Note to self: Blog the Teeswater, the Teeswater, the Cheviot, the 18-ply, the Russian Underpants challenge, the Infamous 8-ply, and the combs.

Teeswater

Once upon a time, there was a recurring theme in a spinner’s life. This recurring theme was an incredibly beautiful, and incredibly long, longwool, and its name was Teeswater.

I heard tales of this marvelous stuff when I was but a wee spinner (this was in the high and far-off times, O Best Beloved - nearly two years ago!), and I shivered with anticipatory delight, because here, clearly, was the Grail of Longwools, the very Granddaddy of Longwools (literally, in fact, because Teeswater is one of the parent breeds of the wonderful Wensleydale). The vision of long shiny curly Teeswater began to haunt me.

For complicated reasons having to do with Hoof and Mouth disease, there are no purebred Teeswater sheep in the US. There is this fascinating thing (please note that I use “fascinating” here in its lesser-known sense of “extremely dull unless you happen to be as geeky as I am”) called the Breed-Up program; through which, thanks to imported semen and a hell of a lot of hard complicated work, US breeders have been developing an increasingly pure cross - I think they’re now producing a sheep that is somewhere around 98% pure Teeswater. But the real and rare breed itself, the true original Teeswater, is to be found only in the UK. And the very best of that pure and true original Teeswater comes from one place and one place only: Higher Gills Farm.

One day, not quite a year and a half ago, a wonderful thing happened. I ordered some little thing from Beth at the Spinning Loft. It arrived in a box that was, well, a little too big for it, and so of course Beth - who had already infected me with the longwool love - had packed it with ample padding. Which padding was soft and shiny and curly and… long. Which padding proved to be a few ounces of those legendary Teeswater locks.

I gasped.

I played just a little with the long soft shiny, and then I carefully put it away, because I was still new to the ways of fleece and I knew I was So.Not.Ready.For.This.

One day, a couple of months later… another wonderful thing happened. I was corresponding with Tsock Flock club member woolforbrains, and I must have waxed eloquent about my fascination with Teeswater, because not long after that I got a package in the mail from England, and it contained… several ounces of the same wonderful Teeswater locks.

Then one day last fall… another wonderful thing happened. Actually a wonderful thing within another wonderful thing, because it happened at SOAR. (Oh, that’s right, you haven’t heard about SOAR yet, have you.) During SOAR I got to meet a lot of the imaginary friends who live in my computer, and one of them, SarahW, brought me a gift: half a pound of - you guessed it - Teeswater locks, from you-know-where.

But wait… there’s more. Just when I’m thinking my cup runneth over, along comes another imaginary friend from inside my computer, and danged if yet another wonderful thing doesn’t happen. This time it’s Chalyn, another Tsock Flock member, home on Christmas break from veterinary school in Glasgow. (Oh, that’s right, you haven’t heard about Chalyn’s visits yet, have you.) How she could even afford the airfare, after what she must have spent on gifts, I don’t know; suffice it to say that MORE THAN TWO POUNDS of Teeswater locks from you-know-where constituted only about half of the loot I brought home from that meeting.

Christmas indeed. Here I am with three pounds (POUNDS!) of some of the loveliest fleece on earth, come by in the nicest way imaginable, and obviously if I don’t start spinning the stuff I am some kind of a danged fool. What am I waiting for?

I’m not. Not any more.

There are three kinds of fiber acquisition and application. There’s the fiber bought for a particular purpose; you set out to find it because you have a certain project already in mind. There’s the fiber you buy because it oooohhh-shiny speaks to you, even though you’re not sure what it’s saying; this fiber will marinate in stash until its message becomes clear, because until then you don’t know how you want to spin it. And then there’s the fiber that you just spin. And spin. And spin. Because the the making of the yarn is enough in itself. Anything that may happen to it afterward… well, that’s a possibility for tomorrow, but the spinning is now, today, this minute.

As of late December, the Teeswater was now, today, this minute. I scoured it in batches, and I started flicking it and spinning it right from the lock. (Oh, that’s right, you haven’t heard yet about my obsession with spinning from the lock, have you.) And when I say “lock” - well, I’m talking 14-inch staple AFTER maniacal flicking, AFTER all the debris and tangles and brittle tips are removed.

(You’ll have to forgive me here. Do I have pictures of all this beautiful fleece? Yes - somewhere. I know I do. But it was six months ago.)

I’ve been spinning it on-and-off ever since. Filled six bobbins with singles. Spun two good-sized skeins of mediumish laceweight just from the flicking waste, carded up with some silk. I’ve saved the last few ounces of locks because I hate to come to the end of it all - but I’ll probably spin these during the Tour de Fleece, because after all the sheep are making more. And the other day, in the interests of clearing the decks for said Tour de Fleece, I ran a Ply-a-Thon and plied up all the singles to date. (Unlike many people I know I didn’t really need to clear bobbins - I only have one bobbin per wheel, so I wind everything off to storage/plying bobbins, of which I have quite a collection. But I still like the idea of the gesture, of starting the Tour with a fairly clean slate.)

