Fiber Talk

I've been meaning to do a spinning post for awhile, but other things kept coming up. At the last Valley Spinner's Guild meeting I was excited to find out it was my turn to take home the drum carder - yippee!

Usually members can rent it for one month at a time, but since the equipment person is gone next month I get to use it until the September meeting. This is good because I have quite a bit of fiber to card and I don't want to do it by hand. For the non-spinners, carding involves picking apart the sheep locks (getting any dirt bits out) and in this case, feeding it to the machine which then brushes them out and blends them together so they are prepared in nice, fluffy batts for spinning. Carding with a drum carder is fun, but I'm not enjoying all the picking that needs to be done. I think it was an error in my choice of fiber however - I bought this blue stuff because I liked the color (yes, I'm a newbie), but if I had looked at it more closely I would have noticed that it was very matted and full of burrs. Grrrr.

Keli asked in one of the comments where I get my fiber. The truth is I get it wherever I happen to find it! The nice thing about attending Guild meetings is that some of the members process their own fleece and every once in awhile there is a sale at the meeting itself. I like to buy my wool pre-dyed, but there are many who offer natural fleece as well.

The Schwiders own The Pines Farm and they sell beautiful batts and roving from their Romney sheep that are very easy to spin. I think they sell raw fleeces too, but I've decided that's not my thing. I actually visited their farm in Maple Valley a couple of months ago for their "Spring Fling" class on color blending. Gretchen's Wool Mill in Monroe also had an open house that month where I picked up some navy blue batts of a wool/silk blend - I can't wait to try spinning that! Other than that, I've done some trading with friends (yarn for fiber) and I've bought smaller bags of roving that caught my eye at local yarn shops like the other day when I saw that gorgeous Corriedale roving at the booth from Village Yarn and Tea. I know NW Handspun Yarns in Bellingham has a pretty good selection of fibers to spin, but I haven't yet visited any of the downtown Seattle stores like Weaving Works. (I tend to avoid driving down there unless I'm taking the kids to the zoo or something.)

Last weekend, (in a moment of insanity) I volunteered to do a spinning demonstration for Kla Ha Ya Days in Snohomish. It was a hot day to sit with a pile of fleece in my lap but it was fun visiting with some of the Guild women, chatting with people who were curious about spinning, and producing a lovely skein of purple wool yarn with a bit of acrylic sparkle! I have no idea what kind of sheep this is from since I received it in a trade, but I do know it is very fine.