Handspun

 I have been away from the spinning wheel for a long time, over a year.  I was missing it so this last week I plied what had been on bobbins sitting all this time.  The first is this Ashland Bay merino in the Rose Quartz colorway. I've got 3 big skeins in a worsted weight so am thinking a hat, cowl and fingerless mitts for a gift.  I've also plied some merino/bamboo/nylon but it's not been washed yet - picture to come once I do that. Now I feel like I can start spinning something that's been waiting in the wings, something fun, something colorful........I've short listed choices, just need to decide on which but first I'll knit this up. 

New roving colors

Four new roving colors from Ashland Bay, now listed in my etsy shop for sale

Dusty Rose, Mulberry, Forest and Graphite

New roving in shop

I've spent the past two days fondling roving..........only it's not as fun as it sounds. I've been weighing, bagging, tagging, updating inventory and listing in my etsy shop - too much administrivia. Thank goodness for Sam's help since working together makes the job 3 times faster than me working alone.

I've got some new items like the green bamboo (above left) and these 5 new colors of merino.  The rest was just restocking sold out fibers in my shop.  Check out what I've got to offer here.  Of course I couldn't resist setting aside a couple colors for a future project - Mink & Plum - I need to decide what else to mix with them.......that will come when I'm ready to start playing with the blending board or drum carder......too much else on the to-do list at the moment........

Handspun merino

I finally washed and blocked the merino I had been spinning. The top 3 skeins were my hand-dyed plied with Ashland Bay merino in the Seafoam colorway, 1,125 yards. The bottom skein was the same hand-dyed plied on itself, 122 yards.....I was lazy and didn't feel like spinning more of the seafoam for that so just decided to have a little constrasting yarn by plying it on itself.  Not sure what this will become when it grows up - it will sit on the shelf and marinate a while.

Currently on the wheel......

Yesterday I start spinning some of my hand-dyed merino - I had stashed this colorway before anyone could buy the last 8oz, am wishing I had set aside more for myself. I'm not usually not attracted to blue but these days I love seaglass or tropical colors. Since I don't have much of this I'll ply it with another color to make it go further. No idea what it will grow up to be yet.........spinning what will probably be fingering weight when plied.

Administrivia

I spent the better part of the day fondling roving. I had a huge order to weigh, bag and label that I had ignored for two weeks......decided today had to be the day to deal with it since my original plans changed. Then there's the administrivia of putting it all into inventory records and updating my etsy shop - phew........overload........

I have two new colors of multi-colored merino - I can't wait to spin up the samples. Above is Cabo, below is Granada.  I love both of them.  These are now available in my fiber etsy shop.

Now off to finish up with more administrivia and on to other mundane chores........

Sizzle

Sizzle....that's what we're now doing in this extreme heat. Yesterday it was 105 in town, only 101(hah) here on our property since we're outside of town and up a bit in elevation. 10 day forecast is for 100+ temps plus chance of dry lightening each day.  But that's not the clincher - it's that our compressor went out last night so no air conditioning - ACK. Call into local company last night, called again this morning and were told that 'John' was returning calls......hoping to hear back soon.  There's no telling what is wrong or how long it will take to get repaired/replaced. Not sure what's on the agenda today - definitely will not be anything that generates heat in the house or in the body......there's only so much an attic fan and ceiling/floor fans can do in this heat.  I do have some dreaded photography work to do........could work on planning future weaving projects - but way too hot to be winding a warp or weaving.

This is the resulting handspun from those rolags I made on the blending board using one of my felting landscapes kits - the Strawberry Fields Forever kit.  I got 1,036 yards - not sure what it will grow up to become.....will sit it on the shelf and marinate for a while........

New roving colorways

Yesterday morning and then again today I started dealing with a big Ashland Bay roving order - photographing, weighing, bagging, labeling, listing in the etsy shop and putting into inventory records - way too much administrivia for my taste, would rather be weaving. Above are some lovely new colors of Superfine Merino. Here's the section of the shop with all the superfine merino including the variegated discontinued colorways I have left.

And here's a limited offering of a merino in natural, brown and grey. It's lovely and I keep eyeing it wondering if I should spin some.

The shop is also restocked with some sold out merino colorways in addition to ecru merino and ecru superfine merino.  And now I can move on to something that's a little more fun.........

The last of the dyed roving......

