In which I get ready to move, and other adventures

I have sadly been neglecting my blog lately.  There is way to much going on in my life right now.

Let's start with the fact that we're moving. 

Again. 

I'm very sick of moving.  I'm also very sick of apartment living.  I'm very sick of my neighbors, who are mostly obnoxious.  (To be fair, there are probably nice neighbors, but it's the obnoxious ones that I see, hear and have to pick up after.)  So we're moving across the street, to a townhouse.  It's an end-unit, 3 BR with only one common wall.  We'll have our own entrance, our own garage, our own laundry facility, and it's all one story.  I'm very excited!!

But it is a lot of work, even though I tell people it's all downhill--from the second floor, across the street, to a single story.  July 10th is the big day.  Wish us luck!

I've had to pack away the carder for the move, but not before I completed the carding of a gorgeous blend for the Rosalind shawl pattern by one of my favorite designers, Sivia Harding.  The blend is 65% white Polwarth wool, 16% bleached tussah silk, 16% fawn cashmere, and the rest white firestar.  It is so soft!!  Here is the first bobbin spun up:

Yes, it IS as yummy as it looks.  I'm going to 2-ply it into about a fingering weight yarn.  I have about 14 oz total, in 8 batts to spin.  This is my Tour de Fleece project.  The Tour de Fleece starts on July 3rd, which is the date of my father's 80th birthday party, so I probably won't get much done that day.  Plus it's a week before we move, so not much spinning will get done the first week of the Tour.  Luckily, 14 oz won't take too long to spin.

More to come, maybe from our new location!

In which I attend Shepherd's Harvest Festival

What a fabulous weekend we had at the Shepherd's Harvest Fiber Festival My 8-9th!  The weather was cold, especially Saturday, as it usually is, but Sunday the sun came out and everyone was feeling wonderful!

Here are some pictures of our Northern Lights Handspinner's Guild booth.  Here's our fearless leader Pauline:

Here is my Gone Batty Fibers inventory.  I was pleased to fill an 18 gallon tote with my batts for the show, and I sold quite a few.

I spent most of my time working on the Fiber Sandwich.  This is an event where we collect donations of fiber from the vendors, lay them out on a table in layers, like a big lasagna, and then split off 4 oz chunks for volunteer spinners to spin.  We then auction off the finished skeins to benefit the Heifer Project.  It is a great cause, and we love our donors and volunteer spinners, as well as the people who bid on the skeins.  Here's the auction in progress:

 
We raised almost $400 this year for Heifer, which is very exciting.

Here's my skein(s).  I spun a single Corriedale ply to ply with it, and make the finished skeins a bit more cohesive.  Others chose to do the same, and it was really fun to see what people did.

Someone spun a novelty yarn that was gorgeous--it was a bestseller.

The Minnesota Knitter's Guild also had a booth, at which I worked on Sunday morning.

I should have more weekends like this--good friends and lots of fiber and fibery activities!

Getting Ready for Shepherd's Harvest!

I am getting so excited for Shepherd's Harvest, the fiber festival held every Mother's Day weekend at the Washington County Fairgrounds in Lake Elmo, MN.   The event lasts for two days, and I plan to spend every minute of my weekend there.

I have a class on Saturday morning in--what else?--Drum Carding.  It should be great fun to get tips from someone I really respect, Carol Wagner of Hidden Valley Farm Woolen Mill.  I have purchased a lot of her roving in the past, as well as having her process raw fleeces for me.  I'm very excited about the chance to "pick her brain" about the carding process.

I will also have space at my guild's table to sell my product, so I have been frantically making batts to sell at the Festival.  Not too many pictures of the batts, since my lighting doesn't do them justice, but here's some ingredients:

Many more to follow.  I am keeping my drum carder busy!

Another exciting event for the weekend is the Fiber Sandwich.  Many vendors will donate fiber to this cause.  What we do is lay out the donated fiber, which will be anything from hand-dyed roving to raw, washed fiber, into a huge "lasagna" of fiber layers.  It usually takes up a full 8' banquet table, to a depth of at least 12 inches!  It's quite a sight.  From there, we have volunteer spinners who take 4 oz sections and spin skeins of yarn.  The skeins are auctioned off on Sunday in a silent auction to benefit The Heifer Project.  Great fun for a great cause!  We are still looking for volunteer spinners if you are going to be in the area.

