So many hobbies!

A bit of spun Cormo

Aside from flicking a bowlful of locks, this is all I got done tonight.  I've had too many nights this week of going to bed very late and the lack of sleep has caught up with me.  I've been so busy lately.  Busy in a good way - I so love what I'm into right now - but busy all the same.  So, I took a nap when I got home from work, did a bit of flicking and spinning and now I'm going back to bed.  Whoever says sleep is overrated is lying.  Sleep is good!  I don't have any plans to go anywhere this weekend, except to the post office to mail off a certain swap, so I'll be staying home, spinning and listening to public radio.  I'm going to spin up 4 oz. of my own hand-dyed BFL this weekend.  I realized a couple of days ago I haven't spun anything with color in ages, other than natural colored wool, and I'm in need of some color.  I hope everyone has a great weekend.

A night off... mostly

After running several errands after work, I thought I'd take the night off from wooly things and do a little reading.  That worked just fine and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  But, that darn Cormo kept calling me and I just had to flick a lock and then spin it.  Here it is unflicked:

And here it is post-flicking:

It turned into a big, soft puff!  And the spinning... awesome!  It's a good thing because I plan on making 3-ply yarn out of this stuff for future sweater knitting.  There will be more big, soft puffs tomorrow because I plan on spending the evening flicking and spinning.   Tell me again why I have to waste precious spinning time going to work?

Oh, my God, the Cormo!

Happy, lovely Cormo drying on a sweater rack under the ceiling fan.  Boy, am I glad I decided to process this stuff myself and not give it to a processor to handle.  This stuff is even more amazing washed and dried than it is in the grease, and that's saying a lot.  No wonder Beth loves Cormo so much.  There's a low voice in the back of my head the keeps whispering something about rolling naked in the clean wool.  I have a bit more decorum than that so I ignore the voice (reluctantly) and rub it on my face instead.  I even love how the unwashed wool smells.  Sort of a warm animal/earthy smell.  Glorious!  Oh, man, am I hooked!

Yesterday, I opened an Etsy store called Middle Kingdom Fiber.  I'm selling my hand-dyed roving, currently Blue Faced Leicester, and my hand-made stitch markers.  Please visit my store and let me know what you think.  I've become so enamored of dyeing wool, if I didn't sell it, I'd be hip deep in dyed roving in no time.  I'm pretty excited about my store.  It moves me in a direction I've been wanting to go for quite a while.  Woot!

Such a busy weekend!

I almost don't know where to start.  I guess I should just go chronologically, which means starting with the Great Lakes Fiber Show.  Blogless Ginny and I drove down to Wooster, OH Saturday morning and arrived in time to drop off my skein of handspun for the skein competition.  We then proceeded to wander.  First stop was the fleece competition so I could shop for wool:

Fleeces marked for sale could be purchased before the judging.  I found a beautiful black Cormo/Border Leicester cross that I eagerly purchased.  (Sorry, no picture.  I dropped off with Zeilingers for processing.)  The rest of the day was spent wandering between the buildings and the animals outside.  We stopped to talk to the owner of these angora rabbits:

And these alpacas.  The alpacas were not happy being away from their farm and kept humming their displeasure.  Much as I tried, they wouldn't let me near so I could pet them.

Ginny was very enthusiastically nibbled on by this lamb:

Aside from the black fleece I bought first (and a second one later), I didn't really find too much I was keen on buying.  I found a couply of back issues of Spin-Off magazine, some painted roving and some sock yarn.  Remember how I said before that I seem to gravitate to greens and blues?  This photo makes me a complete liar.  From left to right:  Yarnsmith's Sockezze, Tofutsies and some lovely Merino/silk roving.

