Cotswold Fleece Redeemed & Dye Inspiration

After posting about the raw, super-long stapled Cotswold fleece last time, I thought I might share what it's become before it leaves me and goes on its merry way to whomever decides it would enhance their stash :) Please excuse the goofy shadow in the photo ~

Granted, there's only 9 ounces there and it's for sale on my website, which is a shame for me because this would be so perfectly lovely to comb and spin. It's nice and open and silky (though not soft, really ~ it's cotswold!) and ready to just jump onto some combs and be somebody's sexy playmate. Alas, I am in the business of selling fiber and my personal stash is just about as guilt-inducing as it gets, not to mention that it's spilling over its allotted space, which is considerable. I'm on a bit of moratorium as far as personal stash goes. Not a complete moratorium, but a BIT of one.

And, as I was dyeing up the curly lock part of this fleece, I managed to harvest these:

How awesome are those things???? 8-10" long perfectly organized OMG GORGEOUSNESS. sigh...

I originally didn't think I could get anything like this out of the fleece because it was dense and needed a lot of teasing/picking BUT I managed close to 2 ounces of the Kelpy colorway above and 3.4 oz of these in my Jester colorway:

And, there were curls as well from this fleece so all-in-all, a great harvest from the small amount I managed to wash. And I *did* manage a little pile of this fleece in this colorway for myself that was really picked out a lot and didn't have much lock structure left and wasn't REALLY enough to offer for sale on the site. And really, I DID have some space in my huge "Lock Basket" which is where I store all my bits of dyed locks for art yarns. It's on a shelf and there's still ROOM in there so :p

Wednesday was a 13-hour long day of dyeing (and packing and shipping) and out of all of it, this simple little colorway made me fall in love and realize why I do what I do...I mean, it's not an In-Your-Face OMG WOW thing but it's sweet and simple and I think it's lovely.

So, I dyed some yarn too because I adored the pale silvery lavender in there ~ I hope like hell I can do it again!!! I did take notes but it makes me nervous to love this so much and be disappointed because there was some weird little mojo that day that left me and won't come back.

On my google homepage, I have a widget called "JS Nature Photos" and I get a lot of inspiration from there. These are freaking fabulous photos taken by a man named John P. Sercel and you should go check them out. Amazing!

What I'll normally do is see the photo as I'm checking my email account, then quickly write down a name and a list of colors to use. I generally don't look at the photo again before I do the colorway, which is usually down the road so what I come up with is sort of a very loose translation and more "my own" that way than trying to nail the exact photo. When I try to nail exact photos (for example, I rip out a lot of magazine ad pages and use them as I'm working) I'm more often than not disappointed. I'm ALWAYS happier when I see something, write it down and then go about it. I don't often compare my work to the original photo but sometimes I do. And sometimes that makes me happy and sometimes it doesn't. But translating amazing photography and nature's wonder into wool with powder and vinegar isn't exactly an exact science and I'm not really a perfectionist.

I did that with my Big Sur colorway and shared it on a Ravelry dyers group and several people commented that it really DID capture Big Sur perfectly and that made me really happy. Of course, I worked from the heart as well as a photo on that one because I've been there and find it to be one of the most beautiful places on this planet.

Some of the colorways that I've come up with using that method...

It came from this photo here: Independence Pass Nature Photo If I were to pick it apart, I could say that the green isn't "green" enough or bright enough or deep enough and the lavender isn't silvery enough or intense enough in spots but hey ~ I still like it! And I did that fleece in the top picture in the same colorway, which is actually closer to my original intentions. Yarn and fleece or roving are two different animals when it comes to translating colorways.

For my May colorway contest one of the gals sent me a picture of this bird: Blue-Bellied Roller and I came up with this colorway on roving:

I feel like I'm having a bit of an intensity issue here but it's still pretty. And then I worked from a magazine ad and did NOT hit my mark and this sort of bums me out so I'm going to keep trying. The result is pretty enough but it's NOT WHAT I WANT DAMMIT!!! So as soon as I get over myself (roflol!) I'll give it another go...

