the Village Knittiot

Just in case my obsession with enjoyment of knitting, spinning and all things fiber wasn’t enough I thought it might be time to add something new to the mix. As I mentioned a couple posts ago, I’ve been completely absorbed with reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. For me, our relationship with food, its role in good health, the environmental impact of our growing systems and agricultural theory have long been an interest of mine. The evolution of my awareness and the resulting changes I have made at each stage of the game are not something I typically talk about here, but I am feeling more and more of a need to write about it these days. Pollan’s book coupled with May’s Eat Local Challenge (not to mention the Summer of Knitting Naturally and other attempts to green-up our Village) have really gotten me thinking about my food and where it comes from — no longer just about whether or not it is organic and/or healthy and/or affordable.

Because I have (once again) found myself too late to join any of the local CSAs that I am interested in, my thoughts naturally turned to the backyard. Despite living in a bustling metropolitan area, we are lucky enough to have a little postage stamp sized piece of earth behind our apartment. And I must confess that, until this week, it was almost feeling a little too big and the prospect of taming its wildness a little overwhelming. For those of you who grew up in houses with yards and possibly gardens, this may seem silly, but as someone who spent her entire childhood and most of adulthood in an apartment — usually on an upper floor — lawn care and/or gardening was not something I had to think about. When we bought and briefly owned a house, I had delusions of becoming a great gardener and growing bountiful vegetables and amazing flowers. That lasted for about one afternoon, after which I retreated into the house and told my backyard it could do whatever it wanted. Occassionally I would head out there and try to show it who was boss, but this (wo)man had no dominion over her land. I gave up and let my backyard become very unkempt natural.

When I was younger I spent a considerable amount of time at my aunt’s house. She lived in the country and kept what to my 5-year-old self felt like an enormous garden. She would slather sunscreen on us some afternoons and send us out into the rows to weed. We hated it and complained bitterly. We also got very little done and usually spent the day sitting in the midst of the green beans picking and eating them right off the plants. They were delicious, but the experience did not improve my green thumb. There were also a couple of years that we had an apartment on the ground floor where we planted a lovely little flower garden around the edges of our stone patio and that was singularly satisfying. So, I’ve never planted vegetables and I have no reason to believe that I am going to be any good at it. But you know what? I do believe it. I believe it with a rabid intensity. Thus, I have set about planning and creating a summer vegetable garden…

While undertaking a task of this nature is normally quite overwhelming for this little knittiot, for some reason I have been really good at breaking down each task into manageable, bite-sized steps. So, I spent a leisurely Wednesday evening at the bookstore flipping through some of their gardening books. I’ve decided that even though we have a backyard that has some actual dirt, this isn’t a permanent place of residence and therefore container gardening is the best way to go. Portable gardens can be carried with you. Next I tamed the wilds of the area, trimming back the enormous bush that had taken over most of the growing space and pulling up the mammoth weeds that had managed to pop up all over. Today a trip to the local hardware store will result in some chicken wire for creating a small yard waste compost pile. I have also drawn several diagrams of what the space will look like. Some are ridiculously ambitious and involve plans to can tomatoes in the fall. Others are more manageable. I’m leaning toward manageable, mostly because I prefer to succeed in my pursuits.

Pictures will follow at various points along the way…

Fleece Update
And lest you worry about my poor fleeces and fear they have been abandoned to a new monomania, I assure you I love all my children equally. The washed bits from the cold water scouring experiment have now been either combed or carded. My first attempt to spin the fleece involved using some of the carded rolags. The results were awful. It was difficult to spin and the resulting yarn was very rough and not at all what I want to be knitting with. Nevertheless, I plied it and knit a rather rustic looking gauge swatch. While it isn’t the softest thing in the world, I must say that the colors are just gorgeous — a lovely, subtly varigated, brown/grey tweed. I am certain that the issues with the rolags have far more to do with my inability to card correctly, so I am looking more into what I am doing wrong.

After the unsatisfying results from spinning with the rolags, I decided to try spinning straight from the lock after combing out the tips and the shorn end a little. The result was scrumptious. Easy to spin. Soft and inviting singles. Even the plying was a joy. All around a very good attempt and I now have my first sizable ball of handspun somewhere in a 2-ply lace-weight range. Sample swatch to follow at a later date.

I did manage to wash some more of the fleece, this time in the recommended hot water and the results were much, much better. However, despite two washes and two rinses, the tips are still quite matted and dirty. In the book Hands on Spinning by Lee Raven, she actually advocates a method of fleece washing that has you slightly agitate the tips to get the dirt out. I am planning on trying out her instructions on the next round which will probably be sometime this weekend. Once I determine which method I most prefer, I will be finishing up this fleece in short order and moving onto the other two, which I am hoping to process much more quickly than I have this one and probably in larger batches.

