Goodies from OFFF

The Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival (OFFF) happened last weekend.  This is a festival that has been around since 1997, and despite living in the Pacific Northwest for nearly all that time, I've never attended.  But now I have!

I wasn't going to go, since the Columbia Gorge Fiber Festival (CGFF) happens next month and you would think that one huge fiber festival a year would be enough (hahahaha!).  But as it happened, Wanda and Ed Jenkins of Turkish spindle fame (Kuchulu!) made an announcement about their product line in the week prior to the festival that made it imperative that I attend OFFF.  They do not vend at CGFF, you see.

There are going to be a lot of pictures in this post.

Here's all of what I got:



A bunch of pretty fiber, a skein of yarn, a really cool sheepy tote bag, and... yeah, some spindles.  You see, Ed Jenkins has added a new size to their line of spindles.

This... this was the reason I went to the festival.



The bigger spindle is my 11 gram verawood Kuchulu. Up until this weekend, the Kuchulu model was so tiny, so small.  It has now been eclipsed.

The new tiny one is named the Bee Hummingbird after the world's smallest bird.  My spindle has ebony arms and a walnut shaft.  It weighs 3 grams.

THREE GRAMS!  It's so incredibly tiny and cute. 

They have only made a small number of these spindles so far- as you can imagine, they are quite technically difficult to make.  They are small and fragile and hard to hold onto during the fabrication, especially sanding.  Rather than having a giant stampede at the beginning of the festival, as rabid spinners from all over the Pacific Northwest descended on their booth in a ravening horde, they decided to hold drawings throughout the weekend to choose who could buy one.  Two names every hour, so we just had to take our chance with everyone else.  It was frustrating not to be able to just walk up and buy one, but I guess I see their point.

Luckily, on the fifth drawing of the day, we were at their booth and Ed let Emma be the name draw-er.  Amazingly, she drew her own name! I swear she wasn't looking and it wasn't rigged!

Happy happy joy!  We have a Bee Hummingbird!  So even though theoretically it was in her name... I paid for it, and I'm the one who likes to spin fine, and so I'm claiming it.  If she wants to use it she can learn to spin fine.

Since there was no guarantee that one of our names would be drawn, I was also forced to buy another Kuchulu when we were first there.  Oh, and also a Spindlewood spindle since they were also at the festival. It's not my fault, they're just so pretty.



These are a 25.5 gram amboyna burl Square Midi by Spindlewood, a 10 gram lilac Kuchulu by Jenkins, and a 3 gram ebony Bee Hummingbird by Jenkins.  The wood on the Kuchulu has actual purple streaks in it.  Drooooool. 



Of course I had to start spinning on the Bee right away.  I pulled off a tuft of the merino braid I got at the festival and started spinning in the car on the way back to Anne's house (Anne was driving).  I had finished about one gram by that evening.



This spindle spins FINE.  I let the end of the singles ply back on itself to see what I was getting, and the piece trailing over the quarter is that 2-ply yarn.  Tiny singles.  Cobweb 2-ply.

After I got home, I spun another gram onto the spindle.  More than about 2 grams would, I think, make this spindle too heavy to spin a microscopically fine singles.  Here's the Bee with 2 grams of fiber. 



top view


bottom view


I just can't stand how cute and perfect this spindle is.



Over the next couple days I spun another 2 grams of fiber into two more turtles.



I finished the singles on Thursday night, and couldn't wait to start plying.  I first wound the paired singles into a plying ball (the core was a convenient cat toy I found next to my chair).  I was nervous about the turtles tangling, collapsing, or going out of control while winding, but I unwound them from the outside and it went very well.  Winding the ball took an hour.



I should have stopped there since it was getting late and I had to go to work the next day.  But I couldn't wait to start plying on the new lilac Kuchulu.  It felt enormous after the Bee.  This is after an hour of plying, and I couldn't really tell any difference in the amount of singles on the plying ball.



I should have stopped there, since it was getting very late and I had to go to work the next day, but I couldn't. I had to keep going, and it took a total of three hours to ply the four grams.



