I pulled a stupid.

I certainly did. A combination of being over tired, in a rush, and having a kitchen that's inadequate both in space and useability has led to a broken dye pot. Yep, I broke the crock to my dye pot crockpot. And I was just two colors away from being finished dyeing for tdf13 too.

Grrr!

This means that I will not be able to find out if I can spin 3 pounds of fiber in under a month. Yeah, I was crazy to even try that but I did want to see how far I could get. But anyway....

This is what 2.55 pounds of my hand dyed, drum carded, fluff looks like.


I'm actually thinking of going back to the thrift store and picking out another basket as my regular spinning basket is too small now.

That's the one on the right. I had to pull all of my wips out of my old sewing basket (left and hasn't had any sewing stuff in it for years) just to give all this fiber a nice place to stay while it waits to become yarn.

To give you an idea of size, most of these batts are around 2 ounces, give or take.

In between carding all of these up I've been frantically trying to finish a scarf for my niece for Christmas and being on a Hercule's Legendary Journeys kick. I was busy having kids when it originally aired so while I enjoyed it when I happen to catch it on I wasn't in a position to watch it often. Now thanks to Netflix I'm seeing every episode (and in order) and having a lot of fun. I am so tempted to buy the dvds just for the commentaries. You gotta love Michael Hurst.

When does your 'workplace' become your 'studio'?

Why do I love drum carders?

Because they take a compressed mass of mess and turn it into something soft and fluffy.

I was working in my workplace/studio..thing all day today and had to stare at this.

I've been hungry for peas, carrots, and red bell peppers all day now. Thank goodness I got out of there before I set the blue up to dry or I would have had to run out and get blueberries too!

Lose a crock pot - gain a dye pot

When the lid to my 7 quart crock pot bit the dust, I couldn't just throw the whole crock pot away. "Crock pot" doesn't sell replacement lids, and the way the handle broke off would mean super glue could potentially melt into our food if I tried to glue it back on.

This crock pot has been relegated to the basement as a dye pot and I'm having so much fun using it like this.

6oz total of merino/targhee x, finn/dorst/targhee x, and some cormo thrown in for good measure.

I pre-soaked the merino/targhee separately because that was the only fleece of this combination that wasn't coated and was full of VM (vegetable matter).

I used Country Classics dye in the Bluebonnet colorway.

I dyed it in two batches. I wouldn't want to try to dye more than 4oz at a time in this pot. Then I dried it on the sweater rack...

and when it was barely dry, spun up a tiny sample skein and plied it with some natural white finn/dorset/targhee x. I love this little yarn and have decided that I need to dye more of this color and ply it with more natural white because, this dye job has been slated for plying with more of Fiber Fancy's Weekend Enjoyment. Hopefully it will be a scarf that looks like just the light blue end of this one.

We both like the light blue end of this scarf better and now I have enough of the light blue to make a whole scarf like that.

By the way, if you've never tried dyeing your own fiber, it's very addictive.

This is more finn/dorset/targhee x in pine green. I have merino/targhee x in raven cooling down right now so I can dye the mohair that's been soaking over night to become what ever color strikes my fancy this morning.

eta: This is VERY addicting and if it keeps up, I'm going to have an excuse a reason for buying more fleece.