Loose Ends

Spinning: Castlemilk Moorit

Spinning Singles

Way back when I did my initial research into this breed, I was forewarned that due to its short staple length, this fleece is usually blended with other longer fibres to make spinning easier. While I’m quite happy to experiment with blending, I’m keen to explore how each fleece works on it’s own where possible, so pressed on with spinning it ‘pure’ from the batts I carded during Tour de Fleece.

When working with a new fleece I’m often tempted to start spinning using a shorter draw until I’ve felt how the fibre behaves, but with such a short staple this proved more challenging. After some trial and error I found the best way for me to spin was tearing the batts into three sections and use a supported long draw (woollen) technique; as long as there was enough twist travelling up the yarn I could spin a relatively thin single. My biggest challenge was maintaining consistency. After two passes through the drum carder my batts looked pretty good, but small clumps where the tips were sun-bleached still managed to slip through, and as the strips I was spinning grew smaller the fibres weren’t held together as well so were prone to clumping up. Slubs aren’t an aesthetic problem for me, but with the short staple length any sudden changes in yarn thickness would risk fibres separating, and on several occasions I re-joined my fibre to give a more gradual variation in diameter and hopefully strengthen the yarn.

Plying & Setting the Twist

This was fairly straightforward and I opted for a simple 2 ply as this was a small fleece, so I wanted to maintain as much length as possible to ensure I had enough for a final project. Lots of the coarser fibres fell out during spinning, less so during plying and washing, and what’s left doesn’t seem to be poking out too much. Despite having carded it well, this was probably the dustiest fleece I’ve worked with so far – my carder, spinning wheel and floor were covered in a layer of dust and it was still coming out during winding!

In all, this fleece gave me a total of 1,106m of 2-ply yarn, but around 1/4 of that is made up of yarn with more of the coarser fibres. I’d initially planned for this fleece to be turned into a jumper from a pattern I bought at EAYF, but I will need to swatch to see if it feels too scratchy for a next to skin garment. If the less coarse yarn will work then I could use it as the yoke and use another yarn as the base so I have enough, but if it’s too coarse, it is quite a stiff yarn (it sort of crunches when squished), so I reckon it would also work quite well being woven.

Happy Spinning!

Tour De Fleece 2025 – Week 3 Final Wrap-up

And that’s a wrap on another year of Tour de Fleece! I was going to start by reflecting on how the challenge has flown by, but looking back at last year’s post I think that’s a recurring theme! I try to pack a lot into TDF, so my challenge often feels quite fast paced, which is at odds since spinning is slow and mindful. It also means that it’s not until the final wrap-up that I slow down and see what I’ve managed to achieve; so if you’re also wondering where July has gone, I strongly encourage you to gather together everything you’ve spun during TDF, take a picture, measure it, compare with any initial to-do lists and give yourself a moment to properly take it in.

But before I get carried away reflecting on the whole challenge, I should first address week 3. I had to switch from the Black Welsh Mountain as the rain stopped me from combing outside and the fleece is too dusty to process indoors, but it did give me the opportunity to experiment with mint & ramie fibres. Halfway through spinning cotton on my wheel I decided to card it (my carders are only 72tpi so I wasn’t sure it would work, but it did make drafting easier), so the mint fibre roving replaced the cotton as my portable project. I also completed my final Tuesday Challenge, which was perhaps the trickiest – spinning with my hands behind my back (the full attempt is in the video below)

Final Reflections

This year I spun for 5.62km (that’s the length x3 to account for any plying) which is the longest total yarn distance I’ve managed during a TDF, and I’ve kept on top of my daily and weekly posting. I’ve also made weekly videos which has been a learning curve and probably contributed to how quickly my challenge passed as I’ve spent a lot of time editing too. The videos are a little different to the project videos I’ve made previously, so do let me know if you’ve enjoyed them or not and feel free to leave any suggestions for the future. I wrote a to-do list out at the start of the challenge, so let’s see how I did:

Castlemilk Moorit – For the first time in a TDF I carded, spun & plied a whole fleece! Castlemilk Moorit are one of the smaller sheep breeds and their fleece has a very short staple, but this one has been waiting to be processed for a long time, so it’s satisfying to see it finished. I can now write up the spinning post for it and think on the final project (which might differ from what I planned now it’s spun).
Black Welsh Mountain – I’ve made a start on this one – I’ve probably combed through about 1/4 of the fleece (but spun less since there’s a lot of combing waste ready to be carded up later). This one has been fun to work with and I have exciting projects lined up for both the yarn and combing waste, so this should give me motivation to continue gradually working on it over the coming months.
Cotton – My first attempts at cotton spinning went well considering the fibres were purchased secondhand and probably meant for blending, coupled with the fact that my carders aren’t the right size for fine fibres. I swapped from the spindle to the wheel to give me a bit more control as I had both hands free to manage the twist and reduce slubs (but I love cotton fabrics that show imperfections in the weave, so it worked out quite well!).
Challenges – I completed three Tuesday Challenges and don’t think any were a total failure, and hopefully they’ve helped improve my spindle control.
Things not on my list – I also managed to spindle spin some mint fibre I had been ‘commissioned’ to turn into embroidery thread and experiment with a 50g sample of ramie fibre I’d forgotten was in my stash. I have some other plant fibres from last year’s TDF which I’m planning to turn into a project, so the ramie may be able to join them.