Then the plying was done.  I should have stopped there and gone to bed, since it was now very, very late and I had to go to work the next day, but I couldn't. I had to know how much yardage I had.

I transferred the yarn to my skein winder and counted the wraps.  That all took another 45 minutes.  But finally, I knew how much I spun!

Ta Daaa! This is 4.84 grams of merino 2-ply yarn, measuring 183 yards.  Spun on the Bee, plied on the Kuchulu.  



This is the finest yarn I have ever spun.  I'm so proud of myself.  I love this tiny spindle.



To end this long post, here's (almost) my whole spindle flock.  One is missing because I can't find it.  It's in a project bag upstairs somewhere, but I couldn't immediately put my hands on it tonight.



Back to front for the Turkish spindles, then left to right, these are:

27g (0.95 oz) Jenkins Yarn Tools, Turkish Delight, beeswing narra arms, maple shaft (2012)
11 g (0.38 oz) Jenkins Yarn Tools, Kuchulu, verawood arms, walnut shaft (2011)
12g (0.42 oz) Jenkins Yarn Tools, Kuchulu, snakewood arms and shaft (2013)
8g (0.28 oz) Jenkins Yarn Tools, Kuchulu, olivewood arms, maple shaft (2012)
3g (0.10 oz) Jenkins Yarn Tools, Bee Hummingbird, ebony arms and walnut shaft (2017)
10g (0.35 oz) Jenkins Yarn Tools, Kuchulu, lilac arms, walnut shaft (2017)
8 g (0.28 oz) Cascade Spindle Co., Tiger, zebrawood whorl, mahogany shaft (2008)
21g (0.75 oz) Spindlewood Co., Square Mini, cocobolo whorl, ebony shaft (2009)
20g (0.70 oz) Spindlewood Co. Square Standard, birdseye maple whorl and shaft (2011)
23g (0.81 oz) Spindlewood Co., Square Mini, amboyna burl whorl, cocobolo shaft (2015)
20g (0.70 oz) Spindlewood Co., Square Mini, thuja burl whorl, flamewood shaft (2013)
23g (0.75 oz) Spindlewood Co., Square Midi, myrtlewood whorl and shaft (2016)
21g (0.75 oz) Spindlewood Co., Square Mini, tulipwood whorl and shaft (2016)
25.5g (0.90 oz) Spindlewood Co., Square Midi, amboyna burl whorl, mahogany shaft (2017)

not pictured is:
15g (0.53 oz) Spindlewood Co. Square Mini Featherweight, flamewood whorl and shaft (2012)

That's a lot of spindles.  However, I use them all and investing in art and the artists who make it is never a bad idea.

Kuchulu and cashmere and silk

I wanted to spin last night, but I didn't want to leave My Chair, even to sit at my beloved Schacht-Reeves wheel.  Solution? Kuchulu.

I love Kuchulu spindles because they're so perfectly tiny that I can spin while reclining in My Chair, watching Netflix on my computer, blissful in my productive slothfulness.



This is a Kuchulu spindle by Jenkins Woodworking, made of snakewood and weighing 12 grams, which I got at the Columbia Gorge Fiber Festival in 2013.  The fiber is natural colored cashmere and silk from Abstract Fiber, which I got at the Hood River Spin-In last month.

What a gorgeous spindle.  What a gorgeous bundle of fiber.  I feel like I'm spinning silver.

Last weekend, Emma and I went to the Columbia Gorge Fiber Festival with some friends. This was a FANTASTIC weekend, and not just because of the fiber festival. The weather was lovely, gorgeous and sunny, the flowers were blooming, and the company was wonderful. The fact that there was a fiber festival to attend was the icing on the cake, although that part was a bit dangerous.



My haul.  I almost wasn't going to post this picture online, because...well, there's just so much.  But it's all wonderful fiber, and will give me and Emma many, many hours of spinning pleasure.  See, some of that is Emma's, so it's really not as bad as it looks.  Right?  Of course there's a lot of fiber, I was buying for two!

