 'fluffing' it into little cottonball-like puffs.

When  get a box of those done, I put them on the drum carder, making bats for dyeing.

Here is where the lamb vs sheeps wool comes in... the lambs wool just gums up the carder... when carding,  instead of trying to smooth out all the little shlubs, I gather those and use them for felted dryer balls.  With the lambs wool it is ALL little shlubs so it will go through the carder once, just to get rid of the last of the VM and then into a bag for a dryer ball it goes.  Since I can only make so many dryer balls, I think in the future, the lambs wool will get a quick wash and will go directly into the pantyhose for insulation bundles.  Since those get thrown away every year, I think anything more than a cursory wash would be a waste.

Of course, this is just my personal method... I have seen on the internet a bunch of different methods, views on soaps, etc.  I don't claim to be an expert and I am sure if I ever used this method for better fiber types, I would find things I would like to adjust and do differently.  So... if anyone has any suggestions or comments in that direction, I would be happy to see them posted!  This post was in response to someone asking about my methods, so I am sure any input would be welcome by them as well :)

Spinning Blues

A couple of years ago, I agreed to do a knit along with out knitting group.  We were going to start at the first of the year, 2013, but my accident interrupted me and I was unable to knit with the group.  I had, however, dyed up and spun a BUNCH of yarn in blue/violet/white and grey.

Once dyed, it had to dry so my porch railing was put to good use.  I love how it is all stringy and clingy when wet, but then gets all puffy and soft as it dries.  You can see a little of that in the picture... the ones on the right are wet while the ones on the left have started to dry.

Once dried, the fun began.  The roving braids were so pretty it was kind of hard to start breaking them down for spinning.  For this project, I had broken the roving into 4 ounce packs.  For spinning, I pulled each braid apart lengthwise into 4 quarters.    I spun two types of yarn... the one on top in the picture was spun very thin and then made into a 3-ply using the Navajo ply or chain ply technique.  It is a very relaxing method to use and gave me a yarn that kept the colors generally together.  

The second type of yarn was spun making two slightly thicker singles and these were then plied together.  Because the length of each color on the singles was not controllable, when plied together, the color interplay between the two singles in the ply was varied and random, giving a more variegated look.

So I ended up missing the knit along, but once I was ready to start knitting again, I decided to try a top down, seamless sweater pattern I had never tried before.  But at this point, I was fascinated with the concept of knit-on-below.  I loved the idea of vertical stripes using the (relatively) solid 3-ply yarn as one 'color' and the more variegated yarn as my second color.  For some reason, the picture of the knitting had turned itself and I can't figure out how to flip it back.  The color (top) is to the left and the stripes are vertical, not horizontal.    Needless to say, trying a new pattern and a new technique had been a challenge, but it has been fun.  I am at the point of putting in sleeves, so I will post pictures of that when it is finally done.

I have had several people fall in love with the colors though, so I am currently in the process of spinning more for several people.  Once friend needed 3 pounds. If you have ever wondered what three pounds of dyeing wool looks like, here you go... a picture of the dye bundles (I went with 6 ounce dye bundles), drying (took TWO railings, this time) and the spinning singles... she wants all of it in the navajo ply so, LOTS of spinning singles... heh.  I am about half way done on this three pounds and getting ready to dye another pound for someone else.  She wants 'bulky' so that spinning should do quickly :)

If you like board games....

If you like board games, especially the cool ones the Germans are always thinking up, there is a site called Yucata that allows you to play other people on-line.

The graphics are top notch and it is free, unless you like it enough that you feel like you would like to donate a few dollars.

I found it because I like to play Carcassonne Hunters and Gathers, but have come to really enjoy others like Can't Stop, Balloon Cup, Nauticus, Targi, Rapa Nui and Skyline.  There are some good ones for kids of all ages (Hey, That's My Fish, Atta Ants, Two by Two) and some really complicated strategy ones... most of the rest of the almost 100 games fall in that category.  I try to add a new game to my list each month just to stretch my brain.

Like anything else,  you have to figure out how the interfaces work, but it is pretty straight forward.