Thank you to everyone who has followed along with my challenge this year – my next task will be thinking up some projects to use all the spun yarn! I’m currently knitting a jumper in gorgeous Zwartbles which I’m hoping will be ready to share in the next few months and also have some plans for upgrading my suint bath set-up, so stay tuned for future blog posts (albeit more sporadically!). If you’ve completed TDF this year, do let me know how your ‘wrap-up’ has gone in the comments below!

Happy Spinning!

Tour De Fleece 2025 – Week 2 Wrap-up

My fibre processing has been quite repetitive this week with my focus on getting the rest of the Castlemilk Moorit processed, spun and plied. It’s the first time I’ve processed a whole fleece start to finish during TDF; the Castlemilk Moorit is one of my smaller fleeces, but it has been in my stash since the early days of my blog so it’s satisfying to know it’s finally ready to be turned into something (but it doesn’t make for the most varied picture gallery!). I’ve made a start on the Black Welsh Mountain (BWM) too – combing is slow work, but quite meditative.

I also completed my second Tuesday Challenge – this week I attempted to spin using random household objects in lieu of a spindle (my favourite was the pocket watch!), with some interesting results which you can see in the video below the gallery. I plied the cotton spun last week on the spindle, and while I think my first attempt is quite good, there were some weaknesses in the singles, so I may experiment and see if using the wheel improves the strength and consistency as I can go a little more slowly without worrying about the weight of the spindle.

Day 9: More Castlemilk Moorit carding and some Black Welsh Mountain combing

Yesterday I took time to clear my bobbins, hoover (the Castlemilk Moorit had spread dust everywhere) ahead of the final week of TDF. I’ll continue with the BWM and the cotton, but do have a couple of other fibres that I might experiment with if I have time, to keep things interesting!

If you are also joining in with Tour de Fleece I’d love to hear how you’re getting on, let me know in the comments below! As next Sunday is the final day of TDF, my wrap-up will be out either at the end of the day, or on Monday depending on where I’m up to in my challenge alongside video editing.

Happy Spinning!

For more information about my tour de fleece challenge my introductory blog post is here. I’m also posting my progress photos daily on my instagram.

Tour De Fleece 2025 – Week 1 Wrap-up

As usual, the first week of Tour de Fleece has flown by and I’ve found myself focusing on processing the Castlemilk Moorit. I had less spinning time in the latter half of the week and have felt progressively less productive as the current heatwave in the UK continues, but looking back over the past week’s photos I’ve managed more than I thought.

I started by separating the Castlemilk Moorit fleece into soft and coarser fibres and carding the soft fibres. I then spent the rest of the week gradually spinning and plying these, as well as taking on a Tuesday challenge (seeing what length of yarn I could spin with just one spin of the drop spindle) and experimenting with spinning cotton for the first time on a drop spindle. I’ve also been filming my progress and you can find this week’s video (including footage from my Tuesday Challenge as it was difficult to photograph) below the gallery.

Day 1: Managed to get around half of the Castlemilk Moorit drum carded ready for spinning

I have around half the Castlemilk Moorit fleece left to card and spin, so I’m hoping I can make good progress on that next week and hopefully introduce some Black Welsh Mountain to make things a little more varied.

If you are also joining in with Tour de Fleece I’d love to hear how you’re getting on, let me know in the comments below!

My stats also tell me that this is my 100th blog post since starting Loose Ends Fibre, so I want to say a massive thank you to everyone who has joined me on my fibre journey so far, I hope my woolly ramblings have been interesting and provided some calm in the increasingly volatile world we live in.

Happy Spinning!

For more information about my tour de fleece challenge my introductory blog post is here. I’m also posting my progress photos daily on my instagram.

Tour De Fleece 2025

It’s Tour de Fleece time again from the 5th – 27th July!

