Selling Hand Spun Yarn

Meditative, relaxing, rewarding.  All words that apply to hand spinning.  It has become my favorite fiber activity over the last few years.  The result being that my pile of hand spun yarns has become overly large and I can't knit or weave enough to use it all up.  So an attempt will be made to sell some of the textured art yarns that I have made recently.  I listed a few on my etsy shop, with more coming.  It is hard to know how to price hand spun.  The fiber content, and the time you have put into the yarn with dyeing, combing, or carding, and spinning all play into the final price.  I recently bought a Mad Batt'r drum carder so I could make larger art batts for spinning textured yarn.  My friend asked how much I would have to sell to pay for that investment.  I just laughed.   If some of the yarns sell they will defray the cost of the fiber that has stockpiled around the house and studio,  but equipment is probably just a cost that will be paid for with money from the day job.  

Thick and Thin Spiral Ply

Here are a few pictures of my hand spun yarn and two of the projects made with my own yarn.

Core Spun

Hand Knit Wrap with Tassels

Hand Woven on a Modified Structo

Class: Intro to Spinning on a Wheel

I am lucky to be one of the artists sharing a lovely sunlit studio space in an old Elementary School.  We are setting up a series of summer arts classes and I have decided to teach an introductory spinning class.  The class will be May26, from 1:00-4:00 at East Canyon Studios in The Center, 59 Leicester St.  Perry, NY, 14530

My herd of wheels has grown to six and they all do different things very well.  My latest is an Ashford Country Spinner II, (I don't have this one yet, coming soon!) and the others include a Majacraft Rose, a Lendrum, an Ashford Scholar, a Fricke Electric Spinner and a Country Craftsman.

The Rose does almost anything well, the CC is fast and great for spinning fine, The Lendrum, a perfect all purpose wheel, the Scholar was my first and is a great beginners wheel.  The Fricke I bought mostly for plying and traveling and it is quiet and fast, and uses Majacraft bobbins, so now I have lots of those.  The Country Spinner is for spinning textured art yarns and the bobbins hold two pounds of yarn!

My idea for the class is to allow people who are thinking about buying a spinning wheel to come and try out several and see what they like or don't like about the different wheels.  Single treadle, double treadle, and double drive being some important choices to make.  I also have a variety of drop spindles for people to try.

The class fee is $30 and includes use of my equipment and a variety of fibers to use during the class.
I will discuss different types of fiber and the right prep for the type of yarn you would like to spin.

To register for the class you can email me at fiberlingo@gmail.com
or eastcanyonstudios@gmail.com

I accept paypal payments at fiberlingo@gmail.com
other methods of payment are also available

There are other classes available, view complete information on our offerings at eastcanyonstudios.wordpress.com


Registration Form



East Canyon Studios Summer Class Series

Registration form

Name_________________________________Email___________________Phone_______________

Class Title__________________________________________________________________________

Payment enclosed____________________________________________________________________

Payment must be received 4 days prior to the beginning of class. Any classes with less than a minimum number of students may be canceled and all payments will be refunded.

Please make checks payable to the class instructor. Some teachers may accept paypal or cash, email eastcanyonstudios@gmail.com for information regarding alternative forms of payment.   

Suint Method for Cleaning Fleece

Several years ago I was gifted several fleeces, some of which had been in bins, unwashed, for 6 years or more.  Most of it cleaned up beautifully, but the last one was particularly nasty.  Greasy, dirty, and mostly cotted.

I was going to toss it, but decided to try the suint fermentation method of cleaning dirty wool.  I read a lot about it and it seemed like just the thing to avoid actually having to put this wool through multiple baths.  A mini suint experiment was designed to see how it all worked out.  Using a small ice cream bucket and tap water (rainwater is recommended because chlorine can affect the process)  A large handful of really greasy wool was put in the bucket and left for about 10 days.

