Sunday, April 26, 2009

Showing off

I've been doing more and more spinning. I am especially fascinated with the process of going all the way from raw wool (or other fiber) to finished yarn. I have been playing around with raw alpaca fiber I purchased from a farm in the next town. Before that, I had been spinning prepared wool "roving" from local sources.

Here is the photo of the finished alpaca yarn that I made. I washed the fiber, dyed it (with KoolAid - Orange and Fruit Punch for a peachy mix), combed it, and spun it on my drop spindle. I wish you could feel it. It is really soft.



This is some that I spun with wool from a producer located just about a mile from where we used to live up north. We didn't know them when we lived up there, but I wish I had. This wool comes from a sheep with a funny name: California Variegated Mutant, or CVM for short. The wool is very spongy and squishy. I love it.

5 comments:

cpainton said...

TOO cool!
I recently just purchased fabric to make a beach bag...yesterday I just went ahead and bought one...hehe!

teacakebiscuit said...

Wow, that's really nice yarn! I wanted to spin last year and looked into classes, but got put off by the expense of the equipment. But back then I only knew about wheel spinning. Now you're really tempting me again with this drop spinning stuff, I'd not heard of it before. I think I need to spend some time on google......hehehe

Brook said...

Casi - you should still make it! A homemade one would be way cooler :)

Nin - yes, definitely look it up. You can make spindles out of CDs or wooden wheels from the craft store really cheap to try it out and see if you get into it. Then you'll get hooked! I wish we lived closer and I'd show you. The spindle I used for this was a homemade $5.00 wooden wheel one purchased from a local spinner.

Cami said...

Way to go Brook. I love it!

Jennifer said...

Brook, the gray one looks just like a dog turd in your grass!