this weeks tool of the week...

Goes to the drum carder! I honestly don't use it as much as I would like, but here are some shots of me and the Girl creating wonders with it.
First pic shows the batts I carded earlier and then dyed. got ready to spin them and noticed I had dyed the stripes the wrong way.... so we tore them up(in order) and threw them back through, in a colour sandwich.
When we where done doing my batts, the Girl got to do her own, with the floof off the feed drum, and some extras from my stash. She has the hand of using the noisy beast now, but has aquired some battle scars along the way. We go with a "two hands on the handle" rule, and she still enjoys it.

The two pics above are the spun up singles, and finished yarn. I plyed my "recycled sari" with babylonglegs silk/merino top, one in petrolhead colourway, the other a custom dye.

The top was very smooth to spin, very fine. It tends towards what meghan, at stitch it!! would call "nose hair". You can compare this to the drum carded stuff, which has the same ratios of wool to silk, and they use the same wool(sorry, forgot to check what that is though...). The top is a worsted preparation, and the drum carder does semi-worsted. I think the additional neps and noils are due to my technique, but I think I fell in love with them, they remind me of recycled sari yarn, the silk holding the dye so vividly. Just think of what it would be like with a smidge of angelina...

I inherited the drum carder from the Mans dad, who was a spinner too. It was playing on his wheel for a week that helped me "get" how to spin. He mainly used it for preparing raw and scoured fleece, and managed to get some relatively smooth yarns out of it. maybe someday I will get there too. think I will be being more ruthless with the mini-batt and the obvious neps at that stage, instead of worrying about "wasting" the fleece.
To stay on theme, next week will probably be the Wheel....

inside the lair...

It has been a while, so I thought I would share elements of my most treasured asset, my Craft room. This is where I get to plonk all my crafty junk and get a bit of space to think and work. Hopefully also looking at what I have in there and putting it on "show" will encourage me to get a bit tidier and maybe even get rid of or use some of the stuff I keep for "just in case", like toilet roll tubes, and old debit cards!!!

I am blessed to have a house which, at the moment, has a spare room for me to use in this way. it is about 10x20 foot (ish), and has poor storage at the moment, a good reflection on the whole house.

The door stays SHUT. The children do not enter without me, so I can leave pins and sewing machines and books open all over the place safely. down side is I am the only one who cleans it, or remembers to close/open windows/adjust the radiator. The postcard on the door helps get me in the "mood" for creating, a favorite quote of mine, from Goethe.

If we open the door and take a peek inside(which is enough for most people), you see the array of bags of knitting projects ready to grab, recycling system(paper, yarn, fabric and rubbish), yarn stash in it's mothproof tupperwares and the Passap knitting machine, which I have yet to master. the window sill has become a shelf for bottles full of buttons, and tins of knitting needles, so when I approach the house from the street I can see my haven and smile!

Inside the room(which I DID NOT decorate, by the way) you are assulted by stacks of banana boxes of fabric, plastic tubs of fleece, worktable, rocking chair, sewing machines everywhere and just stuff, I am sorry to say. It just barely fits two people working in there, but then you can't get around at all!

So, there is an overview of what it is like in my Craft room. I hope to update on the specifics in greater detail, as it can be interesting to see what makes a difference to people in the way they craft.