Friday, February 26, 2010

Back to Business....

I am planning a big trip over to South Australia in March.  Primarily to visit  my dear friend and wool grower/seller, Jane, she has an online store and is a registered breeder of English Leicester sheep.  However, times are tough and we are racing to save enough for the trip.  The bonus is, I am planning on making part of the trip a business stop.  I have a few lovely customers in SA so plan on meeting them.

Dear Jane brought to light that there is an Agriculture show at Mt Barker, just out of Adelaide on the last weekend I am in the state so we are going to pool our resources and have a stall.  That way the ladies can all come to meet us and have even more variety of yummies to buy.  More on this at a later date.

But before that...tomorrow in fact, I organized a picnic for my crafty ladies in my online forum groups here in Melbourne.  I did it before xmas and everyone had such a good time that they didn't want to wait a whole year to do it again.

I had dyed all this....

To take to the picnic but I took it to spinning on Tuesday and the ladies there took a liking to quite a bit of it and I only have the merino superwash left(that is the 4 on the bottom right and the bright coloured one on the right hand end).

So I had to have a looksee at my stock and see what else I had to dye so I have some new stock to take to the picnic.

I found four lots of 200g of fibre.
firstly, Shetland humbug, it's white and brown stripes.

It's actually a lot more pink than the picture portrays.

These two are Blue faced Leicester blended with Tussah silk 70/30%


And last but not least, this one is superwashed, BlueFaced Leicester.

None of these fibres are available from the local market.  These sheep simply aren't bred in Australia.  Not that there is anything wrong with our local fleece.  NZ and Aus do do the best merino in the world and their other breeds are pretty good too.
But we are very limited in variety so this is what I am able to offer my customers.

The picnic should be fantastic.   I think it will be a spot warm but not so extreme not to sit under a tree and do a spot of chin wagging and spinning.


On a personal note...I have some finished spinning to share.
I have had this black Shetland roving sitting around for a while.  You saw the first skein at an earlier post.
Finally finished spinning it..
It's quite thick, a chunky finish, about 920mts out of just over 1kg of fibre and silk.


The coloured silk is very subtle and I don't think it'll really show up until it's knitted.


This is mine and I do plan on knitting it...but of course, if someone offered me a good price I would sell it.

One thing I must mention about commercial processors that I have noticed.
This wool had been through a thorough scouring and processed into roving.  If it hadn't I would not have been able to bring it into the country.  This simply means that the wool has been heated to a temperature such as any live seeds or bugs have perished.
I have found however that this process does not necessarily mean that the fibre is clean.

Now this is raw wool, locally sourced Polwarth, uncoated and this is the first wash.


And this is the water from fully scoured and processed Shetland after it has been spun.


I do believe that the processed wool is actually dirtier...
Reason????  When a commercial processor who does multiple breeds and colours of fleece scour, they do the white wools and process them first.  But as they go through, the moorit (brown) and black fleece go into the water last.
So while they are free of oils and sterilized of plant and bug matter, they are also full of the dirt from all the other fleeces that have come before them.

This is a real bother for me as the black roving doesn't feel very nice.  It feels scratchy and sort of sticky.  I do have to tell my ladies that this is because it is quite dirty but it will feel nice after washing.

Of course that water has nothing on your average Alpaca fleece....

Now that is really disgusting...

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Baby is home..

At long last my baby got home on Sunday...after being stuck in Washington DC for a week longer than expected due to "snowmageddon"...She was really roughing it..not..

She loved the 3ft deep snow, as I would as well..but then I am a fibre addict and would have an even better excuse to knit and spin if I lived where it actually got cold...

Had to get the obligatory arrival shots...

'No, Mum, I'm not stopping for a photo'


'I'm all sweaty and smelly'
and she was...be grateful that there isn't smellovision yet...
I had to laugh as she went with one bag and came back with four!!! That's my girl!!

She managed to get to a few of the Museums in DC.  And bought home copies of the Gettysburg Address, the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and another one I can't remember.  Can I ask an American, why isn't George Washington's signature on the Declaration of Independence? (or did I miss it somehow)

The kids are glad their sister is back..even happier to get the lollies and crap she bought back for them..