Of course there must be a shameless mercenary plug here since all of these are available on my website. The yarn is not but will be in my Etsy shop soon :)

My knitting mojo has gone and left me. I hate that! I really need to finish some UFO's but I keep starting (and actually finishing!) really simple little projects so I'm still knitting while UFO's are grumbling and mocking me from their hiding spot in my wool room. Screw 'em! They aren't going anywhere. It's seriously time to frog at least one of them and commit to the rest because there are SO MANY cool sweaters I want to knit. Sooooooooo many. Damn Ravelry anyway.

I've been spinning some of the Sea Mist wool/silk laps I sell on my Ashford Traveller and they're working out really nice. I pulled out 8 oz for myself and am trying to spin them into fine singles just as they are. I think most folks who buy them drum card them but I just sorta pull 'em into roving-like strips and do what I can that way. I've got a couple of smallish slubs here and there but it's not awful or anything.

Of course, I don't have a bobbin photo but just looking at that picture makes me all hot to get home and put on that other bobbin for the last four ounces and get me some YARN BABY. (it is Friday night, which is "Do-Whatever-The-Hell-I-Please-and-Screw-Working" night. Oh, and I don't cook on Friday night!!!)

It'll probably look something like this, only sea green and not azure blue :) Mmmmmmm ~ I can still feel that skein like I was holding it. Have I knit it yet? Ah..... no. But that's only because I have a little bit more of that stuff (which is superwash and silk) to spin and THEN someday it'll leave it's cozy home in one of two huge handspun yarn baskets and make it's way to the needles.

And last night, in my So-Tired-I'm-Stupid situation, I took out a spindle and started spinning this really fine as well. Really fine for ME that is, which isn't exactly lace weight. I think I'll get light fingering weight though.

This is some Alpaca, Merino, and Tussah Silk roving I had made up for a particular sweater I'm going to do one day from the Classic Elite book "Make it Modern". How spoiled am I???? This stuff is really delicious and it's only fault is that either the silk or the merino noiled a bit in the processing but that's ok. The yarn has cute tiny little white nubs that will be very subtle in the plied yarn and give it a bit of a rustic feel, which is perfect for this awesome sweater I think. (excuse the crappy lifted-from-the-catalog photo. I still need to order the book. I adore Classic Elite patterns!!)

Did I already blog about this sweater? Probably, cuz I'm totally in love with it. Anyway, just giving the fiber a bit of a test spin since there were a couple ounces left over from what I put away for the sweater and the little bit I had left over to sell. I'm spinning it up on my lightweight carved rosewood spindle and it's lovely lovely LOVELY! I hope to have enough for a lace scarf or neckwarmer. I doubt there will be enough for any kind of real scarf but a sweet little neckwarmer is likely :) Or some cool wristers to go with my awesome sweater. Or something.

See what I mean about the moratorium? This is constantly what happens. Of course, this was never meant to be business stock ~ it was all mine all day!!! Just so happens I had more than enough and could share with my business. I'm a bit nervous about attempting to spin for that particular sweater but I think I can handle it. I'm an expert at subbing yarn anyway since I never EVER have knit a garment using the yarn called for in the pattern.

If you'd like to check out my knitting projects, they're in Ravelry and I'm YarnoraTale there so check it out and be my friend :)

And I've been promising a pug picture so here's Miss Lily, my adopted creature whom we ADORE and is just the best little snuggle buddy on the couch or on Saturday morning in the bed that there ever was as far as four-legged creatures go :) She's a constant source of amusement and smiles and the occasional urge to wring her neck. But she's so damned cute that will never happen (and I'm not a hideous animal abuser nor is my husband!) Yes, she has a bum eye and we have no clue what happened to it. But she can see amazingly well with the one that's left :)

And, here she is playing with a hanger (and yes, that's my under-construction laundry room and my dirty laundry and it's embarrassing but hey ~ when you're in the midst of home renovation, pride has no place in your existence!!!) Apparently, many pugs play with plastic hangers, if the half a dozen other photos in my pug lovers Ravelry group is any indication. I'm tellin ya, pugs are like the Borg...

Redeeming a Nasty Fleece...

