The Art of Front Loader Felting

If you get one of the new High Efficiency front loading washing machines, you will notice that your clothes are suddenly a whole lot cleaner and seem much dryer when they come out of the wash than they did when all you had was your top loader. The new machines use a lot less water than the top loaders and they are much more gentle on your clothes. They have a computer in control that evaluates the load and decides how much water to use and how much washing is really needed.

When you tell your knitting friends who do not have a front loader yet, about your new acquisition, I bet the first thing you hear is that it is nice for you to have a modern machine, but to forget felting your knitting ever again - unless it is something that you don't want felted!

Well, friends, do not despair. You can felt in your front loader, but you will have to be more determined than before. Felting in the front loader is even more of an art than it used to be in the top loader, because the first thing you have to do is outsmart your smart washing machine! Things probably won't felt in 5 minutes like before - it may take one or two complete cycles to get the look you want.

I would tell you to start by reading the book that comes with the machine so that you understand all the settings, but my experience is that the books are totally worthless and do not cover how to take control of your washer. For example, my washer - an LG brand - will spin out without spraying water if I just turn it on, and select the spin speed I want then press the start button. This is not documented anywhere in the book that came with it. Someone on the Internet made this discovery and shared it on one of the lists I read in response to my whining.

Felting wool requires heat and agitation - and your agitation does not count. Since the washer computes how much water to use, if you just put your item to be felted in, with nothing else, don't expect much felting to occur - unless the wool felts super easy. So, find out how to run your load with really hot water. One item is not going to create much agitation either.

Get yourself some felting helpers to build a load that will definitely cause some agitation as well as adding weight to the load to fool the computer into thinking that you have a big load - and thus need more water.

I have some items that I keep just for my felting loads. My recipe consists of one dozen tennis balls. The photo shows them in a mesh bag, but I dump them loose in the machine when I felt. Add to the balls, one pair of old jeans (or more) a pair of flip flops, one old towel (or more) and an optional pair of old tennis shoes. Now you have an agitating load!

The next thing you have to do is experiment a little - remember this is an art and all front loaders are not created equally plus different wools felt at different rates. The best thing to do is to make a swatch (this is not a dirty word!) and felt it using the concoction you have assembled to do the deed.

Wet your swatch and don't squeeze out too much water. I have found that a wet swatch felts faster than a dry one. I guess it is because no wash water is wasted getting it wet, and you get a fast temperature change - one of the felting keys.

Put your swatch in a zippered pillow cover then into the wash. Don't forget to add a little soap , Dawn or Synthropol (not detergent since it contains whiteners). Set your machine on hot or Sani-Wash and let her rip! The swatch needs to be at least 6 inches wide and long so you are getting something to work with.

In my front loader, I can usually get a satisfactory felted item in one wash cycle for most wools, but for others it takes two cycles. I have found I have to use the Sani-Wash cycle to get really hot water most of the time. I also pick a long cycle, although some people say that it is the temperature changes that cause the felting to occur, so a shorter cycle might work too.

Felting time does vary with the wool used. I had one commercial yarn that felted well in my machine with half of a normal hot wash cycle. A long hot cycle would have ruined this project. My favorite handspun wool takes two to three Sani-Wash (extra hot and long) cycles to make suitable felt. So, experience is the best teacher, and when in doubt, swatch and felt the swatch.

Once your item is felted to your liking, pull and stretch it into shape over a box and or towels or other stuffing that makes it the right size. Then let it dry.

If you want to read a good felting reference, I suggest either of Kathleen Taylor's books on felting - Knit One Felt Too or I Heart Felting. She has some great information about swatches and felting in both of those books. She does not have front loader specific stuff though.

Good luck with your felting projects!

Rockstars and Space Bags

Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival is the largest Fiber Festival of it's kind in the United States. Since shortly after I began spinning in 2003, I knew I wanted to go. This was my lucky year.

I have a spinning friend in Virginia, Julie, of Julie's Handspun Yarns, who I get to see rarely. Julie invited me to come and stay with her and attend the festival. I felt so lucky to have a guide and I left the planning up to her. I felt so lucky to have an experienced guide for the festival. I wanted to be sure I did not miss anything important, and I know Julie would be sure I didn't.

