Oops, it's a badger!

This morning I saw this video and got really inspired. Making a layered batt and pulling it through a diz to get a striped rowing. Well, I could not wait to start my trial. I picked some 50 g of superwash merino, 15 g of silk noil (white - the inspiration hit so hard there was no time to go dyeing), 5 g of long staple egyptian cotton, and 19 g black diamond bamboo. The idea with blacks and whites was to get a lot of contrast in the test.

Note: I apologise for the big amount of photos (15) in a single post, but since I am trying something new I wanted to document every step, in case this post has inspirational or educational value to someone. If you are busy or not interested, just skip and check the last pic for the end results.

First I layered some merino to make a lining.

Next, I added half of the silk noil. It needs to be spread really thin to get a nice batt.

It makes a nice effect... like snow?

Then the bamboo. It's has a long staple so it easily gets wound around the feeder drum.

That's not a problem, it clears when the fiber gets packed to the main drum.

The cotton. This is my preferred method for adding cotton. This way I can get very thin and even layers, not clumps. Also, it is a good idea to keep the amount of cotton small.

Looks like this so far:

Finally, all the rest of the merino going in...

The finished batt looks like this:

And nothing sticking to my feeder drum!

Then I took my needle measure tool and used it as a diz to pull the roving out. Well, I used it because I read somewhere in the Fiber Prep group that it works - well, I nearly broke it... At first I tried to make my rowing too wide. What happened I got the circumference of the drum and ended up where I started and made a corner by taking some fiber with the doffer tool. I used a much smaller hole and started slowly, to avoid a "corner" where I started. It works!

I could not get all of it as I pulled, but very little was left on the drum:

The biggest roving I got was 420 cm and 33 g. It made me think of a cute little badger. :o)

And here are all 88 grams of cuteness! A flower of spring. I wonder what spinning it will be like... pain or gain?

Seabreeze

Tour de Fleece inspired me to card batts for a cardigan. I had dyed tops to have something nice when I want to mix batts. The tops were piled on my table, waiting to get listed in my Ravelry stash. They looked really nice together, inviting and cute, and I could not separate them from eachother. So I mixed them together.

I got eight batts, altogether 500 gramms, and I named them "Seabreeze". I combined alpaca in natural gray alpaca and light turquoise, two different superwash merino tops, and mulberry silk.

It looks lovely as a single - I've got about one third spun so far.

Eglantine socks & squishy birthday cake

Welcome to my brand new spinning-knitting-crocheting-sewing-etc-blog!
Currently I'm knitting the Eglantine socks (Ravelry link) pattern by Nicole Masson. I made my own heel, and have not followed the pattern after I learned the panel, but it is very pretty. This pattern is available for free.

I have modified the pattern slightly at the ending point. Rather than stopping where the pattern repeat ends I just continued in the style of the pattern to make a diamond shape finish for the panel. This is somewhat easy to do. The yarn is Araucania Ranco. It started a pooling twist in the cuff and I continued with alternating rows using both ends of the ball.

Sock knitting inspired me to card batts to spin sock yarns. I just love carding squishy batts that I like to mix several times to make them appear semi-solid in colour. I carded this batt as a gift for a friend who organized a spinning event to celebrate her birthday. Her favorite color is orange.

The batt weights 92 gramms and has 87 % superwash merino and 13 % nylon - to make a nice sock yarn. I dyed both tops before carding the batt. Of course, I did not take pics about the hand painted top.