Frogging green

Frogging is green или о том как распустить кашемировый свитер на шаль
So, frogging is green. I'm frogging green

in this case lime green.
Cashmere production in Mongolia lead by high demand for chap cashmere garnments caused 2 things
-  the quality of the fiber reduced, a lot
- a goat produces less fiber and lesser quality fiber when this fiber is not harvested sustainably, meaning there is significant overgrazing issue caused by the increase of the cashmere goats farming. Dust storms. What was grass now is dust storm production area, the grasses do not have enough to recover, they can not sustain the animals. In nature the animals vanish because there s not enough food, the predictors take care of the weak and sick animals. Farmers change that... with the help of humans overgrazing is happening and keeps growing.
I'm re-using cashmere from this sweater I've got quite  cheap becasue at some point it was caugh on somethig, and can not be sold at full price. so $5 it was

Итак, кашемир. В СССР мы распускали свитера. Почему я распускаю свитер в Америке? Кашемировую нитку я могу купить.
Причина простая: кашемир упал в качестве, и довольно сильно из-за того что поля стали пустыней и теперь там где была трава ее нет, перегрызли все козы, ушли на другое место. Слишком много коз, слишко мало травы. Пылевые бури из монголии идут кула ветер дует. Кашемир уже давно собирается на пределе ресурсов того что природа выдерживает. Спрос на дешевый кашемир - свитер за 20 долларов в Волмарте - его требуется больше, качество падает.
Этот свитер задернули, купила я его за 5-ку.
Свитера делаются для того чтоб их можно было распустить. Связаны они рукава, перед, зад, корло. Сначала кетлюют перед и зад сниу вверх. потом плечи обычно от горловины к рукаву, потом рукав снизу вверх, потом рукав к пройме покругу (по большей части по часовой), потом прикетлевывается горловина, но не отдельной ниткой а последним рядом горловины.
распускаем швы в обратном порядке тому как свитер на фабрике скетлевали. Вспарыватель работает отлично. после этого  берем горловину, распускаем, потом перед или зад. если там V горловина, то распускаем одно плечо, потом второе, потом средину все сверху вниз.
И так потихоньку, периодически растягивая петли в ширину, можно распустить со скоростью вязальной машины. Из одного свитера подучается шаль приличного размера.
Картинки ниже.

Ok, step by step. We did frog sweaters in USSR because... well we did not have a huge amount of stuff in stores. Here in America with huge amount of stuff in stores I'm froggings the sweater to use less stuff.
Sweaters are made to be frogged. It saves materials. How this sweater is made?
top, bottom are knit bottom up, means frog it top down. shoulders first.
Sleeves are are grafted bottom up towards the shoulder, back and front pannels are grafted bottom up, then shoulders are grafted, then sleeves are grafted (usualy clockwise, sometimes not), then the colar is attached. It means frog it mirroring commercial grafting.
Cut the end of the grafted stitch carefully, and unravel that, when all the grafting is out of the picture, you'll have 5 parts: 2 sleeves, front, back, collar. practice on collar. you may need to loosen sides like so from time to time

 hold wide parts like front like so

here is sleeve unraveled, almost

amish style swift works the best.
yarn winders. small

or larger

and off you go.
now setting the yarn... or should I say block it. Cashmere re-blocks. Can use swift (if it is not umbrella or nidy-nody)
that's why amish swift can save some time.
Wet the yarn, weight it, you need to force block it, especially if the garnment was dry cleaned.
Yeah, I know can not wash cashmere sweater, dry clean only, yeah, right :), washed so many of them :), you do not put it in the drier, you can not wash it in washing machine, unless you want to felt it really good...

I did not finish frogging, therefore blocking comes later :) stay tuned, stay green.
Can get a cashmere sweater in a thrift store for $5 or so quite often, frog it, try it :). The yarn used for fine cashmere sweaters is lace weigh between 28/2 to 16/2 or so. Sweater is 200gr on average. It's quite inexpensive, and you may just learn another way to stay a bit green. Back to lime green frogging :)

Golden fleece part 3

the part of the fleece, small part of the fleece that was in the basket

the yarn on the left is 20/2 nm wool I used as ST break

it's a soft spun yarn, I did not spin it to the point of dog hair thick, the fiber spins to that point fine, the length as one can see from the prepared locks shot allows to go 3-4 fibers thick. This yarn is spun thicker intentionally, good old gossamer yarn. Then it blooms, it will look thicker, that's the hope at least.


