Drum Carder & Wool!!

Due to the great generosity of my wonderful customers I was able to use some of my recent earnings to purchase a new piece of equipment for the business.

Yesterday, after sleeping in on my day off of The Day Job to help myself get over a cold, there was a ring of the doorbell and a lovely man left this:

After much dancing around the kitchen and squeeing at Rachel, (who was being a darling and making me oatmeal since I was not feeling well) I opened the box.

Oooooooooooh!!! The Strauch Finest Drum Carder! So illness (and oatmeal...sorry hun) momentarily forgotten I set about playing with my new toy...um I mean...thoroughly testing the new equipment. ::sheepish grin::

Look how shiny!! 

I especially like the pointy bits!

Here are all of the accessories:

So I grabbed some SW BFL I had lying around (literally because this is quite the wool-infested household) and carded my very first batt! TA DA!!

Then I blended in some alpaca:

Awww how cute and pretty!!! ::dances in amusement of her own genius in spite of the machine doing pretty much all of the work::

Naturally I had to see how it spun up. Love, love, love, tweedy yarns! ::drool:: Must make more so I have enough for mittens. :) Of course at this point the adrenaline I had been running on gave out, my cold smacked me in the face like a Mac truck, and I had to go nap for several hours. It was SO worth it!

Today I got 5 lbs. of wool in the mail (plus a little bonus fiber) to dye up and use as base fiber in the up-coming line of Llady Llama Fiber Co. batts (official product name to-be-released). Our cat Orpheus just had to inspect the sheep-scented bag it was shipped in (you should have seen them both playing in the drum carder box yesterday...adorable!)

FY Pics , Spinninfg WIP, More Leila Pics, New Book, Knitting Socks WIP

Some of my latest FY's (Finished Yarns):

The last of the Blue Icee chain plied Romeny/Mohair
(This has been done for awhile but was sitting around waiting to be photographed)



"Glee" 2-ply Ramboullet. There is a third skein of this which I haven't photographed yet but total yardage is 386 and the WPI is 28.


"Amethyst" 2-ply of superwash merino, 32 WPI and 328 yards.


2-Ply Coopworth (from the batt I got at Knox FFF), 21 WPI and 148 yards.


Spinning WIP

Plying 2oz. of bamboo and 2 oz. of BFL




As I was photographing yarn Leila became curious and I got some really cute pictures of her.


BIG NEWS!!! I have joined the dark side (feigned shame). I have learned to knit...SOCKS!! ::HAPPY DANCE:: This sock is actually done now but I haven't taken photos of it. I haven't cast on the 2nd one yet but I am still SO proud of myself! This is my first sock and my first knitting item. My Mom taught me the knit stitch as a child (7 or 8 I think) and I recall making a blob of yellow fabric which I inteded to be an afghan someday but never became anything.

I have been wanting to teach myself to knit socks out of my handspun for quite some time now. I finally bit the bullet and through the help of Coggie from The High Fiber Diet podcast and a couple of beginning knitting books I have picked up the DPNs!

I just used some cheapy acrylic yarn for my first socks in case I ruined the yarn through frogging. This is sport weight done on size 3 DPNs (because we don't have a LYS and I couldn't find Fingering weight yarn or #1 or #2 DPNs). I now have some Imagination Handpainted Sock Yarn in the Lost Boys colorway and Harmony Wood DPNs on order from KnitPicks.


Yeah those are my rainbow PJ pants!! :)



I also have a new book!!! YAAAAYY!!!

My distraction, Stash Pics

Here she is, the tiny little distraction that is my excuse for not crossing the finish line for the Ravelympics. Her name is Leila and she was a VERY unexpected addition to our little family. We found her the 21st of August under my car in our driveway. She was very emaciated (this picture was taken a couple of days after we got her), flea-bitten, but soooooo lovable. We adopted her and the vet said when we found her that she was 6 months old bsed on the size of her teeth (other than the fleas she had an intestinal parasite and we still have to get her fixed next month). She's now a healthy 4 pounds and still such a love!!! Orpheus (our 2-year-old, 14 pound cat whom we found as a stray and adopted when he was 8 months old) adjusted pretty quickly to her presence and they get along just fine.

Orpheus was also starved when we found him and so has always been very obsessed with food (as starved animals have a tendecy to be), but he actually backs down and leaves his food to Leila if she's around. It's so bad we have to lock her in the bedroom to feed Orpheus and then feed her when he's done!! If we feed them at the same time she'll run between the bowls and eat from them so fast that Orpheus won't get a chance to eat anything.

Here is after a couple of days. (My cats love to lay all over the bed and get the matress pad all cat-hair as soon as I've stripped the sheets for the wash):

This was taken about a week ago...they are sooo cute (and look how much Leila has grown)!!

She is a narcoleptic gremlin cat who loves laps and naps more than anything else (well, except food). She'll lay in my arms like a baby or lay on my lap while I spin and fall asleep within 2 minutes. At night she either sleeps on my chest, between my ankles or between our pillows (I've accidentally squooshed her lots of times but she never gets discouraged). She is mischevious as all kittens are but she's a lap cat and extremely cute, so I forgive her.

On to fiber-related things:

My first plied-on-the-wheel yarn is in front here and there's another center pull ball of singles in the back:

This is the rest of the fiber that I got for the Ravelympics (It's all spun now but I haven't taken picstures of the finished yarn yet):

4 Oz. Ramboullet in the colorway "Glee" from FlawfulFibers


A sample of Shetland they sent me with the Ramboullet


4 oz. of Superwash Merino in the colorway "Amethyst" from DyeabolicalYarns

Next post: Picstures from the Knox Farm Fiber Festival, including new stash pics!!