March Show and Tell.....

Well its Woolly Wednesday again and another month has gone by in a flash!  But it has been quite a productive month on the whole.

Two shawls finished - one in my gradient hand spun

This was a mystery KAL by Lilygo who designs the most lovely shawl patterns with lots of stitch definition.  Was really pleased the way the colours show up the pattern.

The second, another KAL, this time by SussanaIC was done in Mad Tosh Prairie and here it is on the blocking mats

On the spinning front I have spun the second batch of gradient dyeing producing a whopping 1035 yards, so a big shawl.

For the rest of the month I have been experimenting dizzing off my drum carder.  At a SpinDyeWeavers meeting last year we had a terrific time playing with drum carders and hackles blending batts after which I purchased a copy of Deb Menz' Color in Spinning having been inspired by her Fiber Preparation and Multicolor Blending Techniques DVD. 

I have also long admiired the beautiful Bullsye Bumps produced by Steph at Loop, but have been put off buying because they would incur a custom charge.  However, I was lucky enough to get a bump in a detash for $25 (so avoiding the custom charge) which I then disconstructed to see how it was done! 

These are a centre pull batts, not your ordinary run of the mill drum carded batt - the blurb from her site says:

"This is not a batt, though it looks like one! It is actually one continuous strand of roving that will change from color to color as you spin. I have wound the roving into a center-pull bump so that you can simply pull the roving out from the center as you spin."

Well after much trial and lots of errors I have come up with these!

These two took me four hours to card, and wind them into a centre pull on my nostepinne and the two only weigh in at 38grams (19grams each) no where near the 5ozs of the original. In my defence my drum carder is only 7 inches wide and I would be really pushed to get anywhere near 100 grams of fibre on it even with the packing brush!  My eventual aim is to get a 50 gram bump...............

And finally two new acquisitions

An Easy Spin Wheel - this came with a broken flyer which is why it was such a bargain.  Mr S has made a new flyer and today I bought the wire to replace the delta orifice, but even with a cobbled orifice she spins like a dream - a true 'easy' spin.

Finally a Yarn Suzy from Mr S in American Cherry - this photo was taken before he had shape the top! But I am pleased with it and it does stop centre pull balls from collapsing in on themselves..........