The Art Roving Hackle Part 3: Making Textured/Chunky Art Roving

I had all the pictures taken for the tutorial using the art roving you see to the left. Really. Me, being the technologically advanced person that I am hit a button on my keyboard and my computer swallowed all but the 4 photos here. Did you hear me scream? That's alright though because I have a trick I discovered recently that I can share with you in this tutorial. I call it "The Ellis Technique" also known as "Reloading". Don't ask unless you really want to know the story behind that, it'a a little weird.

TEXTURED/CHUNKY ART ROVING:

There are many different ways you can prep your fiber and load it onto the hackle to achieve various effects for spinning. You can load locks, top, etc, directly onto the hackle much like we did in the 1st and 2nd ARH (Art Roving Hackle) tutorials. You can double layer your colors so that when you Part Don King's Hair your roving dizzed off the tophalf of the hackle will match the roving you diz off the bottom half. Again, many different ways to prep your fiber. I do, however, suggest you use at least one fluffy "grabby" fiber to help "glue" everything together. For instance, kid mohair locks are great in art roving but your roving would fall all to pieces if this were the only fiber you loaded on your hackle.
For this tutorial I chose to grab various types of fiber~~~silk, bamboo, firestar, sparkle, faux cashmere, kid mohair locks, romney, cormo, and merino fleeces...the latter 3 being my "glue". I then talked Alex into running it through my Fancy Kitty bench picker twice for me. He's a sweetheart. This opened up locks , blended the fibers and colors some and got rid of a bit of the vegetable matter.

We're going to do something a little bit different this time. You can obviously load the hackle , Part Don King's Hair and diz as we did in previous tutorials but we're not this time. Grab a handful of your fiber and lash it onto the hackle........do not lash on more than 1.5oz total because we are going to diz across the whole face of the hackle!!! If you pack to much on you will get more waste. I've found that approx. 1.5 oz will give me enough dizzed fiber to make it worth going to the trouble and not so much waste that I want to grit my teeth.

THE ELLIS TECHNIQUE aka RELOADING


This is so simple you'll wonder why you didn't think of it.........or why I didn't think of it months ago. I still don't know why I didn't think of it sooner! Start dizzing across the whole face of the hackle from right to left. When you get to the end DON'T DIZ ALL THE FIBER OFF!! Leave a little on the hackle and the diz in place. I found it very helpful to have a chair to catch all the dizzed roving.

Clean the waste off of the hackle and set aside being careful not to disturb the fiber your diz is on. Now, with approx. 1.5 oz of fiber, RELOAD your hackle from the point you stopped dizzing down to the other end. To start dizzing again, pull your diz back toward you, grab a little bit of the reloaded fiber and tuck it into the hole of the diz along with the 1st load of fiber so it pulls through when you diz off the remainder of the first loading to start dizzing the second batch. Diz across and stop just before you get to the end. Continue to reload and diz back and forth across the face of the hackle until you've dizzed all your fiber. This will produce a continuous strand of roving provided you don't break it when dizzing. I suggest rolling it into a ball when you're done much like you would ball up yarn.

I had 6.2 oz of fiber that I started with. After loading the hackle a total of 4 times I was able to diz off a 5.4 oz roving ball and had 0.8 oz of waste that I'll toss in my drum carder. Not bad!! Again, remember that the amount of waste you get will greatly be determined by the type of fiber you use, how the fiber is prepped, how much you load on the hackle, and your dizzing technique. Dizzing does take practice to get the best results. That's it for the Art Roving Hackle Tutorials.


I'll be posting the first of the Comb and Hackle Tutorials sometime after the 1st of February.

Art Roving Hackle Part 1: The Basics--Set Up, Loading, and Dizzing

Slight change of plans...we are going to start the tutorials with the Art Roving Hackle. The Art Roving Hackle was designed to make textured/chunky rovings for spinning art yarns BUT will also do smooth rovings as well. The hackle has an 18" working face with 5" tines in a 1 pitch setting to allow chunkier items such as whole locks, novelty yarn, etc. to be dizzed more easily through the tines. All of the specs on the Art Roving Hackle can be found here. In this tutorial we will go over the basics and create a "semi-smooth" art roving.........smooth with texture.....with tutorials on making more textured/chunky art rovings and smooth ones as well to follow in the next few weeks.~~~Beth

Set Up:

When setting up your Art Roving Hackle you want to make sure you have a good heavy sturdy table with a 2" or so lip to attatch it to. I'm dead serious about the table being heavy and sturdy, it's a must! Make sure the clamps are pushed as far in the hackle as they will go and the metal bar of the clamps should be right up against the table edge. The hackle edge should be even or a smidge over the lip of the table. Once everything is lined up tighten down the clamps. You think you have the clamps tight but do you really?? It's time to test them before you start playing. Grab the base of the hackle on either end or the base that the tines set in and push it back and forth, put some effort into it! If the hackle moves it's not tight enough, if you move the heavy table and the hackle stays put you're good to go!


Loading the Hackle:

So we're ready to start playing! Get your fiber together that you intend to play with. Picture #4 is what I chose to play with:


20/80 silk merino top--3-3 1/2" staple, novelty yarn cut into 4ish" lengths, silk top--5 1/2" to 6" staple, firestar--4" staple, angelina/crystal metallic--8" staple, kid mohair locks--4" staple, romney fleece --5 1/2" staple, merino fleece --4 1/2"-5" staple, alpaca top-- 3 1/2" -4" staple, faux cashmere--3 1/2" staple, bamboo--3-3 1/2" staple

All of the fleece I'm using has been washed/scoured to remove any lanolin. You DO NOT want to use raw fleece as it will leave grease on your tines that will be difficult to remove. The romney fleece has been run through the picker to remove vegetable matter and the merino fleece was coated so it's pretty clean. You will want to remove as much VM (vegetable matter) as possible before loading your fiber onto the hackle.

