A Few Sheep Shy of a Farm

Well, its Wednesday already . . .

time seems to be flying by lately, or is it just me?

Yesterday I was home with a Migraine Headache, yuck! Not a whole lot of fun. It was afternoon by the time I was up and even trying to function. Took me 30 minutes just to make coffee! That is when you know your in tough shape . . .

Later in the afternoon I did manage to pull my act together enough to do a bit of spinning So the day wasn’t a total loss . . . I’m now up to 2 oz of the Romney Sock yarn and 12 oz of F/R for the week. All is spun into singles but not yet plied. I wound off to the ball winder and have them stacked on the sofa near the wheel. Sometime toward the end of the week I’ll work on plying and setting the twist.

I also sorted through several of the containers of fiber to do a bit of reorganizing. Its amazing what a bit of reorganizing can do to a fiber stash! I now have 1 empty large fiber tub and about 6 of the 19qt tubs empty (ususally for small fiber allotments or individual projects) and once the F/R is spun I’ll have a second empty tub. I do have all the cloth bags I had made filled with raw fibers that are waiting to be scoured. Perhaps this weekend I’ll have time to tackle one of the smaller fleeces, like the Icelandic? We shall see.

I cleaned out some of the yarn and UFO tubs and put together a big back of stuff that I’m just never going to get around to using or finishing and brought it upstairs to MIL. She’s a human knitting machine and goes through any donated stash at an astonishing pace. Nice to know that nothing goes to waste at least.

I also cleaned out some badly felted early scouring attempts and some very pitiful llama fiber that I bought from someone on line (so far my only truely bad on line fiber buying experience, knock wood). Both of those are actually going in the compost pile in the back yard when I get home tonight.

All this tub clearing made room to put all the washed fibers into tubs and once the back of the closet was cleared out of useless projects I was able to put all the bags of too be scoured wool out of the way in the back of the closet where no one has to see or trip on them.

I will have to go buy 2 more sets of jersey sheets so I can make more fiber bags. I have 4 more fleece either already on their way or coming in the near future so I will need more bags. I think I’m going to have to either get some serious help with the processing or send a few of these out this year as I think there is enough there to be rather labor intensive for doing on my own. Though I would prefer to do it myself as I have some really nice fiber this year and I wouldn’t want to see it get screwed up. I have realized that there is a big difference from one processing method to the next and now that I know a bit more about fiber I have a better of idea at least of what not to do (ask me now I know that?) I still haven’t had a chance to use my new combs but perhaps this weekend, if we stay home on Saturday maybe I can work with them for a bit Saturday evening, just to give them a try . . .

Well, lots to do today to make up for being away yesterday so I’d better get to it! Have a great day and I’ll be back in a day or two . . .

Trying to update info in the blue margins, new blogger acting funny . . . .

One step forward . . .

two steps back! On Friday night I was able to finish spinning the last 2 oz of F/R to equal a pound of it spun for the week! I plied all the waiting skeins and set their twist. I now have 8 skeins hanging on the pole waiting for a good day for some dyeing. I did check the tub. I have another 3.5 lbs of it there plus some (not sure how much, could be up to a lb.) that has been treated with Synthropol already.

unfortunately, due to a very crazy weekend, I didn’t get to start on this week’s pound of fiber yet! I have found that splitting the spinning of singles and the plying into two seperate tasks seems to speed things up for me. I just wind off onto the ball winder and set them aside. Then when I have a small pile going I can readjust to plying mode and do them all at once.

Saturday we did some gardening and things around the house and had company for the afternoon and evening. Dinner out on the patio was fun, but a lot of running back and forth. We need to come up with a system that eliminates some of the running around. To that end a dishwasher (which will happen someday when new cabinets are ready . . .) would go a very long way!

Sunday M and A came over and we had bunny rangling 101. All were groomed, cages were cleaned, one was partially plucked, there was bunny play time and treats and new, tip-proof dishes were obtained for the little ones.

May try to get a few more plants in the ground this evening, weather permitting other than that more of the ususal . . .

Post # 201

Wow! Blogger now tells you how many posts you have logged and this is # 201, not bad for a bit over a year!

Lots going on today at the “PLACETHATFUNDSTHEFIBERADDICTION” so this post will be short. I did a bit more spinning last night, some of the F/R fiber and a 2 oz skein of the Romney sock yarn. I’m now 2 oz away from finishing the first LB of F/R! Of course, I still have to ply 5 skeins but that shouldn’t take too long. I also finished a 30g skein of Alpaca (plied) and am about to ply a drop spindle worth of the Dark Grey Romney as well. So the plan for tonight is to spin the other 2 oz of F/R and then spend the rest of the time plying the 6 wheel skeins and the 1 spindled skein.

The hutch building plans for Sunday have become more complicated so we shall have to wait and see what happens with that. The new bunnies may be spending a couple of weeks in the smaller cages when all is said and done, but since they are still small it really isn’t a big problem . . .

Updates this weekend if time permits, otherwise on Monday!

Spinning my life away!

My current spinning goals revolve around getting a bunch of my “lovelybutnotquitespectacular” fibers spun up and out of the fiber stash before any more of the new stuff arrives.

The stuff I’m working on now, a Finn/Rambo cross, is very soft and could be wonderful if I had known what I was doing when I bought it. Its from 3 lamb fleeces I bought a while back, before I had really done any processing yet. I did scour some of it at home but since I didn’t know what I was doing I wound up with semi-felted wool. I then tried skirting more of it as there was a lot, and I mean small furry things could have lived on the VM in this fiber, lot of hay etc in this wool! I should have skirted even more heavily than I did, but who knew! My next mistake was to have it sent out and made into roving. This fiber should have been TOP, no question in my mind now that it would have been truely spectacular if it were TOP instead of Roving. Its so soft and so fine that it has a lot of noils in it. . . live an learn. At least it wasn’t expensive stuff! Thank goodness! Oh and did I forget to mention, the raw weight of the 3 fleeces when I got them was 22 lbs! Even after skirting and processing at the mill I wound up with something like 14 lbs back and I still have about 3/4 of that to spin!

Part of what I had intended to do with this fiber was experiment with learning to dye my own. And I have used it for that on several occassions now. Its also good for teaching beginners as it sticks together like glue and yet drafts fairly easily. A has learned by spinning about a pound of it so far, perhaps a bit more and she still has about another pound in her stash . . . which is fine since it doesn’t count in my stash

I’ve found that if I have uninterrupted spinning time, I can spin a 2 oz skien in about 90 minutes. What I’m working on now is spinning up several 2 oz skiens of singles and then I’ll switch the wheel to the settings I use for plying and ply several of them at once. That way I don’t loose as much time switching the settings back and forth. I have 6 oz plied, 1 skien ready to ply and another 1/2 spun at the moment. I hope to finish that one tonight and perhaps do one other as well. Once I have a couple of lbs spun I plan to do some immersion dyeing, probably over the summer. I am considering making a sweater from some of this yarn (Goodness knows there will be enough of it!) and the rest will likely be hats and mittens to be added to the collection for giving away as needed.

Bunny update:

The new bunnies are really starting to feel at home. Their appetites have increased over the past few days and they don’t freeze every time the dog walks by anymore. Sunday is going to be hutch building day and DH and I are working out the design over the next couple of days. The plan is to build something that can house them year round, most of it outdoors and perhaps the coldest spell of the winter with the hutch moved into the barn he is building. Next thing will be to make sure there is more lighting where they will be to make it easier to take care of them during the “darker” months . . . tough to feed them when you can’t see to find the dish!

Ah well, back to that other stuff that must be done before the fiber fun . . .