Spinning My Drum Carded Fiber

Remember those first batts I carded on my brand new drum carder? I finished spinning it into yarn!

The carding did the trick because the spinning was smooth. After I got the batts off the carder I pulled them apart into 4 long strips per batt. The drafting was easy and it made for a consistent yarn weight.

I think it looks a bit blue in the pictures, but its a dark purple wool with white mohair and white nylon sparkles.Now I need to expand my fiber stash...

September 25 Blog Carnival: My Studio

I've done posts on my studio before but I've moved since then so I thought I would show you the latest version.

Yep, its the same couch and spinning wheel as before. The couch is still comfy and the spinning wheel is still awesome.

Here you can see my shelf with my boxes of finished things and works in progress. I have all sorts of stuff on that shelf: my swift, wpi tool, scale, boxes of yarn. You can see some blue and green hand dyed merino wool at the top left. I thought it looked pretty blotchy when I was finished dying it, so I decided to spin it and see if I like it. I can always ad more dye when I'm done if I want.

I'm still working on the whole more space thing. I actually have less space at this apartment than at our last one. I'd probably keep whatever I was working on in the living room because I like to spin there, but it would be nice to not have to keep everything there, well the drum carder is currently in the bedroom. I still have to figure out where to store it!

Drum Carder!!!!!!

Earlier this week I was surprised by the fabulous gift of a drum carder! Here it is after I carded my first batt with it! I'm pretty excited about all the new yarn possibilities!

It is a fancy kitty drum carder. I'm really liking it so far! I still need to get a few tools to go with like a burnishing tool and a brush to clean it. I also want to finish the wood.


This is what I used in my first batt, a mix of purple dyed wool and white mohair with some nylon sparkle. This is what I had around here. That purple and white stuff is supposed to be roving, but it is a bit messy. I've hand carded some of it for yarn before.
This is the finished batt. I made 3 of them today and spun them all. I'll post pictures of the finished yarn when its done drying from setting the twist!

Featured Etsy Blogger For September: designsbyvanessa

Each month the Etsy Bloggers choose a member to feature. The featured Etsy Blogger for September is ... designsbyvanessa!

designsbyvanessa has jewelry and cute bird and cupecake items in her shop!

You can find her blog here http://designsbyvanessa.blogspot.com/
and her Etsy shop is here http://designsbyvanessa.etsy.com


This shows a few of the things that are in her shop!