This year I’m in a position to hopefully spend a bit more time spinning, and having put fibre processing on hold while university deadlines were looming, I’ve decided to use TDF to dive right back in, tackle my stash and do a few experiments and challenges along the way. That being said, I’m still going to make a list to help give me some focus. As per usual, I’m including fibre prep within my challenge so without further ado, this years’ to-do list incudes:

Castlemilk Moorit – Long term followers may remember my fibre prep post for this fleece – I wasn’t happy with the way it was hand carding so put it to the side. Since then I’ve acquired a drum carder and after experimenting, I think I prefer it in batts. This is quite a small fleece and I have a project in mind, so I’m hoping to get it all carded and spun.
Black Welsh Mountain – This was one of my early fleece purchases from an online marketplace that arrived damp (the hazards of buying a fleece without seeing it). I washed and dried it thoroughly before storing, but some of the fibres are breaking as a consequence of it being damp for so long. Rather than discarding it, I’m going to comb it which should remove broken fibres; then I can spin the combed nests and use the combing waste at a later date for felting. Combing takes a bit longer than carding, so I’ll have to see how much of the fleece I can process.
Cotton – A few years ago I bought some cotton fibre second hand. I’ve never spun cotton before, but it has a short staple which I’m hoping will make it a good spindle project.
Challenges – I’ve had a few different challenges suggested this year which should test both my skill and technique. I’ll tackle one per week to attempt in the hope it will be entertaining while also improving my spinning.

As usual I’ll be doing weekly updates on the blog and daily updates on my Instagram, but I’ve also decided to try and film snippets of my week too, including the TDF tasks I don’t normally show on the blog (such as skeining, washing and winding), which although not part of my progress, are important. Providing technology doesn’t play up, I’m aiming to get the videos edited and released weekly too.

If you are also joining in with Tour de Fleece feel free to share your goals and progress in the comments section and if you want to find out what I got up to last year I’ve included links below.

Happy Spinning!

How Long is a Piece of String?

This is a question that many spinners find themselves asking after skeining their yarn and can be quite a frustrating and time consuming task. If the only piece of equipment you have to hand is a niddy noddy to wind your skein onto, then the easiest way to calculate yarn length is to multiply the number of strands by the length of skein the niddy noddy makes (i.e. the length of yarn to wind around it once). My Ashford niddy noddy makes a 1.5m skein so if there are 50 strands I have approximately 75m of yarn.

There’s nothing wrong with this method, but after finding myself frantically counting skeins en masse at the end of Tour de Fleece the last couple of years, I felt there must be a more efficient way. An online search brought up meterage/yardage counters, but they were either part of expensive yarn winding set-ups, or would have required quite a bit of fiddling to make suitable for yarn. Quite by chance, I came across someone selling a vintage Leclerc yarn measuring counter second hand online and decided to see if it would work.

Before making a base, I decided to check how the wool needed to be positioned for it to wind. My plan was to have the measurer between my yarn swift and ball winder so the yarn was measured as I wound. The photo below shows my first set-up, which despite looking like a prototype from Wallace & Gromit, actually worked!

I then decided to make a simple base, screwing the yarn measurer into the side of a spare piece of wood and placing two screw eyes either side of the wheel close enough to ensure the yarn retains some tension over the wheel while winding. This is still a work in progress and I might replace or add a larger set of eyes for thicker yarn, but it should make this year’s TDF much more efficient.

Since the yarn here is tensioned on the skein and ball winders, I’ve opted to tension it through the eyes only rather than also wrapping it around the wheel once, as it makes very little difference to the measurement.

I also needed to find out what units it measured in. Leclerc are a Canadian brand and I’m not sure how old my measurer is, so I expected it to measure in yards, but I ran a couple of commercial yarns through that showed the length in metres and while the dial wasn’t exact (likely due to differences in tension while being measured), it was much closer to the metres measurement than yards. One revolution/the inner wheel circumference is also exactly 10cm. Considering I round down when measuring to accommodate for human error, and always allow extra in my calculations for projects requiring specific amounts of yarn, I think I’m happy to assume my measurer is metric.

Tour de Fleece starts this coming Saturday and I’m on the hunt for spinning challenge suggestions! Last year I attempted spinning while balancing things on my head, tap dancing, blindfolded and on two spinning wheels at once and had so much fun I’d love to do it again this year. So, if you have a fun/silly/technical challenge you’d like to see me try, leave a comment and I’ll pick some at random to complete between 5th – 27th July!

Eagle Wrap

Like many crafters, some yarn in my stash has been hidden away patiently waiting for ‘just the right project’, but after trying to squeeze last years Tour de Fleece yarn into storage, I decided it was high time to use some of it. The yarn I used for this project was a ‘merlin singles 4ply’ in the colourway peat from a company called Knit me Sane who closed down several years ago, so the project had to take at maximum two skeins. The pattern is the small version of the Eagle Wrap from Alice Starmore’s Glamourie book which has some gorgeous designs that I’ll definitely be exploring with some of my handspun in the future.