the distraction did grow some thanks to discount stores and craigslist. Thomas trains are sooooooo outrageously expensive retail, they should not cost that bad as $10 for a small train and $40 for some painted square building. Supply demand and hit entertainment fees I guess have to do something with it. The production of these in China can not justify such very high price alone (they are not hand painted or anything of that sort). But they keep some remaining value so when the kiddo is done with them another kiddo will get to play at the discounted price. Pass on the savings.

it turns out that couple sets from Ross pay off to start because it;s hard to believe that this layout was in $30 range new plus 15 on craigslist and lucky thrift store trip for plastic takealong

flexible collapsible bridge was from discount store, not super lucky purchase, but a lot better than $80 retail.

after couple of days of banging the bridge... not the best place to put it in the first place... and couple disconnected flex track pieces on a flexible track (thank you craigs list purchase... $18 retail is kind of steep for 2 pieces of track made of wood and metal wire, but flexibility seems to cost I guess).

the way the logistics work, mama get up earlier, makes a layout

so then I have time to do this kind of cooking which requires some attention

or this kind of silk winding that is not quite child friendly due to how fine the yarn is,..

the silk is same silk plied with white wool. turned out I could not buy this kind of silk coned, only hanks. I'd pay for connig, but they just would not cone that kind of silk... it;s not a 2-ply silk, it;s a filament single.

update: measured 2300m rounded to meter. 63gr. 2-ply yarn

Guess the fiber

can you guess the fiber?

after drying etc on the ball, knitting started

Big stuff 2

some progress. tired.

Big stuff

Big... yeah... 30 cm decent size  Orenburg spindle looks kind of puny in this.... tub
it was that gray stuff over there on the top. has luster

so the tub

do I just want to take that to my wheel...Looking at the photo, it's quite tempting indeed.
Because this distraction may get old by the time I'm done on the spindle and I have to add some new distracting cool pieces to the big distraction... well comes with the clean up... and a small problem, the tub where the "distraction" lived is taken by the fiber, bummer, did not think of that, I guess I need to buy a new tub.

White aka "golden fleece" progress on the wheel. no I'm not spinning "dog hair" thickness, I'm spinning more practical cobweb.

Organized. Store bobbins, spindles, yarn. Reuse.

basically subj :)

these were possible CD storage shelves or display shelves. it turns out, they make pretty reasonable bobbin storage. I was looking at buying winding station. This simple organizer postpones the purchase. It is a nice oak unit. And it's a green storage solution. Reuse-recycle-re-purpose.
Speaking of spindles...

right :). it was used for spice tubes. it used to be a lazy kate deal. I did a bit of modification with epoxy. stays put. I have a different kind of spice rack, so ... re-used the one here for organizing.
Not only that one can fin in the kitchen, better to say in someone's kitchen...

clear food storage containers. hard plastic N6. not so good for food. especially for pasta cooking (that's how these were marketed, someone bought it on TV, found what plastic was it and never used, was a chap garage sale pick). Disadvantage: just barely not tall for 30-31cm spindles
Wine gift boxes... works fine. nothing fits large Russian Orenburg plying spindle so, that one I keep for centimental reasons, I ply my warm shawl yarn on my wheel.

what else? how about bread box for silk storage? Here it is.

Scotch tension and golden fleece part 3

oh, forgotten. that;s what that fleeceScotch tension on Schacht Reeves. modified.
there was a bit of spinning and the original ST thread did wear out and the spring got caught-stretched. accidents happen at high plying speeds.

the spring is from ACE hardware, softest they had. the thread on ST is 20/2nm wool for what it worth. I like it. It seem to have finer tune for gossamer yarn spinning. nice and smooth. did not try plying in that configuration. the ST will wear out faster than cotton, granted. hey, I have a cone of that wool, not at any risk of running out :)


oh, forgotten, that's what that golden fleece does spin into.
excuse my dog hair in the picture, but I guess it worked for the comparison purposes, well, not intentionally :)

Golden fleece part 2

remember that golden fleece? a free-be :), blogged here about it.
that's what a small portion of it looks like now

that's the finer fleece. In comparison to that... stuff.. I was doing this week (just to be done with it as I was looking at it ... for quite some tome, not a pretty fleece it was) this one looks quite nice.
I was experimenting with lock by lock prep. made a small butch for fine spinning to see how will it look like in the yarn. If I like it, I'll have to ind out about what breed was it (hoping that the label on the bag was the original ).
yanking the fiber from carder like some in Orenburg do applied to wool. have to be locks, and small carder with rather tall teeth (or whatever they are called), the tool resembles a dog brush in a way, one that would be used to get the fur out from the breeds that shed a lot.