Gosh I can't believe it was August when I last posted on here. Life is, as always busy ,I never have time to be bored and as always I need more hours in the day to do all I have planned.Yesterday I spent all day carding glitzy batts and today I dyed a kilo of fibre and tomorrow another kilo and a half will go to the dye pots. The reason for all this dyeing is twofold. I have too much roving so will list some in the Etsy shop and some will be used this weekend when my darling daughter is coming over and we are having a few spinning days. She has had a wild flyer for her Suzie for Christmas and so we are going to do some art yarns . I received a couple of spinning DVDs for Christmas one which was Jacey Boggs Sit and Spin and it has given me new ideas re making art yarns. She uses different methods to do some art yarns from what I learnt so it will be fun to try these out,hence the batts ;)
Another DVD I received is Judith MacKenzie 'A Spinners Toolbox' When I told a friend I was getting a few spinning DVDs for Christmas her reply was 'why? you can already spin' my answer is 'there is always something new to learn' This is the very reason why I so love spinning as I am continually learning new ways to do things.Also I am finding that everyone has their own way of doing things, they may not all be right but its another way of looking and trying things.
Something else new I learnt these last few weeks was a better way to spin angora (rabbit). In the past I have just grabbed locks straight from the bag and spun it longdraw but then there was a discussion on Ravelry about how folks spun it and there was a suggestion to card it into punis and spin it longdraw so I tried it and it and gives a far better yarn.Okay it takes time to do the punis but I get satisfaction from seeing them all stack up ready to spin and boy are they satisfying to spin up:)
I then dyed the yarn green as there was WAY too much of the white stuff around us !!!!
(We had the worst snow in living memory up here in December and it played havoc with our lives.Plenty of pretty pictures but many folks had burst pipes and broken gutters etc So glad it has finally melted and lets hope the rest of the winter is mild)
Last year thanks to Amanda Hanniford's lesson on longdraw I have perfected my longdraw and this year I want to produce more woollen spun yarns and I want to use fleece.I so want to get down to using more of my fleece.I have been spinning fleece mainly over the last few months to make Christmas gifts but I want to make garments and have a couple of fleece in mind for them.I know prepping fleece is the big time consumer but there is no denying you get a far superior yarn than any roving/top will ever give you. So that is this years challenge ,but saying that on the knitting front I desperately need to knit up some of my handspun yarns;I have enough already to make three garments but as yet not found the right pattern.
I really must do more knitting:) On the needles atm is a jumper for Tony;bless him he is patiently waiting for a jumper which I abandoned knitting to do pressie knitting. So does this mean less spinning and more knitting is in order? crikey I hope not ...now where can I find more hours in the day ?
