Feature-Rich Rambouillet Wool Socks

Here's my most recent knitting--socks from my crock-pot-dyed, hand-spun Rambouillet fleece. Several years ago, I decided that this neppy, lumpy wool was not a failure, but an interesting exercise in color and texture: It's Not a Nep, It's a Feature. I tried out a few interesting rib and cable patterns, but they lost all definition in this "highly-textured" yarn, so in the end, it was plain old "Knit 2, Purl 2" ribbing. It was a fun, mindless knit, and these soft, soft socks are a treat to wear.

Spinning Away a Winter Virus

Other than these skeins of Rambouillet yarn, I have little to show for the past few days. I thought I might get through a winter without a head cold, but a virus got a hold of me, and my mental acuity has not been too sharp. Fortunately, spinning is something that doesn't require much concentration, and I have compressed a big plastic bin chock-full of fleece bats into a dozen skeins of yarn, freeing up about four cubic feet of closet space.

You may recognize my ancestral pincushion posing next to the yarn, sporting its collection of hatpins. My grandma and her mother must have been brave women to use these fierce implements to fasten down their hats.

A Little Late Winter Spinning

In my continuing efforts to clear some closet space, I've been spinning a plastic tub full of dyed and carded fleece. Yarn takes up so much less space than wool batts! These four colors of Rambouillet wool represent four different crockpot dye baths.

These two batches of yarn represent the last of a very dirty fleece that was given to me. Even as yarn it's got burdock bits in it, but I really like the complex way it takes the dye. Once dyed, it was just too pretty to throw out.

Label 'em Up, and Move 'em Out

It's come to my attention that my storage space is finite, the most crowded corners being occupied by fabric and fiber. With this in mind, I gathered up my odd skeins of hand spun wool yarns, priced them as if for a yard sale, and took them to a local shopkeeper. Of course, yarn needs a pretty label to make it look "real," so I spent an afternoon experimenting with the sidebar photograph I call "The View from Droop Mountain."

I printed this on pastel card stock, and wrote fiber content and care directions on the back. I think it looks OK.

Troublesome Plastic Bag Build-Up

The garden is done for the year. I'm already missing the fresh vegetables, but there is another negative as well: My plastic grocery bag collection is building up again. I use plastic bags to bring in tomatoes, peaches, grapes, peppers, cucumbers...everything. After the bags are muddied or ripped, I can throw them out in better conscience. Since there is no place locally to recycle them, they just pile up the rest of the year.

I have a sense that they "must be good for something," so I'm always on the lookout for ways to re-use. Here's a way to turn them into "fiber" for crochet, knitting or Recycled Plastic-Bag Weaving by Jana Trent. Her woven plastic project is the best looking use of plastic bag "yarn" I've seen, and it makes me want to try it out.

Spinning Away the Troublesome Bits

While my vision was messed up last month by a string of migraines, I had a chance to do a little spinning. This is the "troublesome local fleece" I've been working on for the last year. The end of it is now in sight; I'm currently spinning the last dye batch. I'm trying something different with the unspinnable bits (burdock tangles, short cuts, neps) this time--I'm throwing them in the compost. Some people use bad fleeces as garden mulch, and my own experience shows me it rots away pretty quickly outdoors. Now, my compost has surprising bits of heliotrope and teal, and will soon have some deep rose. The acid dyes are chemically similar to food colorings, and I used food-grade vinegar as a fixative, so this shouldn't poison us when it goes on the garden.

The yarn-display case is this winter's growing wood pile. It's that time of year.

A Little More Spinning

I've done a little more spinning of the troublesome local fleece, although I've accomplished very little else.

I've been substituting in a vacant teacher's position for the last few weeks. That means that I started teaching classes of middle school social studies and science, making my own lesson plans, grading papers and giving tests with no advance notice. Of course, I caught both the upper respiratory infections moving through the school the second day I worked, and that has not made me more efficient.

Now that I feel a little better, I've learned some of the school routines and gotten ahead of the kids in the textbooks. Perhaps I'll be able to re-establish my blogging routine. It's a pity I can't tell you the interesting Pocahontas County stories I hear at work every day, but I'm afraid that would be intrusive. Perhaps they'll make grist for the fiction mill someday.

