Sheep, Sunshine and Celebration

So I guess I am behind on my blogging but it's spring and there is much to do. First was the Spring Fair. I live for this event as it is when I get to buy my fleece for the year. This year I bought a Jacob fleece. I have wanted one since I saw the Yarn Harlot post a picture of a shawl she made using one. I was enchanted by the many variations of color in one fleece. The day I got it home I was able to get it all sorted out and washed. I am proud of myself for getting the 'hard work' done on day one. 

In addition to my fleece I also visited some vendors and bought a bag of blue roving with the intent of making a hat for Jacob, but I am not sure if that is what this is destined to be as it is spinning up differently than expected.

I also bought a ball of top in some beautiful soft colors that is now a skein of yarn but I don't have a picture of that yet so here are the singles on the wheel.

Oh, and a shawl pin:

On another day I took the kids to the fair to play. There were bouncy houses, 

Rides, 

And of course lots of critters. This is Abby petting Juniper, a kid goat.

The big hit of the day however was this miniature house. It was being raffled off and had some beautiful hand made furnishings that so inspired my son that we stood looking at this thing for 20 solid minutes.

In fact on the next sunny day we went out and collected sticks for him to build his very own mini furniture (which of course means I will be learning how to build it for him).

As to the celebrations there have been a couple. First was Brian's birthday. Then our very good friends decided to get married so down to the courthouse we went and witnessed for them. Andrew and Anna we love you lots!  

Last but not least my family made my 32nd birthday a wonderful day!

Easter Weekend

Easter weekend was very fun for us. We joined a gym and got started  learning our way around the place. On Saturday we dyed eggs with the kids and I just couldn't let the leftover dye go to waste. So I grabbed some wool and a handful at a time I used up the rest of the dyes. I did manage to burn myself rather well with some boiling water, but in the end I got a wonderful pastel rainbow of wool. I still need to process it and spin it but for now it is pretty to look at just as is. We had dinner in with good friends and opened a lovely bottle of wine.

Sunday we got up to see that the Easter Bunny remembered us and we ate our dyed eggs. Later we headed to brunch with Ron and Julie and then came back to our house for a visit. While the kids were resting Brian got to play his video game and I finished up some spinning. Overall I think everyone had a pretty good weekend.

I don't know why I am still surprised by the changes that happen to colors when I spin but here I am surprised again. This is the ball of singles spun from the rolag in the previous post - next to a spindle full of the white singles it will be plied with.

The colors are dark and rich and I really love them. I knew in order to keep them that dark I would have to ply it back on itself or leave it a singles but I wanted to make the 'same' yarn I had before to compare end results better so I went ahead and wound the singles into a plying ball. As you can see this lightened it up rather well.

Finally the finished skein of plied and set yarn. In the end it was much closer to the desired result I was trying to achieve with the first set of rolags that came out rather orange. I really like that I got a bit more of the rainbow effect I was looking for and who knows what changes will happen to the colors when I knit or weave it.

I had a very nice weekend with my family. We went out to dinner on Friday, and spent Saturday morning lounging around the house. We had a Saturday afternoon visit and dinner out with Grammy and Grandpa in the evening. On Sunday we stayed home. The kids played (with toys), Brian played (with his computer) and I played (with wool). We cooked a very nice dinner of crab cakes and Cesar salad together on Sunday and after we all went for a long brisk walk. All in all it was a wonderful weekend!
Sunday morning the kids and I made Calm Jars. I saw this project on Pinterest and thought it was a wonderful idea. I got them each a mason jar and let them fill it with various glitters and fun shaped bangles. Then we filled them with water and glued the lids on.

The object is when you are upset and/or having a fit to shake up the jar and sit and watch it until the glitter settles. It is just about the right time to let emotions settle too.

I am spinning a second set of 'scrap' rolags I dyed with food coloring. This time I wanted to see if I could get more distinct colors and try to get the blue dye to take better. I gave the blue dye a 3 minute head start from the red and yellow. Here is a (crappy) picture of one of the rolags (the other two are already spun)

 

The result of the dye in the rolag is much like I expected but it is spinning up very differently than I thought it would. Over all this is a dark yarn whereas the last one was a light yarn. I will post that once I am all done with that. Today's projects will be to finish that spinning, comb some wool, spin a different set of singles to be plyed with the dyed rolags, and make some boxes for my storage cubes.

Wool Days

Well, I have a bit of catching up as usual but her it goes:

Not so long ago I decided to try an experiment with my new drum carder. I started with some brown "mystery wool" that I think is Romney. Then I cut up bits of yarn (leftover thrums from the Sheep To Shawl) and sprinkled them in.

It worked. Sort of. 

I like the look of the color interaction but I am not sure how well the bits of yarn will stay in with wear. So next time I think I will card up the little yarn bits first.