 Now this stuff is supposed to stink and you are supposed to do it outside away from neighbors and friends.  Well, I expected stink, but it went way past smelly to raunchy and nauseating, but it worked!  After a soak in Dawn followed by rinsing and a soak in vinegar water to restore ph, then more rinsing, it was very clean.  I put it in baskets then out into the sun to dry.  After a few days of sun the smell finally went away.  The people who use this method talk about drying completely to eradicate the smell. (Later i found that soaking in vinegar water for a several hours really eliminates the smell right away)   Hopefully when it gets wet again the smell won't return.  The remainder of the fleece was left in the suint for between 3 and 5 days, once the fermentation gets going, the process works much faster.

This is the clean fleece ready to spin.   There is a bit of yellow in the tips, but it looks beautiful.  The picture below is some of the fiber that I combed and dizzed off my home made hackle (which works great).

I am spinning the fiber from teased locks to make 

a bulky two ply for a spinning activity with the Shepards Talk Spinning and  Knitting with Naturals group on Facebook.Shepards Talk


Eventually this yarn will be combined with some other chunky yarns I have spun lately to make a wrap,  still trying to decide knitting or weaving???

The remainder of the fleece is badly cotted and I doubt it is worth cleaning and trying to separate, so I may just try to felt it on the bottom and use it as a rug.

Rhinebeck

I just came back from the New York State Sheep and Wool Festival with lots of wonderful new fiber for spinning and felting.  This has to be my favorite weekend of the year, stocking up on supplies, visiting with friends, the beautiful fall colors of the Hudson Valley, and great meals.  

This is my haul, including cones of tencel for weaving, the most awesome silk/merino hand dyed top from Lisa Souza that is amazing for nuno felt, some hand dyed lace weight yarn for weaving, a lb. of clean soft teeswater locks from Delly's Delights, a big bump of charcoal merino, a bit of yak/silk top to play with, merino tencel top to spin with, handmade soap by Betsy Ketola Snell, and that big bag of merino fleece.  Everthing is so lovely that I can't wait to work with it. 

I jumped in this week with washing the merino.  I bought it from a friend who had purchased quite a bit of it at a good price, she sold it to me for twice what she paid,  so far so good.  See how nice it looks in the picture above?  Well, shame on me, I took it at face value and didn't open it up.  Imagine my surprise to find this, rolled to the inside, and this is the cleaner part.

It is crusty, moldy, and full of feces and urine stains, and my guess is that it has been in that bag for years, as the lanolin is all hardened onto the fiber.  I picked out more than half of it to just throw away, and tried to wash some of the better parts, but it is just nasty.  The second picture is after multiple washes, ends still stuck together, and tons of small vm that is so difficult to remove.  Even though the price for the fleece wasn't high, I never expected to have to throw it all out.  The cost in time and  labor of trying to flick and comb this mess is more than I want to pay. 

 So lesson learned, always, always open up the bag and examine the wool.  I know that this 
was unintentional on the part of my friend, who is stuck with several bags of this stuff.  She planned to take it to a mill for processing.  Hopefully they can salvage some of it for her.

Wet Kitten Handwarmers and Wrap

This is a wrap I completed recently.  I purchased some lovely merino silk super wash singles yarn called Aria from  Propanicus Moon  It is hand dyed by Sarah in her Wet Kitten Colorway.  I used a double strand to weave this wrap on my 3 ft triangle loom, then added leno strips in the back for texture.

I crocheted the top edge of the shawl as I removed it from the loom, then crocheted around the perimeter with single crochet, then a row of double crochet on the sides.  Using a circular knitting needle I picked up and knit on the sides using the border from the Nearly Mindless Shawl that Sarah at Propanicus Moon designed, finishing up with a picot bind off.  After blocking, the border looks great.

There was quite a bit of yarn left so my thought was to make some fingerless mitts to go with the wrap.  I searched ravelry for the perfect pattern and tried to knit some simple mitts.  After about 5 frogs I threw in the towel, and looked for a simple crochet pattern.  I found the perfect pattern,  Season's Change Fingerless Mitts by Deborah L. Berger on Ravelry 

Not being the most experienced crocheter, it took a few tries to get two mitts the same size.  I kept holding the yarn tighter and tighter.  After four tries there were two that were almost the same.  Due to lack of perfection I am including them with the wrap which is for sale on my Etsy Shop shop.  The mismatched pair is for me, and I love them!