Whoa...if you read my blog and have been sadly disappointed at my lack of posting, please accept my apologies! I've been working on a couple of team blogs ~ one is the Selfish Sunday Knitters which you may know about and the other is the UFO Knit Club...we'd love to have more team members so if you're interested, email me!

The pile of circus bright fiber above is part of a Shetland fleece that I purchased online...it was not at all what I would have expected...much coarser than I liked and literally packed full of VM...PACKED! sigh...but, I sorted it out and sent the best parts out to the mill and it came back much nicer than I expected ~ not as soft as I want shetland to be but still really nice and not dirty. There's a bit of VM that pops right out in spinning. That was a relief and I can't wait to dye it! I took the matted, really coarse part that I skirted out and washed and shook and picked and then tossed it into the dyepot with a ton of different colors and out came this pile of crazy bright dyed fleece.

I proceeded to hand-comb the nasty dyed fleece:) This took me forever, but I finally finished it. It's now dead winter with about a foot of snow on the ground and the pile o' fleece pic is probably early fall on the deck! I ended up with a lot more birdsnests than what you see here...I spun a bunch before I remembered to take a photo.

Now, combing is a serious amount of work, there's a lot of waste in a fleece this nasty (more on that later!) and it's just shocking how much time I spent to get the resulting 88 yards of combed, spun fiber. ACK! But, the result of the combing was something sooooo lovely to spin...I was just enamoured of this combed top I made while I was spinning it!

The lesson I learned with this stuff is that you can get some very cool color blending done with combs (particularly when you have to comb and comb and comb....) The teal-ish birdsnest at far left is the result of just grabbing a handful of fiber with a lot of colors in it. It blended far more than I expected it to but still had some variation in color. The gold bit is the result of grabbing in a more "controlled" manner...meaning I just pulled a chunk of the lighter orange, which still had bits of the other colors in it but was more yellow orange than not :) Some of the colors that came out were totally unexpected but cool! But, even a small amount of another color in my handfuls yeilded a color that I oftentimes didn't expect at all, and the predominant color in the whole mess was a teal...the purple also tended to dominate as well. When the colors blend though, you do end up seeing one color at first glance but the depth is amazing...at closer examination you start to see different threads of individual colors...very cool!

This is how the singles spun up...I put all the little birdsnests into a paper bag and just reached in and pulled them out at random, spinning whatever I ended up grabbing. The combed top was just so lovely and smooth and way silkier than I expected this wool to be...the spinning with combed fiber is just about effortless.


The bottom skein in the picture is what I ended up with from those singles. Not much yardage and I haven't weighed it yet. But, the waste (super fluffy in volume) about filled up a paper grocery bag and I didn't want to felt it and I didn't want to toss it. The top skein is the waste that I decided to play with and spin.

The combing waste...nasty nasty nasty! But, I thought I'd try to spin it up. Hey...I don't take my spinning too seriously and this stuff was bright and I'm easily amused so what the heck? I just grabbed handfuls, didn't try to draft and ended up with great huge slubs in the singles, which I actually plied into this massive bulky neppy, gnarly stuff. I wouldn't recommend it for a garment, that's for sure! And that whole bag of waste ended up being only 30 yards of super bulky weird yarn.

My plan was to felt it but there isn't enough to felt anything except maybe a coin purse, which is fine :)

The ball shows the singles before plying and the bottom photo is the plied yarn. The skinny photos show the singles in progress...ick, right?
I need to take both skeins to work and weigh them today to find out the ratio of good spinnable fiber to waste fiber from combing the nasty skirted out parts of the fleece. The skirting I had to do wasn't skirting out tags, etc. It was skirting out the coarse, matted, VM loaded part, which was probably neck wool.

All in all, this was a fun day of playing at the wheel :) I adore the combed yarn I came up with and have decided that combing is so worth the effort because what you end up with is pretty seductive.

This weekend, I hope to blog about some hand-dyed and spun wool/silk "crack" fiber that I've been playing with and some awesome Lincoln locks I dyed up for the shop/website :) Thanks for checking out the Nasty Fleece Redemption and I hope it inspires you to take out something less than perfect and see what it can become :)