The first thing I am learning about blogging is to write everything in a Word document first, and copy and paste into the blog. I write, I upload photos, and then in trying to fix the text wrapping, I invariably lose the post and don’t have time to go back and recreate the whole darn thing. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to click the “Save” button early and often, either!
Well, my lovely week of vacation flew by, but I did make inroads to both new spinning and knitting projects. Spinning was particularly alluring, as I had just received before Christmas a shipment of newly-processed wool from Spinderella’s in Salt Lake City. This was the result of my summer and autumn’s worth of wool washing and dyeing.
The first to get tried out were the blue thrums. The term, “thrums,” technically means loom waste – the stuff left over from tying a weaving project onto the loom. If you don’t happen to have any loom waste lying around, you can take any yarns and cut them into about 3” lengths and mix with wool. This is a good way to get rid of leftovers, odd skeins, and the skeins you inherit from well-meaning friends (you know – “this was in my grandma’s house when she passed away”).
The wool for the blue thrums was a new fleece. I used to buy the clip of a small Shetland herd from a farmer in Maine, but the Shetlands got old and were replaced with white Corriedale crosses. So, no more nice natural colored wool from this avenue, but the white crossbred wool seems to work out nicely. It was dyed with regular old Rit dye and blended with orange, yellow, and red bits. This is what the resulting roving and a skein of the finished yarn looks like:
This will be going into a pair of socks for the Maine farmer who raised the wool.
Next up was the twist roving. This is the first time I branched out with this and am uber happy with the results. I used the three little Border Leicester lamb fleeces from Pegg Thomas at Twin Willows Farms. These were REALLY nice fleeces with no veggie matter in them. I dyed one green, one rose, and one a sort of shrimp pink. You keep the three colors separate when you send them to Spinderella’s, and they get carded side by side so that you get a distinct strip of each color, not all blended together. This is what the resulting roving and a skein of the finished yarn looks like:
The other twist roving was from the three Lincoln Longwool fleeces from Cory Simpson in Montana. If you ever need a good Lincoln fleece, this is the one to go to for soft, lusterous, and clean fleeces. I dyed one purple, one orange, and one lavender. This is what the resulting roving and a single ply on the bobbin look like:
I finished the second bobbin of this and am currently plying it. Haven’t decided yet what to use it for, but I’m sure a project will present itself before long!
The Wool Merchant's Daughter 
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