The yarn is a linen/merino blend, meaning it’s incredibly soft, has a gentle sheen and is drapey, which I thought would be perfect for an eagle. My initial swatch was too small, but determined to make it work, I decided to hold the yarn doubled and thankfully that did the trick. Knitting was fairly straightforward, however I did make a couple of amendments to the order of construction. The wrap is knitted in two halves which are meant to be blocked before grafting and then the (also blocked) cable band sewn on, however due to the drapey nature of my yarn I wasn’t sure how it would behave with the stiches suspended on a cable during washing, so decided to graft first. It was my first time grafting anything bigger than a sock and when laying out my pieces, my knitting needle fell on the floor leaving me holding onto my stitches for dear life – miraculously I didn’t lose any!

It was also my first time properly blocking anything as I’ve been reluctant to purchase blocking squares made of foam (if anyone has recommendations for blocking sets made from natural materials let me know), however a friend kindly let me borrow their set so I was able to get the shawl finished in time to wear to EAYF and the following photoshoot with the talented @leanagibsonphotography!

The shawl should be secured with a shawl pin, but the one I have is too big, so I’ve opted for a vintage brooch at the moment. I just need to decide what to put in the centre of it.

Overall, I’m happy with how the shawl came out and very pleased to have found just the right project for the yarn. I’m hoping to do some stash-busting over the coming months, so hopefully I will gradually start to fill in the gaps on the (newly revamped!) flock page.

Happy Crafting!

Repairing a Felted Necklace

One of the lesser discussed parts of having items made from natural fibre is the pests. There are a number bugs and beetles that enjoy munching on keratin fibres (they’re made of protein after all), and unfortunately they don’t care about what or where they eat (and acrylic fibres are at no less at risk of being munched). But this post isn’t about how to repel pests – it’s about dealing with the damage they’ve left behind.

This felted necklace belongs to my mum, and had been munched on. I’ve read that some people throw away items damaged by beasties, but this seems a shame when the damage could be repaired. To make sure there was no chance of further infestation, the necklace was washed in hot soapy water (since the beads are felt and glass it didn’t take any harm), and once dry, it was sealed in a bag for a while before moving onto the repair.

The two holes were quite small and as luck would have it I found some fibre of a matching colour in my stash. I decided I would try needle felting the fibre into the holes; this was a fairly straightforward process and worked a treat, however I learnt that unlike needle felting a whole object, wet felted beads are surprisingly hard to felt into, which meant I needed to work slowly and gradually coax the fibre into the hole (a fiddly process that meant didn’t leave me enough hands to take a photo). I also managed to break two felting needles as they are not designed to bend and it was difficult not to move the bead or needle when working (I’m also very new to needle felting so it is also possible I was using too delicate a needle!).

The finished repair isn’t too visible – there are a few small needle marks where I can tell I’ve repaired it, but happily it doesn’t really show.

Happy Repairing!

East Anglia Yarn Festival 2025

Hello everyone, a very belated happy new year. I’ve had a very hectic few months and then promptly caught covid which is taking longer than I would have hoped to recover from, so blog posts are a bit slow at the moment. I did manage to make it to East Anglia Yarn Festival yesterday, so after a very un-fibre-y start to the year, it was nice to be surrounded by all things yarn.

I was much more restrained this year; I didn’t buy any fibre or yarn and instead purchased things which I feel fulfil William Morris’ quote of being either useful or beautiful (or both). I purchased a selection of vintage goodies from Simply Vintage Designs which I will use in more historical projects (and in my opinion one can never have too much vintage lace!), a needle-felting mat from Felt Wildly which should come in useful for future projects, and chose some beautiful porcelain buttons from Buttoned Up. I also purchased a card from LittleGemFelts whose sheepy art pieces always bring me joy and a suitably witchy mug from Emily Cross Ceramics who also makes incredibly intricate yarn bowls.

While I didn’t come back with any wool, I do have plenty in my stash that needs processing and lots of projects planned for when I get time. I have finished one smaller project off that I knitted at the end of last year and needed sewing together, so will be back with a finished object blog post soon.

Happy Crafting!

Wovember 2024 – Week 4

Wovember Wind-Downs

Happy Wovember! While I’m busy working on my university dissertation, I’m using this Wovember to celebrate slow making and the calm that comes from crafting by releasing some ‘unedited’ video content. While the end of the year can be a stressful time, join me to unwind with some quiet crafting, gentle creaks of spinning wheels and the passing of weft through warp in real time.

The final video this month is the full length footage from when I was weaving a Herdwick Rug.

Thank you for joining me this Wovember, it’s been a little different this year but I hope you’ve enjoyed it. I’ll be using the next couple of months to finish assignments and begin new fibre projects, but will return in the new year with some more woolly adventures! My Wovember’s Past page is available all year round should you want to look back at any previous years’ posts or visit the Wovember website.

Happy Wovember!