January Fiber Updates

 Hello my friends! It is good to be back here in blogland with you. I will admit I have been spending more time on Instagram then on my blog. Probably because the camera on my phone is nicer then my point-and-shoot. And it is fairly instant, far less work then editing photos and doing up a blog post. But I am determined to be a little more regular on here, as time allows, and not neglect my poor blog and my wonderful followers. 
 First up are shop updates. 
I am keeping fairly busy with my shop. Things slowed down around Christmas but are picking back up within the last week. Spindle sales are on the rise and that is a blessing. I get so excited every time I sell a spindle. Actually I still get so excited every time I have any sort of sale. Each one is a blessing and an answer to prayer.
Newest in my shop right now are my Marbled Puni Collections! 
I am working on carefully carding up unique fiber blends on my hand cards and selling them in small amounts. These are similar to batts, but are already split up into sections as you can spin straight from a puni. They will make beautiful heathered yarns and depending on the content, will be lightly textured.
If you haven't seen them yet please do stop by and check them out!
** Concerning Punis, I will be doing a special post about what makes a puni, and the difference between punis and rolags. Stay tuned!

 In my own personal non-business-related Fibery dealings, this is a little of what I have been working on. Bright and early New Year's day, (yes, I mean about 12:30am!) I dumped out my container of woolly odds and ends left over from other carding projects. I wanted to see if I could make some order out of the chaos and maybe card them into rolags/punis. Yes, I know I could use them for felting or stuffing, but they seemed to pretty to use for anything other then spinning. I lashed them neatly onto my hand cards as shown above, then away I carded.

 As you can see they turned out beautifully! They have some short,, blobby spots. And I had to deal with a few more noily sections then I usually do, but overall I loved them. Since I was using scraps they ended up being a mixture of merino wool, angora, silk, bamboo, llama, and sari silk threads. 
 This was my project basket on New Year's Day. Although I ended up just working on my scrappy punis and never did get to spin on my Christmas yarn. I carded, spun, and plied all of my scraps on January 1st, in between the general chatter, food, games and time spent with my wonderful family. 

 Here is the resulting yarn, my first handspun of the year 2013!I am not sure on the WPI of the yardage, I will have to measure it again.

 As for my Happy Christmas yarn, it spun up fairly quickly. I dithered back and forth on how I should ply it. Two ply to blend the colors more? Navajo ply for longer color repeats? Normally I don't have trouble deciding what to do with my plying but I wanted this to be perfect so it sat as a single for a little while. Two different people advised that I do two-ply. So that is what i ended up going with.

And I absolutely LOVE the way the colors ended up! It is a very unique yarn, and some of the colors are not "me" at all. But as a whole I love it and I am already designing a shawl pattern with it. This was only 180 yards of fingering weight yarn. I have already knit almost all of it and I am plying the second skein for it. Depending on how the shawl turns out I may turn it into a pdf for sale on Ravelry. I'll be sharing pictures with you soon!
What about you? What projects have been keeping you busy in your spare time thus far in the New Year? I would love to hear all about them!