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!

non-spinning yarn stuff

Just a little update on what I have been doing the last few days... that's not spinning yarn.

Saturday night we had a guest over in the form of my 11 yr old nephew. This is a good and a bad thing. Good because it keeps the 9 yr old son busy, bad because I am convinced that boys can't play together without getting on each others nerves. So, my kid went to bed about 10:30 which is late for him but not so early that he misses time with his cousin. The 11 yr old went to bed an hour later. So from about 9:30 till 12:30 I did some dying.
This is the result. I am trying to stay away from to many pastel like colors and get more saturation but I didn't have any luck that day.

I have discovered that so far, my new baby blue dye is breaking funny. Its really annoying because it creates spotting on the yarn/roving. I purchased two packets so I may need to open the other and see if I get the same effect. Also, instead of hand painting I may need to opt with a soak in a pot. Just in case the dye is not mixing well. I'm not sure why it would since all my other dyes used while hand painting mix up fine.

I also got some carding done. I don't have a really good picture since I wasn't planning to take any. However, my husband was playing around with the camera and got several fiber pics (after he took my spinning pictures.) So in case you can see through the clear plastic enough, thats my new batt set. Its pink and black with sari silk and bamboo and glitz and some regular silk as well. That's pretty hard to see but I will be sure to upload more pictures in the future.


In the store, I went through and remeasured the yarn that had been dyed in block coloring such as "Parakeet." Surprisingly that yarn was listed at 114 yards and it was actually 132 yards. However, most of them were roughly the same yardage as listing. The only difference is that instead of using the word "approx" the measurements are more exact.

So, on a final note I wanted to mention that I got some samples sent in for the April PhatFiber box. I didn't mention it earlier because I had some restraints that made me unsure if I was going to be able to make it. (Now, lets just hope the PO doesn't have issues.) I hope to contribute on a regular basis or at least bi-monthly. Since it was my first time I only sent in a few but next time I will be more experienced in what I need to do to get more samples made. If you happen to make it here after getting a box, be sure to leave a comment. I'd love feedback!

Fiber not Yarn...

...because we all get tired of talking about the same thing over and over and I plan to do a lot of yarn talk this month with spinning everyday.


So here are the first two batts I carded on my new (old) carder. Well, not the first but the first I plan to put in the store. The batts are purple-ish pink and have gold glitz and sari silk in them.

My other fiber treat is a picture of my washed cheviot fleece. I purchased this sometime last year but I just sorted it this week. This is some of the nicer, crimper fleece washed up in hot water. There is still a little vegetable matter in it but I'm hoping to work through that with additional processing. I think I will take some and carder it up bit to spin. The carder is coarse cloth but I think it should be enough to open up the locks before spinning.


Hopefully I will have more to post later today but now I must go watch a soccer game!

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.)

Fluff of the Gothic Nature

I swear I must have some fascination with Goth's and/or Royalty. I loosely carded this black merino and bag of fiberpuffs that I purchased from Knitch and all I could think of was variations on the name Royal Goth, Purple Goth, Gothic Royalty etc etc etc.... I really have to branch out some. Maybe inspiration will strike me and a new name will come into mind.

So, I carded these last night. A total of 11 batts in all. My carder is a Strauch Petite so its not really meant to card real bulky items. It will pull on the teeth and bend and break them. I just carefully turned the handle and when the fibers started to collect on the licker-in drum I took the bat off. One run through... thats it. If I wanted a nicely blended fiber then it would be put through several times. Fortunately there is no real need for that. The fiber puffs are made for good texture and tons of bulky.

Of course, by the time I was done with the carded I was ready for bed. I must be coming down with something. I left work early Friday feeling bad, had a sore throat Saturday, exhausted all day Sunday and woke up feeling pretty crappy today. Still, I dragged myself to work. Thats what you do when your sick and don't have much sick time and live in a one income family. You work. My Dad's always worked and my parents have been two income all my life so I guess I get my work ethics from him. Didn't help much since I ended up home today as well.

But seriously I am hoping to spin this up tonight or at least get started. I still have the Ashford Country that a friend in my spinning group loaned me. I asked if she would be interested in selling it so if all things work out it may be mine permanently. I also have my eye on purchasing a small floor loom. The price is right, the size not so much for living in an apartment. I feel bad though. I am totally ready to expense money that I don't need to. More than likely we can get something worked out on the wheel but I have my doubts on the loom. I've told my husband I still want to get the Sonata and a loom and its not just an "I want I want gimme gimme gimme" sort of thing. I really enjoy these things and there is always something new to learn about fiber arts. That's really what keeps me going. I love to learn and I like watching things change and experiencing how it changes. Even if you do the same project ten times, when you use different fiber, yarn, needle size etc... the project comes out a little different. I just really enjoy the why's and how's of things. That's probably the best way to put it. I'll leave it at that.

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?