Innehållsförteckning för Spring 2021 från Spin-Off

“What’s your favorite color?” is such a simple, almost trite question, but it’s big. Color is personal, cultural, psychological, discussed in the framework of rules, but ultimately informed by our own perceptions. And like all else, we experience color in the context of its environment. You might answer red because wearing it makes you feel confident. You might answer blue because it brings the sounds of the surf to your ears. I’m obsessed with a specific, nearly neon green that is the color of mossy veins running through old, gray stone walks. So, it’s not just color, but color in context. For handspinners, this context also includes texture, color mixing during drafting and plying, and what we plan to do with our colorful skeins. In this issue, Jillian Moreno, Suzy…

Although Kate Atherley and Kim McBrien Evans didn’t set out to write this book exclusively with the handspinner in mind, their approach to design and using up every precious yard of yarn will immediately grab a spinner’s attention. Custom Shawls contains 13 projects, but don’t settle for adapting your one-of-a-kind handspun to a pattern written for commercial yarn. The book’s strength lies in teaching readers to design their own shawls. Begin by selecting a shape in chapter one, which includes a discussion about the pros and cons of the most common options. Next, add some color and a stitch pattern; you’ll find clear explanations of techniques, including color-theory basics and how to shape stitch patterns, supported by handknitted examples. The authors provide the tools and a creative nudge for designing…

Hand-dyed and handpainted fibers have become ever present in spinners’ stashes. When I teach classes about spinning braids, the number one question I get is, “How do I know what it will look like after I spin it and knit it?” The answer depends on many things, so my usual answer—the same answer every spinning teacher gives to many questions—is, “It depends.” We really should make T-shirts. I do have more detailed answers to that question, and here are two: It depends on how the fiber was dyed, and it depends on how you want to spin it. If you want to get better at knowing how your dyed fiber will turn out, the best thing you can do is to pay attention to your fiber and process. Take a…

Handpainted fiber is my favorite thing to spin. I love the way it looks unspun and braided into bumps full of pops of delicious color, and I become mesmerized by the ever-changing hues as they run through my fingers and onto my wheel’s bobbin. But as much as I love spinning handpainted braids, I don’t always find a use for the finished yarn. Four ounces of most fibers spun in my default yarn produce too much yardage for a small knitting project, such as a hat, but not enough for anything larger. And with all the time, money, and effort that goes into producing handspun yarn, I want to see my efforts front and center and use every last inch. While thinking of all of the ways I could extend…

As I’m writing this, the world is grappling with a pandemic, and many of us are facing some form of adversity, wondering what normal may look like in the future. If there’s anything 2020 has taught us, it’s that no one is immune to uncertainty and the upsets it can bring to our personal routines and habits. I was diagnosed with a chronic pain condition in 2019, and what followed was the unplanned restructuring of my entire life. I know I’m not alone in this; things happen in our lives and send us searching for a new normal. A concept frequently taught to those of us living with chronic conditions is pacing. It’s a reminder to take things slowly and mindfully in order to keep ourselves from overexertion or a…

1. To avoid scouring cotton in a pot of boiling water, place your cotton into the dye jar with the dye and salt solution, and give about two small squirts of Dawn on top of the cotton. Poke the fiber down into the solution with a large spoon. The detergent will scour the fiber well enough for the dye to penetrate the fiber. 2. In a workshop in Little Rock, Arkansas, we needed to heat-set the dyed fiber. We placed our dyed fiber into ziplock plastic bags, sealed them, and laid them in a parking lot. The warm sunshine on the asphalt created enough heat and steam to set the dye. 3. In the middle of a Tucson, Arizona, summer, I can simply hang the dyed sliver outside to heat-set…

The siren call of color is alluring yet treacherous. In spinning, there is a fine line between beauty and mud, and finding that elusive line can be maddening. If something you have spent hours spinning followed by hours of weaving turns out to exist on the muddy side of the line, it can be heartbreaking. When more than one phase of a project is completed by hand—such as spinning for weaving—the time you invest in a project might be the costliest part of the project. Even when a handspun yarn is brilliant and enamoring, it does not always translate well to woven cloth. However, it is not necessary for us to trudge forward blindly. With a little sampling and planning, you can make better use of that precious commodity, time,…

