#fibre prep

[tyrhinosaurus]

English Leicester fleece prepping has begun!

I washed some handfuls earlier in the week. (Cold water and scour and detergent! No heat needed!!)

Homemade temp comb, the table set up doesn't work amazing. So handholding the small piece and combing each end.

I enjoy these little bundles :)

First samples spun and plied. 2 and 3 plys and one off the drop spindle. Still want it thinner though

Bonus photo of the drop sheet collection of crap:

[littlebirdinagarden]

So september last year my sister gave me a bag of wool from one of the sheep she works with, Womble. He’s a valais blacknose. I’ve met him a couple times and he is lovely

I finally got around to scouring it last weekend

Unfortunately I don’t have my combs currently so I’m gonna have to wait until after we move to process this

But I’m very excited to make something from a sheep I know personally!

[articreated]

Planet Earth Spin - Gotland Wool Yarn

It is done! All 24 oz (680 g) of the Gotland wool roving that I dyed has been spun, chain plied, and the twist is set.

From start to finish it took me 80 hands on hours to get 781 yards of 20 wpi, 45 degree S twist, chain plied yarn.

I started with 100% gotland wool roving that I dyed for a monthly fiber spinning club. I was a newbie dyer when I did this so I felted the roving slightly. I dyed up another batch (without felting it) sending it to the club, and kept this batch of 22, 1.1-ish braids for personal use. I ended up drum carding each of the braids into lovely, lofty batts and spinning them up over the last couple of weeks.

I’m still getting my feel of things back since it’s been over five years since I have spun thanks to injuries that ultimately led to my diagnosis of ehler-danlos syndrome, among other autoimmune disorders, so the yarn isn’t the most consistent and is nowhere near what I used to be able to spin. But being able to sit at my wheel at all is wonderful.

[amymon-arachne]

Look what came in the mail today!

I bought a wool comb and hackle set for myself for my birthday.

These are literally the sharpest things I’ve ever seen. Like, legitimately terrifying.

It feels like I shouldn’t be allowed to go near them.

But the reason I splurged on this set instead of something cheaper is because of the way the cover and holder are designed to keep them stored away safely. I also thought about just getting combs without a hackle but I figured it’d be cheaper in the long run to buy them together. Which, yeah. Shipping + duties? Ugh.

I’m going to a fibre festival in the next major city next week, so maybe I can find something fun to experiment with these with there…

[ezekiellsplayground]

Processed up another of the merino X leicester fleeces I washed end of last year, using my double tined tools.

[whatthefibre]

Currently I have 2 boxes of wool waste from combing the white fleece (too short cuts of the wool). To avoid having to throw it away I'm carding it. My goal is to spin it into something like a rustic tweed yarn

[socksforthehomeless]

To be clear, there are many (many many) easier ways to do this, I just choose to make things difficult. Plus it's the first time I'm processing fibre so maybe this is not actually as tedious as I think

they may look like cards but I'm fairly certain they behave more like combs... we'll see

[glaciart]

I will disassemble the next beast now