So, the Thursday before the festival, I caught a plane and headed to Virginia. Very early Saturday morning, we left Julie's house and headed for the Festival.


We arrived before the official opening time, and went on in. This was a good thing, because we were able to go to the big Exposition Center before it got too crowded. We bought a beautiful silver merino fleece that won second place in it's class in the fleece judging. We split this fleece and sent it to be processed.


We wandered through the barn and managed to get through about 1 more barn before the crowds got so big, you could not stir them with a stick. There were lines for T-Shirts and lines for Socks That Rock yarn which we did not get in. We decided that we were not waiting in line for those.

Most of the booths were so crowded that there was no way to get in. We did score a washed and skirted Coopworth fleece that we split. I have not spun Coopworth before, but it looks really nice.




I went to the Ravelry Meetup, and got to meet Mary Heather, Jess, and Casey. The lady in the wine colored sweater is a Ravelry friend - Llamalady (Barbara) that I also got to visit with. It was really fun to get to actually speak with someone I felt like I knew from the Ravlery She-Kints Group.

The day passed quickly. My friend Cindy was there working at the Jacob Sheep Conservancy Booth, and she wanted to go to dinner with us, so we were waiting for her to "get off work". This made us hang around later than we would have.

I was falling down tired so I found a bench outside of one of the barns and sat down. Being Texan, I made small talk with another lady sitting on the bench. I asked her what she bought and one thing she had was Socks that Rock sock yarn. This yarn is famous for the wonderful colors it is dyed in. I have never knit with this but have been hearing about it for a couple of years. By this time, late in the day, the lines were all gone. So, I got Julie and we headed to the Fold's booth.

The Fold had lots of Socks that Rock Yarn left at full retail, and they had a basket of seconds on sale at a good price, but only 4 skeins were left and the colors were, shall we say, ugly. So we shopped around their booth, and while we were making up our minds they put out the seconds they had held back for Sunday - two huge bins - and we got first choice! We got the Socks that Rock Yarn at a good price and we did not have to wait in line at all!

The next day at the Festival, it was raining and it never let up all day. This was good for us, but bad for the vendors since it hurt the crowds. The day starts with the Sheep to Shawl Competition.

Julie is a member of the Tidewater Treadlers Sheep to Shawl team, so we were there very early to get ready. I had never seen a Sheep to Shawl competition, and it was lots of fun to watch the sheep - a black Hog Island Ewe - get shorn, and then have the spinning and weaving commence.

In a Sheep to Shawl Competition, the loom arrives with the warp on it. The sheep is shorn and the spinners start spinning the fleece in the grease. Once the first bobbin is done, the weaving starts. The team has a short length of time to spin the weft for the shawl and get the shawl woven. It is important that the spinners keep up with the weaver.

The team is judged on several criteria, including their weaving accuracy, spinning quality, costumes (the Treadlers compete in Colonial dress), adherence to the size specified for the shawl and their teamwork. Once the shawls are completed and off the loom they are washed before being judged. After the awards are announced, all the shawls are auctioned off.

The Tidewater Treadlers had won the competition three times before, and they added win number four to their record this year. They also won a special award for the best spinners in the competition.

While Julie was spinning, I took the Umbrella and went to Jennie the Potter's booth to meet Knitting Rockstars Amy Singer from Knitty and Heather Ordover from the Craft-Lit Podcast. These two ladies are so nice in person - just the way I expected them to be.

I did some shopping and got Finnsheep roving and superwash Blue Faced Leichester roving as well as a few other treasures.


Once the Sheep to Shawl Competition was over, Julie and I bought another fleece - this one from a Columbia Sheep, and we took that to be processed. On the way back, we noticed there was no line for T-Shirts, so we stopped in and got one. Our patience - or lack of it - regarding waiting in lines paid off for us again.

Because of the rain, we really did not get to see all the booths at the festival. We missed the skein competition as well as the handmade garments. We also missed the sheep dog trials as well as lots of other stuff I am sure. I guess that gives me something to look forward to when I manage to go back.

Monday morning, it was back to Texas for me. I was very concerned about getting all my loot in my suitcase and I would have never made it without Space Bags! That suitcase was stuffed to the gills. I was very worried about it popping. I am sure the TSA did not open it, because I don't think it could have been closed again.

