Etsy Shop Update- Yarn and Roving and OMG CASHMERE!

I had a bit of time off around Xmas to putter around the house with a nasty cold keeping me in. While the soulmate decided that the time was for making beer, at one point I jostled him away from the stove to put my dyepots on. Finally, I've got everything photographed and labeled and listed and ready to go! Oh, except for some lovely merino lace yarn that I want to re-photograph. That will be listed very soon.

Here's a few things in the listing.

A few skeins of handspun Shetland:


A couple colors of hand dyed Polworth-Silk top that I'm wild about:




A few colors of Superfine Merino/Superfine Kid Mohair pencil roving:




Laceweight Merino:




A few colors of Superwash BFL roving:


The best is for last (drumroll please...) MONGOLIAN CASHMERE ROVING!



SQUEEEEE! I can't say enough good things about this stuff. It's the softest fiber I've ever touched, and it spins up into a drapey smooth yarn, and then blooms into the most perfect little delicate halo ever. I have a limited amount of this, and I am still having a sale- 30% off! A real bargain as far as cashmere is concerned.

Check it out at KnotMyDayJob.etsy.com. The coupon code for the 30% off is "trente". Happy shopping!

Making Time to Spin

That's really my biggest spinning challenge now. It takes me so long to set myself up and sit down in front of a wheel that I need to commit time to it. Also, it's bad to run back and forth from spinning to cooking dinner, as no one wants chunks of alpaca in their kale and bean soup.

So here we go.

I'm still trying to consciously control my spinning and not just zone out and make laceweight like I do when I'm on autopilot.



4 oz of Spunky Eclectic Corriedale/Alpaca blend in "Thunderstorm".

Singles:



Plied:



Fin:



At 62 yards, this is not my personal best yardage-wise, but it is a true bulky weight yarn, and I managed to keep the singles even enough so that I don't have to call this a thick-and-thin yarn. Whoo hoo! My first bulky yarn that I'm happy with. Sweet Victory.

Here's another one. This one started out as a Spontaneous Spinning Batt from Loop.



Holy Tinseltown. This was ridiculously fun to spin, but I have sparkles everywhere now. I mean- it worked its way into everything I own, to the point where complete strangers would stop me on the street to point out the big clumps of tinsel attached to my tail. I just cooly and calmly smiled and pretend that I wanted it there. I'm sure there's been a fair amount digested as well. Actually, I'm positive.



I also had an assortment of purple babycakes that I've been collecting. Ever since Loop opened up a studio close to NYC, there's been a pretty hefty trade in these going on. I felt like the don of purple babycakes.



I striped the babycakes (which are just 1oz mini-batts) into the big 4oz batt so I have a nice variegated skein of purple yarn. This was my try in spinning artsy imperfect singles.


The results:





Squeeee! It's so girly and pretty. I'm thrilled with it. It needs to be knitted up ASAP.

On the other end of the spectrum, here some of the fleece from Muriel the Moorit Merino.



Which was processed into this by the mill:



And which I spun into this:



330 yards, woolen, dk weight. It's so soft. I have oodles of this stuff left- I'll never be able to spin through the pounds of this that is in my spinning basket, so I'm selling off some of it on my Etsy Store. For the rest of the month, it is 30% off.

Also on the wheel is some Merino/Tencel blend from Silver Moon Farms. I got this at Rhinebeck ages ago...even though pastel rainbow isn't really my color scheme, I decided to give it a try.



I've never spun tencel before. It wants to be lace and it's a bit slippery, and I'm finding that it wants to be spun worsted rather than woolen. It drafts out like butter and I'm enjoying it immeasurably.



It's shiny! The tencel is almost luminous. I'm thinking of making a delicate lace scarf with it.

Enjoy your weekend, and get some spinning done!

MORE Sheep and Wool...and Frisbee Dogs, too

My favorite part about Rhinebeck is wandering around and checking out the sheep and goats and then eating said sheep and goats. Kidding! They do serve plenty of good lamb dishes though. They put some distance between the sheep being petted and the sheep being eaten...the places serving lamb are far away from the sheep barns. It does seem kind of cannibalistic. Apple cider donuts and kettle corn for me then.

This Cheviot was a bit too pretty to eat anyway.













One of the highlights of the day for many are the frisbee catching canines. They used to have sheep dog trials, but I'm not sure what happened...now they just have sheep dog frisbee. They are fascinating to watch.



The dogs are just filled with vibrant energy and concentration.



















So about the shopping...people spend oodles of money here every year. I've spent a kagillion bucks here in previous years. It's great to support the industry and small farmers and indie businesses. However, I was just uninspired to shop and found myself in much more of a contemplative mood. I think I've been doing this festival for so long now that I've already bought everything that I feel the need to buy. Weird, right? Also, it's been much more of a social event for me...getting out of the city and hanging out with good people I don't see often enough becomes a priority. Plus, I have a few big trips coming up and that money that wasn't spent on fiber will soon used to buy the perfect croissant.

