Hackling days are here again....lol

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click the above to view my hackling rovings...cheers.......cher

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Cher
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Hi, Cher! Your url broke in posting, so I made you a Tiny Url:

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thanks for sharing your roving pix!Noreen

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Noreen's Knit*che

Hey Cher. I've been scouring my Hershey's fleece lockwise (versus stuffing it into the washer), then combing it. My combs happen to handle 2oz, which is about how much I can stand to scour at one session. I'm dizzing it off through a very tiny hole I made in a clamshell using a 1mm drill bit in my Dremel tool. I expect I'll have to retrain myself to spin it, since all I need to do is insert twist, no drafting required :)

Do you do any color blending on your hackle? I've tried on the combs but I don't like the results I've gotten so far - I get blotchy/patchy blending, not a nice homogenous blend, regardless of how many times I comb back and forth, or how I lash on, yadda yadda.

PS -- what kind of wool is that?

PPS -- I'm prepping that package today for posting tomorrow. As it'll be an envelope it oughtn't take more than a week to get to you.

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Reply to
Wooly

Than Noreen, how do\ I get to do this tiny url thng for the future as I have loads of albums...

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> phL4iWDB5YZAj7Wo> >> > click the above to view my hackling rovings...cheers.......cher > >> >

Reply to
Cher

can't see my last post but have sorted them all out now...try this one Noreen it shows me an Sal at one of our gigs..

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> phL4iWDB5YZAj7Wo> >> > click the above to view my hackling rovings...cheers.......cher > >> >

Reply to
Cher

Goody, you found out how to make a tiny url (as per your previous post), so I don't need to answer that, grin! Will take a peek in a moment at your gig! Noreen

Reply to
Noreen's Knit*che

This is pol dorset 4-7ins staple, lovely soft fleece, I use a 12ins length hackle and for colour blending so that I have stripes I do one colour right across the width, then I do half of one colour and half of another followed by another row of the main colour, I'venot got any combs to try it out on, but you could get some clamps and clamp them side by side on a table to give you one longer one...

I have three holes in my cow horn diz ....don't ask the sizes I can't remember, the tiny one in the centre I don't use that much I use one of the larger ones...

Reply to
Cher

go back to this one and the roving is now in this folder

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incidently the weaving on the loom is done fromsome of this roving.cheers....Cher

Reply to
Cher

On Sun, 24 Jul 2005 19:42:25 GMT, "Cher" spewed forth :

Well, our two approaches to blending are substantially different *lol*

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Reply to
Wooly

Gotta love the fluff! I spent last evening combing wool which is not all that different. ;)

Helen "Halla" Fleischer, Fantasy & Fiber Artist snipped-for-privacy@verizon.net Balticon Art Program Coordinator

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Helen Halla Fleischer

OMG ....lol.....to blend them together so as to say get mauve from red and blue, I do a little at a time, and keep hackling combing or carding, depending of the length of the staple, until I get it right, but I do hackle or comb or card out the original colour first several times so that it is sleek and then I take a small\ piece of each colour til I get it right..hth.....cher

Reply to
Cher

I misunder...read, Wooly's question but I love messing about with colours, and on the drum carder, I put a third of each colour on to make one bat,, then take the same three colours in different tones to make another bat, then again the same three colours but different tones again and make a third batt, once all three are done and laid ontop of each other I roll up across the batt, not top to bottom, and then pull and pull to make a thin roving, and enjoy watching the colours go by as I spin......lovely

Reply to
Cher

Good Morning Cher (or evening there),

I'm a fool for cool wool tools. I want to use them all, or as many as possible, so I pick the fleece first, then drum card once and then comb. Oddly enough, I had the opposite experience from Wooly. I once gave up trying to comb for colored rovings from a dyed fleece on the 5 pitch English combs, even from locks, because it yielded overly blended color. For gradient colors, I now use a II-it which is a circular hackle.

The only time I got gradient rovings from combing was with a colored fleece and that was because the darker fibers were slightly shorter on average than the lighter ones, so they always came off the combs last, with a little mixed area in the middle. Looking at the locks you didn't see that, it just looked heathered. Changed my plans for that yarn, I can tell you! I ended up chain plying to retain the lovely color gradients.

Hmm, that might be the key to Wooly's problem. Perhaps the different colored wools are not exactly the same staple length? That never matters >I misunder...read, Wooly's question but I love messing about with colours,

Helen "Halla" Fleischer, Fantasy & Fiber Artist snipped-for-privacy@verizon.net

Reply to
Helen Halla Fleischer

Perhaps the different colored wools are not exactly the same staple length? That never matters in carding but it would make them tend to separate on drawing from the comb.

