Matonkudontaa

Olen pitkään (siis pikkulapsesta asti) halunnut oppia kutomaan kangaspuilla. Tänä syksynä tajusin että voisihan tuota käydä vaikka kurssilla, ja lähdin sitten Pirkanmaan Kotityön järjestämälle kankaankudonnan peruskurssille Verkarannan taitopajassa. Mainostan että siellä järjestetään paljon muitakin kiinnostavia kursseja, niistä ei vain kuule koska niiden mainokset on piilotettu yhdistyksen omaan lehteen ja Verkarannan nettisivuille.

Kurssilla oli ensin teoriaosa jossa sai kyllä myös käytännön opastusta ja harjoitusta kangaspuiden kokoamisessa, loimen luonnissa ja rakentamisessa. Sitten saimme kukin kolme kudontapäivää, joilla tehdä mitä huvittaa. Itse olin saanut kaverilta matonkuteita, joten aioin käyttää ne loppuun. Matto ei ole ihan valmis vielä, viimeinen kudontapäiväni on huomenna, mutta tältä se näytti lauantaina:



Ei hullumpaa ensikertalaiselta, vaikka itse sanonkin! (En kommentoi miten monta kertaa kuvioraidat piti purkaa ja tehdä uusiksi.)

Briefly, I went to a weaving course and learned how to wind a warp, set up for weaving, and now I'm making my first rag rug ever, and am very happy about it - even if the first pattern stripe had to be re-woven about 10 times.

Old lace, new lace

I found an old bobbin lace pillow (probably homemade) on a flea market. It had a project pinned on, and an instruction book from the 1950s with it. The project was in a horrible tangle and one bobbin was broken. I untangled it, and glued the bobbin together:

Löysin nypläystyynyn kirpparilta halvalla! Siinä oli ohjekirja ja kesken jäänyt pitsiprojekti mukana. Nypylät olivat solmussa ja yksi oli poikki, mutta selvitin sotkun ja liimasin nypylän kokoon:



I noticed that there were some mistakes in the lace and unwove it a bit. There were still more mistakes left (a frustrated beginner maybe?), but I decided to leave them in to remember the last owner, as they weren't so bad:

Edellinen tekijä oli mennyt mallissa sotkuun, joten purin jonkun matkaa pois (ehkä työ oli jäänyt turhautumisesta kesken?). Jäljelle jääneessäkin pätkässä on virheitä muttei niin pahoja, joten päätin pitää ne muistona edellisestä omistajasta:



And this is how far I've come! I haven't taken a course, but bobbin lace was one of the things I played with as a kid/teenager, so I remembered the basic stitches with a little help from the instruction books (and a lot of weaving and unweaving). It's fun!

Näin pitkälle pääsin - en ole käynyt kurssilla, mutta opettelin pienenä itse kirjoista. Lunttasin vähän oppaista, ja kyllä se palasi mieleen kunhan tarpeeksi tekee ja purkaa. Kivaa!

Spinning fireweed fluff

Let's talk fluff.
Höttöistä asiaa...

Fireweed (Epilobium angustifolium, a.k.a. Great Willow-herb, or Rosebay Willowherb) is a pretty, red-blossomed weed:
Kaikki varmaan tietävät maitohorsman (Epilobium angustifolium)?



Every fall, the seed pods (those long, narrow things under the blossoms) break open and release a cloud of fluff. And every year, I wonder if you can spin it. This year, I grabbed a takhli and decided to find out:
Joka vuosi kun maitohorsman höytyviä lentelee ilmassa, mietin saisiko niistä lankaa. Tänä vuonna nappasin intialaisen tuetun takhli-värttinän, ja pitihän sitä yrittää:



Left: dry, open fireweed pods; middle top: discarded bits of broken singles; middle down: discarded pods; right: takhli with a cop of cotton, and spun fireweed singles wound at the top of the shaft.
Vasemmalla: maitohorsman siemenkotia, kesk. ylhäällä: katkenneita säikeitä, kesk. alhaalla: siemenkotien kuoria, oikealla: takhli, jossa puuvillalankaa ja varren ympärillä kierrettynä maitohorsmalankaa.

