(no subject)
Nov. 17th, 2007 12:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickSo... I said that the HoHI would be done and ready for the opera (which is Sunday). Well. Not going to happen, I don't think, unless I get very lucky tomorrow.
Tasha (of Tasha-who-does-horses) purchased another horse and I'm going to pick it up with her tomorrow. There should be some car (truck-n-trailer) time, during which I might actually get some knitting in, but it's not going to be the concentrated full-speed-ahead knitting that I need to knock out the rest of the HoHI. (I need a third of a pattern repeat, then toes, then sleeves-for-elastic.) I was planning to play with that tomorrow, but picking up a new horse (not mine) trumps sock knitting.
I guess I could have done with the socks tonight but I was distracted because my sheep ("George") arrived in the mail today. George is a very thirfty breed of sheep, a Romney, and I don't have to feed him or take care of him or shear him. He is, in fact, a fur-only sheep, the sort readily available on eBay. (Persons of distinction, taste, and rather more money than I'm willing to invest in the sheep project can adopt a named sheep for about three times what I paid for my sheep-in-a-box. Apparently you get pictures of the sheep if you go the adoption route. Possibly there are also "farm updates" or (more cutesy) "letters" from the adopted sheep. Yeah. I think I'll stick with the "raw white fleece, Romney, 5" staple length, 4 lbs." sort of sheep-in-a-box. I already came up with my own name for the sheep-in-a-box and if I feel the need for pictures of George, I'll google Romney sheeps and locate a picture of same. Sheep of a given breed all look alike to me anyway, so it's not like I'd be able to tell the difference. If *I* was a shepherd of sheep for adoption, I'd damn well have one picturesque picture of a freaking sheep and that would be "Ethel" and "Bess" and "Violet" and "Bluebell" and "Daisy" and "Lily" and so forth. To my way of thinking, there is no need to go stomping around the field trying to take attractive pictures of sheep when they all look the same except for the ear tags. Maybe I'd need pictures of the colored sheep, but the white ones? Forget it.)
George, thrifty and trouble-free soul that he is, lives in a cardboard box in the closet until I need some sheep fur, at which point I tear off a hunk and and piss around with it endlessly (multiple processes involving dawn dishwashing liquid, a dog comb and two CDs on a dowel rod) until it more-or-less resembles yarn (for values of yarn that include "lumpy"). George is more fun than anything that smells that strongly of sheep should be.
I got George because I wanted to learn to spin. Now, I realize that I have a relative who spins. I do not really want advice or succor or other input from the relative who spins. This is my project and I'm having fun with it. If I want advice or succor or whatever, I know where to go to get it. I'm good right now, thanks.
I know that most people who learn to spin things start with pretty, rainbow-colored pencil roving (pencil roving is sheep fur that is carefully arranged in ready-to-spin amounts and fiber orientations. It's clean. It does not smell of sheep and it doesn't have wee bits of hay in it and it's ready-to-use.) but I don't have any interest in other people's roving of any sort. What I really want to do, here, is see how wool gets from sheep-to-yarn, step by step, with my hands. (Other people can rent a fucking documentary from Netflix: "The Story of Wool" or similar.) My way does entail a fair amount of learning on my part, but what the hell. I'm up for it. I'm kind of a process girl. I *like* process. It's very... interesting. You learn lots more with the whole process.
Process Progress so far: I opened the box. Sheep fleece is not white when it comes off the sheep, except for the inner cut-off-the-sheep part, which is sort of a creamy white. The outside of the sheep fur is kind of tippy-mats that are not very white. They're a color I would classify as dingy. Sheep fleece also smells a lot like sheep. It's kind of a barn-y smell. I have horses, so this is not a problem. Raw fleece is sticky as hell -- that's the grease and sheep ick (sweat? whatever) in the wool and it adheres to itself. Anyway. I looked at the fleece. It's a little daunting at first glance, a "What the fuck was I thinking?" daunting. No worries, though.
I washed (some of) the fleece. There is a lot of fur on a sheep. A lot. I got several nice-sized handsful and plopped them in a lingerie bag. I soaked the fleece in very hot water (not boiling, but too hot for my hands) with a little soap. I rinsed. I repeated the soak-with-soap and the rinse. I repeated 'em again. The water was starting to look not quite so asstastic. I repeated again and hung the fleece baggie up to dry.
I waited a while (and did another bag of fleece b/c I have two bags for washing lingerie. NO, I do not own that much lingerie. I figured that wool takes freaking forever to dry and thought I might want to be able to tag-team the bags... so I bought two this afternoon at WalMart.) and then I took the wool, which was dry enough to work with, and split it up (by lock, where possible) into locks or working-sized pieces. I fluffed as I went to help things dry better. When I got some that actually was dry (I heat my house with a woodstove. The air is dry. Normal people would not be able to have dry wool this fast.), I combed it with the dog comb until it was all straight and nice and had no ick at all in it. (The method of carding I'm doing is called flick carding and it's cheap and easy. I like cheap and easy, particularly when the alternative is a three-hundred dollar drum carder.)
I attached one small end of wool to the loop I'd made in the top of the leader coming out of my cd-and-dowel spindle. I spun the spindle (there are numerous videos on the internetwebmotron to show you how to do this) and it made yarn. It wasn't very good yarn, but it was yarn. It didn't pull apart when I yanked on it. It was longer than one hunk-of-pretty fiber and I spliced new pieces on several times. This is not rocket science and Romney (George is a Romney sheep) is a good beginner wool anyway. (I did my homework before buying a sheep.) Getting *better* at it is going to take practice but, given my OCD and my total desire for uniformity, I figure it's only a matter of time until my handspun looks machine-made, rather like my handmade cookies look machine-made.