As I was walking to the car park at the end of the day, I swung by the Foxhill Farm booth and bought a bag of Cormo roving. I couldn't buy absolutely nothing. It just felt all sorts of wrong. Alice Field breeds and raises the loveliest sheep- she keeps them blanketed, so they are nice and clean. You can just tell when you are spinning it that the sheep it came from was loved and well cared for. The roving isn't over-proceeded at all and I had so much fun spinning what I bought from her last year.



Totally worthwhile purchase. It will keep me busy for countless hours, along with the rather huge stash of fleece from previous Rhinebecks that are still patiently stored in bags under my bed.

Etsy Shop Update! Really!

Some "hurry-up and wait" emergencies at work meant I had some time to sit down and work on a long-overdue Etsy shop updates. Here's a few things that have been listed:


Merino/Silk sock weight yarn that I dyed using Eucalyptus leaves


Merino lace weight in tonal greens and blues


Merino/silk roving. Gorgeous stuff, lovely to spin. I could almost eat it.

Also- I have started a spinning batt club that I have listed in the shop. I have a lot of fiber that needs to be turned into batts, but the batts can not be squished down once I've made them. I live in an apartment that is filled with yarn, fiber and homemade beer.

I. Can. Not. Have. One. More. Fluffy. Fiber. Batt. In. The. House.

Or giant kettles. Dyeing yarn and making beer both require huge kettles, which are hard to store. No more hobbies that involve kettles. Space is my biggest issue when I'm making and trying to store batts, but I can make time to make batts and ship them out once a month. Membership is very limited as is my time, so sign up quick like a bunny!

Muriel

Last October at Rhinebeck, I fell in love with a fleece. This fleece was very large and very greasy, but the color and the crimp and the softness combined got me to throw my wallet down anyway.



I love the fact that they included a picture of the sheep with the fleece. She's pretty.

There are plenty of really good merino for spinning available commercially, but it's rare to find such a beautiful moorit color anywhere. Merinos, along with other breeds, have been selectively bred to be white. That way, they can get consistent dye lots in the textile industry. It's hard to find naturally colored sheep fleeces unless you really seek them out, and I do. This is my white whale of a fleece. Except it is creamy brown.



It took a ton of washing to get this clean, and I lost about 30% of the weight once the grease was gone. She was wearing a coat, so it was remarkably clean and free of dirt and bits of plants that sheep pick up as they graze.

She had the most perfectly gorgeous fleece I've ever seen.

A fleece this size was going to take me weeks to process and months to spin. I was looking forward to it wholeheartedly- I love processing my own fleece and enjoy the project from start to finish if it's a nice fleece. This was the plan until I got wind of a sale at Zellinger's. It was too good of a deal to pass up, so I packed the fleece in a big box, included my order instructions and sent it off for someone else to deal with.

Wool processing mills are notoriously slow at turnaround time (many of my friends are just getting their processed fleeces in the mail that they had sent off when they were at Rhinebeck) so I had this really large window before this would make its way back to me. Five months sounded reasonable- I'm in no hurry and it's not like I'm running out of fleece in the meantime.

Imagine my surprise that a mere 5 weeks later, an absolutely enormous box arrived with the UPS man. What? I'm not expecting anything. This can't be right- what would show up my door in a box that comes up past my hip? I am tall, by the way.

Oh. It's You. I wasn't expecting You so soon.



Didn't I just get a Shetland fleece processed at Loop a couple days ago? Once you turn a fleece into roving or batts, you can no longer pack it down solid and shove it into space bags and vacuum out all the air and hide it. Once it gets nice and fluffed up, you are stuck with it in that bloated state. Unless you want to ruin it. Which you don't.

Anyway. I will sing the praises of Zellinger's. Not only were they super fast and extremely affordable- I paid $43 for 8lbs, which came back to me about 6lbs- but they also did a wonderful job. They washed it one more time for me and the roving is perfect, with hardly a nep to be found. I couldn't have done a better job if I painstakingly combed it lock by lock.





Someone has some spinning to do.

Etsy Shop Update!

I took advantage of a nice cool day last week and put the sad-looking neglected dye pot to good use. I'm quite pleased with the results:



"Flare": These are skeins of 75% Superwash Merino/25% nylon sock yarn. They come in 460 yard skeins, and I have 4 of them listed in the same dye lot (or at least similar enough to be considered a dye lot). I kettle dyed them and then handpainted another layer over the kettle dye, and I'm quite pleased with the results.



"Rouge": This is some of the softest commercially-prepared Corriedale top I've ever touched. It has a nice, long staple length and should spin up nice and heathery.



"Arancia": Blue Face Leicester roving. It's silky and soft and I'm envious of whoever might get to spin this up.

Everything is available at my Etsy shop.