So many hobbies!

Lambs!

Sheri and I drove to a friend's Saturday to hang out and to visit this year's lambs.  The lambs were uber soft and extremely curious.  They would chew on just about everything:  my shirt, pants, shoelaces, my camera. 

We missed seeing them when they were first born but a month and a half later, they're still pretty cute.

As you can see, they really love Rhonda.  Of course, she's the one who gives all the lovin' and, for one lamb, the bottles.  One of the lambs was rejected by the ewe so Rhonda feeds her every four hours.

Saturday was also a craft day for the three of us.  I was planning on warping my rigid heddle loom but managed to leave the heddle at home.  Fortunately, I brought the silk with me and finished spinning my first ounce of hankies.  Sheri worked on the bookmarks she was weaving:

These are the first two she's woven.  I think they're gorgeous and she's got enough warp left for a couple more.  I'm really impressed with these bookmarks.

Scoured some wool today

And found this.  Must be comfy. 

The fiber is Bowmont Braf which is a new, rare breed that is 3/4 Merino and 1/4 Shetland.  The breed was created in Britain.  I managed to score an ounce of fiber.  The fiber itself is lovely now that it's scoured but whoever did the shearing did a lousy job.  It was full of second cuts making an already short fiber (1.5 to 2.5 inches) even shorter and worthless.  I paid more than I'm willing to say for that ounce and to have so much ruined by second cuts really chaps my hide.  I'm not happy with the staple length as it is.  I'd tell you who I bought the fiber from so you can avoid it but that would mean you could find out the ridiculous price I paid and my pride won't let me do that.  This is probably the only fiber from this breed I'll ever get my hands on so I need to make this little bit count:  a lock and spun yarn in my breed book and a knitted swatch.

The Great Batt-making Weekend

Since I discovered that 8 oz. of fiber isn't enough for most of my projects, I took steps.  I bought 14 oz. of roving to make my own batts.  My camera refuses to correctly photograph purples but the left-most and middle balls are purple.  Plus, light blue and melon-orange.  I spent all day Saturday carding and made 13 batts.

This was the order of the carding:  purple 1, melon, purple 2 and light blue.  After the blue, I pulled the batt off the drum, split it in half, put the first half through and then the second half.  This is the drum after the second half was carded.

And the finished batt coming off the drum.  The melon roving was only supposed to be an accent so only 2 oz. of that color were purchased.  The other three colors were in 4 oz. balls.

All 13 batts.  I ended up using about 12 oz. of fiber in total.  I expect I'll start spinning pretty soon.  All that lovliness is calling to me.

Raw wool

We got some not-so-great news last week:  The Spinning Loft is closing.  Beth, the owner, is closing her brick-and-mortar store because it's no longer what she's interested in doing.  She's spending more time teaching and writing spinning books.  So my friend Amy and I took a drive over to Howell Saturday to visit the store.  This will likely be the last time I'll be able to paw through all the raw fleeces and pull the ones I don't have in my breed books.  Beth will still have the raw fleeces on her online store but I won't be able to go see them myself.  I also wanted white wool to spin for dyeing.

The bundles above, from left to right, are Gotland, Polwarth and Texel.  Gotland is the breed whose wool was used to spin and weave the elven cloaks worn by the hobbits in The Lord of the Rings movies.  It's a natural grey wool.  Polwarth is a fine wool almost as soft as Merino.  Texel is a long wool often used for outwear garments, like wool coats.  The Polwarth I bought for dyeing and the Gotland and Texel were missing from my breed books.

The Gotland is at the top, the Texel is the top two rows of white and the Polwarth is the bottom two rows of white.  I know the white all looks the same but, trust me, it is.

Saturday night my sister came over to have some dinner and watch a movie.  As usual, we were cracking up most of the time.  The two of us specialize in SciFi movies, especially B-grade movies.  B-grade movies are lots of fun because they're often really cheesy.  We had a blast.