This last Sunday I declared it a "wool day" and spent most of the day playing with wool in various forms. First I was updating my spinning notebook with a fiber blending project I am working on. Here they are all blended, spun, skeined and stored in recycled jelly jars:

I also have issues throwing things out so the scraps from the blending got spun up into a little mini skein that I knit into a sock for my key chain and had some left over to put into my spinning notebook.

I also wanted to get some wool washed so I could spin. The fleece I bought in April was Romeldale, a fine wool that I wanted to treat with care so I washed the locks one by one in the sink. Here they are dirty, ready to be washed:

A dunk in hot soapy water of the first 2/3 of the lock, then flip it, do it again and repeat in the rinse water. 

Here they are sitting to dry on the drying rack all nice and white:

Then they were flick carded one lock at a time and set in my spinning basket waiting to become yarn:

And then some spinning on the wheel - going for lace weight so we'll see how big it gets when plyed and set.

The kids wanted in on the wool fun and because I really loved the way the colors of my scrap bits behaved together I decided to dye a larger batch and see if I could make a batt that would get me similar results. Here is the wool all dry and ready to be carded on the drum carder.

After running each color through the carder individually I separated them into strips and layed them on the carder in a sequence I hope will gain me the desired yarn. 
 Here is the pretty batt all rolled up. I ended up with two of these as I did not want to overload the carder.

Yesterday I still had the wool bug so I spend some time carding some more of the mystery brown wool that I used in the skein in the first picture (Just a plain brown batt, nothing exciting to look at). I also carded up the remnants from combing out the locks of wool for my spinning basket. That yielded 3 rolags that I soaked in water and vinegar and then dropped some food colors into.

After the color had set, this is what I got:

A bit more muddled than I wanted so I am going to have to play around with the way I am dyeing things to get the desired results.
And last but not least is my current knitting:

A companion scar for my most recent hat. I love how soft this yarn is!

Portable wool dryer...

Sent from my LG phone

Woolly Distractions

Abigail is trying to adjust to her brother going to Preschool without her so she and I have been doing lots of focused one on one time during his school hours. I think it has been really nice for us to have this time together just her and me. On Thursday we did some Kool-Aid wool dying of the Romney fleece that I bought at the Spring Fair last year. First we mixed the Kool-Aid and then put in the wool.

Abby pushed it down into the water and I put it in the microwave. After it was all 'cooked' I rinsed it and drained it in the 'wool spinner' (a salad spinner dedicated to my woolly things). Then Abby helped me spread it out to dry.

We were having so much fun that rather than just the two colors I was planning we ended up with 6 or seven and had to get out the drying racks. After they were dry (That evening) I started combing out the colors one by one. I was hoping to get a heathered look but the color saturated too well for that so I may go back and comb in some undyed wool  to get the effect I am looking for.

This is the way we wash our wool...

So I have been spending the last week washing wool. It is done. Well, the washing is - there is still a bit of work to do to get it ready to spin.

If you have no interest in wool, feel free to click away otherwise, if ya wanna know how it gets from sheep to sweater (or sock or blanket or whatever) read on.

On Saturday (of last week) I bought a fleece at the Spring Fair.

I brought it home and layed it out on the kitchen floor. It was already 'skirted' (someone had gone around and taken out all of the icky bad clumps on the edges of the fleece) but it is always prudent to do your on checking. You can see the shape of the sheep if you look for it...The bit up on the Seahawks mat there in the top left corner is what would have been on the right front leg of the sheep.

A gratuitous close up of the locks:


The locks are about 4 inches long. Next they got divided up - ended up with 4 58qt tubs of wool prewashing (weight about 6.75lbs).


Next the locks got a dip in soapy water for about a half an hour. I got smart after the first batch and bought some tuelle to use as a net for moving, draining and drying the wool.


After a couple of rounds of soapy soaks it gets a rinse soak and then I spun the wad of wool in the tuelle to get the water out (washing machine is much more efficient tho) and then spread it out in the yard to dry:
Next comes the waiting. and waiting and waiting for it to dry. It washed out to be a pretty brilliant white.
I spun up a small sample from the locks just as soon as they were dry. I didn't take pics of the spun yarn until after I got out the kool-aid. However, after a dip in some kool-aid baths and a heat set in the microwave this is what my samples looked like:

That is Lemon-Lime and Pink Lemonade for anyone who wants to know...
Of course I had to see it knit up so I made another key-chain sock. The sample was just enough to get a sock out of (I had about 6 inches of yarn left over):


Overall I am really happy with the wool I bought. I ended up with a 73% yeild of the original weight..so 4lbs 14oz. I split this fleece with my friend Andrew and we are just playing around with the fiber seeing what we get when we try different things. Andrew carded the trimmings from his son's haircut with some of his wool and spun it up into a course yarn. Personally I love the color blend but won't touch it because it itches to high heaven. I think it would make a great rug but I think he is going to make a belt out of it. I have also combed some of my wool into roving and dyed those with the same colors. I can't wait for them to be dry because I really want to make aroving braid just to see it all done up pretty.