Spinzilla prep!

I have the wheels ready and 9 bobbins empty and ready to go in the morning... and just as importantly.. my entertainment lineup is ready to pop into the dvd player!

I can't post a photo of my fiber line-up yet because it includes batts from The Big Wee Hag SAL, also starting this week.. I just shipped them out on Friday, so I won't spoil the surprise for folks who ordered the same colorways I decided to card for myself!  =)

Spinning in Public!

So Saturday, September 20th, was Spin In Public Day... and I did!







We headed to a favorite park that has fishing, boating, hiking, biking, and riding trails... and I did some much needed training for the upcoming Spinzilla, while hubby went for a hilly hike.
 

There were plenty of curious adults and children, some as always were intrigued that my Kromski Minstrel is not an antique, but a fairly modern wheel (I bought mine in January 2011 so she's probably a 2010 model) .  One boy was really excited that he knew what I was doing.. from halfway down the boardwalk he was yelling at his younger sibling "she's making string.. she's making string!!!"....  another group of girls and mom had gone to Maryland Sheep & Wool for the first time back in May, so had some more interesting questions about the actual construction of the yarn and what breed of sheep I was spinning.

The bobbin shot below was the first four oz braid finished, before I started drafting the 2nd braid... 

It was a lot of fun, and even with all the talking - I got 5 oz of singles spun in about 2 hours, from an amateur's hand dyed top that was just a bit sticky to draft.

...the Grey Beyond!

I was very narrow in my focus on fleece shopping this past spring...   soft and different! I ended up with finn and finn x's, a couple merino x's (one is merino x romney), and lots of alpaca as usual......  and perendale lamb fleeces as well!

Here's a my expert fleece skirting assistant - Baelii...  loving on one of the finn fleeces as I was re-skirting it in the living room.


And below is one of the grey fleeces.... LOVE natural greys!

The sun bleached tips are creamy, but the fleece beneath was a deep charcoal...  This is one of the finn, finn x, or merino x fleeces in the mix, which also included perendale lamb.. and only a tiny bit of grey alpaca fleece. The mill turned it into GORGEOUS squooooooshy easy to spin roving listed in the shop here. 

These are the first yarns I made with it...  the left is plied with a braid of my hand dyed bfl top, the right top is plied with a chalk dust batt.


Next post:  the white and fawn roving!

..more organization!

 My hubby was very sweet and put up a new garage tool organizer up on the wall for me this weekend. The skeinwinder he built for me last year is now wonderfully up out of the way when not in use. So minus a few plastic bins outside on the deck, this is the current state of the dye shed....

All the bags of fleece stacked up high and down low, will be winging off to the mill soon.  I'm just waiting for my last three fleeces purchased this spring to arrive. I will carefully reskirt them, and the box of 10 lbs of alpaca sitting in the living room and then send them off for 2 or 3 custom rovings I hope to have back in the fall. I focused on perendale lamb, finn x's, and merino x's this year, with alpaca again of course!

dyeing ALL the things!

I'm prepping for my first ever almost back to back festivals next month - and the winter that won't end is really cutting into my dyeing time!   I finally got a few days this week of above freezing and no rain or snow - so I filled the drying rack as fast as I could!

Below is a close up of a new colorway of bfl (everything I dye is a new colorway actually, but this is one I hadn't tried anything close to before! lol) and some new Shadow base yarn in reds - I can't get over how much shine that nylon thread adds to the yarn!  I have to knit some next week during the next snowstorm!

I think this is my favorite part - when the water is clear and I see what the yarn has grown up to be!

Fleece Junk!

These are photos of the mess I made sorting fleeces one day this month.  The top two pics are just hay contamination (when it's more hay than fleece I toss it), the third down is a big swath of 2nd cuts (less than 1" long), and last is the trash bag under a "clean" fleece that hadn't actually been washed.  That bad boy is going in a mesh laundry bag and getting beaten outside before it touches my hand cards or drum carder!   I'm just glad the neighbor is parking in her garage so I can without showering her car in dirt.
When I first started I felt like I had to salvage EVERY hair from the animal possible.... but I'm not doing that anymore. They are growing more, every single year... I'd rather have more time to spend with the dyepots!

Spring?

It's mid March here and after a crazy-fun-busy weekend (limited sunlight, but weather warm enough to get some dyeing done and break in my new crock pots, and some much needed organizing in the dye closet) THIS started yesterday afternoon. 
This white blanket of "spring" will probably stick until tomorrow afternoon - I am SO ready for real spring, fiber festivals, and the local farmer's market!