The story of my second fleece is one of pure luck.  I stopped buy a booth that had two bags of beautiful white fleeces bracketing the entrance.  I learned the hard way that a good protion of the vendors took only cash and checks, including the owner of the black fleece I bought first.  This took a huge bite out of my cash supply.  So, I stopped in this booth looking to buy some of the wool only to find that they didn't take credit cards either.  Bummer.  Ginny and I moved on only to be tracked down by the mother of the girl who owned the fleece.   Long story short:  another vendor who was a friend would take my card and pay them for what was charged.  Yay!!  It turned out I managed to find the owner of the first place winner of the fleece in the white, fine-wool fleece category:  an absolutely beautiful Cormo fleece she agreed to sell to me.  The sheep had been blanketed so the wool is perfectly clean, almost pure white with a staple length of about 4 inches.  I can't express enough how GORGEOUS this wool is.  The girl who owned the fleece had been raising Cormos since she was thirteen and now had a nice-sized flock of award-winning sheep producing award-winning fleeces.  Between the 7.5 pound Cormo/Border Leicester fleece and the 5 pound Cormo fleece I bought, I'll have enough wool to keep me spinning for quite a long time.  At least until next year.

So, after all of my lovely purchases, Ginny and I worked our way back to the where the skein competition was located, only to find this:

No one was more surprised than me.  I couldn't believe it.  I still can't believe it.  This was the wool I hated.  The wool I wasn't going to finish spinning because I really hated how it felt.  I ended up getting 96 points out of 100.  Who'd a thunk it?  (Oh, BTW, I don't photograph well, just admire the blue ribbon.) 

More on this weekend tomorrow.  I need to go to bed.

Mixed success

My wool washing was only partly successful.  I think I had too much water and not enough wool wash because only about half of the lanolin was washed out.  I didn't realize just how much was still in the wool until after I had flicked the locks and started spinning.  (Hey, I'm completely new to this!)  Once I was spinning it was pretty obvious how "dirty" they still were.  It was much harder to draft - the fibers  didn't want to slip past each other - and the longer I spun, the warmer the wool in my hand became and the harder it was to draft.  A vicious circle.  I decided to keep going because no experience is ever wasted and I now know I really don't like "spinning in the grease."   Give me nice soft, clean locks any day.  I need to buy more wool wash.

My attempts to ply weren't terribly successful either.  I wound the single into a center-pull ball and happily started plying.  My joy was short lived, however, because the damn ball puked its guts out and created a knot, thereby ending my happy plying moment.  Grrr!  Beth, are you sure that ball winder was a good idea?

Since this is the beginning of the fiber festival season, I thought these survival tips from knitty.com might come in handy for those planning on joining in on the festivities.  Good luck.

Lovely locks!

Isn't that a beautiful sight?  If I did it right, and I didn't felt them, the last of the dark Corriedale locks should be dry and ready to spin tomorrow night.  Woot!  Beth showed me how to make a little package of tulle with the locks inside.  This makes it so much easier to move the wool around with as little agitation as possible.   I need to put a safety pin in the middle of the package next time - keeps the wool even more immobile.  Hmmm, somehow I need to become independently wealthy so I don't have to waste time working when I could be playing with all things wooly.  I'll have to work on that one.

Here's a shot of some stitch-markers-in-progress.  I'm really liking how some of these are turning out.

More stitch markers

There aren't enough hours in the day, or rather, not enough after-work hours.  There's so much I want and need to do and not enough time to do it.  After work tonight I got groceries, came home and put them away, ate some dinner, relaxed a bit and read some of the book Living with Sheep (just in case I want to buy a place in the country and raise my own wool), then spent the rest of the evening designing and making stitch markers.  No wool touched my fingers all night.  I think I'm going through withdrawals.  Tomorrow I'm going to do my homework from the Sheep Breeds class which is to wash the dirty dark Corriedale locks we were given.   I've already flicked and spun all the clean locks and I'm ready for more.  I'm going to need more wool wash before I tackle washing the lighter Corriedale.

I'm so excited about the Great Lakes Fiber Show this weekend I can hardly stand it.  It'll be my first.  I admit it, much of my excitment is for all the wonderful fibery things I'm anticipating buying.  But I'm also looking forward to seeing all the livestock.  I don't think I've ever seen an alpaca in the flesh before.  Plus there's the sheeps, llamas, angora goats, angora bunnies.  I think I'll have to constantly talk myself out of buying my own source of angora.  I'm also entering my own handspun into their skein competition.   Wish me luck.

