Five on Friday - Chocolate Fleece

It's been a busy week, but no work has been done. The highlights were my youngest son coming home from his holiday in New Zealand and going to the movies with my mother, her Christmas present.

The movie was great....Cinema Nova run a series of beautifully filmed operas from the Met in New York. We saw the Barber of Seville. My mother loves opera and I get to learn a little more, then we have lunch, in this case.

Anyway, my Five on Friday is all about my chocolate fleece; well THREE chocolate fleeces. Given to me by a friend, surplus to a school's requirements, I thought I had three bags of fleece, but turns out to be three fleeces.

I've already given some away at Experimental Spinning, and am processing the rest of that fleece on my wool combs.

The fleece is not particularly good, all the best bits have gone. It is actually a lovely fleece, a bit dirty, but a really lovely chocolate, couldn't quite capture that.

 Part of the deal was to get better at using the wool combs. There's lots of rubbish left over.

Could do with an extra comb, but you end up with a lovely product, ready to spin.

25grams done, just want to get to 100 grams quickly!

An ode to Petlyn wool combs

Dear Julie and Joe,

Just thought I'd drop you a line to let you know how much fun I'm having with your English wool combs that I bought from you at the Australian Sheep and Wool Show in Bendigo this year. I also purchased some of Coral Stewarts' dyed fleece. More of a sentimental purchase, as I don't need any more fleece, but I do love her work and have a jacket and a jumper made from her dyed yarn, which I love.

Now I know that this was not the perfect start, whilst the fleece is dyed it was still very greasy, but I thought that knowing this was not the best start would allow me to experiment to find the best way to process it. Fleece is always tricky as you tend to get a muddying effect as there are no distinct blocks of colour. Well, this fleece, anyway.

I found the best way was to load a rough colour block at a time, then take it off with the free comb, load more, take off more, and keep going till I had this:

You can sort of see the layers that were created and when I 'dizzed' it off I got

It spun up beautifully, as you would expect using wool combs, I navaho plied the resulting single to try and keep some colours. It did turn out muddy in places and I did really lose the blue, but I love the yarn so much I didn't take a photo before I knit it up into a shrug to sell in my Etsy shop.

I really love the combs and have started work on my next project, and, as convener of Experimental Spinners at the guild, we're going to have a session playing with wool combs. A couple of us have wool combs and so does the guild. We're going to try colour blending and see what happens.

Thanks again for your marvellous products and your generosity in sharing your knowledge.

Cheers, Teresa

PS Hints on blending colours on wool combs would be appreciated!

Samoyed and new toys!

Eventually you have to get on with things. I've finally managed to catch up with the lovely Samoyed owner W and discussed progress on the spinning and weaving of a blanket from her lovely Samoyed fur. Many things had to align for us to finally have an excited and exciting discussion. We're both passionate about this project, I for the challenge it will be and for W, the promise of a wonderful reminder of a friend.

Here is the bags of fur that I now have to spin!

It also means that I do feel the pressure and was highly delighted when I showed her the small spun samples and the little bit of weaving that I had done. The weaving was done on a weave-it loom, which is only a square with nails and gives a fairly rough approximation of the final product. Fortunately, her immediate response was positive!

In testing out the spinning I used my small wool combs and loved the result so much that I determined to buy the much bigger English combs when I went to the Australian Sheep and Wool show in Bendigo in July. I've been playing with these monsters ever since, and just love the speed of preparation and the resulting ease of spinning. It is these that I will use to prepare the Samoyed for spinning.

Now I'm off to spin up some the wonderful wool top from Andyle to make into lovely natural coloured neckwarmers. I've just realised that without really thinking, I've been doing the right thing. In the middle of winter, when I can't really get any dyeing done as there's nowhere to dry and the boys don't really appreciate having their bathroom taken over by slow drying skeins, I spin natural wool tops that I get at the sheep show. It makes so much sense. Now, I have to make a special big effort over the summer to do alot of dyeing!

Off to Harrietville

If you haven't been away on a weekend with people who share your passion then I highly recommend it. Harrietville is just such a weekend with friends, old and new, organised by the Handweavers and Spinners Guild of Victoria. From Friday night to Sunday lunch, it's wall to wall spinners, weavers, knitters and interested friends.

The weekend goes so quickly, so being prepared is a must! There are a number of workshops, all of the, 'drop in and out when you feel like it' type over the whole weekend. Last year I didn't do anything but sit, knit, spin and drink coffee! This year there are two workshops that are of interest: Historical dyeing and a Blending workshop using wool combs. I think I am prepared....

I have alum mordanted skeins for the historical dyeing. We're going to be doing indigo, madder and osage orange. I never miss an indigo dyebath if I can help it and I've never dyed with either Aliziran for the madder or osage orange. Hopefully, I'll have an opportunity to overdye some as the different dyes will be spread over three sessions.

The blending using wool combs will help me get better use out of my small combs and maybe I'll be tempted into some larger ones. I've decided to take away a bag of red and see what happens.

And finally, I have to try and finish the spinning on the wheel, so I have a bobbin ready for the colour blending.

Oh, and, of course, I have to pack clothes, camera, the rest of my spinning gear and try not to forget the toilet bag! As I'm being picked up very early in the morning, it will all be done before I go to bed......I just don't know when I'm going to bed!