And now it's late and I have to be at Tasha's tomorrow morning at 6:30 to go get a pony from north of State College. I need sleep.
Tasha (of Tasha-who-does-horses) purchased another horse and I'm going to pick it up with her tomorrow. There should be some car (truck-n-trailer) time, during which I might actually get some knitting in, but it's not going to be the concentrated full-speed-ahead knitting that I need to knock out the rest of the HoHI. (I need a third of a pattern repeat, then toes, then sleeves-for-elastic.) I was planning to play with that tomorrow, but picking up a new horse (not mine) trumps sock knitting.
I guess I could have done with the socks tonight but I was distracted because my sheep ("George") arrived in the mail today. George is a very thirfty breed of sheep, a Romney, and I don't have to feed him or take care of him or shear him. He is, in fact, a fur-only sheep, the sort readily available on eBay. (Persons of distinction, taste, and rather more money than I'm willing to invest in the sheep project can adopt a named sheep for about three times what I paid for my sheep-in-a-box. Apparently you get pictures of the sheep if you go the adoption route. Possibly there are also "farm updates" or (more cutesy) "letters" from the adopted sheep. Yeah. I think I'll stick with the "raw white fleece, Romney, 5" staple length, 4 lbs." sort of sheep-in-a-box. I already came up with my own name for the sheep-in-a-box and if I feel the need for pictures of George, I'll google Romney sheeps and locate a picture of same. Sheep of a given breed all look alike to me anyway, so it's not like I'd be able to tell the difference. If *I* was a shepherd of sheep for adoption, I'd damn well have one picturesque picture of a freaking sheep and that would be "Ethel" and "Bess" and "Violet" and "Bluebell" and "Daisy" and "Lily" and so forth. To my way of thinking, there is no need to go stomping around the field trying to take attractive pictures of sheep when they all look the same except for the ear tags. Maybe I'd need pictures of the colored sheep, but the white ones? Forget it.)
George, thrifty and trouble-free soul that he is, lives in a cardboard box in the closet until I need some sheep fur, at which point I tear off a hunk and and piss around with it endlessly (multiple processes involving dawn dishwashing liquid, a dog comb and two CDs on a dowel rod) until it more-or-less resembles yarn (for values of yarn that include "lumpy"). George is more fun than anything that smells that strongly of sheep should be.
I got George because I wanted to learn to spin. Now, I realize that I have a relative who spins. I do not really want advice or succor or other input from the relative who spins. This is my project and I'm having fun with it. If I want advice or succor or whatever, I know where to go to get it. I'm good right now, thanks.
I know that most people who learn to spin things start with pretty, rainbow-colored pencil roving (pencil roving is sheep fur that is carefully arranged in ready-to-spin amounts and fiber orientations. It's clean. It does not smell of sheep and it doesn't have wee bits of hay in it and it's ready-to-use.) but I don't have any interest in other people's roving of any sort. What I really want to do, here, is see how wool gets from sheep-to-yarn, step by step, with my hands. (Other people can rent a fucking documentary from Netflix: "The Story of Wool" or similar.) My way does entail a fair amount of learning on my part, but what the hell. I'm up for it. I'm kind of a process girl. I *like* process. It's very... interesting. You learn lots more with the whole process.
Process Progress so far: I opened the box. Sheep fleece is not white when it comes off the sheep, except for the inner cut-off-the-sheep part, which is sort of a creamy white. The outside of the sheep fur is kind of tippy-mats that are not very white. They're a color I would classify as dingy. Sheep fleece also smells a lot like sheep. It's kind of a barn-y smell. I have horses, so this is not a problem. Raw fleece is sticky as hell -- that's the grease and sheep ick (sweat? whatever) in the wool and it adheres to itself. Anyway. I looked at the fleece. It's a little daunting at first glance, a "What the fuck was I thinking?" daunting. No worries, though.
I washed (some of) the fleece. There is a lot of fur on a sheep. A lot. I got several nice-sized handsful and plopped them in a lingerie bag. I soaked the fleece in very hot water (not boiling, but too hot for my hands) with a little soap. I rinsed. I repeated the soak-with-soap and the rinse. I repeated 'em again. The water was starting to look not quite so asstastic. I repeated again and hung the fleece baggie up to dry.
I waited a while (and did another bag of fleece b/c I have two bags for washing lingerie. NO, I do not own that much lingerie. I figured that wool takes freaking forever to dry and thought I might want to be able to tag-team the bags... so I bought two this afternoon at WalMart.) and then I took the wool, which was dry enough to work with, and split it up (by lock, where possible) into locks or working-sized pieces. I fluffed as I went to help things dry better. When I got some that actually was dry (I heat my house with a woodstove. The air is dry. Normal people would not be able to have dry wool this fast.), I combed it with the dog comb until it was all straight and nice and had no ick at all in it. (The method of carding I'm doing is called flick carding and it's cheap and easy. I like cheap and easy, particularly when the alternative is a three-hundred dollar drum carder.)
I attached one small end of wool to the loop I'd made in the top of the leader coming out of my cd-and-dowel spindle. I spun the spindle (there are numerous videos on the internetwebmotron to show you how to do this) and it made yarn. It wasn't very good yarn, but it was yarn. It didn't pull apart when I yanked on it. It was longer than one hunk-of-pretty fiber and I spliced new pieces on several times. This is not rocket science and Romney (George is a Romney sheep) is a good beginner wool anyway. (I did my homework before buying a sheep.) Getting *better* at it is going to take practice but, given my OCD and my total desire for uniformity, I figure it's only a matter of time until my handspun looks machine-made, rather like my handmade cookies look machine-made.
And now it's late and I have to be at Tasha's tomorrow morning at 6:30 to go get a pony from north of State College. I need sleep.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-11-19 03:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-19 05:28 am (UTC)