big fat singles

Spinning Spider Jenny very kindly pointed out two blog enteries she had written in response to a question that I had posted on one of the forums on Ravelry this past week.

http://spinningspiderjenny.blogspot.com/2006/11/drafting-techniques-for-handspinners.html
http://spinningspiderjenny.blogspot.com/2006/11/opinions-on-drafting-techniques-for.html

I found both these posts to be extremely helpful and decided to try the supported longdraw on my double treadle lendrum. I normally do a version of it with my dropspindles so this was somewhat familiar territory I though:>. I pedaled about a medium amt. and spun up 4 oz of handdyed 64s Merino top from Henry's Attic that I had handpainted and set using the microwave last week or so. Tomorrow I'll take it and ply it I hope. Thanks to Jenny I now have a better grasp of spinning something other then thread and laceweight or fingering singles!

Felting a caftan

Our intrepid friend Elsbeth came all the way from Maryland this weekend and we felted--boy did we felt. We're working on a caftan for her Turkish outfits for SCA based off a caftan I had seen in July made by Mehmet Ghigiz and Theresa May Obrien. Their's was on silk and had cashmere for the white places--totally incredible piece. This weekend was a really exciting experience and I can't wait to do this again. Do to time and resource limitations we only got half the caftan laid out but it's a good start and she's at a point where she can keep working on it at home. It's huge with about 5 lbs of wool for the one side. The wool came from Lori Flood of Spinster's Treadle and was an excellent quality and price. I can't wait to order some more. We mixed Elsbeth's merino with my norwegian felting batt from Lori's shop and it worked beautifully. Here's some pics of the process...

Whoops.
It's still soft at least.
Dyed in a braid which was fun and easily repeatable but slightly toasted due to my still learning the dos and don't of ovendyeing.
I forsee some overdyeing and spinning for the home.

Yesterday's dyeing.

Tonights dyeing adventure was discovering the toasting point of wool. Whoops.

10 lbs of wool showed up today despite the cold snow and ice.

4.15 to 4.20 oz of corriedale in the oven at 8:10pm (yellow, brown, blue). Using this method is new to me so we'll see how it works. I'm going to go ahead and put some bfl in the crockpot to soak in a vinagar solution next and perhaps do a wh/bl/bwn skein of 4 oz..

Drumcarded spinning batts, handdyed, and handcombed top as well as a few spinning samples

Crockpot dyeing and handpainting

I had a blast dyeing yesterday. Working on building up some inventory:>.

crockpot report

Well, did some crockpot dyeing as an experiment tonight. I used yellow, 26 red and I think 460 blue. It messed really well in parts and came out with a beautiful rainforest motiff in parts but underdyed in others. I suspect I'll have to work with this technique a bit more to get the results I really want.