Fleecy Colours in my studio-

Or Stash aquisition beyond reasonable proportions - (all 10 lbs of it!)

The Woodstock Fleece Festival was Saturday.  Normally I'm found demonstrating spinning at the guild booth, but this year I was helping the guild with a class in the afternoon, so the morning was spent shopping.  I neglected to bring my list of things I'd forgotten to add to suppliers orders.  Places like Gemini Fibres will order and bring equipment to the Fleece Festival for pick up, which saves me either shipping or a rather long drive.   The Fibre Garden is my absolute favourite place to shop for spinning fibres.   They have  a fantastic selection of different fibres, reasonable prices, fabulous sales almost every month, and at least pretend that they don't mind adding to my order when I email them with an order addition two days before the Fleece Festival, when I know they are packing.

After picking up the items I'd ordered, I totally forgot about the dyed silk tussah and fine hemp roving that I wanted, and possibly some more coloured cotton sliver.  I was tempted by spectacular Icelandic fleeces, lots of Alpaca but resisted.   Instead, I was lured by pretty colours of superwash Merino mill ends which were inexpensive and so pretty.  Mixed with some nylon, these will make gorgeous sock yarns.  I can't believe that I didn't get the day glow yellow/green and some black.  It would have made perfect socks for Halloween!  (I keep wanting to put the apostrophe in Hallowe'en, but it seems to be constantly rejected by the all knowing spell checks)   I also found lots of white in sock yarn blends, and exotic Merino, Cashmere, Silk blends - also mill ends, but they card up so easily and spin nicely.  

I was playing with acid dyes a few days before when the skies were, once again, grey and dismal.   This is all Blue Faced Leicester.  I was trying new techniques, hence the odd interesting colour blends.  It's amazing that a length of fibre which makes one wonder why you did it in the first place, looks great when braided up.  The top right braid in the pinky red and light blues, looks awesome braided, but a little too much like cotton candy when unbraided. 


Playing around with little purple rolag/puni.  It's some purple Merino, tussah silk, sparkle on (nylon) and some bits of dark purple which I cannot remember even adding to this blend.  The dark purple is really short fibre, obviously wool and very tufty.  It makes interesting little nubs in the yarn, which I'll admit to pulling a lot of the larger,  globs out of the fibre as I get to them, if they don't seem to want to draft out nicely. 

The finished yarn is rather nice, considering I really hadn't put any thought into the yarn.  I was simply testing out a wheel and just wanted to see how it spun.    It spins like a dream.  The treadling action is very easy and incredibly smooth.   The flyer barely whispers as it spins around,  sweet murmurs, declarations of love with each stroke of the treadle.   It's a modern wheel though; very modern.  It folds into a backpack for travel and did I mention, it looks rather like a modern wheel?  But wow, it spins so sweetly.   The Kromski Sonata would make a lovely addition to any spinning wheel stable.