I'm too tired right now to list everything out properly, but there's alpaca, alpaca/silk, alpaca/merino, polwarth/silk, shetland/merino, shetland/corriedale, blue-faced leicester, merino/bamboo, superfine merino, and a pack of angelina that Emma picked out to blend with merino we already have at home.  Gorgeous stuff, all of it.

The sharp-eyed among you may notice that there are {cough} three spindles on the table.  Ummm, yeah.  I can't resist.  But only two are for me! 



Mine are the Jenkins Kuchulu (olivewood, 8 grams) on the left and the Spindlewood Square Mini Featherweight (flamewood, 15 grams) in the center.  Those were the only spindles I was going to get, but then on Sunday when we went back to the market, Emma somehow talked me into getting her a Jenkins Turkish Delight (beeswing narra, 27 grams), even though she much prefers to spin on a wheel.  It wasn't really that hard to talk me into it- everyone (everyone!) needs a Jenkins spindle of one size or another.

Plus, I have a devious plot to appropriate her spindle for myself when she remembers that she prefers to spin on her wheel.

So here's a group shot of all my lovely spindles.  The family is growing!



Left to right:

8g (0.28 oz) Jenkins Woodworking, Kuchulu, olivewood arms, maple shaft
11 g (0.38 oz) Jenkins Woodworking, Kuchulu, verawood arms, walnut shaft
27g (0.95 oz) Jenkins Woodworking, Turkish Delight, beeswing narra arms, maple shaft
20g (0.7 oz) Spindlewood Co. Square Standard, birdseye maple whorl and shaft
21g (0.75 oz) Spindlewood Co., Square Mini, cocobolo whorl, ebony shaft
15g (0.5 oz) Spindlewood Co. Square Mini Featherweight, flamewood whorl and shaft
8 g (0.28 oz) Cascade Spindle Co., Tiger, zebrawood whorl, mahogany shaft

On Saturday night, I started spinning one of the shetland/merino batts I got from Sporfarm, and it is wonderful stuff.  I initially only got one package of this fiber, but I liked it so much I made Anne go back to the market on Sunday so I could get a couple (OK, six) more.  And just a few other things.  Oops.



After we cleaned out the market finished shopping, we went up the valley to the Blossom Craft Show in Odell, which was another of the Hood River County Blossom Fest weekend events.  It was way bigger than Anne and I were expecting, full of wonderful high-quality crafts made by local artisans.  Lots of woodworking, jewelry, quilts, weaving, ceramics, glass, and other fun things to look at. 

My eye was immediately caught by this bowl, in the first booth we saw as we walked in the door.  It kept rattling around in my brain and poking at me as we went through the whole fair, and ultimately it had to come home with me.  It's turned by a man who lives in Parkdale, out of bigleaf maple, and it has an amazingly chatoyant grain pattern.



For now it's on the table next to My Chair...loveliness holding loveliness.

The grand reveal!  The yarn is done!



This is the Fiber Optic 50:50 superwash merino and bamboo top, in "Catamaran Batik", that I bought at Sock Summit.  I finished plying it Saturday morning, and it has had a nice warm bath.  It is beautiful.  That's all there is to it.  It's beautiful.  I can't believe I spun this on a spindle.

 Can you SEE how soft it is?!



Anyway, the stats.  This is a 4 oz. (114 gram) skein, and is very skinny yarn.  Ready?

It contains 2,068 yards of 2-ply.  Wowzer.

I was just spinning as fine as was comfortable, figuring I would get about 1,600 yards, based on my previous two Kuchulu skeins.  Apparently the fine merino + fine bamboo let me spin extra-fine.



As a side note, I had a terrible time photographing the colors in this yarn.  All my pictures came out too dark or too washed out or too blue or too red or too yellow.  I did some extensive adjusting in Photoshop, so if the color looks weird on your monitor, that's probably why.  In real life, the yarn is mainly turquoise and purple, with some sapphire blue and sea green.  Really, really pretty.  Imagine it somewhere in between all the pictures that are in this post.