Pocahontas County Textile History

Here's an addition to my "local history of textiles collection" from William T. Price's Historical Sketches of Pocahontas County. (1901) Price includes many discussions of "how they did things in the old days," but one can't tell when these are based on personal recollections (his own or other local people) or on books he had read. The lack of detail makes me suspect Price referred to published sources here.

In the early times now under consideration it was an essential matter that about every thing needed for comfortable use about the home should be home made or at least somewhere in the immediate neighborhood. Thus it came that pioneer wives and daughters were not only ornamental but exceedingly useful in promoting the comforts and attractions of their homes by the skill of their willing hands. Every household of any pretensions to independence or thrift had a loom, spinning wheels, little and big, a flax breaker, sheep shears, wool cards, and whatever else needful for changing wool and flax into clothing and blankets.

Sheep were raised on the farms and were usually sheared by the girls and boys. The wives and daughters would thereupon scour, card, spin, weave and knit the fleeces into clothing.

The flax was grown in the "flax patch," usually a choice bit of ground. When ripe the flax was pulled by hand, spread in layers until dry upon the ground were it had been pulled, then bound in bundles, carried away and spread very neatly over the cleanest and nicest sod to be found, most commonly the aftermath of the meadow. Here it remained with an occasional overturning until it was "weathered," or watered. After an exposure of three or four weeks, or when weathered completely, the flax was gathered, bound in bundles, stored away in shelter until cool frosty days in late fall, winter or early spring would come, when it would be broken by the flax breaker, then scutched by the scutching knife over an upright board fastened to a block. Then what was left of the woody part by the breaker and scutching knife would be combed out by the hackle, and was now ready for spinning and waving as flax or tow. The tow could be held in the hand and spun for coarse cloth, "tow linen." The flax, being the straight and finer fiber, would be wrapped to the "rock," attached to the little wheel and spun for the finer fabrics. The rock was a contrivance made by bending three or four branches of a bush together and tying them into a kind of frame-work at upper end. Flax was most commonly put through the entire process from planting to wearing without leaving the farm on which it was grown.

A Little More Spinning

Here's a little more of that troublesome local fleece, dyed, carded, spun, and re-washed. It's interesting how much color difference there is between the carded bats and the spun wool. While I'm not using up my fiber resources, I am making them much more compact!

January Spinning Round-Up

The last few years, I've made an effort to make my fiber supplies more compact. I've sorted and used scrap fabrics in big projects and small. After visiting a going-out-of-business sale, I haven't had to buy yarn since 1992 (although I swapped work for a huge horde of dyeable New Zealand wool last summer.) I don't really need to go on a fiber diet anymore; in fact, I need to find sources to buy fabric for clothing and upholstery, and I've run very short of hand-dyed fabrics.

I do have a backlog of dyed, carded fleeces waiting to be spun, however. Since the first of the year, I've been spinning a little bit every day, and these are the results. These fleeces are from local sheep, Suffolk-Dorset crosses raised in pastures full of burdock. With short cuts, mats, neps and plenty of "vegetable material," most hand-spinners throw stuff like this away, but I always need to find out what I can do with the materials at hand.

I picked over these fleeces as best I could, washed them in Dawn dishwashing detergent in garbage cans in the back yard, and dried it outdoors. Then I picked the locks open and threw away more short cuts and burdock seed heads. I dyed the wool in an old crockpot. My technique involved dissolving Jacquard Acid Dye in a small amount of water, pouring it in the crockpot, and stuffing in as much wet wool as possible, finally adding enough water to cover. (This over-stuffing makes the dye take unevenly, giving a nice, heathery effect in the spun wool.) After the water and wool got hot and had simmered for an hour, I added 1/4 to 1/2 cup of white vinegar from the grocery store, and let the wool simmer until all the dye came out of the water and went into the wool. It's easy to tell when acid dyes are exhausted--the water clears!