I arrived home bone tired and very happy. This was the most fun I have had in a long time. The only thing that would have made the trip better would have been more sleep!

Colorful Cotton Lint

My friend Peggy gave me 2 pounds of ginned cotton lint last fall to experiment with dyeing. I have not done too much cotton dyeing so every time I do it, I have to wing it a bit. The MX Dyes are not my friend - yet anyway. I was sure that I did not want to spin the undyed lint though. That would be way too boring!

I found instructions for dyeing the lint and also for dyeing cotton sliver at the Cotton Spinning Website.

Joan Ruane runs this site, and she is an expert cotton spinner. She has instructions for dyeing the lint or sliver with both the MX Dyes and also with Natural Dyes on her website and she also has a DVD on how to spin cotton that is available there.

I sort of combined Joan's instructions on dyeing lint with her instructions on dyeing sliver, as I wanted multi-colored lint to spin rather than a solid color.

Here is what I did:

1. Scour the Cotton - put a pot on the burner and fill it about 3/4 full of water. Add a little dish soap. Break up the lint and immerse it in the water, forcing it under. Bring the pot to a simmer and let it simmer for 15-30 minutes or so. A lot of dirt will come out.
2. Rinse the Cotton and squeeze out most of the water.
3. Soak the wet lint in Salt water for 10 minutes - Here I switched to the instructions for dyeing cotton sliver. I used Joan's instructions of 1/2 cup of salt dissolved in one gallon of water and let my lint soak while I mixed my dyes and activator solution.
4. Mix dyes - I used Joan's recommendation of 1/4 tsp of dye powder to about 3/8 cup of water. I mixed the colors I wanted - a green, a purple, turquoise and navy blue in separate bottles.
5. Prepare soda ash solution to activate the dye - I mixed in another container 1/4 cup of soda ash to 3/4 cup of hot water. This should be enough soda ash solution for 6 colors of dye stock, so I was good with my 4 colors
6. Squeeze out wet lint and put it on plastic sheet - at this point I took the wet cotton lint from the salt water solution and squeezed it with my hands until it was fairly dry. I lined my concrete mixing tub (a useful Home Depot or Lowe's item) with a few sheets of newspaper and a large sheet of clear plastic from a partial roll my friend Laurie gave me. A garbage bag or a couple of sheets of saran would work. I then spread out the wet lint on the plastic in the tub.
7. Add activator to dye and apply - One at a time I added 1/8 cup or 1 ounce of activator to each dye. Then I applied that color at random on the lint until it was gone. The activator needs to be added to the dye, then the dye needs to be used quickly. I have read that after 45 minutes, it is technically exhausted or has lost a lot of potency.
8. Wrap the dyed fiber and leave in a warm place for the dye to work - Unlike the acid dyes, the MX dyes work at warm room temperature and do not like to get too hot. It was a fairly cool day so, I put my plexiglass cover on the concrete container with the wrapped dyed fiber and left it in the sun for a couple of hours. Then I left the dyed fiber alone until the next day before I began rinsing.
9. Rinse and rinse and rinse - Here is something that I find frustrating about the MX dyes - all the rinsing required. I have found that the item or yarn or fiber needs about 10 rinses in cool water before the water is semi-clear. I rinsed out the fiber
10. Scour the rinsed fiber and set the color - Next I put the fiber back in the pot of water with some Dawn and brought it up to a simmer for another 30 minutes to set the color.
11. Rinse out the soap, squeeze the fiber out - I had the bright idea to put the dyed lint in my front loader and spin it out. I put it in a mesh bag, but the heavy cotton that was full of water made the machine very unhappy. Next time I do this, I will remember to split it over several bags.
12. Dry the fiber - I put dyed lint in a mesh bag and gave it a dryer cycle which left it pretty wet still. Then, I let it dry over night and gave it another dryer cycle and it was slightly damp, so I put it in a mesh hamper that would let the air get to it and hung it to dry another day.
13. Tease, card and spin - I have started making punis from the fiber. It is going to be so much fun to spin my colored cotton!

Here is my pile of cotton fiber with some of the punis I have made so far. I will probably card all of it before I start spinning.

I am still not as comfortable with the MX dyes as with acid dyes on wool. This session helped some, but I guess I need more practice. Fortunately I have another pound and a half of cotton lint.