This yarn represents a pretty large time investment:

• ~38 hours to spin the singles on my Kuchulu (calculated based on the time to spin 1 gram, tested 3 times)
• 9.5 hrs to ply on my wheel
• 0.5 hr to wind off the bobbin onto the skeinwinder
• 0.5 hr to count the wraps in the skein
• 0.5 hr to rewind the skein after washing

I am thrilled with the final yarn.  It's so soft and has such a lovely sheen.  I can't stop petting the skein. I didn't take any special care to match the color sections as I plyed, I just let the barberpoling happen as it would.  It turned out with good distinct runs of color, and should look lovely when woven.

To close, let's just take a moment to ponder the fact that 2,068 yards is 1.2 miles.  Of yarn.  Of 2-ply yarn.  That means approximately 2.4 miles of singles.  From 4 oz of fiber. Spun on a spindle.

TA  DA!  A major milestone was accomplished at 10:30 last night.  I finished spinning the singles of my 4-oz braid of Fiber Optic "Catamaran" merino/bamboo top!



I can't believe it's done.  I'm excited to see the finished yarn but also sad, because I so thoroughly enjoyed spinning this.  I started at the end of August, and it took a long time because I spun the fiber ridiculously fine and mostly had it as a travel project.  It was on the go for almost exactly six months.  The bulk of these singles were spun at our weekly Crafty Night at Anne's house.

I'll be plying these on my wheel tomorrow, and am plotting to weave a scarf/stole/shawl with the finished yarn.  Length and width will be determined based on available yardage.  I was debating about adding beads to the yarn while plying, but I think I'll forgo that and add beads only to the fringe of the finished piece since I want the yarn to take front stage.

So that was how I ended my birthday.  The rest of the day was equally lovely, spent in the company of good friends.  (I am truly blessed to have a friend like Anne.  And don't forget Rachel and Meg! Thank you!)  Anne took me and Emma out to lunch and then we went to another lampwork bead class.  Emma had to tag along and I set her up in an adjacent room with clay, drawing supplies, and snacks.  I was worried that the whining quotient was going to be high during the 4-hour class, but there was NOT ONE BIT of complaining.  (I am truly blessed to have a daughter like Emma.  Thanks sweetie, that was the best birthday present ever!)

I made another lovely pile of beads:



I concentrated on making sets this time, and smaller beads that will be made into earrings or necklace/earring sets.  I started off with some purple,



and did a couple variations of blue spotty ones,



a cute little pair of clear with blue bumps,



plain blue (rounds and flats) with a bumpy blue and white focal,



and a teal and white set.



Making glass beads is so much fun.  It was a wonderful birthday.

How about a fiber round-up?  I've been busy recently, and finally got around to taking pictures this morning.

First, though, I want to show this:



Emma's really getting the hang of spinning!  She finished her first full bobbin of singles at Crafty Night this week, and is well on her way to filling a second this morning.  I really can't think of a better way to spend a Saturday morning than a mother/daughter spinning session.  After all the miserableness of the past year, this brings me so much joy.

Now, onto my show and tell.

This is a project from a couple months ago.  It's special because it is a blend of Corriedale wool and mohair, and the mohair is locally grown.  The goats that grew this fiber live in Summerville, at Pleasant Hill Farm, about a half hour from my house.



I blended the fibers on my carder, 80% wool:20% mohair, and spun a fine singles.  This yarn is a 3-ply, from three batts, and the skein is 340 yards, 137 grams (4.8 oz).  The spinning was delightful, and LOOK at that shine!  It's drapey and smooth and soft and will develop a lovely halo.



I have a pile of mohair left (I went a little crazy when Emma and I were at the farm...) in white, silvery black, and light tan, so watch for more of this yarn.

Next up is the gray-brown Romney wool from Christmas, which I finished off on New Year's Eve/New Year's Day.  Emma and I had a quiet night to welcome in 2012, with our dinner of shrimp, cheese and crackers, clementines, a homemade veggie dip tray, and raspberry lemonade.  This is the second year that we've done this as our "traditional" New Year's Eve party, just the two of us, and I found myself looking forward to it as much as she was.  It was a very pleasant evening of snacking-for-dinner, watching movies, and spinning.