Fireweed fluff has a staple length of ca. 0,5-1 cm (+1/4 in), has no elasticity, will fly off at the slightest breath when dry and stick to anything damp (your hands, itself). You can't get the seeds out, but luckily they fill mostly fall off while spinning. In short, it's a pain to spin and will make a big mess. Nevertheless, after a while I started to get the hang of putting in just the right amount of twist to keep it structurally sound while not too much so that it snapped, and managed to make a bit of Z-spun singles. I then folded the singles in half and plied them S - twice, because the first go didn't give enough twist and the plied yarn drifted apart when tugging.

Maitohorsmakuidun pituus on 0,5-1 cm, eikä se jousta ollenkaan, lähtee kuivana lentoon pienimmästäkin henkäyksestä ja tarttuu kiinni kosteisiin käsiin tai myttäytyy yhteen. Siemeniä ei saa pois, mutta enimmät putoilevat irti kehrätesssä. Jos lankaan laittaa liian vähän kierrettä, se hajoaa ja jos liikaa, se katkeaa vetäessä. Onnistuin kuitenkin kehräämään vähän Z-kierteistä säiettä, jonka taitoin sitten kaksinkerroin ja kertasin tiukasti S-kierteiseksi (koska jos kertauskierrettä ei ole tarpeeksi, lanka voi hajota vetäessä).

And here it is:
Ja siinähän se:



There's a 5 euro-cent coin for scale. It's probably about 30 cm (1 ft) long bit of string altogether, fluffy and soft and a bit fragile.
Vertailun vuoksi 5 sentin kolikko. Lankaa on ehkä 30 cm, se on pehmyttä ja vähän haurasta.

An old Finnish source talks about the properties of fireweed:

Flora Fennica. 1866, written by Elias Lönnrot and Th. Saelan (via Henrietta's Herbal).

Folk usage: Fluff is good for stuffing pillows etc.; it may also be spun as yarn for candlewicks. The sprouts can be eaten in spring. Cows give plentiful milk when eating this plant. It would be good sown in stony dirt, where forest etc. is being allowed to grow. Roots spread over a wide area.


Löysin viimeinkin lähteen, missä kerrotaan maitohorsman haivenien kehruusta, eikä aivan vähäisen, (Henrietta's Herbal):

Flora Fennica. Suomen Kasvio, 1866, kirjoittaneet Elias Lönnrot ja Th. Saelan.

Epilobium angustifolium L. Maitohorsma. (R98: Epilobium angustifolium L. (Chamaenerion angustifolium (L.) Scop., Chamerion angustifolium (L.) Holub), maitohorma (rentun ruusu); duntrav, mjölkört.)
Muist. -- Haivenet sopivat täytteeksi tyynyihin j. n. e.; niistä taidetaan lankaaki kehrätä kynttilän sydämiksi. Juurivesat keväällä kelpaavat syödä parissina. Lehmät lypsävät hyvin tästä kasvista. Ansaitsisi viljeltää kivisessä ja multaisessa maanlaadussa, jossa metsää ynnä annetaan kasvaa. Juuret levenevät laajalta.

I have another fireweed (and nettle) project going, but more about that another time.
On minulla toinenkin maitohorsmaprojekti, mutta siitä lisää joskus toiste!

Summer stuff

Some thing done this summer... I got a drum carder:



And carded some batts:



And spun some yarn:



And did some demo in the kitchen:



And now I'm off to pick blueberries.

Tour de Fleece 2010

Reporting late, but I'm in the Tour de Fleece again this year. The goal?

1. Spin every day (One make counts.)
2. Try something new on the challenge day
3. For the Team Suck Less challenge of spinning a mile I’ll probably walk a mile while spindling, or something else since I am slow.