On a final note, things around the Village may be a little quiet over the next week or so. My best friend and her husband are coming out to visit us over memorial day weekend and there is much work to be done before they arrive. So updates may be few. Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Yesterday I noticed that my copy of the holy tome of spinning was in at the library. So, Mr. Knittiot and I hopped in the car and took a quick jaunt to one of our favorite places where I picked up The Alden Amos Big Book of Handspinning. I have had it in my possesion for less than 24 hours and I have already learned more in a couple hours of reading than I have in months. This is one of those books that must become a permanent part of my own library.

I of course skipped right to the section on scouring fleeces where I discovered a few things I thought I ought to pass on. As it turns out, water temperature does matter. Yesterday as I was combing out the results of my cold water wash, I noticed that it felt a bit greasier than my hot water batch had. According to Amos, that was most likely because the grease or fat in the fiber only melts at somewhere around 105-110 degrees. So, the detergent did the best it could, but if the substance wouldn’t melt, it couldn’t entirely remove it. He also gives a mini chemistry lesson that explains how soaps and detergents interact with fibers and the effects of hard vs. soft water on the process. And while he does provide detailed instructions for his own method of scouring, what is really impressive is the information and explanations about how everything works, which is really important if you want to experiment and find your own method (particularly one that doesn’t waste so much water, and even there, he tries to help you by telling you at what points you can conserve water).

I made it through the section on carding and found his concise, yet detailed instructions to be of great help. This morning in just 10 minutes I was able to easily master the technique and produce my first two rolags, which look significantly better than my previous attempts using what little information I found online. It’s a fairly easy process, in fact, and one which can be done anytime you have an extra five minutes or so.

I am also doing some spinning, but sadly none of it is from my festival purchases. I’m trying to finish up a project with some BFL I started sometime back, mostly because I want to free up a couple of my bobbins, but also because I hate leaving things unfinished. Over the course of the next couple of days I plan to spend a considerable amount of time with my new buddy Alden. He is so jolly and pleasant. I just know we are going to be great friends.

Sunday morning after we got home I laid out all three fleeces (they are technically half fleeces, but writing “half fleece” everytime feels tiresome to me, so when I say fleece, just know that I understand they are only half of a fleece — but a fleece nonetheless) on a sheet in my living room to air out a bit and decide what I was going to do with them. The woman who sold them to us told me *not* to keep them in the plastic bags, but didn’t tell me what I could put them in so I did a little research. Pillow cases, it turns out, are a good idea. So I grabbed the oldest, rattiest ones I could find (that wasn’t hard — linens are not a priority in our household) and wrapped up two of the fleeces. Then I bought a couple large plastic storage bins and placed them in there.

I decided to work with the smallest fleece first, the rich dark chocolate one with the tawny tips (which weighs in at about 2-1/4 lbs.). After much research online I determined that everyone has an opinion about what is the “right” way to wash a fleece, and while they have some similarities, absolutely no two people agree. Some say use hot water, some say use cold. There were a hundred different suggestions for detergent (everything from Dawn or Ajax to various laundry detergents to shampoo to professional wool scours). Some say add in a little vinegar at the end to soften up and condition the wool. Others say don’t bother. Absolutely everyone agreed, however, that if you are using hot, use hot all the way through or if cold, always use cold, and also that agitation was the number one no-no-bad-dog.

So, I’ve been experimenting. The first day I used intensely hot water and a little Ajax dishwashing liquid. I did two soaks with detergent and two or three soaks without. I worried that I had managed to felt it a little bit despite my careful handling of the fiber, but using a pet hair comb (Thanks for the tip, Juno!) I was able to pretty easily comb out both the tips and the end of the lock to get this:

Here is a detail pick that actually manages to almost capture the color.

Since the fleece project falls under the Summer of Knitting Naturally umbrella, I considered my first attempt in terms of impact. A couple of things came to mind. First of all, it required a lot of water. Second, hot water uses considerably more energy and resources than cold. Three, Ajax is not the best, most environmentally friendly detergent in the world. So, for the second attempt I decided to use cold water. When combing out the first batch, I noticed the fibers shed a lot of dirt in the process. To try and reduce the amount of water and eliminate more of the dirt, I let it soak for several hours the first time around. In addition to the extra long soak, I tried to loosen up some of the more matted locks before getting them wet. I also found some excellent dishwashing detergent (nontoxic, no petroleum products, plant based, biodegrable, no chlorine or carcinogens, no fragrances, etc., etc., etc.), which will also replace my Ajax detergent for good.

All in all, I was very happy with the results of the second go. Most of the dirt was gone. The fibers felt soft and easy to loosen up. I’m still not 100% sure that this is the right detergent for the fleece. Since we are experimenting with some new laundry detergents that are less impactful and don’t irritate my skin, which is very, very sensitive (Seriously, I get hives just from taking a shower), I plan to try them out on the fleece as well. So, the answer may lie with one of those products. I guess we shall see. For now, though, this seems to be working just fine.

Today, more washing. Tonight, experiments in hand carding. Details to follow.