I ended up with about 420 yards of 3-ply yarn, a total of 241 grams (8.5 oz). This will work very well as part of a future sweater with the Christmas Tunis and Friday Harbor Border Leicester-Romney that I have tucked away in the closet.  Some may be dyed, or maybe not. Not a decision that needs to be made immediately; for now I'm just collecting yarn.



Next, here's a Work-In-Progress.  This is the superfine New Zealand Merino that I bought with Emma's wheel.  It's lovely stuff, incredibly soft.  I'm spinning it very very fine (surprise, surprise...) and have finished the first batch.



This is 19 grams of roughly 130 wpi singles, but it's hard to measure accurately.  It'll be easier after plying.



Another Work-In-Progress: I'm still going on the bundle of Fiber Optic merino/bamboo top that I got at Sock Summit.  I have almost three-quarters of it spun, with only 32 grams left.  I'm spinning this very very fine, and savoring every inch.



And one last Work-In-Progress to wrap things up.  This is the Fiber Optic pencil roving from Sock Summit, 50% superwash merino and 50% bamboo (rayon).  I pulled this out after I finished the gray-brown Romney because I needed some color...and just because.



Lovely greens.  The pencil roving comes as a doubled strand, so the first thing I did was split it in half lengthwise and wind each into a ball.  I'll spin each from the same end, and when I ply, hopefully the colors will mostly match up.



I started spinning the first half last Tuesday, at Crafty Night.  I'm drafting this out very very fine (are you seeing the trend yet?!) for laceweight.  I have tentative plans for this to be woven into a scarf, using it for both the warp and weft.  The long runs of color should give a plaid-ish effect when the yarn is crossed with itself.



Whew!  So that's what I've been doing.

I'm still completely smitten with my Kuchulu.  I started another bundle of Sock Summit fiber yesterday.  It is gorgeous...



This is top from Fiber Optic Yarns, 50% superwash merino / 50% bamboo (rayon).  It's beautiful stuff, that shimmers and sparkles and fairly glows.  It's spinning up wonderfully, and should make beautiful laceweight.  I have 4 ounces (115 grams), so it will also make a LOT of laceweight. 



And also, here's another super happy fun factoid about turkish spindles:  Even the pattern on the underside of the spindle is pretty, especially with color shifts.

Well.

I have something to show you.



That, my friends, is a very full Kuchulu.  Yes, that is my Kuchulu somewhere in that ball of singles.  Yikes!

I may have taken this personal challenge of mine, high yardage on a Kuchulu, just a wee bit far.

This is the last of the Bunny Patch Fibers merino/angora top from New Hues Handspuns.  I was spinning merrily along, and when I paused to evaluate how full the spindle was getting vs. how much fiber remained, I decided that there really wasn't that much left to spin.  So I might as well just carry on and finish it off, right?

Turns out there was a bit more than I thought, but of course once that notion entered my brain it wouldn't leave.  Personal challenge, you know.  Sooooo, I had to see if I could get the rest on the spindle.



I kept wrapping and wrapping, eventually just going around and around when I ran out of room on the arms to do the typical turkish spindle winding pattern.  No arms visible this time!

So how much was it?  I got 725 yards of singles on the Kuchulu!  Great googly moogly...



Those are the three spindlefuls.  Left to right, I had 16 grams (465 yards), 18 grams (524 yards), and 25 grams (725 yards).  The color in the singles was beautifully variegated, ranging from deep forest green through light sage, with occasional patches of greeny-teal and greeny-brown.  These pictures don't do it justice, the color is hard to capture.

I wound a plying ball yesterday,



and finished the plying today.  It took a looooonnnngggg time to ply.  I'm feeling it in my shoulders now.

But then it was done.  And I was sad.  No more spinning to do for this fiber.



The finished yarn is beautiful.  It's 59 grams (2 oz.), and I have 817 yards of lovely soft fine green yarn to play with.