That’s just under 2,500 yards of Teeswater 2-ply, plus a skein of silk spun from mawata and a remnant of Bond spun from combed top. (Oh, that’s right, you haven’t heard about the Bond yet, have you. Or the combs. Or the mawata.)

(See all those tags? That’s part of my Tour plan: developing good handspun-labeling habits. Bet I don’t need to tell you why.)

Glamor close-up of the Teeswater:

Ditto of the silk:

Bonus effect from the Teeswater - another 1,000 yards spun from the waste:

That’s about 80% Teeswater flicking waste (I flick in two passes; the debris from the first gets thrown away because it’s all garbage and brittle tips and such; the second batch gets saved for the carder) and 20% tussah silk. It’s about the same grist as the other yarn, but has a smoother hand because it’s more processed at the prep stage. That’s what I love about spinning from the lock (Oh, that’s right, etc.) - you end up with a yarn that bears a really strong visible resemblance to the original staple.

Teeswater story does not have its happy ending yet - but it’s only a matter of time.

Cheviot

Once upon a time - oh, never mind. Long story long: at some point last year I got a note from Dan telling me that he had found some Romanov, and was I interested? Of course I was; what’s a Tsarina if she’s never spun Romanov? Then he casually mentioned that there was also some Cheviot available from the same source - extremely reasonable prices, etc. Well, I had just destashed a Cheviot cross because I wasn’t enthralled with the dryness and overall texture, but I’ve had fleece dealings with Dan before and I had a feeling about this - of course I went for it. (Oh, right, you haven’t heard about my fleece addiction yet, have you.)

Excerpt from Dan’s report after fleece acquisition:

I predict liking of the Romanov…. The Cheviot is small and cute….

He was right on both counts. After a preliminary sample, the Romanov is still on the back burner until I can decide how I want to work with it. But the Cheviot…! It’s more than “small and cute” - it’s some kind of a freak. A sport. A mutant. It’s unlike any Cheviot, or indeed any other downs wool, I’ve ever heard of let alone spun. It’s incredibly fine and soft. I sat down to spin a few sample locks, and next thing I knew I had this crazy-fine singles. I swear I hardly felt as if it was me doing the spinning, at all - the Astonishing Freak Cheviot was calling the shots, and the shots were fine and delicate and even. Also mesmerizing.

When I finished spinning the sample I set about plying it, and that’s when the mayhem really started. I tested a few inches plied back on itself into a 2-ply, and it was clear that the yarn was still going to be ridiculously fine. So I doubled that. And then I doubled that. And then I had an eight-strand plying ball… and that became yarn. A 23-yard sample of fingering-weight 8-ply yarn.

Seriously. That blue strand? That’s a bit of our 4-ply custom millspun sock yarn, for comparison.

Dudes. Fingering 8-ply.

I’m still not sure how it happened. It just… happened.

But wait… there’s more.

A couple of months ago I joined a discussion on Ravelry about improvised Lazy Kates. This is a subject rather dear to my heart; I confess I’m proud of my own plying rig. So I sez on this forum, sez I:

I use my squirrel-cage swift as a Kate - if I had enough old straight needles I could do up to an 18-ply on it if I wanted (no, I’m not really that crazy - maybe - but it’s nice to know one’s limits). And lately I’ve taken to putting it on its side, slightly leaning away from me. That way gravity is your friend for the tensioning aspect, because if the bobbins are not horizontal they won’t free-spin and back-spin. Makes a huge difference. The other day I used this rig for a 4-ply with super-fresh lively singles and had no trouble at all.

And a certain wiseacre replied…

Oh, I don’t know… I’d love to see you do 18-ply…. I would bow to your greatness, then.

So I thought, OK, maybe I am that crazy - maybe at any rate I want to call her bluff.

And now - I’m doing it. I’ve combed up a big whack of the freak Cheviot. I’m going to spin a mile of it for Team Suck Less, and then spin a little more… and then I’m damned well going to make 100 yards of 18-ply out of it. It will, in fact, be my Stupid Wheel Tricks Challenge for Team Russian Underpants. And when it’s done… I’m going to demand that bow.

Can it be done?

It can.

Of this I am sure, because yesterday I did a trial run.

I spun up 11g of that Cheviot top at my normal speed, and I clocked about 120 yards/hour. Even if I don’t step on it, at that rate I can produce the mile in under 15 hours.

Behold the Counting Swift/Skeinwinder; no way I’m winding 18 bobbins of superfine singles by weight:

Behold the 99-WPI singles:

Behold the 225 yards of Cheviot singles wound off for future use:

And behold the 1-yard 18-ply sample:

I plied it on a spindle, of course, but at 13 WPI the full run of it will certainly fit through my antique orifice.

With room to spare.

The Tour de France rides today. Let the spinning begin.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 3rd, 2010 at 3:13 am and is filed under Stash Talk, Spinning, Tour de Fleece. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.