Saturday, May 21, 2011

Another week, another contest


Just thought I'd let my readers know, if you have a little spare time pop on down to SpoonFlower today for their weekly fabric design contest and there you will see, I have made an entry. Check it out:



I hope you will all come down and partake in this weeks contest! Enjoy and don't forget to vote! Voting ends on the 25th.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

The joy of fleece, in the raw

An offer came up on CraigsList, and it was just to good to pass on. Several left over fleece from a shearing last year, $20 each, and although an original limit was placed in my head of just one, I couldn't help it and fell in love with two! Seeing as how this is my first experience working with unskirted and unwashed fleece I knew to expect some bumps in the road as I tried to figure out how to deal with it purely by the internet alone. Thankfully, the internet is a vast resource today of everything including video tutorials, of which I didn't find as many as I would have liked but just enough to get me started experimenting. First however, was to wait for the weather to change, and I unfortunately only managed a few good days to get a little done. The start of coarse was rolling out the, unwashed, sheep smelling, poopy carpet, to which the canine that has glued herself to my hip decided was the greatest thing in the world next to memory foam.


After playing in it for a while she soon settled down for a nap right in the middle.


I pulled out and picked through a small amount to start with and from the video's washed it in two small rubber buckets in the basement. After first washing it with a bit of laundry detergent and letting it soak, then rinsing, and more soaking and rinsing, the next day I set it outside to dry. Having some issues with the wind I've now found an easier way, with my second batch it dried just as well pinned to the cloths line in an airy garment bag. My first batch came out pretty good, I'm still picking through it for little bits if debris and carding it by hand. My second batch was a test run of trying to wash just the curls, they need to be washed and rinsed one more time as the ends are still a little dingy, it was a rather dirty sheep down the middle. And my third batch went a little wrong and felted slightly, enough to where I'm not even going to bother and will use it as base material for more wool ball toys! I'm now picking through some more of the raw wool and even starting on some of the colored fleece, but after a week long run of beautiful weather, the cold and rain has moved in. I'm actually quite pleased with how everything is going and am finding this to be a lot of fun outside of the annoying long wait for good weather to continue. Next step, our own flock! Well, one can dream.