Spinning Update

  Hi Everyone, and happy midweek. We were suppose to be warm today-not-I can't complain no ice or snow, but we are windy, cloudy and cool. So still can't burn leaves from last fall, or work outdoors. I am still fighting not feeling well too. I am thinking I need a dose of predisone for the asthma, can't get into the doctor til end of March. and bummer my car is still not working, we thought we had it fixed and now won't start again-must be some sort of electrical problem.  So instead of food shopping I am playing with fibers again today-smiles. 😀

  Since I am still playing with fibers, thought I would share some progress. One of the skeins I had spun back in 2016 I was able to save from the mice getting into it, at the woods house-since it was on the bottom of the bag. No smells, so I put it on one of my diy niddy noddy's and wetted it down again.  I have been tagging everything over the years so I know what it is. This was blended on the blending board back then with odd fibers and also romney locks that needed to be hand carded individually with a tool called a flicker. After reading the label I remembered I had a big basket full of long locks that I carded outdoors.  This is not too bad of  yarn for a beginner, but it is on the thicker size and the joins are all pretty noticeable-it will weave up ok though

Remember the blending board from my T Tuesday post? Here is the yarn it spun into-I had trouble drafting it out-I had put a bit too much fiber on the board-so this ended up pretty but a little on the thick size too Very soft

   Photo below is of the skein of the long white wool and the above after being wetted down on the niddy noddy to set the twist and let dry 

    Below photo shows dried, put into a skein and added to their cloth bags: the white wool skein goes with the rest to be spun, and the other Yellowstone colors cloth bag.

     Note: I learned years ago to Never store fibers or cloth fabrics in plastic bags, better to keep in cloth bags or old cotton pillow cases.  Resale shops are good places to find pillow cases if you need them.

   The fibers that I bought came from three different sellers all came in plastic, which is ok to mail in, but one of them was quite damp-thinking it was in the plastic too long before mailing.

   I have not had a problem with fabrics being in those large plastic storage containers with lids but plastic bags is a big No for long term storage especially fibers for spinning and spun fibers. 

This next yarn, I played with yesterday. I still have more of this roving so will make up more

Laying on fibers to the blending board

I decided to make into these rolags which I really liked-you pull the fiber from one end draft it out and you get one very long spun piece-if it doesn't break-smiles.

In those two bags of fibers to use for this purpose that I had bought-there were two large pieces of this pretty striped roving-I think the colors are so much prettier blending them together on the board opposed to what I have been doing-tearing off long lengths of the roving and then spin-just get the color you tear off doing that. These colors to me are Yellowstone

  Today I had two pieces of roving left to spin of that pretty tweed green-bamboo and merino wool.  I decided to make rolags out of the last of it, and also add a little bit of the darker green roving and a golden yellow 

I did spin one of these rolags this afternoon, but didn't get a photo yet. For some reason I had a more difficult time pulling the fiber out to spin-may have gotten it too tight. I want to go back to the video I shared yesterday-to make roving from the blending board. Will try that out tomorrow.

Here is a video by Ashford on how to use the blending board to make rolags-I love this company and  have several of their products

    My first purchase was back in the mid 1970's for one of their spinning wheels in kit form. I have not been able to concentrate long enough over the years, to figure out my wheel-which would speed up the spinning. This spinning wheel has been a struggle for me. After I bought it I was working allot of hours, had some life changes, moving around etc and then when I would have some time couldn't figure it out-back then no internet for help.  Years later I discovered they sent the wrong directions-wow-so I got it put together the right way but still couldn't get it to work right. One year I took it to Fiber U when I was taking a spinning class-she was telling me the different things I could do-didn't write it all down at the time-sigh  It's been a long story-still determined though to figure it out one day.

       Oh and  Ashford is a family business out of New Zealand

 Looking at what I have left to spin for my Yellowstone park inspired rauna or poncho, I need more blues and yellows. So I ordered 2 more art batts to make up my own on the blending board-less expensive and more fun too.

  Can't believe we are heading to the end of another week already. 

Happy March 1st everyone.