Voila, yarn!

So here's my first 350 yards (give or take), double ply, loosely spun, variegated weight, Merino/Cormo cross lamb and English Angora wool yarn.

The yarn is twisted into two hanks. The first hank is really large, and the second one is smaller, but the yarn is all about the same.

Carding and Spinning

Once I was able to find some of the wool was dry (not all of it is dry, but some of the locks on the top of the bag were dry) I didn't hesitate to start carding the wool.

This is my first experience carding sheep's wool, as well as trying my hand at blending wool fibers. So I would estimate that this blend is 70% lambs wool 30% angora...maybe? I'm just sort of putting two to three fist full of wool to each fist full of angora fiber. I know that's perhaps a bit haphazard. It's turning into a very fluffy batting.
And thus far it's spinning up nice enough. Now, I've got to decide what to knit with this. I wonder if this is soft enough for my son's sensitivities. (He doesn't like itchy wool). I might make a sweater for him. If this doesn't do the trick I don't know what would. This is angel soft!

Wool Washing

Friday we washed our wool. Wash, rinse, wash, rinse, rinse, rinse, rinse. It's so hard to be patient.

The cleaner the wool becomes the more it's prone to float. The instructions said to press the wool down with wool racks. Opps, I don't have any of those, so I got some coffee mugs and used those to help anchor the wool bags down during the soaking portions of the washes.

Then, it all has to dry. It's so hard to wait when you just want to just spin!

But it is so lovely! It's so clean is smells awesome!

Pre-soak the wool

My lovely wool came with washing instructions. I'm so glad too, cause I'm pretty green at this part. My first fleece ya know!

So the first step is to run out and buy some laundry bags. I dashed off to the PX where they gave me a $5 off coupon for spending 10 minutes to fill out a survey. So I got 6 bags for the price of 4!

Once home, put wool into bags.

Fill tub with warm water (and I added some euclan wool wash) and allow to soak for at least an hour...or over night.

Tomorrow we wash!

Pearl my wool

I've found the most scrumptious wool fleece, it arrived today. The most beautiful part is it's so clean, soft and fully lanolized, and I didn't have to feed or tend to the dear little lamb who produced it for me. I love my fluffy bunny, but he is stinky. I'm so glad he's partly potty trained though. He uses a littler box and helps to ease his clean up to some degree. Still, when I'm ill or super busy, and the cage needs to be cleaned, I wonder if it's all really worth it. Growing fine wool is hard work. It's a dirty job, but someone has got to do it.

Cause, yes, in the end the fluffy clouds of wool, are so worth it.

This big box is going to take a while to process, and it's a good thing too because my wheel is broken again. And we've got to take it back into town and have another new piece made for it. Yeah!

Another diaper Cover?

I just finished this diaper cover today, after starting it on Sunday. It took me four days. I think I have a touch of tendonitis to thank for it too.

My three year old has been potty training forever, and has yet to fully graduate. Well, she came down with a horrible diaper rash over the weekend, and she doesn't even really wear diapers, per say.

However, I determined that her PUL lined training pants weren't helping her skin to breath. Perhaps the were causing the problem? She needed a good old fashion lathering of lanolin with a bit of cotton and wool to help heal her bum. My old wool covers are just a tad too small for her now. She's been in training mode longer than my other kids ever were. So I yanked that XL wool diaper cover out of my store and stuck it on her over a pair of panties stuffed with a newborn prefold.

Then I ordered some ToddlerEase Sandy's, and got to work on another XL diaper cover. Perhaps I over reacted with the purchase of more diapers (but my thought was that the Sandy's are side snap and she could pull them up and down like undies if need be). She's healing very well now, and her rash is now peeling away, and no longer red and sore. She's back in her Imse Visme Training pants today.

Hopefully, she won't need this for long, but this way I'm prepare to keep her in breathable undies till....whenever she finally stops having accidents.

Snow White

Oh, I can't tell you how good it feels to have this project completed! This dress has been sitting in my pile in peices for so long. It's been weighing on me, calling out, "ha, you have to make me, you can't escape!"

I won't go into detail about how I had to change the thread color on the sewing machine about 50 times. I hate how many different colors this dress has...well I like it now that it's finished, but I sure don't know why Disney decided upon these color combinations, and why this dress???? Seriously, this is the biggest pain in the you-know-what princess dress to make. Surely the animators felt the same, imagine changing your paint brush color over and over again. I'm guessing it's why all the Princesses that followed had relatively single colored dresses.

Now I truly, have made this little girl's dreams come true, and she is just gushing over her dress.

Spinning Merino

I also spin...well know that my spinning wheel is repaired I do. Oh, I think it was about two years ago someone reclined the lazy boy into my spinning wheel and broke one of the wood peices that was instramental in the operation. I wasn't really actively spinning anyhow, so the wheel has sat collecting dust for the past three years. Yes, It's really been three years since I've completed anything. I've give you one guess as to why I was too busy to sit and spin three years ago.

This weekend I spun up the rest of this purple merino wool roving, which I purchased over three years ago in hopes of spinning and knitting up into a pretty sweater for Charlotte. We all know that didn't happen, and now I'm not sure what will become of this, but either way, I'm finished with the spinning part.

It's sort of lumpy and not the finest sample of spinning ever. However, I fell back in love with spinning, and have a wonderful 3+ pound Merino/ cormo cross fleece coming my way. I'll be blending Pearl's fleece with some of the angora wool I've been collecting over the last few years. Just you wait, it's going to be the softest wooly yarn ever!

Pixie Dust!

This years Halloween challenge is complete, for one child at least. Tinkerbell does seem to suit her personality. The skates are just sort of my whimsical addition, we'll probably leave those at home on Halloween night.

I've not seen wings that look right. I don't think she'll notice if we never find them either. We still have a pink pair from the last two years, which I'm certain would be sufficient.