Reply to
Cher

On Tue, 26 Jul 2005 13:32:56 GMT, Helen Halla Fleischer spewed forth :

Could be. I generally try to treat one fleece as a single project, but at Taos last fall I suckered into the Rainbow Tent - took my trash bag and began stuffing it full of their gorgeous naturally dyed wool. It had been scoured (obviously) and picked, but I decided to try some blending on the combs to produce a bit more of a color gradient in the socks I envision making from the stuff. I guess I'll just have to do Bohaus instead, what a pity :)

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Reply to
Wooly

My English combs are Meck 5-pitch. Got them in the 80s. Never took to hackles until I tried the II-it. It's an 18" circumference hackle and comes with a little comb so you can use it to comb and blend locks easily. You can lock it or set it to rotate as you pull the roving. I'm a little biased about the II-it because I demo the thing at the Indigo Hound booth at MDS&W and was a beta tester. I really don't use my 5 pitch all that much, any more. I tend to prefer the Viking hand combs that John and Carol Huff made based on Coppergate finds. I like them because I can use them sitting anywhere without a need for clamping. But I would never give up my first combs, you understand. I save them for very long fleeces with nasty veggie trash that means they sell cheap. ;)

A few drops of propylene glycol will keep the oil in suspension longer and washes out well. I have the recipe around here somewhere, or I could ask Carol. She includes it in her English combs brochure.

Same here, except for the fabric conditioner. Most of the ones in this country are made to puff open the structure of cotton and can lead to increased felting of wool. If I have a wool that needs softening, I tend to use hair conditioner or just relegate that wool to rougher tasks.

Sounds lovely. Did I tell you we got a new RV this spring? The old one was

25 and the engine was always wimpy, so we thought it was time to start looking. Of course we saw the ideal one at the first place which is a bit scary. We decided to go for it, though. It's 3 years old, has real horsepower, gets better gas mileage, and has a much better floor plan for 2 old farts like us. No more climbing into a cab-over bunk! Took the silk worms camping with us twice so far this year. Since I've started another batch, they'll be going along for our next two trips, too.

Always fun to share the joy with other fiber fiends. ;)

Helen "Halla" Fleischer, Fantasy & Fiber Artist snipped-for-privacy@verizon.net

Reply to
Helen Halla Fleischer

Definitely sounds like a job for a hackle. That lets you control the gradient much more closely than combs or cards.

Helen "Halla" Fleischer, Fantasy & Fiber Artist snipped-for-privacy@verizon.net

Reply to
Helen Halla Fleischer

Goodness Helen, this is all very interesting and talking the silk worms camping must be a real hoot....''''don't sit there...the worms are in there''' lol. I bought a small traveller for spinning when camping,, and like you I've gone for a better floor plan, we have two benchtype seats either side of the van with the kitchen at the back, and across the backwindow, meaning the third door is at the back on the side of the m/home. shower toilet etc the other side, originally you had to put\ the table in between the two seats and bring down the seating as beds, couldn't be bothered with all that, dh made a metal frame that pulls out from each seat and the seating moves along and the backs come down and you have nearly a five and a half foot bed...great...lovely and comfy too, and that is my main priority....being comfy in bed..Anyway thought the 'wheel' could go up on the top bunk and be anchored up there as it folds up, andno one will use the bunk, and I sure ain't clambering up there..lol

Great life isn't it...I hope to go up to Scotland around the end of October, but Sept 05th we are going to Dorset ... \of course the two westies will come, they love camping...Dunno what they'll make of it if I start spinning in the evenings...lol

cheers...Cher

"Helen Halla Fleischer" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

wrote:

are...hopefully

Reply to
Cher

Nothing like a good hackle.....you ain't lived til you've hackled ..lol cher

Reply to
Cher

Gracious, Cher, your new camper sounds ever so compact compared to ours, but ours only has one door and an escape hatch window in the back. It's a 27 foot Class A Motor Home with a queen sized bed in the back, but then we're not trying to take it on the roads of Scotland, just West Virginia. ;) Seriously, I remember single lane roads with half-moons to pull in and let someone pass, but that was on Lewis. You didn't dare pull over anywhere else or you'd sink in the bog.

I generally just take knitting along, maybe a spindle, and my sketch books. None of my wheels seem quite the thing for camping, even in a coach that big. There's room for a cage full of silk worms and a cooler full of mulberry leaves, though. Usually in the shower stall. I can't imagine using the shower without a sewer hookup and we never camp anywhere that has that particular luxury!

Helen "Halla" Fleischer, Fantasy & Fiber Artist snipped-for-privacy@verizon.net

Reply to
Helen Halla Fleischer

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