I made some awesome batts!

Oh, I just love my drumcarder!  She is awesome.  I will sing the praises of the Fancy Kitty high and low.

She made these batts:

Which spun up like this:

The grey in this started as raw, washed locks of fiber, and it only took two passes through the carder to get these batts.  The blending fibers had already been carded once, so I carded the locks once through, then weighed and measured for the batts.  The small skein was spun out of the leftovers--I'm still getting a feel for how much fiber I can get into one batt.  I made a total of 5 batts, weighing a total of over 8 oz, so they are not quite 2 oz each, which is what I was aiming for.

The little skein from leftovers spun up like butter!!  I want to keep these batts rather than put them in the Etsy store, but I have to be good.  I'm building inventory slowly, and have yet to post anything in the store, but it's coming.

This weekend is Yarnover at the Hopkins High School, and I am very excited.  I am volunteering in the morning, then in the afternoon I am taking a class from the incomparable Meg Swansen.  I will be learning more about Elizabeth Zimmerman's EPS system, which is brilliant.  I think I understand the system, but it certainly can't hurt to hear more about it from the source!  I wanted to take a gansey class from Beth Brown-Reinsel, but sadly I was too late with my registration--my own fault, but I can still mourn.  I even have the yarn for the gansey--I bought it in Estonia on my cruise last year.  Sigh.

The following weekend I'm planning an entire day on Saturday devoted to dyeing.  My order from Dharma Trading finally arrived, I have a couple of friends coming over, and we are going to attack the dyepots.  However, I still want to get more batts carded before that day--I think you get more even dyeing results using carded batts rather than raw locks.   So lots of work yet ahead.