Today was a very lazy day for the cats and me.  They woke me up at about 6:30.  I got out of bed around 7:00 and by 8:30 the three of us were asleep on the couch with me on the bottom of the pile.  That nap lasted almost two hours.  I fixed banana chocolate chip pancakes for brunch.  Yummy!  After brunch, I popped in a movie, sat down on the floor and started to make the bundles of wool above that are currently in the sink being washed.  When they're done being washed, I'm heading out to dinner and the grocery store.  This was definitely my kind of day:  quiet, lazy but still productive.  Okay, I didn't get most of the things on my to-do list done but, hey, I'm okay with that.

How was your weekend?

The cats are taking over the blog

I didn't really do anything bloggable this weekend.  Well, one thing.  Mostly I cleaned and worked on laundry (although, Saturday I went to the Spinning Loft in Howell and Forma in Whitmore Lake).  At the Spinning Loft, I couldn't resist some raw Corriedale from New Zealand:

I don't think you can see it in this picture but the wool has amazing luster for a Corriedale.  Apparently, they grow some nice wool in New Zealand.  I bundled the locks in their tulle packages for scouring and afterward, spread them out on a sweater dryer to dry overnight.  This is what I walked into today:

I guess this stuff is really soft and comfy.

Saturday morning, I folded a load of towels.  I didn't pick up a stack of them quite fast enough:

And a pile of sheets that didn't get folded fast enough got burrowed into:

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to finish up the laundry.

I want a drum carder for Christmas!

I was a carding fool this weekend!  I made art bats, which were a total blast:

I dyed BFL, Merino/silk, Merino/mohair, Merino/bamboo and superwash Merino in three dye pots:  red, blue and black.  Different pots getting different combinations of wool.  I found that the Superwash Merino took the dye the best of all of them, giving me jet-black roving.  The BFL and Merino/mohair came out gray-black. 

The colored bits are sari silk.  This bat had a base of black BFL, with some red Merino/silk and what I think is straight bamboo (although I have no idea where I got it).

I made two bats similar to this one.  The other one produced this yarn:

The sparkly bits in both the bat and the yarn is ultraviolet Angelina fiber.

Eventually, I got tired of making bats out of my limited supply of stuff and turned to my stash for inspiration.  I pulled out some washed locks of brown Polwarth and brown Merino and decided to combine them and card them up.  While I was carding, I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with about a pound of brown wool.  It was beautiful and soft but it wasn't inspiring me.  While rooting around in my stash, I found some Firestarr that had been in my stash for so long I'd forgotten I had it.  The lightbulb went on.  After quite a few hours of carding, splitting, carding again, splitting, carding, adding Firestar, carding, adding more Firestar, splitting and carding yet again, I ended up with 10 gorgeous, sparkly bats:

The one on top is smaller than the others and I added a bit too much Firestar.  Eventually, I'll spin up all this bounty and probably knit a shawl.  Or maybe a vest.  (The sparkle isn't really this obvious but I had to use the flash so the picture would come out.  Oh, and I've already straightened that picture.)  Using just had cards, it would have taken me at least 5 times longer to get all that wool carded and blended.  Darn, I have more brown locks (Corriedale, I think) in the basement that I could have carded.  It's a good thing that at our next Guild meeting I plan on renting one of the drum carders my Guild owns.  I kind of doubt I'll be getting a drum carder for Christmas so renting is the next best option.  I have about a third of a fleece of beautiful Cormo that needs carding.  Guess what I'll be doing over the holidays?

Saturday

 

Saturday was Worldwide Spin In Public day.  I drove to the Spinning Loft in Howell to join the crowd of spinners.  The original plan was to sit out on the sidewalk in front of the shop and spin.  Unfortunately, it was too cold so we were inside in the hallway between the Loft and the restaurant next door.  We all had lots of fun.  I spun up some Texel to add to my breed book.  Friday night I spun both yak and camel.  They were hard, at least for me, to spin alone so I blended them, separately, with some lovely soft Merino wool.  The knitted swatches are going to be wonderfully soft.

Today was the Spinner's Flock Fleece Fair in Chelsea.  I went to keep my friend Alice company and ended up buying a couple of ounces of gorgeous angora fiber.  It totally wasn't my fault!  I blame Alice who made me go and Jan who owns the angora rabbit who gave up his fleece.  It's possible I was affected by the wool fumes as well.  Besides, it's really beautiful fiber.