Enjoy:

http://www.yucata.de/en/

Game currently available, more added often:

A Few Acres of Snow	Drako	Luna	Sobek
Alchemist	Egizia	Maori	Space Mission
Antike Duellum	El Grande	Masons	Sticky Fingers
Arkadia	Era of Inventions	Morris	Stone Age
Arktia	Famiglia	Mount Drago	Sudoku Moyo
Aronda	Fantasy Dice Battles	Nauticus	Tally Ho!
At the Gates of Loyang	Fearsome Floors	One-Eye	Targi
Atlantida	Finca	Oregon	The Hanging Gardens
Atoll	Firenze	Othello	The Palaces of CarraraBETA
Atta Ants	Founding Fathers	Pergamon	The Speicherstadt
Awale	Four in a row	Pompeii	Thunderstone
Balloon Cup	Glen More	Ponte del Diavolo	Thurn and Taxis
Bangkok Klongs	Gobang & Gomoku	Rapa Nui	To Court the King
Black Friday	Hacienda	Rattus	Torres
Call To Glory	Hawaii	R-Eco	Trias
Campaign Manager 2008	Hexxagon	Richelieu	Two by Two
Can't Stop	Hey, that's my fish	Roll through the Ages	Tyrus
Capt'n W. Kidd	Industrial Waste	Russian Railroads	Vikings
Carcassonne H&G	Jaipur	Saint Petersburg	Vinci
Carolus Magnus	Just 4 Fun	Santa Cruz	Völuspá
Chinagold	Just 4 Fun Colours	Santiago de Cuba	War of the Roses
City Blocks	Kahuna	Schweinebande	Yspahan
ConHex	Kamisado	Shanghaien	Yucata
Down Under	Kanaloa	Six	Zooloretto the dice game
Dragonheart	King of Siam	Skyline

Every Story Deserves a Happy Ending

I was going through my previous posts and realized I had posted on a project we had started BA (Before Accident).  I thought I would go ahead an update on that one. If you are interested in the first parts to this story, you can find them at the following links.  Don't worry... most are pretty short, mostly pictures:

http://ephemeralsg.blogspot.com/2012/03/operation-dads-here-for-visit-phase-1.html
http://ephemeralsg.blogspot.com/2012/03/operation-dads-come-for-visit-phase-ii.html
http://ephemeralsg.blogspot.com/2012/03/what-phase-are-we-on-we-will-just-call.html
http://ephemeralsg.blogspot.com/2012/03/floors-beginning.html
http://ephemeralsg.blogspot.com/2012/03/electricity-its-alive.html

So... when we left our intrepid explores, the water and electricity had been run and ... that was pretty much where the story ended for a while.  I think we had set the toilet, but once my Dad left, I sort of lost steam and had a million other things going on, so nothing else happened for a while.

Fast forward to January 2013.  I spent the month of December in the hospital and was ready to come home.  I had to stay at my sister for a few weeks for one basic reason.  I could not get to a commode in my house while in a wheel chair.  I was going to be in the chair for about 3 months, so my housemate moved the huge waterbed around the bedroom and cut through the wall from the bedroom to the new bathroom.  This was always the plan.  We had installed the pocket door on the bathroom side, but never cut through the bedroom side (because the hurkin big waterbed was in the way).  So... almost like magic!  One chainsaw later, I had access from the bedroom to the bathroom and could go home.

Fast forward a few months more.  My Dad had moved back here from PA -  partially to help take care of me, but mostly  because he was bored.  As soon as I was cleared to get out of the wheelchair, he took on my rehabilitation.... he took me for walks each day until I had built up enough stamina to help with some brick work (I will save that story for another post... heh).  Then we got back to work on the bathroom and here is what we ended up with:

View of the bathroom from the bedroom

View of the pocket door to the bedroom from the shower

View from the utility room...pocket door to bedroom to the left, shower and toilet to the right

I am very happy with how things turned out.  For something that started out as an old uncovered porch 80 years ago, I think it makes a very nice bathroom  :)

Ok... I think I am going to start out with something easy... a recap of my last few projects.  Sorry if this is redundant to those who read my G+ feed.


This one was a lot of fun and some challenges:

This was part of a set for a friend who was looking for something handmade for her nieces birthday.

She originally asked for 4 placemats  and then she decided she wanted a table runner too.  After a fun trip to the textile center, she decided on the quarry (teal-ish) for the mats and the same color with silver for the runner. And there the adventure began.

I was able to do up the mats with little issue.  They turned out pretty nice in a nifty huck lace pattern.  I apparently neglected to get a picture of those once they were completed, but here is a shot of one on the loom:

Once I got the placemats finished I geared up for the runner.  I made it a little wider than usual, due to my friend requesting it 'as wide' as the placemat.  I was moving along nicely when ... boom!... ran out of the teal.  Not a problem.  Just order another pound and all will be well.  So I did... and waited the week.  Once it got there, I eagerly pulled the loom back out and started on my merry way... only to discover that there IS a dye lot issue... the teal was not the same teal.  If you look with lazy eyes, you can see the top few rows are different from the bottom ones.