While in Florida she did the disney outlets..

we got cups...

I collect Peter Rabbit Wedgewood plates.  Bonnie found this money box..it's not Wedgewood but German porclein, but it is registered PR trademark.


Apparently this bunny is all the rage.  It's from some ritzy store...will add it later as right now the girl is asleep (9am), she's just finished a night shift..

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

I MUST be mental......

I'm heading to a Agriculture Show in March to sell some wares...not being financial enough to get another shipment of foreign fibre in I am going through my cupboards of fluff to see what is viable...I have a HEAP of very nice but kinda dirty East Friesian I have pulled out...I'm sifting through to find the least full of vm bits then throwing it through my coarse drum carder to help get the rest of the vegetable matter out.
Keep in mind that this is what stuffed up my arm and gave me tennis elbow (RSI)...

I started mid morning ish....and stopped about when Grant got home....pick pick card card, pick pick card card.........

Slaving all day......

for..................

a whole 380g......

So if anyone ever knits you anything from fleece, straight off a sheep...
BE VERY BLOODY GRATEFUL!!!!!
because it's taken them hours and hours of very hard work...
(to keep this in perspective...I would need over 1kg for a mans jumper and at least 100g for a hat or socks)


MY LATEST SPINNING

Fresh off the bobbin, washed and dried.  The first of my black shetland.  I have carded some dyed mulberry silk through some of it too..
After all that painstakingly fine stuff this is relatively thick.  Don't know the wraps per inch but it's likely about 12-14.  Weight is 384g.


The water when I washed it was absolutely disgusting!!!! It could have been a skein of raw wool and been cleaner...This means my theory is right about large scouring interests... They wash the white wools first then progress through the colour scales...black is the last...so although it has no oils in it...there is the dirt from about 4 tonnes of wool...I'll take pics next time of water.....

16 Candles

My boy turned 16 yesterday....

Carrot cake with cream cheese icing topped with crushed flake chocolate.

now if I was a sane person I might have stopped having children there and I would now be technically unemployed as a mother and have to go look for a job with the big people......


but if I had......I wouldn't have had this one.........

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

On a roll...and Loving the Storm watching!

We had a massive series of storm fronts came over today...Huge thunder and lightening...and rain....
lots and lots of rain...BIG DROPS...

Our street is prone to flooding if the rain comes down too heavy..
below is the drain next to our house spewing water out the top...
ie, backing up...the road was one huge puddle at this stage.
Luckily there was a few breaks in the heaviness of the rain.
Good thing is..the pool is near to overflowing..

I tried my hardest to get a photo of some lightening....almost succeeded...
I really love storms!!! Bella and I stood on the front porch for about an hour watching it..

Fuzzy photo but a crackin shot of the lightening in the top right corner...
and here is some of the fronts coming through..

This was 2pm in the afternoon..check out how dark it is...I was swimming at 10.30am in brilliant sunshine
They're still coming through now...great to have the big wet...

Here is the other thing I managed to get done today...

I orginally dyed and spun this bluefaced Leicester fleece then blended it with like coloured tussah silk.
I was going to make a knitted something with it but with my RSI, it's impossible, so I put it on my Ashford Knitters Loom.

I still have to wash and block it so my tassels here aren't curly..
Pretty pleased with the outcome..

I'm limited to about 50cm wide which is a bugger...that being said....I don't know if I would piss around with a larger one very much.  Might have to sew a couple of wraps together next time...will use thicker wool than this lace weight though...

Sunday, February 7, 2010

YAY, it's done!!!

Finally, after 2 months  of spinning I have finished the never ending Alpaca.  

And I have blown out all previous record for packing fibre onto bobbins.  I thought I may as I did start off with 700g of fibre and I put it all on two bobbins...

After a whole day of plying, I got to this stage, (we're talking 3 feature films and two seasons of the Vicar of Dibley)


After another full day of plying..............................
May not look like it but I managed to get all the fibre from the right hand bottom bobbin onto that 6mm left on the big bobbin at the top.

I ended up with this much on the left hand bottom bobbin...

