I thought I would share some pictures of my recent fiber festival aquisitions with you today. I went with a friend and between the two of us we purchased 7 and a quarter pounds of fiber! However a good deal of it was not processed, and raw fiber tends to be available at much better prices then already processed and dyed fibers.
This will be a bit of show and tell so bear with me please, I'm pretty excited! So first up is washed Romney locks. I picked up a pound of Romney, 8 ounces of a light grey Romney, and 8 ounces of dark grey locks. There is a LOT of colour variation within the Romney fleeces that I looked at. It was really quite exciting and quite the process to narrow down which of the fleece we wanted!
I started carding my Romney yesterday. I made up about 14 rolags and then started spinning. It changes so drastically from locks to spindle because all the colour variations in the fiber are blended together in the carding process and then blended even more so when it is spun. Overall the colour would probably be described as a gray-ish cream color, with little strands of black running through it.
Romney has a beautiful crimp to the locks. Once I started carding and spinning this fiber up I was wishing I had purchased more. The sheperdess did a fine job of skirting and washing these locks, I was very pleased with the fiber. It is SO beautiful, soft and springy with a sturdy hand to it. I'm considering making a beaded stole with it, and keeping that idea in mind I am spinning it a fingering weight right now.
Our Siamese/Angora cat, Sasha, insisted on getting in my photo shoot.
Here is the darker Romney roving I picked up for my Mother.
Look at all the colour variation just within the rolags she has carded up so far! Beautiful.
I splurged a bit on 4 ounces of Blue Faced Leicester/Silk roving. Mainly I was trying to shop with making Christmas presents in mind. This first skein will, Lord willing, become a Christmas gift. Though I can not say who it is for, or what it will be, here on my blog!
This was the first time I have ever spun a singles yarn on my drop spindle. I am using my handspun in a pattern that calls for Manos Del Uraguay handspun, and I decided to pattern my yarn after the Manos. The single ended up quite lovely I think. As it was my first non-plied yarn I over-spun it slightly, but I'll know better for the other 2 ounces. If I spin them up the same way, that is! I have enough yardage in my first skein, 138.25yds, for the Christmas gift I have planned.
This is a sampler pack of various mixed wools, Merino, Corriedale, etc. I don't have any definite plans for this, just a few ideas. I'm sure you'll hear more about this roving in the future. :)
60%Llama/40%Polworth roving. So scrumptiously soft! I purchased an angora/polworth blend from this same farm last fall and was very pleased with it. This will make something warm and cozy for wearing this winter.
I also picked up a 1.5# of Merino/Corriedale/Dorset raw wool. It is not skirted, and unwashed. Quite pungent indeed! But I'll be washing it up sometime within the next couple of weeks. I'm waiting until I get together with my friend, as she bought a pound of the same fiber (in a different colour) and has never washed raw fiber before. We are going to wash our fiber up together and lay it out on a sheet in the sun to dry. A few ounces of this will be carded together with angora fiber.
I picked up a couple things for my sister, one of which was all these little wool/llama/alpaca/silk balls of roving. I also got Romney roving for her. I learned some interesting facts on Romneys. Apparently Romneys are originally from over in europe, and were much smaller in size. With inter-breeding Romneys have become much bigger, but at the price of the fleeces becoming less soft then the fleece that comes from the original Romneys. The locks I purchased are from a medium sized Romney. Whilst the roving I picked up for my sister is from a small UK Romney and is amazingly soft.
The total haul of the day between my friend and I. We made a lot of identical purchases as you can see!
Well that is it for now. I hope you enjoyed the show of fibers! Next time I'll try to update you on projects, and such. Take care my friends and I'll be back with you soon, Lord willing!