The great thing about dyeing this sort of dirty wool before carding and spinning is that the burdock, dirt, and other vegetable materials fall out more easily, and you don't have to wonder what zoonoses you might pick up from the sheep.

After the wool dried, I carded the colorful locks on my drum carder, making bats. At this point, one can blend colors, but the uneven dyeing technique actually makes this unnecessary.

Babies In the Mill

I came across a collection of American child labor photographs by chance, and thought they'd make a good follow-up to Mother Jones: Child Labor in America (1908-1912): Photographs of Lewis W. Hine at The History Place. While I've some of these moving photos before, I didn't know the name of Lewis W. Hines before. From the Web page:

Photographer Lewis W. Hine (1874-1940) was born in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. He studied sociology at Chicago and New York universities, becoming a teacher, then took up photography as a means of expressing his social concerns.

His first photo essay featured Ellis Island immigrants. In 1908, Hine left his teaching position for a full-time job as an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee, which was then conducting a major campaign against the exploitation of American children.

From 1908 to 1912, Hine took his camera across America to photograph children as young as three years old working for long hours, often under dangerous conditions, in factories, mines, and fields. Hine was an immensely talented photographer who viewed his young subjects with the eye of a humanitarian.

In 1909, he published the first of many photo essays depicting working children at risk. In these photographs, the essence of wasted youth is apparent in the sorrowful and even angry faces of his subjects. Some of his images, such as the young girl in the mill glimpsing out the window, are among the most famous photographs ever taken.

During World War I, he documented the plight of refugees for the American Red Cross. He later documented the construction of the Empire State building in 1930-1931 and even hung upside down from a crane to photograph workmen.

One of Hines' photos was used on the cover of a favorite CD, Babies in the Mill a re-release of the 1962 record album featuring Dorsey, Howard and Nancy Dixon. The recording includes a few of the Dixon Brothers' 78 rpm recordings from the 1930's, a little dialogue with Nancy and Dorsey, and Dorsey singing some of his compositions, including Babies in the Mill, below. Dorsey wrote this song in honor of big sister Nancy, who went to work in a South Carolina mill at age 8. (I learned this song from a Hedy West recording, and these may not be the exact words Dorsey Dixon wrote.)

I used to be a factory hand when things was moving slow,
When children worked in cotton mills, each morning had to go.
Every morning just at five the whistle blew on time
To call them babies out of bed at the age of eight and nine.

Chorus:
    Come out of bed, little sleepy head,
    And get you a bite to eat.
    The factory whistle's calling you,
    There's no more time to sleep.

To their jobs those little ones was strictly forced to go.
Those babies had to be on time through rain and sleet and snow.
Many times when things went wrong their bosses often frowned.
Many times those little ones was kicked and shoved around.

(Chorus)

Those babies all grew up unlearned, they never went to school.
They never learned to read or. write. They learned to spin and spool.
Every time I close my eyes, I see that picture still
When textile work was carried on by babies in the mill.

(Chorus)

Dr. Bootsie Learns About Social Networking

I've nearly finished NaBloPoMo 2007, a group enterprise where members pledge to post at least one blog entry per day for the month of November. The organizers made a website with a list of participants, and used social network software to do the job, because the 2006 list of participants was large and hard to manage. Once you signed up for the project this year, you could join groups, post pictures, video, and text on their website as well as your own, and participate in forums.

It sounded great--unfortunately, every time I visited the site this month, it crashed my browser, an up-to-date version of Firefox. I even had to reboot my computer several times, and I run *nix, so that never happens. Thus, Nablopomo2007 didn't show me interesting new blogs to read. In fact, when I was able to view other participating blogs this year, I mostly saw splogs (spam blogs), blogs with but a single post, and blogs not updated even once in November. Very disappointing, but that is often the price of Internet popularity.

