We’ve been…
skirting… washing… dyeing… picking… carding… spinning… plying… niddy noddy-ing,… knitting… and enjoying the sunshine
In the Fiber Room
Tag: spinning
{this moment}
A Friday ritual.
A single photo – no words – capturing a single moment
from the week.
A simple, special extraordinary moment.
A
moment to pause, savor and remember.
Participating with the SouleMama
blog.
Scenes from the Open House
Sunday morning dawned foggy, damp and a little dreary, but it wasn’t long until the farm was filled with…
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| sheeps… |
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| and peeps… |
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| bake sale goodies… |
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| happy painted faces… |
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| wonderful 4-H’ers… |
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| equally wonderful music… |
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| solar dyeing… |
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| very merry wagon riders…. |
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| spinning…. |
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| and many, many happy faces |
(Many thanks, once again, to everyone that attended our open house! We are also very grateful to all the family and friends that pitched in helping out. Photos courtesy of Jonathan and Megan.)
Getting Ready
Making hay…
skirting fleeces…
carding spinning batts…
and getting ready for The Merrimacs – join us Sunday to enjoy great music and good company!
This Week in the Fiber Room
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| Dyeing Prudence’s locks |
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| Washing fleeces – this one is Blackberry’s ram lamb |
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| Carding and pulling Blackberry’s lovely wool |
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| Carding… sampling… note taking |
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| More sampling… more note taking |
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| Spinning some of Boy George’s Heather Lavender batts |
For those of you commenting on all the bright colors in one of the previous ‘In the Fiber Room’ posts, we thought you might be interested in this series by Jared Flood of Brooklyn Tweed fame. He is giving us a peek behind the scenes in the creation of his fabulous new yarn Shelter. He begins with some wonderful pictures and explanations of color blending at a mill scale. It is a great story, and we love, love, love what he is doing for the wool industry.
Heather Lavender Processing
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Inspired by all the heathery knits out there this year, we rolled up our sleeves and went to work. We dyed part of Boy George’s lamb locks different shades of purple, periwinkle and lilac, gently teased the locks apart, combined it with some of his natural locks and a little mohair. A couple passes through the carder, and here we have it – our interpretation – some lovely Heather Lavender Spinning Batts.
We are trying something just a little bit different with the second group of spinning batts. Along with the batts that are combination of natural and purple lamb locks, we included two batts that are primarily purple and one batt that is natural. They are all 30% mohair. We think this group of batts will spin up into some lovely yarn for a project with some accent color or stripes.
Boy George’s lamb locks (Border Leicester – Coopworth – Wensleydale) are even more soft and lustrous with the addition of the mohair. We are so happy with the end result that we just might have to get back to the carder and spin up some of these for a sample knit!
Winter Colours Week – Silver and Gold
All week long we have been participating in the Poppytalk’s Winter Colours Week, and here’s our farm girl contribution to day five. The photo count is approaching 2,500 in the Flickr Pool. Today it is Silver and Gold.
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| The carding cloth of our recently purchased Strauch “Mad Batt’r!” We are very excited to get this “Batt’r!” going. |
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| Ladders and ‘scaffolding’ in the old barn; still receiving some TLC |
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| Some of the over 600 silver teeth in our Pat Green Triple Picker |
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| We love our Bergey and its silver tower! Installed by Matt and company at PIMBY |
{this moment}
{this moment}
A Friday ritual.
A single photo – no words – capturing a single moment from the week.
A simple, special extraordinary moment.
A moment to pause, savor and remember.
Participating with the SouleMama blog.
Dyeing, Spinning, Knitting
Just a small sample of what we have been up to… when we are not in the barn.
Spinning Easter Egg Painted Roving
Using two different batts that we colored with Easter egg dyes and kool-aid, I spun this colorful little skein on the drop spindle. 
I stripped each of the two batts into narrow strips and alternated them on the spindle. 
It made a beautiful mix of greens and oranges. 
Will make great colorful stripes in a hat or scarf. Hmmm….. 
Any ideas????