Fiber Saturday and Etsy

Last night I went to The Scrap Exchange and found my new favourite helper - A collapsible mesh basket that I think is meant for laundry. I bought it for a dollar and it makes a fantastic container for drying fiber. The mesh provides lots of air flow while keeping things safe from any stray gusts of wind. It's been really warm this week, 75 degrees (almost 24 celsius!) all week. The sun is shining, the birds are singing (the ducks are being wildly inappropriate) - I just had to make some color happen!

So I turned on my dye pots and got to work - here is a little basket of sunshine yellow and a slightly variegated orange. Soon they'll be all dry and fluffy and instead of spinning them, I'll force myself to bundle them up into rainbow kits. Probably. Maybe.

Thursday I picked up a Country Craftsman spinning wheel for my (lovely and talented) stepmother Jackie.

I'll be delivering it to her come Easter but until them I get to put my hands all over it and spin beautiful things. They don't make Country Craftsman wheels anymore so I'm very excited to play with this one and boy is she a beauty. I've the woods chosen for this - the grains and shading. It's a very sturdy, heavy wheel that spins with a silky smoothness, even with an improved drive band. The wheel came with 4 bobbins and a lazy kate. The bobbins are quite small - I've been spoiled by large bobbins and I think I'd get frustrated if I tried to spin anything other than very fine yarn on it. But why would you ever spin anything but the finest, loftiest lace on this lovely wheel? I know, I know. I can't keep her, I have to hand her over to Jackie. And I will! Probably. Maybe. ;)

In other, exciting news I finally tackled that mountain of alpaca. I'll go through the whole process some time in the future, but I took raw, dirty fluff and I washed it, teased it, carded it... and blended it.

See this beautiful, fluffy pillow? That's 70% Romney wool and 30% fluffy alpaca in a beautiful batt of carefully prepared fiber. Half of it I took to spin myself... and the other half I put up for sale on Etsy. :o

Yes! That's right... I've started my own little Etsy store, Fantasy Fibres. In it I plan on selling my dyed stuff, (maybe) some of my handspun, and just about every thing Jackie makes. There's very little up for sale now, but I'm working hard to get a reputable store front together.