Monday, October 02, 2006

Sore arms.

I woke up with very sore arms. Why? Yesterday I spent all evening carding up this pile of fiber.

I was given some holographic tencil with amazing sparkles. I couldn't decide what to do with it because it wasn't in the form of fine fiber. I thought maybe I could add strands of it while knitting a scarf for my niece to add pizzazz. But I soon found out that it was a pain to do, and I didn't like how it looked. Then I thought about "Suzie". Why not try carding it into the wool fiber? I don't really know how tencil will behave with wool fiber when being spun. But heck, I'll find out soon.

So I got out the hand cards and "Suzie" and practiced carding, at the same time experimenting when and how to add the tencil to best blend it together. I was just going to try with a small batch of it. But I couldn't stop. Didn't I say that I love carding? So I made rolag after rolag until it was all done. I got a little impatient at some point and started charging the cards with more fiber. More fiber means more force needed to pull the fiber through. That's how I ended up with sore arms. Can this count as exercising? :-)

I think that I will have to spin this worsted to prevent the tencil from separating and sticking out of the yarn. I hope to have enough to make a hat. More bobbins! I need more bobbins! I thought I had enough with 4. But I can see that there will never be enough bobbins!

Here's another pic that shows more of the tencil. Enlarge the pics to see the sparkles better. I will take a better picture once the spinning is done. Hopefully with outdoor light to show the amazing sparkles.

And here's a pic of my Lendrum. Just for Dave D. :-) More bobbins! I need more bobbins! And Ted made me aware that I don't have the "Very Fast Flyer"!!! :-(

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes, that is a BEAUTIFUL wheel!
And congrats on the rolags. I am not a successful carder. (I've lost knuckle skin in the past.) You're look great, AND you put in sparkly stuff, too. That's so cool.

Jason said...

Dave, I think I placed my wheel a little too close to the fireplace. Too close for comfort! LOL

And please, do leave non-fiber organic matter out of the fluff. They need to be taken them out, not added in. hehehe

Anonymous said...

Hey Jason, those look great. Looks like more than enough for a hat! It's hard to see the sparkles but I bet it looks great in person. You'll have to spin some up and show us at the guild meeting.

BTW, if you decide you want to do huge amounts of carding, there is a guild drumcarder currently housed at Stick & Stone that is available free of charge for drum carding.

Sachi said...

OMG... see... this is why I haven't started carding my own yet. My arms would fall off.

Lacefreak said...

Dear Jason,

Very nice job with the carding! The yarn should really catch the light with that tencel. You should have enough for a hat but you will need more bobbins. The ones for the Lendrum are quite small I've found. Oh, and that would be the, "insanely fast" flyer to you. Good spinning!

Jason said...

Hi Janel! Thanks for telling about the guild drumcarder. That really got me thinking... LOL I think I am going to have to borrow it soon. :-)

I hope to be able to get something presentable out of this. :-)

Hey Sachi! Just have to relax and do small batches. I just got very impatient. :-)

Hi Jane! Thanks! Is it tinsel, tencil or tencel? I just don't know. :-) I am not so sure if this will work at the moment. A lot of experiments to do for sure. Not easy to spin.