This is the last of it, the last roving I dye to sell - whoo hoo. I've been cutting back the past 2 years from the hundreds of pounds I'd dye each summer to less than 100. It's taking away from time weaving and I'm just plain old burnt out. I've been dyeing roving to sell for somewhere in the area of 10 years - time for a change. In the future any dyed roving I do will be for myself or for gifts. All of this will show up in my etsy shop for sale as soon as it's dry, weighed, tagged, bagged and photographed.

On the schedule yesterday was a merino/bamboo/tussah silk blend - 10 pounds...

 

....and today, 6 pounds of merino (3 colorways on the left) and 6 pounds of merino/tussah silk (3 colorways on the right)

 

Yesterday morning while I was toiling over the dye steamers Sam (on the left) went out for a ride in Tom's (neighbor down the road and our painter) 1924 Model T that he put together years ago from original parts. I had to stop and gab for a bit to find out the details on the cute little car.

Here they go.....

....down the drive and out onto the road for a spin.  Sam said it was a little scary going down the drive because of the speed it picked up - no real brakes, it's all controlled by the transmission. Did you know the gas is gravity fed in these cars?  If you're going up a hill and low on gas you could easily stall out....luckily there was plenty of gas in this one for the drive back up our hilly driveway. After Tom left our house he had to go back home to pick up his dog to take her for a spin - she was not happy he left for a drive in it without her.

Samples spun

I finished spinning mini sample skeins of the new colors of Ashland Bay rovings. Don't look too closely at my spinning, this is quick and dirty (and fun) spinning, not concerned whether or not the yarn is perfect, they're just samples added to the etsy shop listings to show what the colors may look like spun.

Superfine Merino - Color Fusion Line (a new line of fiber & colors)

Merino (new colors added to the already extensive line of merino colorways)

 

 

You get what you pay for...........

Well, I have learned that with an employee I get what I pay for.......a gold bricking shipping/receiving/inventory control employee........Sam gets no compensation for his work which is why he was outside working on the property in (fluke) almost 70 degree weather and I was inside weighing, bagging, labeling wool roving, putting it into inventory records and then listing it in the etsy shop....oh, and there are many new colorways so add photography to that list. I spent the better part of two days working on this. Hmm, going to have to re-evaluate this arrangement.......maybe a little incentive so I get to spend time at the loom instead.

Here is a new line of roving from Ashland Bay Fibers called  Color Fusion - it's a Superfine Merino, 19 micron, and is beautiful. It's hard to capture the color variations in some of the colors but I did my best. These are in the Superfine Merino section of my shop (or mixed in by color with everything else if one browses the shop page by page).  I can't wait to spin up sample mini-skeins of this in the next few days to see the color once spun, it's a perfect wool roving for for nuno felting since it's so fine.  I'm going to put together a sampler kit of this line but probably won't get to that until next week.

Here are 9 new colors of the regular Merino roving, some really nice colors to add to the already huge line of this wool. They can be found in the Merino Section of my shop, or mixed in by colorway if one browses page by page.  I get to spin up samples of these new colors too. It's a time consuming job but oh, so fun to spin small amounts of many colors.  Now I need to figure out what to do with all the mini-skeins of discontinued colors or my sold out hand-dyed colorways as they're no longer pertinent.....maybe adding small bits of color to knitting projects? maybe to decorate gift boxes? I'll come up with something.

Fiesta merino roving

The other day I put up a pic of the new Ashland Bay roving colorway  Fiesta.  Here's a picture of a sample handspun - I love it.  It's supposed to replace the discontinued Daffodil and Sunflower - well, no where near what daffodil looked like but pretty close to Sunflower which was one of my favs. It's very autumn inspired once spun up. 

Yesterday I took an all day class at Top Stitch, the Berina store in my area, on my new serger - what a great class - Jonathan is a wonderful teacher demystifying sergers in general and Bernina ones in particular. Looking forward to a class he said we can do for those of us with the 1300 model to learn about the chain stitch and cover stitch which others did not have in class yesterday. Jonathan is great, as is his wife Karen who also teaches at the shop.  If you're ever in SW Oregon they've also got a great cotton fabric selection, not the big 4 pattern company patterns, and threads........not to mention machines and irons.........

Hand Woven Scarves for sale........

Finally did some photography work for the etsy shop - I needed 4-5 shots for each scarf listing, took many more than that to get 4-5 decent ones.  Here are the latest listings in the etsy shop - an off-white merino/seacell scarf, a painted warp ginkgo scarf in autumn colors, a sage/rust gingko scarf and a teal/fuschia dragonfly scarf - the last 3 scarves are all tencel.  More scarves to take photos of in the near future........

