I cannot believe the thought of making my own wool blends is keeping me up at night. I got a new toy yesterday. My dear friend Sheila Mann (alpacabarrio.com) happened to have a drum carder which she rarely uses and said I could store it here and use it if I wanted too. She brought it to me yesterday!
I knew it would be cool but I had no idea how fun it would be. Sid was also over the moon carding wool until 9:30 last night! We took a bag of bits of scrap wool and started running it through the carder. We ended up with beautiful purple and green rainbow wool. We carded some uncarded green dyed lamb locks and got a huge bat of beautiful grass green! First thing this morning, the little one woke up and said "Mom, do you want to card some more wool?"
We picked brown, red and orange shades to create a colour I want to use for some chickens I plan to make.
This is the batt after the first run through.
We carded it about 3 times to get this blend.
Now the possibilities are endless! I can create custom batts, custom colours and I have to admit that this morning I was shopping on line and found a local distributor of environmentally dyes. Yup, I am going to start dying my own wool too. If I can get the hang of this, I might even start selling some hand dyed, and hand carded wool in my shop on facebook. My supplier over at Caanan Mohair (Shirley) is happy to sell me washed fleece for 10.00 a lb. I will need an extension on the house to keep my fibres :) I will not buy a sheep, I will not buy a sheep, I will not buy a sheep ;)
Here is my newest mobile, commissioned and created for a good friend.
Branch is 16", rocket is 10" and earth is the size of a baseball!
Must go do some school stuff then the little one and I are going to play with the wool again.
Have a great day!
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