In between working and being sick

comes writing.

I have been trying to keep up with my Twitter Item of the Day this week but I have to admit it is very hard. The concept was good when I came up with it, but then coming down with cold the same day gave me pause. Maybe its a sign. =P
I did get a little more done on the yarn of many colors but didn't get it finished. Hopefully with feeling better it will be finished before the weekend is over. I'm very excited about it *crosses fingers.*

Also, I'm hoping to participate in the May PhatFiber sampler box. I got started Sunday (or was it Monday) but didn't get as far as I'd like to. Hopefully tomorrow will see a fresh day and plenty of catching up to being done.
Here's a photo of the work station at the moment:


and here is the progress to date:


Thanks for stopping by!

Fiber!

Fiber is good for your diet!















Here are 6 - 4 oz merino top hand dyed for a trade. I worked on making the colors brighter and/or darker. Apparently I have a thing for white as it managed to peek out a little in each of these. I think I will be recreating some of these colors for the store as well.

Spring Cleaning

Okay, so its already well into summer and most people are well past any spring cleaning. However, I tend to browse many, many fiber related boards and a very good subject came to light. How to clean your drum carder. In reality, any equipment a fiber artist uses needs to be properly maintained. Sometimes it's easy to tell what to do for instance when your wheel has a squeak its a good chance that it needs to be oiled somewhere. Other times its not so easy like with a drum carder.

So in my fiber travelings (around the internet) this one website was mentioned several times. It had well documented processes and well it kept it simple silly! So if your wondering if you are keeping your drum carder in well maintained form you may want to visit Abby's Yarns where you can get more details on how to clean your drum carder. Remember not all drum carders will come completely clean but it should be an excellent starting point.

More Batty Goodness!

Here are the batts I promised a couple of days ago. Since then I have begun carding a multicolor blended batt. It has no glitz in it but thats okay. What I do know is that it is the perfect color combo to go with Mystic Dreams. I wasn't sure what to make with that yarn but I know it wanted to be something sorta hip and funky. Unfortunately I am not the hip and funky type. Plus it was knit a scarf or crochet a shawl. A very tiny shawl at that.

So after talking to my spinning group I decided to make Mystic Dreams into a crocheted handbag. We got to talking about it and figured 132 yards of bulky isnt enough. So I was going to make some black three ply for the bottom and the handle. Instead I have to figure out how to incorporate this blend. Do I try to create a cabled yarn with 3 black and 1 multicolored strand? Do I do a black navajo plied yarn for the bottom? I don't know. So many options!

I do however know that these batts are lovely. On the left is "Technicolor Yawn" and "Overload in Red." On the right is "Overload in Yellow" and "Mixed Berry." Mixed Berry is the one that is going to be spun and paired with Mystic Dreams. I'm having a lot of fun with the batts as always, though sometimes I wish they werent so time intensive. You really can not multi-task and card at the same time. I did list "Rebirth" (below) in my Etsy store as separate batts and will probably list the two "Overload" batts as well. I may even make more to add to the listings later. On a happy note. I did make a sale today. Yay Froggy! I guess that is my prerequisite "one-per-month" sale. I'm super thrilled about it though. It's still a really good feeling.



(P.S. - It looks like we will be moving in the next two months! Woot! Goodbye apartment living, Hello rental house! Keep your fingers crossed cause five years is too long here.)

Carded Batts and Rebirth

I took a minute this weekend and listed some mohair locks in the store. It's the last of the locks that I had on hand but I feel fortunate in that I had spent the previous weekend dying up mill ends that would be better off carded. Sadly, I don't have pictures of those quite yet. I think I will try listing some on Etsy and see how it comes out. I'll be sure to post a picture before that though.
Now on the other hand, I have a picture of one of my carded batts for you to view. This batt is called "Rebirth".

On the left is the original batt made of wool fiber dyed in pink and grey, loaded with glitz. On the right is the new batt with fuchsia dyed wool, mohair, and alpaca, undyed carded bamboo, more glitz, sari silk along with the original dyed fibers and glitz. I had two of these batts but by the time I added all the additional goodies I ended up with four. So far I have carded 2 red batts, 2 yellow batts and a multicolor batt in addition to this with plenty more wool to go. I'll probably work on getting 2-4 carded a night and start listing some mid-week. Once I start listing some on Etsy I think I will get back to spinning up the plain handspun for Mix and Mingle yarns. All I've got to do is get a little schedule working. Some days its just very difficult with work, kid, husband and everything else. (On a bit of a positive note, we might be in a position to move from this crappy apartment. I mean basically the best chance we have is this one so keep your fingers crossed! Hopefully we will know a little more by the end of the week.)

Fibery Tidbits

I have been working on spinning up some plain wool yarn to dye into more Mix and Mingle colors. I really like how they have come out so far and they seem to have gotten a good response (i.e. views) on Etsy. I start with what I can get for the time being. I finally caved recently and got an order of the Sheep Shed Mill End Grab bags. Monetarily the price can't be beat. However, as is the case when purchasing things like fleece you do more work trying to prep then you do with the more expensive already processed "nice" roving. Case in point; I purchased four pounds of mill ends grab bag i.e. whatever they send me. Roughly a pound of the mill ends are colors including black, brown red and a little blue. Then there is another pound thats mostly batts that have been cut off the machine. Then of course there is the regular mill end roving bits and the mohair mill end roving bits.
Yes, there are a lot of mill end roving bits.


So after just a few hours of spinning I was already through the easy to use roving mill ends. Next would be the easy to use batts. Unfortunately almost all of the batts had cut ends. Fortunately, I had the experience with some of the cut ends from the roving and manufactured a plan. I took all the batts and carded them into ... well, batts. I basically recarded the wool which there by eliminated the hard to deal with blunt cut ends and made the wool soft and bouncy and easy to draft. Yay me!

The other thing that I did was to divvy up the rest of the undyed bits and started dying them. I have green and yellow that I did this past weekend. I will also have purple and hot pink which I am doing today. The plans for these bits are to card them up with all the variations of colors, texture, glitz and anything else I feel like putting in there. I'm really excited about this but wish I didn't have to wait for the other wool to dry tonight. Where is an air-only dryer when you need one!

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?