Shawls, carding wool, and setting a crafting schedule

I finished up this shawl today! It is made of my new favorite yarn for my triloom: Lion Brand Homespun Thick and Quick. This particular colorway was their Tartan Stripes. The yarn works up soft and fluffy and cuddly, and I'm really pleased with it. And I love the self striping yarn that does the color work for me. Anyway, this beauty heads out into the mail tomorrow for its new home.

I've got some felted juggling balls heading out tomorrow too, which means my stock of those is getting low. Time to make some more! Especially with the holidays coming up, they are a good seller for gifts. I like to use a more inexpensive wool at the core of the balls, and then cover that with the more expensive colored wool. I had a bunch of roving tag ends from the last batch of mill end stuff I got, and it wasn't really in a form that was usable to me. Luckily, I have hand carders, and know how to use them. A few hours of work later, and the mish mash on the right all turned into the lovely fluff bits on the left. Satisfying.

In other bits, I'm trying to set a more regular studio time for myself. I work in my own home, and it is so easy to let housework, or kids calling, or the husbands home to hang out with, or the internet (Facebook is my downfall) luring me into spending time looking at craft things instead of making craft things, or...or.... My art work was taking a back seat to just about everything else in my life. I figured I would fit in some fiber time after the busy times of the day, but then the evenings would be taken up with other things until I just wanted mental down time. As a result, very little was actually getting done.

So, I am a serious night owl. I love being up until 4 or 5 am (yes, am as in morning), and then sleeping until noon or 1 pm. But, by doing so, I fell into the pattern I just outlined. So, for the last few weeks I started moving my bed time back to 2 or 3 am, and setting my alarm for 8 hours after that. And, I've told everyone that I've set aside the hours of noon to 4 as my studio time.

So far? I'm easing into it. Facebook is still a danger. And Twitter. And Pintrest. And YouTube with the craft tutorials. (I feel kind of virtuous watching those, because I'm learning stuff. But I'm not doing stuff, so it is mixed there.) But, for the last bit I've actually gotten things done. Two triloom shawls, some experimentation with finding yarns for the sock loom, and I've got a warp painted project on the floor loom. Juggling balls are on tap for tomorrow, and I have dye on the way for the next warp painted ruanas. Now, if I can keep this momentum, and really form a habit of taking time for the creation! It is so easy to get in my own way...

Tutorial: First try at wool combing

The fleece I washed the other day was dry tonight, so I started experimenting with how to process it for spinning.

The Icelandic sheep's fleece has a longer overcoat, called the tog, and shorter, finer undercoat, called the thel. I'm thinking that I want to take advantage of these two different kinds of fiber. I'd like to use the longer tog for my warp thread, and the shorter thel for the weft. But how to separate it out? Here's the experiment.

First, I pulled at the butt end of the lock, where it was cut off of the sheep. There were some very short fibers there. I pulled those out, and put them in a 'felting' pile.










Then I loaded the butt ends of the locks onto the wool combs, filling about half way up the tines.







Holding the Viking comb in one hand, I brushed the other comb sideways through the locks of wool, first away from me then (carefully!!) towards me. This opened up the locks, and transferred them onto the moving comb.



There was some short nubby wool left on the comb. I pulled that off, and put it in the felt pile. Then I switched the full comb to my left hand, and started the process over again.






After a couple of repeats, the wool looked like this. That is quite a difference from where I started!







I pulled the tips of the wool into a point, and started pulling. I'd pull my fiber out a half inch or so, then move my hand forward and grab from the main bunch again.










This had the effect of pulling out a long, continuous roving. This is ready to spin from now. The current plan is to spin this on a reproduction Medieval drop spindle, worsted style. This should give me a fine, strong warp thread.





I stopped pulling the fibers when the bunch left on the combs were only an inch or so long. I figured that would be the thel that was left there. I pulled that off the combs, and ran it through my carders









Here's the rolag off of the carders. The current plan is to spin this wool on my antique Great or Walking wheel, using the long draw. This should give me a fluffier yarn for my weft.









And that 'felting' pile? When it got big enough, I went to the bathroom sink and made a felt ball for my cats to play with. They love these!

The next step will be to spin up the couple of combs full of wool that I processed this evening, and see what the resulting yarn looks like.