Now, I want to get out the bamboo roving I have and try dyeing that!

Clothes for Hand Cards

I have wanted to protect my hand cards from the elements for a while. I usually keep them tied together to protect the teeth, but that seemed like not enough. I am about to embark on a large, for me, carding project, and my cards are going to have to do a bit of traveling, so they really needed some clothes.

Today, I thought of a quick way to make them a cover in a short amount of time, and at the same time reuse something old.

You can do this for your cards too. It just takes minimal sewing skills, an old pair of jeans - preferably from a man, because you want wide legs at the bottom, and about 1 1/2 yards of 1 inch wide grosgrain ribbon. You will also need a sewing machine and an iron, but I suppose you could do without these things and have something a little less finished.

Here are the steps to make a cover for your cards:

1. Lay the jeans out on a table or cutting board. See if one of your cards will fit into the bottom of the leg. Mine just fit in my husband's old jeans. If they don't fit because the leg is too small, you just will have to hem both ends. Move the cards up until the jean leg is wide enough to hold the card and whack off the hem there.
   
   



2. See how deep the pockets need to be. For my cards, one pocket needed to be about 6 inches deep, so for the two pockets, I needed a minimum of 12 inches plus some ease for folding.
   
   



3. Cut off the leg of the jeans at 2 times the depth you need plus about one inch for a hem. If you need to hem both ends, then allow another inch. For my cards, I cut the leg of the jeans at about 13 1/2 inches, giving the pocket a little more depth. I would err on the side of too deep rather than not deep enough.
   
   



4. If you find your jeans are way too big for the cards, then you could take up the inside leg seam to fit your carders. Also, jeans taper down to the ankle, so one end of your tube will be a little larger than the other one. This did not bother me, but if it bothers you, then adjust the inside seam to straighten things out. If your jeans are just not big enough, then, I would take both legs, and cut them at the desired length. Open up the seam that is not topstitched, and then sew the two legs together to make your tube at the right size for your cards.
   
   



5. Take the piece of jean leg and hem the end you cut. I just serged the raw edge and pressed under about an inch, then sewed around the opening with a straight stitch on my machine.
   
   



6. Fold the tube in half with the hems together. Locate the center and mark with a pin. Sew the center of your ribbon through all layers at this point with your sewing machine.
   
   




7. Now still with the hems together, open the pocket up and sew the insides together along the hem. Leave the outsides of the pockets free. This will keep your pockets together and keep things from flopping when you put in your cards.



8. You now have 2 pockets, one for each card. Put in your hand cards, wrap the ribbon around the handles and tie in a bow.

I hope this makes sense to you and that your cards get clothes.

DogGeekery

A warning. This is only remotely fiber related, but I feel I must share something with you all.

Today has not been a great day so far. We are in the middle of getting the house ready for a party on Saturday night, so things are getting cleaned that have not been clean in YEARS. This is silly, I admit. No one coming to the party cares. They like us for the way we are and not the way we should be.

So, this morning, my Sweetie removed some construction stuff from our back porch that has been there since 2002. I felt he would appreciate some help and I was worried about him injuing his back with the heavy stuff. So, I went out to help him.

We uncovered many treasures. One of them was a dirty laundry basket that had stuff in it that all went to the garbage. I thought I could use this basket for another purpose, and it was dirty. I brought it in and left it in the utility rooom sink filling with soapy water. I promptly forgot this so the water kept running. I was preoccupied with helping. My mistake.

So, when I discovered the sink had run over and spread water all over this end of the house (here is the fiber part) and into the knitting room running under the Pergo floor, I was not happy. I admited my mistake quickly, and my Sweetie ran for the shop vac and started vacuuming water up.

He was not too happy with me for being a dummy and forgetting the water. I wasn't too happy with me either. We cleaned water for a while and then he said some of our dogs had run outside when he came in. Then he realized he forgot the gate was open as he was using the tractor to take out the trash from the porch to the front of the house.

Kharma has a way of getting even doesn't it? He realized that he forgets things too and that took some of the heat of of me for being an idiot.

So, things went from bad to worse in a hurry. We dropped the vacuum and left the wet floor and went outside, praying our dogs had not gone far.

