WonderWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!

So, this past weekend was the fantabulous Wonderwool Wales festival in Builth Wells. I went, along with my entire family (who, to be fair, spent the day I was immersed in wool fumes hiking and exploring and playing in tide pools). The weather was glorious, the wool was plentiful and there were venison burgers. What more could a fiber fanatic ask for?

I went with a few ideas of things I'd like to get, but no absolute requirements. I'm pleased to say I came away with 4 items, one of which I'd been lusting after for quite a while, and some supplies for a repeat engagement with a particular process that I've been wanting to try.

Item 1 (the smallest and most expensive): an IST Turkish Spindle in Satin Rubain and Ash.

Like most of last October's P3 participants, I came away entranced by the whirling dervish Turkish spindles that Brenda and Amy were playing with. I'd looked at IST spindles before, but managed to refrain from getting one until I saw them in person. After trying one, I couldn't resist.

My failed dyeing test run from last week

Doesn't it look like it's itching to get started on this fiber? I can't wait to get going on it.

Item 2 (not pictured): some Unicorn Power Scour, bought precisely to deal with

Items 3 and 4: one dark grey/black and one white-ish Shetland fleece.

Now, my previous experience with spinning yarn from hand-prepped raw fiber was a mixed experience. So you may be wondering what could possibly induce me to start all over again with approximately three times the amount of starting material. You may be sitting in front of your screen, slowly shaking your head side to side and thinking "This may be the final fiber that breaks the porpoise's back." And I'm not so sure you're wrong. But here's the thing...

...I love Shetland fiber. I absolutely adore spinning prepped Shetland top, and ever since taking a day-long course on the inestimable virtues of the Shetland breed with JMM, I have been wanting to play with some fleece.

All this is to say that when I walked through a doorway and beheld the glory that was the Shetland Sheep Society's booth on Saturday morning, it was all over but the shouting...not 15 min after the doors  opened, I was the proud owner of two Shetland fleeces.

The first one is a gorgeous dark grey fleece that I kept coming back to, and couldn't leave behind.

It is lovely and soft. Unrolling it revealed some light tips that are either sunbleaching or guard hairs. Either way, it's going to be just gorgeous spun up. I think that I can sort the locks into two different colors and end up with a black pile and a grey pile. This is going to be the first project.


The second fleece is white, with some light apricot sections - it remains to be seen what it looks like once it's washed.

The locks have some absolutely gorgeous crimp. I'm really looking forward to getting this baby washed up too.


So there you have it - my personal spinning time for the next year, booked.

I've got one more, critically important piece of this fleece-processing puzzle that is guaranteed to make it a success:

I'm going to borrow a drum carder.

Undyed fiber report

There's been so much application of dye to fiber around here of late, that it's something of a relief to have some naturally colored fiber to play with. I've been plugging away on the Gotland (halfway to the required yardage, with another full bobbin and starting another one tonight), but I decided I needed a break, and I'm spun up the Hebridean fleece for the colorwork.

This stuff started out looking like this:


There were some intact locks.

The staple length was about 3-4 inches, and the fiber had some really nice crimp!

I had 68 grams of raw fleece, and after washing I had about 60 gr left.

I carded that up, after tossing out the bits that were too matted or scurfy to be worth messing with. This box full of rolags,

Ended up as approximately 70 yds of lovely 2-ply yarn.

This was really nice to spin - it drafted pretty well (better then the Gotland for sure!) - and the resulting yarn has a nice bounce, although it's not the softest in the world. Sadly, 70 yds is only about half of the required yardage! I do have a couple of other lots of black/brown fiber (Black Welsh Moutain, some Jacob), so the plan is to use the Hebridean for the colorwork on the arms of the sweater, and spin up probably the Black Welsh for the hem and yoke. We'll see how it goes.

The new culprit: work!

After a long stretch of not very much actual lab work in the last year or so, I seem to find my butt firmly planted on a lab stool more often then not these days. Usually accompanied by one of these. Or one of these. It did not become clear to me until today that these dastardly devices are clearly the source of my wrist pain that has developed over the last couple of weeks. Not to mention hundred of little vials that need to have lids screwed on to them. It certainly couldn't be the hemp! Consider this my apology, oh lovely orangey-red Gemini pullover. Sadly, I still can't work on you.

Instead of knitting on my sweater, I've been doing some other stuff. Like washing fleece for the first time. I did my first trial batch on Wednesday, using a technique from Deborah Robson (she of Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook fame). For £10, I picked up five washtubs and five little storage baskets with big holes along the side, and away I went.

The set up: 2 hot (~50 degrees Celsius, which is what I get straight from the tap) rinse baths, 2 hot soapy baths, and 2 final rinse baths (also hot). All done in the bathtub. Here's what it looked like, more or less:

The first rinse bath was absolutely disgusting.

Clouds of brown dirt came off the fiber, even without any agitation. Yuck! The second rinse bath came out fairly clear, thankfully.

The soapy steps seem to have taken care of most of the grease, but I may end up needing to wash again - either with hotter water or more water. Sadly, this round of three trays of fiber used up most of the hot water in the tank, so washing the entire kilo is going to take a while!

Last night, in a fit of frustration because I didn't want to irritate my wrist, I sat down in front of the loom. About an hour later, I had this (small teaser photo only),

which, after a bath this morning, now looks like this.

Hopefully it will be on it's way to Switaly soon!