Still treading water here, gulping for air at times. I have been able to cross a few things off the long to-do list. Huge Ashland Bay order placed for roving for my other etsy shop - I will be spending several days weighing, bagging, labeling, putting into inventory and updating the shop when it comes in. I placed a bigger than normal order as to take advantage of the prices before they increase in the next month.

Many scarves, 9 to be exact, left the studio this week for new homes - I know 7 of them are destined to become holiday gifts - I hope the recipients love them.  I really need to get back to weaving - life keeps interfering........sometimes for fun stuff, sometimes for administrivia. I've got more holiday gifts to knit and other requiring assembly of handwoven/handmade parts, holiday gift sewing to do...... perhaps some work on those will start happening later today.

More handspun.......

The other evening I plied this handspun, got it washed and blocked yesterday. It's from Ashland Bay roving - Merino in the Baltic colorway,....I thought it would look nice as a shawl with jeans.  Small glitch - I only have 801 yards and the shawl I was thinking of knitting takes more than that. I could always spin more after I place my next Ashland Bay order as I'm out of this color right now.......or I could look at other shawl patterns which is probably what I'll do. But first I'm working on some small holiday gifts that I won't be able to show until after the holidays.

 

This is looking out the window behind me as I sit at the computer - what looks like a fog bank is really smoke, it un-nerves me seeing it but I'm assuming the burn-outs on the Big Windy Fire are under control and it's nothing to worry about. I sure will sleep better after the rainy season starts.  Countdown to rain - 20 days........beginning to worry that is wishful thinking......

All in a day's work......

The temperature was below 90 today so I decided to do some dyeing, below 80 is even better for me but that's not going to happen for a while. This is all merino - 11 1/2 pounds of it. Fellow guild member Lucy came over to see my set-up and how I do my dyeing - I warned her it was not scientific (like how I started a number of years ago) but 'by the seat of my pants' dyeing and I'm having so much more fun with it. Lucy helped put some dye on roving and rinse and hang some fiber while here. I was trying for 2 custom colorways on the right, maybe the blue is ok, but the other definitely isn't - I've told that customer I am not a custom dyer so I may not be able to get what she wants. I like everything that was dyed today. I can't wait to spin up baby sample skeins of these.  Maybe tomorrow will be another dye day.........

Hand-dyed Merino Roving and more changes.....

Finally I finished with the photography work on the recently dyed merino roving, all are listed in my esty shop along with a picture of what each looks like spun. See more hand-dyed roving here.

I'm making a major change in my two etsy shops, and I'm hoping it doesn't backfire on me. I've been finding that my handwovens and other handmade items are getting lost mixed in with all the hand-dyed rovings in the first etsy shop I opened. So, I'm going to be gradually moving all the hand-dyed roving over to my etsy shop where I sell the Ashland Bay Fibers. To start the above rovings are in the second shop. So, for a while there will be hand-dyed roving in each shop which may be a bit confusing but I just can't sit in front of the computer for that long making the change all at one time.....plus I don't want to repay fees I've just paid in the first shop, I'll move them as I renew them or as they get close to renewal. I realize it will take a while for return shoppers to get used to the change but hopefully they will eventually figure out what's going on - I've put notices on my front page of each shop about the change.

Wool dyeing days over......at least for this season...

Whoo-Hoo! I've put away the acid dyes for the season. The dyeing from the past week is now braided, weighed, labeled, photographed and most of it now listed in my etsy shop. All the merino and falkland are now up for sale in my shop, the corriedale cross will start going up tomorrow. I've finished spinning up samples of the merino and falkland, pix still need to be taken...then will start on the corriedale cross - very fun to see how they spin up.
 

Hand-dyed merino roving

Today's accomplishments.....merino roving........all of it was playing except the center light yellow which is my colorway called Buttercream. I adore yellow and should have put some of this color aside last time I dyed it but I didn't and it all sold....so here's some more.....hopefully I'll pull some out for me before it sells.

Currently on the wheel............

This is my current spinning, since I usually only spin in my spinning group and when demo'ing it will take a while to get this spun. This is some of my hand-dyed merino roving. It's a dream to spin. Unfortunately for anyone interested in this colorway this is all there is. I do have others for sale in my etsy shop.

Hoping today to get the fringe twisted on the chenille throws.

What I'm current spinning.........

Here's what I'm currently spinning - it's a blend of 80% merino/20% silk hand-dyed by Shelley of Butternut Woolens. The colorway is absolutely beautiful and it's a dream to spin. Shelley always had a booth here in Oregon at fiber events but moved to Montana this past year.