PROJECT NOTES STRUCTURE Plain weave. EQUIPMENT Rigid-heddle loom, 5" weaving width; 15-dent reed (or two 7.5-dent reeds); 1 shuttle. FIBER 6 oz SweetGeorgia Spectra Spinning Colour Six-Pack, superwash Bluefaced Leicester in Glacier, Melon, Lemon Curd, Dutch, Orchid, and Juicebox. YARNS Warp and Weft: 2-ply, 20 wpi, about 2,000 ypp, 28 yd each of Glacier, Melon, Lemon Curd, Dutch, Orchid, and Juicebox. WARP LENGTH 72 ends 1 yd long (allows 2½" for take-up, 12" for loom waste; loom waste includes fringe) for three coasters. SETTS Warp: 15 epi (1/dent in a 15-dent reed). Weft: 20 ppi. DIMENSIONS Width in the reed: 412/15". Woven length: (measured under tension on the loom) 21½" (4½" each coaster plus interstitial fringe). Finished size: (after washing) three coasters 4" × 4½" with additional ¾" fringe. 1…

ARIZONA Fiber Creek Suite 123, 1046 Willow Creek Rd Prescott, AZ 86301 (928) 717-1774 fibercreekprescott.com Tempe Yarn & Fiber 1415 E University Dr Tempe, AZ 85281 (480) 557-9166 tempeyarn.com CALIFORNIA Babetta’s Yarn & Gifts 4400 San Juan Ave #20 Fair Oaks, CA 95628 (916) 965-6043 babettasyarnandgifts.com Dharma Trading Co 1604 4th Street San Rafael, CA 94901 (434) 456–1211 dharmatrading.com Fengari 415 Main St Half Moon Bay, CA 94019 (650) 726-2550 fengari.net Hands On Knitting Center 912 New York Street, Suite A Redlands, CA 92374 (909) 793-8712 www.handsonknittingcenter.com/ The Altered Stitch 12443 W Magnolia Blvd Valley Village, CA 91607 (818) 980-1234 thealteredstitch.com COLORADO Blazing Star Ranch 3424 S Broadway Englewood, CO 80113 (303) 514-8780 blazingstarranch.com Lambspun of CO 1101 E Lincoln Ave Fort Collins, CO 80524 (800) 558-5262 lambspun.com Knot Just…

If you’re a fiber lover suffering from an intense case of wanderlust, The Eye of Fiber will soothe your need to roam. Embark on a journey exploring the fiber traditions of nine countries with Linda Cortright of Wild Fibers magazine. With flashes of wit and humor, Cortright shares the stories she’s gathered about her experiences with the people and places encountered on her travels, infusing each with a pinch of cultural background, history, and economics. But it’s the book’s photographs, both intimate and expansive, that truly tell the stories. Travel along from the remote windswept landscapes of the Gobi Desert to the homes of shepherds living at altitude in the Andes. Cortright offers us a glimpse of the fiber producers—their lives, and even their dogs—who bring us the fibers drafted…

Pamper yourself and soothe sensitive skin with Middle Brook Fiberworks’ Lotion Baah. To use, allow the warmth of your body to soften the bar and hydrate dry skin. Apply after washing, leaving a light lavender scent. middlebrookfiberworks.com Getting rich, deep hues when dyeing requires clean fibers. Remove residue and waxes from bast and other cellulose fibers with the help of Earthues’ Cellulose Scour. For vibrant dyeing, use it in combination with soda ash and heated water to prepare cellulose or with Silkzorb Degummer to prepare silk. earthues.com You’ll find many applications for Full Circle Wool’s Natural Wool Sponges. Use them for washing dishes, scrubbing and general cleaning, or instead of a net pouf in the bath. The wool comes from well-tended sheep at Ferndale Farms in California. Shown in multicolor.…

Pattern and designer Get Weaving jacket pattern JA017 by Sarah Howard. Fiber/preparation The fiber was dyed by three dyers: Greenwood Fiberworks, Targhee in a green color; Crafty Jak’s Boutique, Targhee in a yellow color; and Three Waters Farm, Finnsheep in a purple color. I used 20 ounces of Targhee and 8 ounces of Finnsheep. The yellow yarn turned out to be too bright when I wove a sample with the other yarns, so I used some Gaywool brown dye that I had on hand to tone down the color. It worked perfectly! Wheel system SpinOlution Echo. Drafting method Short-forward draw. Singles direction S-spun. Singles wraps per inch 24 wpi. Ply wraps per inch 11 wpi. Yarn Cabled, 4-ply; 1,000 ypp. Total yardage 1,250 yards. Yarn classification/weight Light worsted weight. Yardage…

Color has been the most exciting part of my 40-year journey with sheep and wool. I realize there was a time—that I can barely remember—when I didn’t spin, and I didn’t dye. I enjoyed looking at and using color back then, but when I took my first spinning and dyeing class and pulled my first handspun out of our first dyepot, I realized I had found what I was hungering for: colors that reflect nature. A very full 5-gallon rainbow pot. All the way along, my fiber adventure has been marked by color—from pedestrian to pastel to vivid—which includes fostering a smorgasbord flock of Romney, Corriedale, a bit of Cormo and Bluefaced Leicester, and a pride of Shetland sheep. What quirky, colorful characters. Somewhere along the road, my sister-in-law, a…

