photoblog 1- yarn love

 just pics, folks. i'll caption them, but that's about all i've got time for at this exact moment...

our newest family member

my first attempt at edible-food coloring dying. the white is wool, the brown is alpaca, and the mesh bag holds angora.

the setup. used 2 sets of dye, just the green, blue and pink tablets. as the two sets were different brands, the colors were slightly different, leading to interesting color variations later.

all the dye has been added, and the yarn pressed into the dye. had to add some water to bring the level up to an acceptable point.

my drying rack full of dyed batts

a re-carded batt containing an odd  bit of dyed wool and the dyed alpaca  (the two skinny bits on the left of the photo above) plus some white wool. yes, i know it's a horrible looking batt. but as i'm planning on using it all myself, i don't worry about the slubs too much.

the batt above, spun fine.

the finished yarn, chain-plied into about 50 yards of tweedy gently-shading yarn.

two of the three matching batts i dyed, pulled into rovings

some of the same wool, spun up

the finished yarn, plied 1-dyed, 1-plain white wool. about 400 yards total, and should stripe wide stripes of color.

color is a bit off on some of these, but the best i can do what with the never-ending rain around here.

Returning from Hiatus

hello again. I'm back. I've been a busy girl, just not on the blogging front. I've been crocheting and spinning a lot, as well as baking, cooking, childcare-ing, and homeschooling.

i have been enjoying the 'bounty' of my window garden (thus far 6 hot peppers and 4 small tomatoes)

 i also took part in a swap on ravelry (the swap was for Imbolc, but i've opened it early) and i thought i'd show you what i got!

 that huge ball is wool roving from a rare breed of sheep called the Coburg Fox Sheep, and the wood box is full of charcoal and incense. Such lovely stuff :D

here's a peek at a couple of my ongoing projects:

a bat-wing style shawl made with some yarn i just LOVE!

100% alpaca, spun fine. to be plied with wool.

 in other news: um... no, not really any other news. am slowly starting to re-connect with old friends locally, which is nice and a real stress relief.

hope everyone is having a safe and warm winter... take it easy!