Fibre Friday

On Friday I sorely needed a break from the tax returns as my brain was fit to burst with numbers and calculations!

My two spinning wheels have been looking a bit neglected and I've been promising myself a spinning session since before Christmas. But before spinning must come fibre, so Julia and I collected together the large bag of natural dyed fleece from my experimentation session with Earthues and our Hue & Dye extracts (which those of you with good memories will remember I started dyeing last September - oops!). Although the fleece quality was a bit variable, I couldn't bear to part with it as the colours were so lovely.

We set up the drum carder and spent a very enjoyable and productive afternoon producing a lovely big pile of multi-blended natural dyed batts. There was madder for reds and oranges, weld for clear, bright yellow, persian berries for golden ochre yellow and gorgeous olive green which I'd made by modifying the weld with iron sulphate. The teals, pinks and purples I've kept to one side for later.

My plan is to make a new blankie for our living room. I'm going to spin up a batch of natural-coloured jacob fleece (I daren't tell you how old that is!), and combine this with the dyed fleece in a slip-stitch mosaic pattern......