 So only one thing to do... I took the new stuff out and finished off the existing runner right where it was, which left me with a third of the silver warp.  Not a problem.  I had some pretty burgundy left over from a previous project, so I just used up the warp with that.  It actually turned out kind of nice, if a little short.

So, I figured with this pattern, almost as much of the warp shows as the weft, so I went ahead and warped with the new teal and wove the 83 inches required by the formula to get the 75 inches I needed for the runner.  It looked pretty good.  I actually liked it with the teal for the fringe instead of the silver.  Unfortunately, while in theory it would seem like it would not be a big difference, switching the light and dark yarns really did make a difference... having the silver as the weft really did make a much lighter fabric and she wanted the darker look.  Not to mention that for some reason I got a LOT more shrinkage than expected, so it was a few inches shorter than the expected 75".  Also not to mention that when my friend said she wanted it as wide as the placemates, I took that to mean top to bottom... she meant side to side... heh.  Apparently her niece wants to use the table runner ends as two more placemats.  I was off by about 3 inches the long way and by about 6 inches on the width.

Ok... so now I have three table runners of differing sizes and colors is anyone needs one :P but I have learned some valuable lessons.... dye lots with this brand DOES matter (no matter what the the store clerk tells you) and ALWAYS verify details with your client.

So I continued... ordered more yarn of both colors, which turned into an adventure of its own.  Between using a new supplier and the manufacturer having shipping clerk errors, I finally got the yarn 2 weeks later.  By this point I am way overdue on the project deadline and getting a little panicked.  But, to my surprise, warping and dressing the loom went very well!  Too well apparently... the lords of weaving decided they needed to take me down a notch.  As I get a few feet into my weaving, all of the sudden one of my threads on the edge (floating selvage snaps).  Ok ... not a problem... fixed it.  Then a couple feet further, it happens again... huh... fixed again.  The it happens AGAIN!  I start really watching it and what is happening is that my sides have pulled in almost an inch on either side and so it is putting a strain on that side, causing the thread to fray and snap.  I try everything I can to alleviate the problem, but end up just babying it and fixing it when it snaps the rest of the way through.  I think the reason I had never had this particular issue before on the other runners, is that I had not tried anything this wide on this loom before.  I was pretty close to its limit.  So, other than one other thread issue (a manufactures knot I missed), I was able to work my way through the project and get it done with only one other crisis.  Remember how the last one shrunk almost 10 inches?  So I added 10 inches onto this one to accommodate that... and this time it only shrunk 5 inches!    ARGGGGGG!  So now the runner is 5 inches longer than she wanted.  Which apparently is ok.  When she uses it on the shorter table, having the fringe handing over the ends will be good for her intention to use them as additional placemats and when she extends the table, it should look just fine.  :)

So all in all, I think everyone will be happy.  And I got to learn a lot of valuable stuff.  I have never had to fix warp threads on the fly and now I am pretty good at it  :)

Annnnnnnd once again...

After a couple of YEARS of ignoring my blog, I have decided it is (once again) time for me to start being better at keeping it up.  This usually lasts a couple of posts and then I start to forget again... I am going to try to do better this time... once again.

So a lit of things have been happening with me over the last couple of years.  As an overview, I had started to get pretty serious in my exploration of fiber arts including knitting, crochet, felting, spinning, dyeing and (now) weaving.  I have a great job that usually allows me time to play with my toys, but I had about a year detour when I was in a pretty serious car accident.  I was out of work for about 16 months, which of course creates the catch-22... plenty of sitting around time, but no ability to play.

I was able to start out slowly... nothing fast, nothing complicated, but I progressed.  About a year into my recovery, I was able enough to haul myself a couple towns away to take a weaving class which turned out to be a mixed blessing... I LOVED it... but now I had to invest in a whole new set of toys (oh darn... lol).

I have been back at work for a few months now, am going to counseling for some emotional issues (which I may or may not blog about :P ) and I keep doing stupid stuff and hurting myself while trying to re-learn how to do things with my new physical challenges.

So there it is... the overview of the past couple of years... some of these things will be filled in/fleshed out... some I may decide need to just remain in my personal hall of humiliation and shame.  I guess we will just have to wait and see.  Since I really have no plan, rhyme or reason for this blog at this point, if there is anyone out there still reading who wants something specific, please feel free to ask.  I am not making anyone any promises anymore, but I will give it a shot  :)