Now, if you have dogs, here is the part where you need to pay attention. Our dogs are all chow hounds and our yard is large. They can be selectively deaf to their names. but from the time they are little, we liberally give them cookies or treats every time they come to us when they are called. When they are babies, we always have cookies in our pockets, and even as adults, when we call them from the yard, they most often get a treat for coming to their names. They know coming to us will NEVER get them in trouble. If we need to scold them, which is very rare, we go to them. We don't ask them to come to be punished.

So, we live at the end of a dead end street. The dogs had been out at least 15 minutes. They are whippets and could have been far away.

We went into the yard, called their names and said the magic word "Cookie". They were all across the street which at our house means they were over the length of a football field away.

All of them came running like they were catching a rabbit. I am so, so grate full. I can not even imagine how much worse the day would have been if one of them was lost. Of course, they all got lots of treats.

So, I encourage you, if you have dogs, to always give your dog a treat for coming to his name. We call it "pay to play". You never know when it might come in very handy. We are drying things out and hoping the floor can make it through one flood. I hope I don't ever do that again.

Next time, I will try to get things back to fiber, but today this is DogGeekery.

Wildflower Whiners Retreat

This weekend is the wonderful Wildflower Fiber Spinning Retreat. Unfortunately, I could not go this year due to other obligations. I was not alone. Several of my Spinning Buddies in the "Texas Twisters" also could not go. So, we decided to have our own retreat which we called the "Wildflower Whiners Spinning Retreat".

Our retreat had lots of the fun elements of the real Wildflower Retreat - food, spinning, workshops and laughing without the drawback of not sleeping in our own beds!

There were six of us, Joanne, Laurie, Maxine, Marlene, Terri and me and we gathered at my house on Saturday morning. Everyone brought their wheels. Joanne brought a wonderful cake, Laurie brought cream cheese, jelly and crackers and I made Lemon Bars. So we ate and had coffee and spun.


After lunch we had our "workshops." Marlene bought her Portuguese Knitting DVD and so we watched that. To knit "in the Portuguese way" you tension the yarn through a pin or around your neck. The yarn is wrapped with a flick of your non-dominate hands thumb (left thumb for all you right handers) and it rests either on top (for knit stitches) or underneath (for purl stitches) of your needle. This method of knitting requires much less hand stress than knitting English or Continental style.

Laurie and Joanne tried it out while the rest of us kept spinning. There were some fits and starts. Joanne thought she was doing the knit stitch, but it turned our she had learned the purl stitch. There was lots of laughing about this.

At the real Wildflower Retreat, Cindy and Rita took a workshop on Viking Knitting where they made bracelets. They texted us a photo of their bracelets,so of course we had to send them photos of our Portuguese Knitting Workshop!

Our second "workshop" was the Patsy Zawistoski DVD on Spinning Cotton, Silk and Flax. It made me want to get my cotton sliver out and spin it. That just may be the next thing on my wheel since I was able to finish plying the fiber we dyed at the Winter Fiber Fun Retreat yesterday.


After everyone left, I searched YouTube for
Portuguese Knitting and found several good videos of the technique. I spent the evening learning how to do it - left handed of course! I managed several rows of the kitchen towel that I am knitting. While I might not totally switch to this technique, I am glad to have it in my bag of tricks and will keep trying it.

We had a really fun day. It was so nice to be able to get together with good friends and share the crafts that we are passionate about.

It did help make up for not being able to go to Wildflower this year.

Winter Fiber Fun - Roving Dyeing

My friend, Mary at Fancy Fibers, organized and ran a wonderful retreat in February, 2009, at a local camp. It was loosely organized for all types of Fiber Folk to come and do their thing and just hang out for the weekend.

She planned only a few classes for the retreat. One of those was a fiber dyeing class that I ended up teaching as a last minute fill in when the original teacher had to cancel. The roving was merino superwash supplied by my friend Joanne of Terrific Fibers

The class had about 14 people in it including several first time dyers. I was very concerned about keeping the dye where it should be and off of where it should not be, and I am happy to say we were succesful with that effort.

We covered everything well with plastic and newspapers, then laid out our soaked rovings on plastic wrap. We painted these with dye stock, then sprayed them with vinegar and wrapped them tightly. We rolled them up jelly roll fashioned. We labeled them with some plastic tape and markers and put them in roasters to steam.

Each of the rovings turned out beautiful, and the fiber spins like butter.