Today (day 10) is actually a rest day, but I've already done point 1. spinning today...

Stress test for handspun yarn

We were discussing relative strength of Navajo ply in Ravelry the other day. As I found myself bored and in need of entertainment this weekend, I did a little test, and here are the results.

The photos are clickable, and clicking will take you to Flickr if you want to see the details - but they are cell phone photos and I wasn't paying much attention on the settings, so apologies in advance for the horrid glare!

Test setup for measuring tensile strength

1 metre or 50 cm of yarn, each end tied to an S-hook with a square knot. One hook was hung from a laundry hanger thingie on the balcony, and a bag was attached to the other hook by its handles. Paperback books (and for more accurate measurements, bags of instant oatmeal and individually wrapped biscuits) were added into the bag until the yarn broke.

Notes on fibre, technique and the singles

Fibre: Ronaldsay pin-drafted roving from Scottish Fibres (medium wool with some kemp and VM that I didn’t bother to remove.)
Spindle: 11g "gingerbread" top whorl spindle from Rina's Spindles.
Drafting method: short draw with twist in the drafting zone
Twist direction: Z-spun singles, all yarns S-plied, all cables re-plied Z (including the double Navajo ply).
Type: semi-woolen
Length of material available: a rough couch-length of singles (ca. 1,8m) was measured for plying all different yarns
Twist setting method: yarn was dunked in hot water and left to dry hanging freely.

Here you can see all the yarns lined up:


Results

In the following there's first an image of the break, followed by the technical details of the yarn and the breaking point (all measurements are in the metric system):


Singles: ca. 38 wpi, twist angle 30-35° (1 metre sample)
Breaking point: 153g (+/-126g)



2-ply: ca. +24 wpi, plying twist angle (TA) 25° (1 metre sample)
Breaking point (BP): 556g (+/-196g)



3-ply: ca. 20 wpi, TA 20°
BP: 813g (+/-35g)
BP, second test: 838g (+/-35g)


Navajo ply: loop length: 20-30 cm, ca. 20 wpi, TA 20°
BP: 878g (+/-30g)
BP, second test: 767g (+/-35g)



4-ply: ca. 19 wpi, TA 20° (1 metre sample, stretched so much I had to move to using a shorter sample length)
BP: 1512g (+/-209g)



2x2 cable: ca. 18 wpi, TA 20°
BP: 1512g (+/-209g)



6-ply: ca. 14 wpi, TA 25°
BP: 2080g (+/-196g)



Navajo-ply, which was Navajo-plied with itself (comparable to a 9-ply): both initial and final loop length: 20-30 cm, ca. 12 wpi, TA 25°
BP: 2842g (+/- 180g)

Intermediary notes

Plying structure didn’t seem to matter very much: cabling didn’t give a dramatically greater increase in strength, and Navajo ply and traditional 3-ply were both roughly equally strong (In the first test Navajo ply survived 65g more than 3-ply and in the second, 3-ply survived 71g more, both with a tolerance of +/-35g, so the results were fairly close).

All Navajo plies showed the same distinctive pattern in breakage, as expected: in all weight tests, the break occurred at a “knot” point, usually leaving one loop in the chain intact and breaking the other one. The other structures show fraying and snapping, but it isn’t possible to predict in advance at which point of the yarn a break will occur, unlike in Navajo ply.

Stress testing continues

I still had lengths of yarn left, so I decided to perform another test - namely, how long would it take for the yarn to break, if I rubbed one point of a 30-cm long length of it against the metal radiator edge? Times varied, because I'm not a consistent machine and the yarns have weak spots, but if you are curious, here are the results of approximately how long it took to break the yarn:

Singles: 2 seconds
2-ply: 5 seconds
3-ply: 8 seconds, (second try: 23 seconds)
Navajo ply: 16 seconds, (second try: 23 seconds)
4-ply: 16 seconds
2x2 cable: 8 seconds
6-ply: 27 seconds
Double Navajo ply: 38 seconds

