sweetgeorgia

Getting raw.

Treenway Silk has their 2006 fleeces listed now and I just bought one. This will be my very first raw fleece — it’s 2.3 kg Gotland ewe fleece that is “cream with light grey tones”. What better marketing for this fleece than to have it featured in the “Lord of the Rings”? Shall I spin and weave this into a cape for myself? Hmm, the possibilities…

Edited to add: Wow. Here is a way better link to the use of Gotland fleece in the costuming for Lord of the Rings.

A Sheep of One’s Own

Yep. That’s right. Sweetgeorgia’s got a sheep!

Last night was our annual little gift exchange dinner among friends — and my friends got together and adopted a sheep for me! They rock. Check it out:

I remember mentioning the “adopt-a-sheep” thing last year and the idea must have stuck! This sheep will be from Owens Farm in New Hampshire. The farm sends letters throughout the year with photos to let you know how life is progressing. Since I’m allowed to visit my little sheep every couple months, Michelle suggested we fly down to visit the sheep in July as part of the celebration of my big 3-0. Shiny!

And they bought me this little sheep ornament at the Circle Craft Christmas Market too — but rather than hanging it on the tree, I’m going to use it to decorate my wheel year-round!

Not quite ready for their closeups

The Manly Sweater (after a year of working on it, off and on) is done! But it’s still drying. I am gifting it to the DH for our anniversary, but again, it’s still drying. It was easy to knit, but I think the armholes are too small…

Look what else is drying… dyed Soy Silk! This stuff is weird. It looks like silk and acts like silk, but is kind of “crunchy” like cotton. I’m looking forward to seeing how it will spin!

And here’s more fibre that’s drying…

That’s Border Leicester roving that I bought in Salt Spring this summer. It’s soft, but not soft like merino! soft. So I’m making…

… a Jayne Cobb hat! If you’ve seen Joss Whedon’s Firefly, you’ll know this is the hat that Jayne receives in the mail, handknit by his mom. I’m going to card (blending the red and yellow to make orange!) and spin up the yarn this weekend and knit it up next weekend when my friends and I get together for a Firefly marathon. All this is prep for the Serenity movie that comes out on September 30. If you want to make one too, this lovely gal has written a pattern for it here…

Dreaming of a drum carder

I know this doesn’t make sense, but June’s entry yesterday about measuring yardage suddenly got me crazy about buying a drum carder. Non sequitur, I know. This summer before my birthday, all I could think about was getting a drum carder — but then when it actually came down to ordering it, I figured I had already bought too much stuff (hand combs, hand cards, too much fibre, etc.) so it never happened. But now we are closing in on Fall… and that means… Christmas is coming!

Ok, so it’s a bit of a long shot, but I can daydream about it. Here’s what I’m looking at:

It’s the Fricke/Strauch Petite Carder which is a 6 1/2″ wide carder with a brush attachment. This carder is $538 CDN from Shuttleworks (where I got the hand carders and combs from). The other carder is the Louet Junior Roving Carder which is 4″ wide and costs $415 CDN. Sure, in my dreams I’d get the Strauch Finest but that’s nearly $900 CDN, so um, no.

Anybody have either of these carders? What do you think? What do you like or dislike about it? Suggestions are very welcome.

I’d like to be able to blend my own fibres or dyed rovings. Like blending some alpaca and angora or silk and merino. Or, blending dyed fibres to make heathered yarns. That kind of stuff. Or, just carding faster than by hand! I’m leaning towards the Strauch Petite because it’s wider and seems better made but the Louet looks better and finished… hmm, off to day dream now.

Happiness is a hand carder

Since I signed up for the Natural Dyeing and Spinning for Sock Makers workshop at the upcoming Salt Spring Island Fibre Festival I’ve been gathering the required equipment — hand carders and a lazy kate.

The kate is the Ashford Precision Lazy Kate that I ordered from The Woolery. It came unassembled and unfinished — I just screwed the pieces together and didn’t finish it. Too bad it only fits Ashford bobbins — my Woolee Winder bobbins are too long for it. Ah well.

But here are my new fabulous hand carders:

I spoke at length with the Shuttleworks owner, Cal, before deciding on these carders. Originally I had thought to buy cotton cards because of the finer teeth, but he steered me towards the wool cards instead. These are quite fine wool cards at 190 teeth per inch (tpi) and eventually when I get a second set of cards they will likely be around 72 to 120 tpi.

These wonderful hand cards have allowed me to finally fluff up the accidently felted rovings and spin happily!

I’ve just been practicing using the cards and spinning either off the card directly or off rolags that are made with the fibres parallel. I did try spinning with some rolags that had the fibres laying horizontally but it made the spinning a little lumpy. Hand carding is slow, oh so meditative, and perfect for these small amounts of fibre.