I started with approx. 2.2 oz. total of fiber layering it on the hackle. When lashing the fiber on I generally get a handful and catch about 1" of the ends onto the top of the tines and gently pull the fiber down onto the tines and back toward me. You don't want huge gobs of fiber going on the hackle at once as they will be extremely difficult to diz off. Things work much better if you do thinnish layers. As you can see above I have chosen fibers that vary from 8" in staple length to 3". As a rule, the longer fibers will diz off and leave the short ones behind so to mitigate this after loading a layer of a shorter fiber I gently grab the ends and tug them side to side pulling them through the hackle just a little so they will diz off with the longer fibers. For some fibers such as angelina/crystal metallic, novelty yarn, whole curly locks, etc. I find actually laying them between the tines works better than trying to lash them on and they diz off easier as well. The last thing concerning loading is to NOT OVER LOAD your hackle. An over loaded is extremely hard to diz off of AND you have a very high "waste factor". Nobody likes wasting fiber! I suggest that the Art Roving Hackle not be loaded more than 2" to 2 1/2" when gently packed down.......meaning press it down gently to compact it and see where you are on the tines. I will show you the wisdom of this when we diz.

Dizzing:

PREPARING FOR DIZZING:



Once the hackle is loaded fluff up your fibers to within the top 1/2" of the tines. Check the back side and make sure the fiber looks as evenly distributed as you can make it. Sometimes the front side will look fluffed and even but upon inspection in the back you can see where there are still compacted areas. My example isn't the best for showing this since I used fleece with whole locks...it looks like it's really packed on the hackle but it's not. Now your fluffed and need to chose your diz. The diz should be choosen taking into account what fiber you have on the hackle....smooth top, large chunky locks, etc. I have 3 sizes pictured, these are the ones I mainly use.


Upper left: 1/4" for smooth roving, upper right: 3/8" for really textured and chunky roving. My choice was the center diz: 3/16" for semi smooth roving that has a little texture. The dizzes I use are fender washers from the hardware store. They are inexpensive and come in a wide variety of sizes.


Parting Don King's Hair--my suggested method for dizzing on our longer hackles

I came up with this method of "Parting Don King's Hair" for the longer hackles after playing with them a bit and finding this method is 1) easier on the person dizzing in the sense of the pulling that goes on AND 2) there is much less waste fiber. From the pictures you can see that when I loaded the hackle I seperated the two halves with cardboard. On the right side of the hackle we will use the "Parting Don King's Hair" method. On the left side I'll show you what happens if you try to diz across the whole face of the hackle.

Parting Don King's Hair: begin by finding the center of your fiber starting at the edge of the hackle. With your fingers work down the hackle horizontally seperating the fibers so there is a top half and a bottom half much the way you would part hair. Try and get the halves as even as possible. Once the fiber has been parted from end to end use your hands to push the lower half down and look for any fibers on the tines at the center part that may have been missed. With both hands, sandwich the fiber on the top half between your palms to sort of pat it together so the top layer is better defined. Again, the top half of the fiber should be within 1/2" approx. from the top of the tines. If the fiber gets to close to the top of the tines gently push it back down..........you really don't want it popping off while you're dizzing!

Now, starting at the top right (or left, whichever is most comfortable for you) grab the tips of the fibers on the edge of the hackle giving the ends a little twist making it easier to put them through the diz. Begin dizzing across the top. Do not pull your diz much more than the length of the shortest fiber on your hackle. Mine shortest fiber was about 3" so I wouldn't pull more than 3 1/2" max.

Okay, so you are at the far end of the hackle with only a little more on the top half to diz off. With the diz extended out toward you and the last of the fiber from the top half of the hackle in the diz reach down and grab up the tips of the fiber on the edge of the bottom half of the hackle just below you. Hold the tips from the bottom half with the top half and gently guiding the diz down, pull them both through the diz together finishing off the fiber on the top half of the hackle and starting the fiber on the lower half. Diz across the lower half until you reach the end. The fiber I dizzed off weighed 1 oz. As you can see the waste was minimal and would not even register on the scale.......my guess is 0.2oz or less.


What happens when you diz across the entire face of the hackle........

You can diz across the entire face of the hackle when it's full BUT I don't mainly because it is much harder to diz with lots of tugging and pulling going on AND MOSTLY because there is significantly more waste. I have noticed this with every fiber I've used and with mill combed top in particular. You can compare pictures #19 and #23 and see the difference while it's on the hackle. I was able to diz off 0.6 oz of top going across the entire face of the hackle and ended up with 0.4 oz of waste.......that's almost 50% waste and that's way to much in my opinion.

In a nutshell:


--make sure your hackle is securely clamped to a heavy sturdy table

--do not load your hackle more than 2 to 2 1/2" gently packed

--when mixing longer and shorter fibers gently tug shorter fibers to bring them forward on the hackle before putting on the next layer

--chose your diz according to the type of fiber prep you have made

--don't forget to "Part Don King's Hair" before dizzing

Odds and ends:

--the amount of fiber you get off the hackle weight wise will vary according to the type of fiber as well as the type of fiber prep you are creating (smooth, semi, textured)

--do not braid dizzed roving....it is much lighter and airy than mill combed top and when unbraiding it can break

--hand combed fleece leaves the least amount of waste of any fiber I've tried with mill combed

top leaving the most waste.