In the "Gains" column, I've had no trouble finding something to post every day, and last year's Nablopomo participation prompted me to near-daily posts as a regular practice. Also, this unsuccessful (for me) social network led me to join Ravelry, a social network for people who knit, crochet, and/or spin. I've been trying to figure out if social networking has any use for people past adolescence (literally and/or figuratively). So far, Ravelry functions as it's meant to, and does not make me reboot Debian Etch to get rid of phantom processes that gobble up all the CPU and RAM. Ravelry creators want to reassure us that their project is suitable for adult-like behavior:

Ravelry is not MySpace:

Don't tell Jess that she's Tom. Jess doesn't want to be Tom.

Yes - it's a community site, but Ravelry isn't just a place to hang out with friends. Even people who aren't interested in being social can get a lot out of Ravelry.

Oh, and music doesn't start up every time you turn the page.

I'm not sure if Ravelry is something I'll use much, as I'm not the most sociable knitter, but it's well-designed, efficient, and intriguing. It'll be interesting to see how it develops.

A disclaimer at Ravelry's request-- Membership is by invitation, but to be invited, all you have to do is sign up with your e-mail address, and in a few days, they'll get you enrolled. This is because they are still in "beta" (aka "under construction") and can't handle lots of new members instantly, not because new members are "evaluated" somehow.

Saturday Spinning

I spent yesterday at the Huntersville Heritage festival, demonstrating spinning and knitting. It was a warm summer day, and there was a very nice turnout. We've been there when the first weekend in October was miserable and cold, too. It would have been a great opportunity for interesting photographs, but all I brought home were some small skeins of this purple yarn I spun from locally grown wool. Burdock is the theme of this wool. I picked burdock heads out of it as I washed it, as I dyed it, and as I carded it. I also pick out burdock bits as I spin and knit with it.

Burdock Disgrace

I've been enjoying Ada E. Georgia's 1914 handbook, Manual of Weeds, subtitled With Descriptions of All of the Most Pernicious and Troublesome Plants In the United States and Canada, Their Habits of Growth and Distribution, With Methods of Control. It's part of a series edited by Liberty Hyde Bailey, Cornell University's Uberbotanist, entitled The Rural Manuals. Bailey's Manual of Cultivated Plants, a reference I use frequently, was evidently conceived as part of this series.

Ms. Georgia and Dr. Bailey both bristle with that old Yankee urge to set the world straight on how Things Should Be Done, and I was particularly taken with Georgia's account of Burdock (Arctium sp.), the plant I photographed by our woodpile last week.

The presence of one of these huge weeds in flower and fruit should be considered a disgrace to the owner of the soil so occupied, for it must have remained in undisturbed possession of the ground for the necessary second year of growth before reproduction.

The root is enormous; often three inches thick, driving straight downward for a foot or more and then branching in all directions, taking strong hold on the soil and grossly robbing it....

Burdock roots and seeds are used in medicine and the destruction of the weeds may sometimes be made profitable; roots should be collected in autumn of the first year of growth, cleaned, sliced lengthwise, and carefully dried; the price is three to eight cents a pound; ripe seeds bring five to ten cents a pound.

I shudder to think what she would say about Pocahontas County, for every local fleece I've tried to work up and spin has been riddled with burdock seed heads. No sane spinner would ever buy a second fleece in such a condition. The sheep farmers hereabout sell their wool in a wool pool, which means that there's no incentive to keep their fields burdock-free if the other farmers don't. All the wool brings the same price, and the West Virginia Department of Agriculture reports that our wool is exported to Europe, where it is used to make felt for industrial machinery. One local handspinner I met raised and sheared her own sheep, and spent much time every year digging the burdock out of her fields. A life-long sheep farmer, spinner, and weaver, she told me she threw away fleeces with burdock contamination.

Burdock

It's the bane of my wool-spinning existence, but burdock seed heads are really rather pretty when they're intact.

Spinning My Tiny Dye Lots

Here's what I've been up to the last few days--dying some local (burdock-laden) fleece in the crockpot, carding, spinning and plying it. I've been experimenting with series of color intensity, trying to get pretty pastels. The more intense colors continue to work better for me. It is encouraging, however, that the colors consistently look better in the spun yarn than in the fleece after carding.

