Maryland Alpaca and Fleece Festival

Last weekend, I went to the Maryland Alpaca and Fleece Festival. I LOVE this festival. It's like MD Sheep and Wool, only not as crowded, and with alpacas instead of sheep. 

I love alpacas. 

They are super soft, have long necks, and make this really cute purring sound. 

They have neat hair-do's, and can resemble gangly teenagers. Too cool for school. 

They pose for pictures. 

But they still have time to take a break for a snack. 

Best of all? They are FLUFFY! 

There were some cool alpacas there this year. Most of the time, alpacas are shy at events like this. But the light brown alpaca above was crazy friendly. He let me pet his head and neck for a long while. I wanted to keep him, but my boyfriend made me promise I wouldn't bring home an alpaca. 

There was also an angora building, all full of bunnies, angora fiber and angora yarn. 

I did as well as could be expected. I spent more money than I planned to, but oh well. 

3 bags of alpaca roving, 4 balls of alpaca roving, a Hobbledehoy classic batt and a green Tempting Ewe batt from Cloverhill (who had a stand at the festival.)

I also received my Loop SAL batts this past week, so that's what I've been working on. 

Setting the Twist: how to finish your yarn!

So I looked through everything I've spun in the last 2 months, and it was almost embarrassing how much yarn I had yet to properly finish.

For me, finishing yarn is the most boring part of the process. I always put it off too long, and end up with 25 (yes....25!) skeins of yarn. It's the most important part of the process, too. The finishing process sets the twist, helps balance the yarn, removes any excess oil from the sheep, removes any excess dye you don't want rubbing off onto your skin, and overall improves the poofiness of the yarn. 

I figured this was the perfect opportunity to document how I finish my yarn! 

How to Set the Twist:

First, you need some supplies:

-pot large enough to have about a gallon of water in.

-wool wash of choice. (I use Soak)

-a plastic baking spoon

-thick towel

-hangers

-a place for your yarn to dry

-YARN!

I had a lot of yarn...25 skeins that needed set. 

I like to lay out my yarn so I can see what I have. It's a pretty good idea to set like-colors one after the other. (Only 1 skein per soak!) 

You also need a thick towel and some hangers! I use a bath towel, because they are much more absorbent than kitchen towels. I also like to use hangers with a notch on either side. The hangers are for hanging your yarn to dry. If you use hangers with notches, you can hang a total of 3 skeins per hanger.

Next, you want to fill a pot about halfway with water, and add some wool wash. You can use a few drops of Dawn dish soap, Woolite, or you can use something formulated for setting and washing wool yarn. 

I like the Soak wool wash. It smells great and is a no-rinse formula. If you are as busy (cough*lazy*cough) as I am, skipping a rinse step is worth the extra $$ for the wash. Not rinsing your yarn also reduces the risk of accidentally felting your yarn. Remember the goal of this is to rinse your yarn of any left over lanolin from the animal, set the twist, and to make the yarn poof out a little. 

While your water is heating on the lowest setting on the stove, this is the best time to lay out your skein of yarn and tie some scrap yarn in 4-6 places evenly spaced. This keeps your yarn from getting tangled while it's setting. 

When your water is hot, but not too hot to tolerate if you stick your fingers in, go ahead and *gently* place your skein in the pot. You can use your fingers or a spoon to gently press the yarn into the water until the yarn is completely submerged. Keep the temperate on the lowest setting and set your timer for 10 minutes. If your yarn is over-twisted, set it for at least 15 minutes. I like to turn off the heat completely in the last few minutes of soaking. 

So you've soaked your yarn, and the soak-time is up. Now what?

I use a plastic spoon and gently lift the yarn out of the water, and let it drain for a few minutes. 

Next, lay the slightly-drained yarn onto the towel. I position the yarn like a horseshoe, and fold the top of the towel over once, and then roll the towel once or twice until the yarn is wrapped up. 

Gently press down on the towel to remove the excess water. 

Hang your yarn on the hanger, and admire your work. Did you burn yourself? No? Congrats! 

