Hi again. 🙂 Thought I would just do another quick blog post about the blending board I bought at Woolfest. It was bought from the very nice people of Hedgehog Equipment. They had run out of blending boards at Woolfest so very kindly offered to send me one free post. I LOVE it!

It was sent very quickly and was wrapped well. I think it had only just been made too.

So, of course I had to try it out straight away! This is some Shetland X wool which I had prepared from raw fleece, with some purple merino.

It took a little bit of trial and error to get the rolags off properly.

What do you think? All odd sizes and thicknesses but I enjoyed doing them.

I thought I would try out some nice multi coloured rolags using some fibres I had bought specifically for it. Red and black mohair with some white sparkly trilobal nylon.

I lay down red in stripes, and black in stripes between them. Then some red on top and then sparkles on top and more red on top!

You can see which ones came off the blending board last as I find it more difficult to take them off at that point.

I really like the shinyness of them all.

All ready to spin and kept nicely in a shoe box, using the new spindle bought from Woolfest. (Hilltopkatie).

Here it is all spun up! I am surprised how much yarn there is from it. I really, really like it. I plan on making some more rolags with this colour design.

And here is the delights of using my spindle around cats! The look on Ayas face when I caught her chewing on it! Ah well. I will put some tape on the end and hopefully it will still spin as well!

Feel free to join my group ‘Empress Spinning’ on Facebook and share your fleecy and fibery photos. Everyone is welcome.

Have a great day everyone,

xXx Love Kais xXx

Hello everyone!

These past few weeks have been completely fleece and fibre full!  I’ve been literally counting down the days to the most amazing wool festival on Earth – Woolfest. I’ll be creating a blog post on it later. I did buy a few fleeces though, which you will see further down the post.

It’s also been the end of school for this year, until after summer of course. The last week has been hectic, getting decorations and displays down, sorting out school work and sending it home. The kids have had fun though and so have I. I look forward to my new class but I’ll miss this class a lot too. I took my spinning wheel in for the last day and they LOVED it. Even the boys couldn’t wait to have a go and were impatiently waiting in line to try using the treadle. Hopefully they might want to try it when they are older too!

Ok, so lets have a look at the fleecy photos then!

This first photo is actually a Zwartbles fleece that was given to me by some very kind Zwartbles farmers. I cannot believe how HUGE the fleece is. The tub at the back is full of good stuff taken from it already, as well as all the fleece lying on the table! I’m using my Dad’s shed to sort it out – it’s a lot better skirting it on the table as my back aches horribly when it is lying on the floor. You can just see my Dad in the left hand side of the picture. I think he enjoys skirting and sorting the fleece just as much as me! You can watch the chickens from the window on the right.

Photo in action!

An entire fleece in the tub – it’s pretty squished in there.

After that, I found some pillow cases and decided to name each fleece rather than just giving it a number. They all have girls names, except the male fleece, which is now named Rupert. Those pillow cases take an awful lot of fleece! However, Ruperts fleece took two cases, it was that big!

Here are some carded batts, some from the Zwartbles (front) and the others from a Ryeland fleece I’ve had hanging around for a while now. I amaze myself how much fleece I have crammed in this house – I surprise myself sometimes! These have been through the carder only once, so definitely need going through again.

Grr, I’m annoyed with myself that I cannot remember the name of this fleece. But it is MASSIVE. I bought this one to card and dye.

This teeny one is a North Ronaldsay. I had been looking at these fleeces at Woolfest but they all seemed pretty horrible, dirty and greasy. Mum found this one and we checked it out on the fleece table. It was a lot better than others and was cheap, so I bought it. When I checked it out later in the shed it was actually pretty damn good! Hardly any vm, or too much grease or in need of much, if any skirting. I was seriously impressed. Thanks Mum! I look forward to washing and spinning this. I won’t be dyeing it, the colours are gorgeous enough as they are.

This is a Shetland X (I think!) If not, it is a Zwartbles. Either way, the Shetland X was beautiful and very little vm or anything. It was very nice and soft. I bought several Shetland fleeces, mostly white.

This little clump of fleece is Leicester Longwool/Wensleydale – I think! (Why didn’t I write the name of the stall down?! Ooh, maybe I can check the Woolfest map, I vaguely remember where it was). It isn’t very good at the bottom, but I got a whole bag of curls from this which I plan on dyeing later. The bit that is felted at the bottom – I plan on washing this, dyeing it in lots of pretty colours and making a cushion with a sheep on it. The sheep will have these dyed curls for its fleece.

And this little lot is 200g of Hebridean fleece. Now, me and Hebridean fleece do not normally get on. I am hoping (and hoping!) that I can wash and card this successfully and actually spin it. I find it greasy and horrible normally so I hope it works. I actually found a Hebridean fleece in the shed the other day and put some into soak. I still need to move it from the bathroom . . . Fingers crossed it works!

I have lots and lots more to say, but I won’t put it all in one blog post. Hope you enjoyed looked at the fleecy photos – I’m looking forward to working with it properly.

Have a great day everyone. 🙂

xXx Love Kais xXx