Let's try this again

For all of my good intentions here it is a year later and I'm making my second entry. Please forgive me and permit me a second chance.

In June I went to the Blacksheep Gathering in Eugene, OR and spent my Christmas budget for the next year. :o) My first big purchase was a Strauch Petit carder. My thinking was, if I can't figure out how to do hand cards on my own maybe buying a drum carder will give me the results I'm looking for. It worked. My second purchase was a Lendrum folding wheel. Both equipment purchases were from Woodland Woolworks.

Other tools I bought were two orifice hooks, a generic one and a Forsythe threading loop and an Adam's Woodshop 5-Needle Handturned Felting Punch all from Carolina Homespun.

I think I walked up and down the vendor isles 20 times before picking up a little bit of fiber to take home. Then I needed something to carry the fiber in once it was purchased so I picked up a basket.


Here you can see the basket, the wheel and some of the fiber I bought. That particular bit of fiber is painted Blue-face Leicester from Dicentra Designs. It didn't all get spun up while camping, guess I need to go camping again to finish it.

The other bit of fiber below is from a woman with a shop in Eugene. It's all spun and was more than enough for a pair of socks for DH. I can't find my receipt or a label from the stuff anywhere and I would really like to get some more. Like the Dicentra Designs wool this is also BLF. Great stuff to spin and knit and the socks are supposed to be long wearing.

Here's the socks I made from the other fiber I bought at BSG. I experimented with spinning the colors so the first sock is knitted from yarn created by not thinning the roving so there are large areas of color. The sock that isn't quite finished is knitted from the yarn created by thinning the roving into several strips. Both are two-ply yarns.



But I didn't only shop this year, I did take two workshops. The first one was POPULAR WHEEL MECHANICS with Judith MacKenzie McCuin and the second was SPINNING AND WORKING WITH HANDPAINTED ROVINGS with Laurie Weinsoft. Laurie is a member of the Twisted Sisters spinning group and Judith is a much sought after spinning, knitting, weaving teacher throughout North America. Both were top notch classes. I can't wait until next year!

I promise to post again soon. No, no, really I promise.