*hint* If you feel like your yarn is still a little over twisted, you can use a small can as a weight to help straighten out your yarn as it dries.

I also find that if the fiber was dyed properly, you can reuse the water. 

I check with a white shot glass. If your water looks like this, you should change it. If you're going to be soaking another purple skein, it's really up to you. Fresh water or no, add some more wool wash and repeat until your yarn is all set.

Let your yarn hang until it's completely dry. This can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days, depending on what kind of wool and how heavy your yarn is. 

Once my hanger has 3 skeins, I move the hanger into the basement to dry.

Warning: if you have cats, they WILL try to help/get in the way.

Spinning the stash....

My goal recently has been to spin chunkier. I feel like I've done that, which means I've been able to get through my stash much more quickly! I've accepted that yarn does not have to be perfect - bumps and lumps are part of what distinguishes hand-spun from factory-spun. I still try to spin as evenly as possible, but I've had so much fun this past week messing around with color and artsy-ness.

I had 2 Hobbledehoy batts waiting to be spun. So of course, I jumped right in to those! *fangirl*

I started out with "Spoof" - an art batt. Before my chunky-spinning-adventure, I wasn't too "in to" art batts because they are difficult to spin thinly. I picked up Spoof at the Cloverhill Trunk show a little bit back. 

I started by dividing the batt up into somewhat even chunks to make drafting and spinning easier. I love the purple! After only a few hours of spinning (a few hours....*squeeee*) I had a bobbin full of thin and thick singles. 

The hot pink was a denser fiber, so it worked very well to make those thicker. 

I prefer to ply heavier yarn from a center pull ball. It's just easier for me. By the way, I'm in desperate need of a ball-winder that easily takes more than 4 ounces of fiber. 

I also spun Butterfly Wings, and I was so happy with how it turned out. 

On the bobbin...

And skeined...

I just *adore* classic batts. 

I've also gone through some of the de-stash I got on Ravelry. <3

This was a Copperpot Woolies fiber batt. I ended up spinning another chunky yarn - it's not super soft, but it'll make a nice outerwear piece. Maybe a hat, since hats are usually sitting on hair, not super sensitive neck skin. 

I've done so much more, but that is for later bloggity posts. Stay tuned for a special entry on finishing yarn!

Congress of Daleks - Hobbledehoy SAL

Before I even started the Congress of Daleks Hobbledehoy SAL, I had a general idea of what I wanted. Well, I knew what I DIDN'T want. I didn't want another super thin 3-ply. I did my last yarn as a "practice", and found that I in fact can spin a bit thicker than normal. It actually proved to be relaxing and satisfying, because instead of filing a bobbin in a week, I filled a bobbin in just a few hours. Whoot!

Congress of Daleks featured about a dozen or so battlings. There were blue, silver/grey, yellow and red little battlings. I split the battlings into two groups with similar colors. 

I decided to do a "fractal" spin. I wanted to divide the fiber in half and spin onto each bobbin. The key with fractal spinning is to fill one bobbin with LONG repeats, and the other with short repeats.

So for the first bobbin, I divided each battling into two pieces and wound each piece into a large fiber ball. This way, it's easy to keep the colors in the same order. Then I spun one ball after the other. Super simple! Here is my first bobbin. The color repeats are longer, because each repeat is half of a battling. 

I tied a bow of scrap yarn around the end to hold it in place. I'm picky like that. I hate it when one end starts to un-twist. 

Anyways, for the second bobbin, I took the remaining battlings and separated each battling into four pieces! You can see them all nice and pretty below. 

I used the same technique and wound four smaller balls of fiber, each with the colors in the same order. I spun each mini-ball in succession onto the second bobbin. This one has shorter repeats, because each repeat is a fourth of a battling. 

It so happens that I had seven colors per mini-ball....so the fact that my wheel has seven hooks thrilled the crap out of me. Ahh, simple pleasures. 

The ending result isn't exactly what I had in mind, but I'm still REALLY happy with it. 

I was hoping for some more solid color in the yarn, but it actually turned out really neat.