I would like to introduce you to a new system for designing yarn, one in which you can take complete control of color placement and proportion to create a beautiful and repeatable preparation you will love to spin. To do this requires only the hackle, a simple tool with an epic degree of pointy-ness, to hold fibers in place for designing and blending. A whole new world of color design emerges in which the humble hackle rules. THE PATTERN SYSTEM My system is a simple one. In fact, when I was developing it, I wondered why I hadn’t come to this so much earlier! It is a system that anyone can use to create what I call a hackle pattern. This template allows you to design a color sequence, create…

As spring arrives and new green leaves begin to pop out on the trees, flowers are poking their heads out of the ground and the sun starts rising earlier each morning. What a wonderful time to be outdoors among spring plants while solar dyeing plant fibers for spinning. Add water, reagents, and fiber or yarn to a jar and set it in the sun. Then it’s time to go in and have a nice breakfast while the sun does the work for you. One of the most rewarding solar-dyeing experiences began one day last spring as I was spinning with a couple of friends on a neighbor’s patio, sitting six feet apart. Lynn handed me several skeins of handspun cotton yarn. Someone had given the yarn to her several years…

The beauty of working in small, bite-sized woven samples is that it does not commit you to spinning large amounts of fiber. Our sampling time and materials can go even further by weaving a cloth of organized, intersecting stripes known as a gamp. As stripes in warp and weft intersect, a grid is created in which each square offers different information about color interaction and more. An extra bonus is that these bite-sized samples make excellent mug rugs! So weave a few extra, keep one for reference, set your hot tea on another, and offer a few to friends. For the first mug rug, I created a six-by-six gamp. This small swatch is only about 4 inches square but effectively demonstrates warp and weft color relationships. The number of colors…

PROJECT NOTES STRUCTURE Plain weave. EQUIPMENT Rigid-heddle loom, 5" weaving width; 10-dent reed; 1 shuttle. FIBER 100 g Fellview Fibres End of Summer (hand-dyed Merino, light gray baby alpaca, and white baby llama); ½ oz 100% Merino, white. YARNS Warp and Weft: End of Summer marl: 2-ply, 18 wpi, about 3,700 ypp, 26 yd; End of Summer/white marl: 2-ply, 15 wpi, about 2,200 ypp, 13 yd; white, 2-ply, 12 wpi, about 1,600 ypp, 26 yd. WARP LENGTH 42 ends 30" long (allows 1½" for take-up, 16" for loom waste; loom waste includes fringe) for two coasters. SETTS Warp: 10 epi (1/dent in a 10-dent reed). Weft: About 17 ppi. DIMENSIONS Width in the reed: 42⁄10". Woven length: (measured under tension on the loom) 12½" (4¼" each coaster plus 4" interstitial…

Breed studies are all the rage thanks to initiatives such as Shave ’Em to Save ’Em that promote awareness about endangered breeds of sheep. But while you’re spinning fiber from new-to-you breeds from near and far, why not expand your knowledge of world history from the ovine point of view? Author Sally Coulthard stitches together fascinating tidbits, exploring the sheep’s relationship to human civilization and culture. Learn how woolen felt protected the Romans in battle. Discover the origins of several common sheepy sayings. Each chapter begins with a charming sheep-themed linocut by printmaker Sarah Price, and the book closes with an index for easy reference and suggestions for further reading. London, England: Head of Zeus, 2020. Hardcover, 320 pages, £16.99. ISBN 9781789544206.…

My sister Susie and I both began knitting at very early ages. We were taught by our mum and our nanny and were continually inspired by our grandmother. Growing up as young crafters in Kenya, it was common to find locally spun wool. When my sister and I returned home after spending several incredibly inspiring years in New Mexico, we saw a flood of imported and synthetic yarns saturating the Kenyan market. Through Provisions Kenya, we are determined to share the importance of sourcing local fibers for crafting. Our mission is to find area craftspeople who share our passion for the natural fiber arts, as well as those determined to reinvigorate this important trade. We believe that handmade goods add a much-needed spark of joy and value to life. All…

I created the color recipes from a set of eight Lanaset acid dyes: six primary colors and two Lanaset modifier colors (Brown B and Black 2B) used to adjust color value. The colors are shown here at 1.0 depth of shade (DOS), which is a measure of how much dye is added to the fiber. A basic scale of DOS would be: 0.1 pale pastel, 1.0 medium, and 3.0 deep. The equation is simple: weight of fiber in grams (WOF) times DOS = ml of dye (1% solution). For my 10 g fiber samples at 1.0 DOS, I used 10 ml of dye solution. The primaries have undertones—tiny hints of their color-wheel neighbors. Knowing this and training your eyes to discern these minute differences will allow you to dial in…