NCS Guild Project

Today I began to turn washed CVM fleece into usable fiber. First I used the great digital scale my sister gave me for my birthday last year and divided both the white and colored fleece into equal parts. That way I can spin two spools of each without guessing how much is half!
I set aside 1g of both so I could experiment to find out whether I should card or comb or do something else. I pulled some of the locks apart. It's lovely, soft and very fine. And only a little vm. The brown is a little neppy, tho'. Carding is not my favorite fiber prep -- I've never really grown fully adept. Nevertheless, it's less painstaking and wasteful than coming so I tried that first. I made a little rolad [photo]. Then I took out my mini combs and tried some. I love the way all the little ends stick out together. If it worked with the mini combs, I thought it might work with the double combs. And , it did -- beautifully. I do hate the waste but I'll put it in the "to-be-carded" bag and see. It can always be stuffing for pillows.
I combed all the brown/red today. It's lots of different shades, which will be fun.

From Fleece to Skein

The fiber is Blue Faced Leicester, a part of a fleece dyed in osage orange at a workshop in Peters Valley in 2003, after scouring and mordanting it in alum. To process it, I combed the locks on English hand-held combs and then spun and plied it. This week we had a combing demonstration at North Country Spinners, given by MaryLou. At Soar in 2004 I took Robin Russo's excellent Fiber Prep workshop and learned to use the various combs and diz. I'm still working on my plying, tho. I really love the way it turned out.

Ashland Bay "Columbia"

Have I said how much I dislike this fiber? This is close to the end of what I'd bought when I first started spinning. And, in July 2007 I sold the Bosworth Journey Wheel to someone who really wanted it, with the help of the wonderful Bosworths. It was quite an adventure but I learned my lesson never to use the services of my local so-called shipping store. The Journey Wheel was a beautiful piece of furniture for my small apartment but never versatile enough for me. I needed a wheel that could spin thick to thin. I'm sorry that I had to part with Jonathan's beautiful handiwork.

Coopworth Skein, May 2007

This finishes up one my first rovings. , except for one spindlefull I found just after I spun and plied this. Because I spun the Coopworth is fairly thick and fuzzy (read: woollen), it did not ply well on the Journey Wheel. However, I was able to ply it on my trusty Louet.