Yarns to keep you Cool... or Hot...

Now, I LIKE being warm. The warmer the better. I lived in Malaysia for a year, and the warm humidity made me feel like I was wrapped in a cozy blanket. I like cozy blankets.
Up here in Victoria BC, it doesn't reeeeeaally get very cold, although some people say the damp cold is worse than the prairie -30degrees (Celsius). I usually wear about four layers (plus a coat if I'm outside) during our mild winters.

However, we are not all built alike. In the dead of winter, my cousin still only puts on one layer, maybe a sweater. At all other times she generally resorts to a tank top. I get jealous, because my tank tops only come out in the summer. In direct sunlight. Sigh.

Making clothes out of yummy yarn must come with some thought for WARMTH. Is the person you are making the item for a fan of warmth and coziness, or does he get really sweaty and overheat easily? If you're not sure, and you're trying to keep your knitted goods a surprise, take a few days to analyze what he or she wears - sweaters, scarves, gloves, layers... or a button-up cotton shirt and a light coat? Once you know, here are some tips for picking the right yarns for your knitted items.

The Cool Stuff

• Plant fibers (cotton, linen, hemp) will pull heat away from the body, and help keep you cool. These are heavier yarns, though. So if you make a sweater purely out of these, especially if it is a chunky yarn, or if the sweater has fancy cables and other stitchwork, be aware that your finished product will be HEAVY.
• Consider getting a mix of cotton and wool, especially for a sweater... the wool will help give the piece more elastic, help it keep its structure, and the wool also absorbs and releases moisture = "breathable." So wools will help keep moisture and heat from being trapped against your body.
• Consider a cardigan... then you can wear it open if it's a bit too hot :)

The Warm Stuff

• Cashmere. Very warm. About 8 times more so than wool.
• Alpaca. Not quite as warm as cashmere. But still about 3 times warmer than wool.
• Acrylic and other synthetic fibers. These do NOT BREATHE. Even I, the Ice Woman of the West, will sweat in acrylic if I'm not in a cool environment. Be aware of this before you knit anything in a pure acrylic yarn. Personally, I stay away from such yarns at all cost. Do you have an acrylic blend with a natural fiber? A MUCH better idea.

Alpaca - knitting tips and other stuff

Alpaca fiber... warm, soft, luxurious. Yum. 

 

 Take-home keys to knitting with alpaca yarn:

• If your yarn is 100% alpaca, the finished product will have a LOT of drape. This works for some things (shawls or small items). However, this can be disastrous for some sweaters! If you want something with good shape and/or spring, try a blend with wool or use another fiber. 
• What you make will be warm and insulating while being lightweight. And have good water resistance.
• Oh... and it will be soft, and non-scratchy for most people, including people like me who can't wear regular wool. :) Now... this does depend on your personal limit for "itch factor" or micron size. Some yarn qualities are bigger than others... see the chart below for descriptions to help you pick the right quality for your garment.
• See below for a discussion of Suri vs. Huacaya fiber and yarn.

Alpaca fiber:

• It is hollow... this helps make it three times warmer than wool.
• It coated with a substance called suint which makes it water resistant.
• It is seven times stronger than wool. Wow.
• Diameter? 15-18 microns, and goes up from there. Consider that the highest quality merino wool starts at about 17 microns...

NOTE: This measurement does not include the guard hairs or the "primary fibers"! These carry a diameter of about 30 microns. If the yarn you are considering has longer fibers that sticks out, these may be guard hairs and will definitely give you some itch factor. That being said, alpaca naturally has very little guard hair, so you are less likely to find guard hairs in alapaca than say, llama or camel. But look out for it!

• The "scales" of the hair lay much closer to the shaft than that of wool, giving a smoother fiber. Feels very, very luxurious, especially the finer qualities....
• A good quality alpaca fiber should resist pilling. Yay! We don't like pilling!

There are different grades of alpaca fiber; keep an eye on the descriptors of the yarn or roving you are considering:

(The first descriptor is the US category, the second is the Canadian category)

Royal baby/Ultra Fine: <20 microns

Baby/Super Fine: 20 - 22.9 microns

Superfine/Fine: 23 - 25.9 microns

Medium/Medium: 26 - 28.9 microns

And it goes up from there. I wouldn't recommend a yarn for wearable items that is longer than these.

 Difference between Suri alpaca and Huacaya alpaca? The animals themselves are certainly very different; Suris have long, fine lustrous fiber, while breeds of the Huacaya type have shorter, spongier, and crimpier fleece (also warmer fleece!). In terms of your yarn, not so much; you may find that Suri yarn has more luster and can often end up looking fuzzier due to its longer length, and Huacaya types may be warmer. Is your yarn unlabelled? You can assume its a Huacaya type; Suri is much rarer.

 Huacaya alpacas, of Pacific Sun Alpacas.

Fiber fest at Saanich Fair 2012: Alpacas... Llamas...

Saanich Fair, 2012

This past weekend I visited the Saanich Fair: at 145 years, it is Western Canada's longest continuously running agricultural fair. For this lovely farmland area on Vancouver Island, this is something to be proud of. My friends who grew up here all used to attend as children, and now take their own. "My mom used to enter the pie competition..." or "My sister used to bring her jam in to be judged..." were comments that I heard.

