From Fleece To Yarn To Product- A Spinning Journey Part 2

Hi Guys :)

Last time we spoke, i was drying out my fleece

(My super high tech drying rack ;) )

I sorted it into lights and darks (rather like laundry!)

I borrowed a pair of carders from a friend

You lay your fleece on it and brush it though quite a few times, this helps open it up and makes it super fluffy, and also gets rid of any lingering small pieces of dirt.

And, do it enough times and you'll eventually get a nice little "Rolag" (small sausage shape piece of carded wool) ready to spin from

Tease out a little fluff, hook in your spindle (the wooden thing below) and simultaneously drop it and spin it clockwise, and once the spindle starts to slow, wrap it around the bottom of spindle. It takes quite a lot of practice! Once you get into the habit of teasing and dropping and spinning and winding you'll eventually end up with a rather lumpy looking length of yarn! 

(It also takes practice to get it even)

Once you have your length of yarn, you can then decide if you want to keep it as is (which is called a single) or you can ply it.

Now plying is fun. You take your single, and you can take either another single, or cotton thread if you want it to stay the same thickness, and hook both pieces onto your spindle and begin to spin in the opposite direction until both of your singles spin together and ply.

                                Eventually, you will end up with something like this :)

And then this! This is going to be a cushion, made from all of the practice yarn i spun. It makes me very happy and tingly when i look at it

Some of you may be asking "Well why would i want to do that? I can buy it ready made at the shop!"

Well...yes..you can. But in my humble opinion, i think every knitter, crocheter, weaver, yarn artist should try it. At least once.

Aren't you interested in how your yarn comes to be? Don't you want to know how you get such beautiful colour combinations? And try it yourself? I do :)

Speaking of which, i have already stepped gingerly into the world of dyeing and colors!

Look at that blue! The picture doesn't do it justice.

I dyed it with food colouring!

And two other experiments, the top left is coffee and top right is mixed herbs (It has made a lovely pale yellow and, quite frankly, i didn't expect it to work at all!)

So there you have it.

From fleece to yarn to product.

I think i'm starting to get my artistic mojo back :) So there shall be many more projects on the horizon :)

What have you been up to this week?