When all else fails....

Do a picture post. For some reason I've been feeling kind down so I will just show off pictures of the things I was working on lately... Enjoy!








I will be at the last Wesleyan Market of the season this Saturday, October 3rd 9am - 1pm. If your in the Middle Ga area, stop by and say hello!

Goodies!

I am so happy to have a chance to sit down and post about my new goodies. Up first, I purchased 5 pounds of uncoated coopworth wool from Homestead Wool and it arrived on the Tuesday. It really is just as nice as it looks on the site.


Look at that crimp!



Then Wednesday I finally conquered my fear and purchased a pair of rotary cutters and mat. I don't do alot of fabric cutting so I just stuck to Walmart. I've been really scared about getting the rotary cutters because of my nine year old and I can be rather clumsy sometimes. =P



I plan to take a few scrap fabrics to practice on then make a couple of fleece tie blankets. Hopefully my lines will get a little straighter now. I'll even have to break out the sewing machine again and continue to practice my stitches.


Join in the fun with the Fiber Arts Friday Blog Carnival.

Handspun, Corespun Yarn

I call this yarn Mossy. It was made from wool batts that I carded from various fibers dyed green. The fibers include coopworth, mohair, wool, and silk; carded with lots of glitz. I spun this on a DMX embroidery thread.


It was really frustrating at first. I just couldn't get the swing of it. Eventually I was able to get more of a rhythm and method for spinning and it went a bit easier. I haven't measured yardage yet but I wouldn't put it more than 100 yards if that. Just sort of a show and tell post. I needed to show off a little since my weekend got off to a pretty bad start.

Who's afraid of Batts?

Here are a couple of batts that I carded over the weekend. I had lots of fun but ran out of glitz. (Oh Noz!)

On the left is Spring Green. ( I just made that up as I wrote it.) It is pre-dyed fiber I bought from Wild Fibre in Savannah. It's layered with dark green, yellow and a lighter, celery green. It also has bombyx silk and glitz. I used a rhyme and reasoning to make the green outer layers that were blended with silk and glitz. The yellow was an inner layer that was carded with silk and the lighter, celery green was carded with glitz.

The middle batt is a one-off sort of combination of fibers. It came out to over 1.5 ounces on my little Strauch Petite. Normally, I can't get more than an ounce comfortable on there but this was apparently packed dense. The colors are a blend of the dark green in the first batts, Louet's Jade roving and a roving that I unsuccessfully dyed a while back. (It had a greenish tinge with brown on the outside, like it was picking up residual dyes.)

The last batts will be called "Boysenberry." They are a combination of purple roving (wool I assume) that I bought from someone a couple of years back and Coopworth locks that I combed to open up before carding. The Coopworth was purchased at SAFF and was a nice purple and purplish-blue. These also included tons of purple glitz. Sort of mono-toned but not really. I really enjoyed drum carding this weekend but it took a little time to get the rhythm going. I'm hoping to get more carding or some fiber dying done this upcoming weekend.
Oh! Have you heard about Sock Wars? I saw something about it yesterday so Google it. (Or come back tomorrow and I will write about it. (For those like me to lazy to Google anything right now.)

My combs, my precious combs!

So, I bent my combs last night. I was doing a bit of combing of some pretty Coopworth locks I have. My plan was to comb the locks loose and then blend them into a batt with some dyed roving. (Not professionally dyed, just someone destashing for some extra dough when I was just getting started spinning.) Unfortunately, I was rougher than I thought and bent the tines on my combs. =(

On the plus side the batts came out real pretty. About a year ago I tried to sell these combs becuase I had only used it once and had no real love for the locks. I figured I would tease and card for the amount of trouble I was getting into. Now that I've used them again for the 3rd time there will be no such sale. Mind you, I couldn't since I bent the tines but also because last night I had a nifty little time with them. Plus, now I have all kinds of neat noil-y bits to felt with in the future. It's great to rediscover the usefulness of things, isn't it?