Beautiful things

A few weeks ago I wrote a post complaining about my old drum carder - the one that made my cashmere and shetland blend all noily? Well it got me so upset that I simply had to resolve the problem - and this week the solution finally arrived: a lovely new Strauch Petite carder from America. Isn't it beautiful?

I've been carding up all kinds of fibres from my stash (and I have a large and varied fibre stash!), but I've rapidly learned that it's easy to make some pretty ikky looking batts. Even the ikky ones seem to spin up ok, but I want to make things that are beautiful - batts that look so beautiful that I can't wait to spin them up. Anyway, last night I think I cracked it! I took some pretty blue merino top that I bought in Frank Herring's in Dorchester last week, which looked like a blended roving when I bought it, but actually was just three different colours of top twisted together. I split this up into its component colours, found some alpaca in my stash from a dyeing experiment that had gone horribly wrong (think snot green...), and a few handfuls of tussah silk. And then the blending fun begain! And from this:

I blended this:

Pretty isn't it? It's lovely and soft too. I'm having a hard time not spinning it up right now (but must finish spinning the painted roving first - otherwise no cookies).

Anyway, my plan is to take the other two colours of wool top, i.e. these:



Then I'll blend them into similarly beautiful batts, before spinning each colour separately, and finally ply all three of the singles together to make a three ply yarn. It's going to take a while, as I plan to spin them finely - for, you guessed it, knitted socks! But I think it's going to be worthwhile.

Oh, and in case you haven't seen enough beautiful things for one post, here's a pic I snapped of my little cat Fili this morning, enjoying some rare winter sunshine. I think she's smiling.