Saturday, May 22, 2010

Wonderful Wool! Dyeing to Spin!

MY NEW KROMSKI MINSTREL! YAY!


My very first spinning wheel arrived on Friday afternoon and I gleefully assembled it and started spinning - yarn pics to follow at end of post. I am so excited to finally have a wheel. I am getting ready for my first Fiber Fest in June and so I really needed this wheel to spin up yarns for the show and to sell on My Etsy.

I also purchased my first Fancy Kitty Kitten Carder. This is the fine 90/120 carder, and I also purchased an auxiliary swift in the Medium cloth as well for carding some textured art batts. I am so excited. My auxiliary swift will arrive on Monday and then I will be carding batts like crazy!
This is my first hand dyed, hand pulled roving. I call it RARE EARTH, because when I saw the colors the first words out of my mouth were "Wow, it so earthy!" I also washed and prepped this fiber from the raw state. It is from a 80/20 Corriedale/Sussex mix breed whole fleece purchased from a local farm.
This is the very first yarn I have spun on my new wheel. It was made using the RARE EARTH hand dyed roving. I also added in some ribbon shreds and some ribbon roses. I just love it. I know I am just going to get hooked on spinning art yarns!

Here's a close-up!

And this is the roving I used. I had 2 batches of this dyed up for a total of 4.2 ounces. The final skein is 4.4 oz and 124 grams.

Here is the very first Batt I carded on my friend's Fancy Kitty before I purchased my own. I used the same Corriedale Sussex fiber, only this was the leftover bits from flick carding locks, and from pulling the rovings. I spun it up on my drop spindle and have not taken pics of the finished yarn yet.
This is the fiber I used to make the Batt above.

This is a pic of all the fiber I dyed that day. I dyed all this in about 30 minutes in between morning and evening service last Sunday.

Well, that's all I have time for right now, I can't wait to share some more Fiber Fun with you all. I plan to make some spinning and carding videos for my YouTube Channel once I get my drum carder on Monday. So STAY TUNED!