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.

I wash fleece, and wash fleece, and wash fleece...

I finally got the white Corriedale fleece from Cindy Lou completely washed!  It turned out practically glowing white, and ready for carding and dyeing.

In the meantime, I have been working the carder pretty hard with the shetland fleece I bought in March.  It was not a covered fleece, so there is quite a bit of VM, and there's a break near the tips which I suspect came from lambing last year.  It's pretty easy to tear off those tips, which are matted and icky anyway, and the rest of the fleece is quite nice.  Picking takes a lot of time, though.

I have managed to card some batts from it, and they turn out beautifully.  See?  They are very soft and a lovely heathery oatmeal color that I think will do fun things when overdyed.  I'll leave some of it natural colored, but I think a red over this will look quite nice.

My order from Dharma was supposed to be delivered yesterday, but apparently nobody was at the apartment office, so UPS did not leave the package.  How annoying!  I wasn't really planning to dye anything this weekend, but still...  I can't wait to see the new dyes I ordered!

I've got lots more of November's fleece to card, but I want to do some of Cindy Lou's also.  I have a big dyeing day planned for April 24, and I want to card a lot of this fleece beforehand.  I think carded batts take the color more uniformly, and I'm looking for that this time around.

I also started washing Carly's fleece, the grey one.  It's so pretty....

During which I entertain middle school boys...

Today, I took my nephews to see the movie "Diary of a Wimpy Kid."  Miraculously, an entire movie aimed at middle school boys without a single fart joke!  (They couldn't avoid boogers, tho.)  Taken for what it is--an entire movie aimed at middle school boys--it was pretty cute and funny, sometimes painfully so.

Afterward, I tried to convince the boys that they should sit on the Easter bunny's lap for pictures.  Seriously, a mall Easter bunny--and it was the creepiest looking Easter bunny ever!  Thankfully, they refused to take me up on my suggestion.

I finally got to Archivers to purchase what I need for product labelling.  I am going to do skein and batt wraps with cardstock.  I think that will protect the batts a little better, and I can print them off my computer.  I picked a color called Pear Crush, which is a lime green, but lighter than the background of my blog.  Hmm, perhaps I should change that to match.

Now I need to design and print some labels, and also my business cards.  Lots of work to do.

Also, I ordered some new dye colors this week from Dharma Trading.  Did you see their April Fools newsletter?  It was very clever, and inspired me to place the order that has been sitting in my shopping cart for awhile.  I love a company with a sense of humor, and theirs is huge.  I also love a company that lets me save a shopping cart for awhile before I pull the trigger.

Placed a huge order for wholesale yarns, too.  Last time I purchased these yarns retail in smaller quantity, to try them out.  They were quite nice quality, so I will be watching for a package of enough fingering weight sock yarn for 50 skeins!!  (Yes, that's what I said--50.)  On top of that, 10 large skeins (100 grams) of laceweight superwash merino.  Yum!

Time to finish washing fleece, so I can get the dyepots bubbling!

It's been awhile...

Sorry that I have neglected my blog for the last couple of weeks.  And I don't have much to say right now.

I never mentioned the lovely Shetland fleece I got on March 21st at Gail's shearing day.   This the the fleece from November, an older ewe who has a lovely, but uneven, oatmeal-colored fleece.  It totalled 4 lbs raw, and I have it all washed right now, but I have not yet weighed it.  I have picked some of it, and put about 4 oz through my carder, and it is nice.  The fibers in some of the fleece are much coarser than I expected from Shetland, but they are still quite soft.  I'm sending the fiber through the carder twice, in preparation for dyeing and blending.  It needs one more pass through the carder to be really nice to spin.

Anyway, I need to really sit down, sort and grade the fleece, but I haven't had time.

I've still got the two Corrie fleeces to wash--I've done some of the white (Cindy Lou) but haven't touched the grey yet, except to fondle, rub the lanolin and breathe the sheepy smell.  I know, I'm weird.

Spring has sprung here--the grass is coming up, the sun is shining and the thermometer topped 70 for the first time in 6 months.  How wonderful!  I'm starting to think about camping again.

No camping trips planned yet, but I'd like to visit South Dakota, and the North Shore of Lake Superior.  We'll also do a group dyeing, knitting, spinning camping weekend.  Need to start getting some dates down.

Here's a picture of my home on wheels--love her!