Doesn't look like much does it?  but that is 50g of fibre once it is plyed.  That is what most baby wool balls are in the stores..
Here is the big bobbin full, and believe me, I could have gotten a bit more onto the bobbin if I hadn't have run out on the other bobbin.


After this was taken I started putting it onto my skeiner, a few turns in, it got caught on the bottom of the bobbin and snapped...BAH HUM BUG.

Not to worry, I still ended up with 500g of fibre in one skein!!!

This is a huge amount of yarn in one continuous thread.  It is 18wpi (or by comparison to store yarns, 2-3ply thickness), the meterage is 1800 or 1950 yards.
I have a couple of smaller skeins too...25g that I started spinning before washing the lot, 23g that broke when I was skeining and 50g that was left on one bobbin.



I washed it last night and true to alpaca style, the water was almost black with dirt...
It's very very soft yarn and it is for sale.  I may knit something with it in the future but if I can sell it, all the better...email me at woolznyarnz@hotmail.com for a price.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Time consuming craft

Now I don't do crafts just as something to do...hopefully one day it'll be a viable hobby business.. At the moment I am just exploring a lot of different things and a few people have come a long for the fibre ride.

Here are a few things I am working on at this time...

A while ago I spun up some Blue Faced Leicester that I had dyed in a progression of blues and blended with a progression of blues in silk.



I had planed on knitting a wrap or something with it but when my arm cracked the sads (RSI from knitting, yes I was awfully busy with my hands).  It got set aside for a while..Then I got an Ashford Knitters Loom and decided to make a wrap out of it.  This is my third loom project.



I am working on it about 2 hrs a day.  Weaving something like this doesn't take long but if it gets tiresome I move onto the spinning............

I bought some Alpaca from the lovely Julie from Petlyns Wool Crafts  It is in a nice grey that she is trying to hybridize to add more crimp to the fibre to give it memory similar to wool... It would be great from a spinner/knitter point as the garments we make won't be so inclined to drop half a metre every time the air gets moist and humid.


That being said, Alpacas are one of the filthiest creatures whose fibre I have ever had the pleasure to process.  The little buggers love to dust bath so their fibre is just jam packed with dirt, twigs, grass, seeds, poop, bugs, you name it, you will find it in alpaca fibre.  Now granted, Julie's fibre was some of the cleanest alpaca I have ever had, but it is still filthy.

I spent  hours picking the crap out of it and after spinning 25g I washed the lot too and repicked it.  Then I carded it into batts, picking, picking, picking...........



I have been spinning this for about a month now I think.  It is insisting on being spun quite finely so it is taking ages...I have the end in sight now though as I am down to the last two batts.  I did this nifty thing with a button called diz'ing.  Simply put it's pulling the batt through a little hole (ie button hole) to make a fine rope of roving called pencil roving.  Of course they do have a machine that does this too but I haven't got one.

it looks like this....

I probably should have done it with all the batts but it is very time consuming to do (like the whole darn craft) and I had other more pressing time hungry things to do.
I had 700g originally, I have spun 25g already but I have only filled two bobbins.  Just that ball up there and  a smaller one left to spin...and ply..


So anyway, doing that kind of spinning can be very very mind numbing so I often grab something that will enjoy being spun to a more 8ply/10ply kind of thickness.  I call them my quick spins, they are solely to break the tedium of other projects.   I have had a kg of black shetland sitting for some time.  Before my injury I had started carding it with some mulberry silk I had coloured and couldn't find a task for.  I probably shouldn't have picked this as my quick spin given that it's a kg of fibre...but Shetland is really nice to spin.




This was one pass through the carder.  I only had about 8 more lots to blend so since my arm is feeling ok I thought I would finish them off.  I decided to stick with the chunky silk look as it is above.
My Majacraft wheels are busy with the alpaca so I pulled out my Ashford traveller, fondly called Bianca to do the job.  She's a lovely wheel to spin on and perfect for this task.

You can barely see the silk in the single.  I have a couple of 100g that has no silk and I am still undecided whether to ply it with the silk blend or keep it separate.

I will post more pics as the projects are finished.


SOAP SOAP SOAP

The show went well.  Not as well as I would have liked but well enough... Now it's soap I am doing a lot of...Yet another old craft no...