Maker Fair

Wandering around Maker Fair Saturday was interesting but the part I enjoyed the most was teaching people to knit.  In four hours, I taught four people to knit and one to do cross stitch.  I'm not the world's best teacher but they seemed to get it by the time we were done each time.  One of my students was a 16-year-old boy.  Way to go kid!

When we finished our shift, the nice ladies who ran the needlearts zone let us take home some of the hundreds of knitting needles, yarn and crochet hooks that were donated:

 

The needles are Lantern Moon rosewood needles and the crochet hook is also Lantern Moon but made of ebony.  OMG!  Lantern Moon!  Apparently, the light colored end on the crochet hook was a mistake so Lantern Moon donated a bunch of "wrong" hooks.  It is hands down the best crochet hook I've ever used and the most beautiful.  It's a size G, by the way.  The Silky Wool they couldn't use because they didn't have a swift to wind the hanks and didn't have time to wind balls anyway.  I'm not sure what I'll make with two hanks but I'm sure something will come to me.  In the meantime, it'll be welcome in my stash.

It occured to me I never showed you the quilt labels I had made:

 

My friend was nagging me to put labels on my quilts for posterity.  I finally caved and had these made.  They're a little "sweet" which isn't exactly me but I like them.  In case you're wondering about that white blotch, I fuzzed out my last name.  Now I just need to remember to actually put them on my quilts.

Something horrifying happened to me this morning.  I found a wool moth and it was loaded with eggs.  *&^%$%#@!  I had two of those huge Ziplock bags so I loaded them up with all the wool and yarn that would fit and shoved them into my chest freezer.  They'll hang out there for a few days, come out for a day or two to let any eggs hatch then it's back into the freezer for a few more days.  Hopefully that'll take care of any infestation in that bunch of yarn/fiber.  I'll be damned if I'm going to let those moths eat my wool!  I wish I'd thought of this last winter when I could have just shoved all my wool in the trunk of my car.  Now I have to do it in shifts in the freezer.  You know something, I have wool, yarn and unspun, ALL OVER MY CONDO.  It's everywhere!  I need to buy more jumbo Ziplock bags.

Spun bunny

 

Spinning this was pure pleasure.  This is 100% angora yarn.  Oooo!  Aahhh!  Oh, yeah, this baby's soft!  And spun from stash fiber, I might add, so the stash is diminished.  This is a 2-ply, sport-weight yarn and I have no idea what I'm going to do with it, aside from entering it in the angora skein contest at the Michigan Fiber Festival in August. 

That's all I have to show for tonight.  I created my quilt sandwich for the green/copper quilt tonight but I'm still deciding if I'll be quilting it myself or have someone else quilt it.  The easiest way would be to quilt it free-motion but I really stink up the joint when I try it.  I could use my walking foot but it would be a pain in the rear with all the turning and adjusting.  So, free but frustrating or send it out and pay.  I'll likely quilt it myself because the free factor is hard to ignore.

I'll be away from the blog until Monday.  My sister is coming to help me declutter my condo so there won't be anything to show you anyway.  Maybe before and after pictures.  So, have a good weekend.  See you next week.

Michigan Fiber Festival

The day started out rainy but happily, cleared... and became really humid.  Despite that, I managed to drop off my yarn at the skein contest and do a little shopping.  I managed to surprise myself by leaving with money left over.  No one was more surprised than me.

 

My first purchase was 8 oz. of BFL.  The brown you see running through the braid is natural brown BFL.  I can't wait to see what this one looks like spun up.

 

My second and last purchase was two braids of Superwash BFL, both in the same colorway.  The colors in BFL seemed to be brighter and clearer than any of the Merino I saw.  I just have to slow down and be careful not to put too much twist in the singles or the finished yarn is going to be harsh.

I entered two skeins of yarn in the contest and I was pretty surprised when both one blue ribbons.  Yippee!  I don't have pictures yet; you couldn't pick up your yarn until Sunday and I was only there on Saturday.  A friend who was camping picked the yarn up for me today.  I'll have pictures as soon as I get it back.

 

The first bobbin of singles from the Merino/bamboo I dyed last week.  Not much progress has been made on my socks since I last posted a picture.  I'm still working on them, just very slowly.