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September 17, 2006
I hit the jackpot!
No, no, I didn't win the lottery, but for a fiber whore enthusiest, it sure feels like it. Lori, my former neightbor, announced that she had a present for me when I called her to find out when I should head over to her place. Being that she's an artist, I figuired that maybe she'd painted something for me.
I was wrong.
Lori took me out to her car to get my gift out of her trunk. It was dark and all I saw were some tied up garbage bags, and a box. She opened one of the bags and told me to feel. The bag was full of raw alpaca fleece!
So were the other bags.
So was the box.
In all, she'd obtained roughly 25 pounds of raw alpaca in a range of colors... FOR FREE! An artist that she's modeling for said it wasn't going to be used and to take as mch as she liked. She got as much has she could fit in the trunk, and he told her to get more the next time she came out!
She doesn't knit or spin, but took it, knowing that I do. The only stipulation? I have to make her something from it, either a scarf or some alpaca bed socks. I think I can handle that. :-) There are about 4 or 5 good fleeces with long staple length. A lot of the others seems to be second cuts. Not too bad! I'm going to send them off a few at a time to be processed into roving, to spin and to possibly sell.
I've been spinning quite a bit. I dyed some austrailan wool and hand carded it with a bit of tussah silk and firestar. I made two lighter skeins with more white and less navy, and a darker skein with more navy and less white to compliment. Here are a few pictures of the process:
I've also been dying more. I've dyed some more of the Australian wool, to make a sock yarn (I think) with it. And I dyed some of the Ukrainian lace yarn a lovely raspberry color. My next dying experiment? After getting the new Spin Off yesterday, I'm inspired by the self striping yarns created by machine knitting , painting thing in stripes, only to unravel and reknit the yarn. So much so that I bought a knitting machine on eBay. But until I get that, you'll have to settle for these pictures instead:
Posted by Holly at September 17, 2006 11:04 PM