The fair has something for everyone: varied activities as face painting, pirate school, Cops for Cancer head shave, food eating contests, magic shows, horse shows and jumping, people doing aerobics on top of draft horses, a farmers' market (Oldfield Orchard and Bakery's peach-blueberry pie was delicious!), dog shows, blacksmithing, and of course the ubiquitous judging of numerous animals, crafts, flowers and foodstuffs. Oh, and what fair would be complete without a ferris wheel and random rides that make people like me nauseous!

However, I confess that the one thing that caught my attention the most (being a self-acknowleged yarn junkie) was the Fiber Fest. The Vancouver Island Llama and Alpaca Club had judging and shows, and owners had lots of lovely roving and yarn for sale! I limited myself to one skein: a beautiful Sangria alpaca/silk (98%/2%) blend from Pacific Sun Alpacas. While I don't really need more yarn at the moment, I love to support my local fiber fanatics.

 

It seems the thing to do, if you want to start conversation, is to wear a hand-knit sweater, which I had done (yes, that's it on the left there!). "Did you knit that?" I heard from behind me. Jennifer, of Pacific Sun Alpacas was on hand, and we got to chatting about dyeing, among other things. I found out that she had braved the Canadian weather (which admittedly is very mild on the Island) to plant indigo! 120 plants this year. She has already harvested them, stomped them etc. that is, started the process to set up her indigo vat. Brave woman! Anyway, she said she would love to have a photographer capture some of the process, and since I very much wanted to see the work, a quick verbal agreement was struck.


So stay tuned for scenes of a working indigo vat! It may very well be the only one in Western Canada...

Jennifer of Pacific Sun Alpacas, the indigo woman, herself!

 

I hope you enjoy the photos of the fair, and of the cutest alpacas and llamas that you have seen.

 

While the girl isn't sure about the mini llama, apparently llamas are extremely family friendly.

This is "Llangford." He loves to pull his owners' children around in a cart on their farm.

Pacific Sun's alpacas! I am the owner of a lovely skein make with the fiber from one of these happy creatures. These guys were humming to themselves while I was chatting with Jennifer. Such a unique sound.

 

 

Someone at Silver Rill Corn has a sense of humor...

 

 I had no idea! A prize for the best hay bale in show!


Solar Dyeing with Purple Iris

So, I've been wanting to dye my own yarn for a long time now. I've had some beautiful lace-weight silk yarn sitting in my stash, eyelessly begging me to dye it and use it. I can't tell you how many books of Natural Dyeing and Dyeing Plants of North America I have taken out from the library. My relatives and friends believe I have a morbid fixation on death, since I keep pointing out plants and exuberantly saying "You can dye with that!"  

Anyway, I figured it was time to just do it. So:

Ordered a pound of alum powder from the pharmacy. Since it's far cheaper than getting it from the grocery store.

Pleasantly requested that my aunt freeze her dark purple iris flowers from me when they were about done. Which she did this summer.

Bought some gigantic 1.9 litre canning jars - Bernardin... "Because You Can." (Ha ha. Best tagline ever.)

Steps:

1. Weigh out alum powder: weigh the silk and divide by four. In my case, 104 g silk... 26 g alum powder.  

2. Dissolve alum in hottish water. Stuff skein in, squeezing out air from yarn (you should really use gloves; the picture betrays that I didn't follow my own advice). Let sit in the hot sun for an hour or two. Alternately, you can simmer this mixture on your stove. (If you are using wool, be careful to change water temperatures slowly, as you can felt your wool! And always simmer, never bring to a fast boil.) Use enamel pot dedicated to dyeing if you are using the stove or a hotplate, if you can.



3. Let silk skein dry. The mordant (alum) will then be bound to the yarn.

4. Meanwhile, measure out your irises, pour hot water into the jar along with the irises, and put out in the sun to start the dye extraction. The dark purple irises supposedly give a lovely green color (irises have been used to produce green ink for hundreds of years or more). Apparently you can also dye with other colors of irises, although in this case it is suggested to use the entire plant, not just the flowers. I admit I hoped that somehow I could get the beautiful purple irises to produce make a purplish dye, even though everything I had read suggested otherwise (after all, no one had done solar dyeing!)

I decided to use all the irises (354 g of frozen iris). There seemed to be a lot of color still left in the dye water afterwards, so I froze it to potentially use again.

5. Once the yarn is dry, stuff it into the jar with the irises, top with water, and put out in the sun. I left the yarn in the sun for about a week, bringing it inside in the evening and popping it under some warm lights for the night.

6. Remove the yarn from the dye mix (using gloves!), squeeze gently to remove excess liquid. Air dry. I decided not to leave it in the sunshine, as UV radiation will leach the color out of anything. I had this stunningly beautiful silvery-purple skein of silk! But I knew I still had to rinse it...

7. Rinse the skein until no color comes out. Unfortunately for my hopes, the purplish color is what remains soluble, so that comes out rather quickly. However, the greenish color that remains is beautifully complex - minty green with purplish blue overtones. My work colleagues all told me how beautiful the color was. And then they were surprised to hear that I had dyed it myself!

8. Make something with the yarn! Or sell it. At least do something with it. My plan all along was to make my aunt, the grower of the lovely irises, a silk scarf. I hope she likes it.

In explanation as to why there are now three skeins - one of them dyed yellow... I decided to use the sunshine and the marigolds from the front yard to dye the last skein of silk that I had. The process was the same for me, except that I used the leftover "alum water" from soaking the first skein to also soak the second skein. This is less scientific, but a good use of resources and less polluting, as there is certainly alum left in the water after the first soak. The marigold color is a lovely golden yellow, although the "gold" part of it seems to be missing from the above photo; the colors below are more accurate.