More stitch markers

I didn't do much tonight except make up more stitch markers.  My first day back at work and by the end of the day, I was exhausted.  Wire work doesn't take much energy, hence the stitch markers.  Eventually, I'm going to offer these for sale so if anyone wants to leave me any feedback, I'd appreciate it.  For now, I'm going to bed.  Hopefully I'll be more energetic tomorrow.

Spinning from locks

I started a great class at the Spinning Loft on Saturday.  It's the Breed Spinning Study, this time focusing on fine wools.  This first class concentrated on the Corriedale and Polypay breeds.  We were given washed locks and shown how to use a fick carder to open the locks for spinning. 

This is what the locks look like before being carded.  I just love the soft look of the crimp, which is pretty even and consistent.  The staples are about three inches long and very soft.  We were given locks from two different sheep:  a beautiful dark brown and this lovely light brown, almost a fawn color.  The most fun for me was using the flick carder.  The locks start out all tight and even and after you take the carder to them...

they look like this.  You take the lock, twist it tightly in the middle (to keep the carder from yanking out the fibers) and you either tap the carder up and down or comb it out.  While you doing this, the tight lock fluffs up and fans out around your hand.  For some reason, this process really cracks me up and I kept giggling while flicking... much to the amusement of the other two ladies.

My new Schacht flick carder.   I just love new toys! 

I'm completely in love with spinning from locks.  It takes hardly any time to open the locks for spinning and once that's done, spinning this way is the easiest spinning I've ever done.  Not to mention the finest and most consistent.   I'm a new convert.  So, when I buy a fleece at The Great Lakes Fiber Show, do I send it off to Zeilingers to be processed?  Or do I do it all myself?  Or...do I buy one fleece to do myself and one to send off to be processed? 

To be honest, I'm rather nervous about buying my first fleece.  I'm a complete newbie.  How do I know I'm getting a good fleece for spinning my first sweater?  Well, actually, I've read enough that I know a little.  Lambswool is softer and the fleece is more consistent throughout than an adult fleece.  The back, sides and neck are the best parts of the fleece while the belly is the worst and is probably thrown out.  I've read the phrase "skirted for spinning" but I don't know what it means.  I know when you "skirt" a fleece you cut out the dirtiest, most matted parts.  So what do they do when they skirt a fleece for spinning?  I'm hoping I can find the answers at the fiber show.  Ideally, I'd like to get someone to "walk" me through a fleece and show me what to look for.   I'm pretty excited about the fiber show and I can't wait for next weekend.  Woot!

Run!

Trust me, if you see someone coughing... run.  Fast.  In the other direction.  "Nough said.

I confess this is my favorite roving.  I started with red (or rather the scarlet I made by adding some yellow to magenta) and red-violet as my base colors.  The two combined beautifully in the crockpot.  I'm not sure I want to actually do anything with this roving except look at it.  I find it quite enchanting. 

A strange thing has happened to me in the last few years.  In the past, if someone had asked me what my favorite color was, I would automatically have said, "Blue."  But I have become unexplainably drawn to bright greens.  In bead stores, I gravitate to the green seed beads first and the blue ones second.  I know it sounds weird, but I feel as if some touchstone in my life has shifted.  It's a bit unsettling.  I never had to think about my favorite color before.  It was always a given.  And now that has shifted and it feels very strange.  Blue isn't completely gone.  On the contrary, most of the beaded jewelry I've made for myself is a mixture of blue and green beads.  I hadn't quite noticed this until my sister pointed it out to me.  When I'm not drooling over the red/violet roving, I look next at the deep blue/green roving.  I suppose my favorite color is no longer the one color but the combination of the two colors together.  Has anyone else had something that seemed so set in concrete change when they weren't looking?