Still not content, I tried breaking one strand in the yarn and see how it held up to tugging (at this point, all pretense of scientific method had to be abandoned, as I don't have a device for measuring strength of pulling):

Singles: Broke easily.
2-ply: After one strand was broken, broke the same as singles yarn.
3-ply: Broke fairly easily.
Navajo ply: Broke fairly easily like the 3-ply, but if the break in the strand was close to the "knot" in the chain, the distinctive breaking pattern showed.
4-ply: Needed a little force to break.
2x2 cable: Same as 4-ply.
6-ply: Needed quite a bit of force to break.
Double Navajo ply: Needed a lot of force to break. Breaking pattern was similar to 6-ply, but if the break occurred close to a "knot" in the chain, the distinctive breaking pattern showed.

Conclusions

The single most important factor proved to be the number of plies. The strength of the yarn increased almost exponentially, when just one strand was added. The plying method was much less significant - cabled yarn and a 4-ply were roughly equal, as well as 3-ply and Navajo/chain ply, but either a 4-ply or cabled yarn was much stronger than a 3-ply or Navajo/chain ply.

The Ravelry discussion centered on the relative strength of Navajo ply. From this test I can say that at least for this fibre and these singles, 3-ply and Navajo ply were comparable. Because of the fuzziness of the fibre and the fineness of the singles, I had to check the yarn very, very closely to tell the two samples apart!

The main difference between the structures was that while the 3-ply would break at some unpredictable point wherever it was the weakest, Navajo ply would usually break at the "knot" or loop in the chain, showing the distinctive "strand and loop" pattern in one end. The exception to this was in the experiments with "sawing" the yarn through or breaking just one strand and tugging - if the break didn't occur near a knot, the yarn would behave in a similar manner to a 3-ply.

What can you conclude from all this? Surprisingly little, actually. The tests, as they stand, only comment on the suitability (or lack thereof) of using yarn for hanging things with and show that woolen spun yarn doesn't take abrasion kindly. If you change one factor (singles thickness, twist angle, drafting method, fiber preparation...) the yarn strength will change, sometimes more, sometimes less, so these results aren't the whole truth about yarn. Also, yarn in a knitted, woven or crocheted fabric will behave differently than yarn alone. Felting and level of wear and tear will also affect durability.

So don't take my word for this, but try it yourself and sample! Your yarn may yet surprise you.

(Use of these pictures (despite the less than stellar photography) and results is permitted if anyone so desires, I officially don't mind.)

Where the yarn ended up

So, the Ravelympics have been and gone. The yarn got finished in time, and almost immediately I cast on a pair of socks. Never mind that this was fairly high micron-count merino, and while it was a 3-ply with a fair amount of twist, it could've had more. I'm wearing the socks now, and although they are pilling and looking a bit bedraggled already, they are very, very comfortable.

On to the pictures:


3-ply Merino from Merinovilla, 217 m / 92 g, wpi: 14-18, spun with short draw across the top - on the wheel, natch.




Haruha socks, pattern by Kristel Nyberg.



What, another beauty shot?



And of course, the badge.


After that I have spun up some more stuff - but that's enough for one post, don't you think?

Ravelympics: midway report

I think I'm starting to get the hang of this:



There is now a faint possibility that I might finish the third bobbin before the closing ceremonies. Faster, wasn't it?

Ravelympics 2010 - Day One

I should've probably started the year by recapping the previous year, but eh. Maybe later. For now, I'm in the Ravelympics, trying to complete a WIP - spinning 100g of merino top into 3-ply sock yarn. Here's what I started with:



I figure since I started that last December (I think) and have managed only 5 min every now and then, I'll have more than enough challenge trying to spin it all in little over two weeks.

And progress for day 1? I did manage to make that length of top noticeably shorter, and bake both cookies and bread (from the 5-minute artisan bread recipe by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François), so even if I don't reach my goal, at least I won't starve trying.