It's Not a Nep, It's a Feature

Not too long after I bought my spinning wheel, I bought a few raw sheep fleeces on eBay. From this, I learned lots of things. First, if you buy raw fleece through the mail, you pay postage on a lot of grease, weeds, and sheep manure. (Most of the fleeces I have washed and cleaned myself have decreased in weight by more than half.) Second, people selling fleeces online have very different ideas of what "clean" and "good quality" mean.

It was a worthwhile learning experience, though. I bought some Rambouillet sheep fleeces. If you read the fascinating breed account at the Oklahoma State website, you'll learn that Rambouillet fleeces are soft and fine as Merino. The fleeces I bought were of fair to good quality, and I cleaned, dyed, and carded some, and began to spin. I found the yarn soft and pretty, but it was full of little balls of fiber, "neps," which made spinning really, really slow. Also, the yarn was lumpy. What was I doing wrong?

I read some books which suggested that the fiber was defective. I read through hand spinners' Web sites, discussion groups, and weblogs looking for advice. I found the general consensus is that Rambouillet sheep make neppy fiber, and that the best thing to do with it is to throw it away.

Now, that is not the way I operate. I paid for it, washed it, carded it, dyed it, and by golly, I'm going to find something to do with it. Besides, it was soooo soft, and I could spin it so fine that I could ply it and still knit it at 6 or 7 stitches to the inch. But it's lumpy. I decided if I couldn't change it, I would learn to love it.

It's not a bug, it's a feature, eh? We will consider the little neps to be "garnets," there to add texture and interest. Thus has Diane Varney's book, Spinning Designer Yarns, paid for itself. (And to think I considered it an "eye-candy" book I was irresponsible to buy!) So, here's a hat I knitted from the first skein I spun from the Rambouillet lamb's fleece, neps--I mean--garnets and all. It's very soft and warm.

Knitting and Spinning Disphoria: Surely a Temporary Condition!

Somehow, my spinning process has been "stuck" the last few months. My current batch of wool was heavy-laden with vegetable material--in this case, burdock seed pods. Even though I spun the singles quite coarsely, it was very slow spinning, and the results, while nicely dyed, were not appealing until I washed the spun and plyed skeins. Most of the crud fell out, and the yarn fluffed up pretty well. Since I washed it with some cheap lavender-scented shampoo, it smells really nice now. I took it down to Morningstar Folk Arts where it's selling for just $2.00 per ounce--a bargain, if I do say so myself.

I've moved on to some teal fleece from the same wool sack. Fortunately, this dye lot was much cleaner, and it's much more pleasant to work with. I hope that the prospect of spinning by the crackling wood stove each evening will get me spinning along once again.

I am also experiencing some knitting disphoria. This is very unusual for me. The only explanation I can think of is my brief foray into retail sales at the Greenbrier Resort's Artist's Colony shop, Appalachian by Design. In between waiting on customers and tidying up the shop, I was meant to knit where customers could see me. The company's chairwoman assigned me several knitting tasks, including knitting up a store model from a kit. These tasks were not much fun, and when it was all over, I didn't get paid promptly. My intention here is not to complain, because I learned a lot of non-knitting lessons about retail, machine knitting, and West Virginia history. It was a worthwhile experience. I do suspect that it took some fun out of knitting, at least temporarily. Of course, I've had knitter's block before. It will pass.

Local sheep to local fleece to local yarn

A neighbor gave me some fleece he had stored in his barn from the days when he raised Suffolk/Dorset sheep. Some of it was very nice, some of it wasn't. I washed it all this past spring, and I've been experimenting with the less nice portions of the fleece to see what could be done with it.

Dying it in the crock pot a half pound at a time took out a lot of the "vegetable material." (That's a euphemism spinners use. That stuff is vegetable material, all right, but a lot of it was inside the sheep before it was on the outside, if you take my meaning.) Carding it cleaned it up further, and lots more non-wool stuff fell out in the spinning.

By the time I plied the yarn and washed it again, it proved to be nice and soft and perfectly functional. Spinning mavens tell you to stay away from this sort of wool, and I suppose many people would find it discouragingly slow spinning, but I like to see what can be done with the materials at hand. These are a couple of half-pound batches I've spun this summer.