Well, Summer semester is underway and has been keeping me rather busy for the past few days. Taking a break from some work right now.

I have been able to get some spinning and dying done (and a little knitting) but I was not able to attend the spinning group at Wild Fibre in Savannah yesterday. :( I'm going to try to find out when the other group is meeting later this month and hopefully go to that one. Then I hope to be able to attend the Wild Fibre group next month. Maybe I'll be able to transport my wheel by then. It's definitely not going to fit in my Miata! Lol.

Is it bad that I already have my eyes on my next wheel? I'm really enjoying spinning and I love my new wheel a lot. I'm not looking to replace that at all. But I'm already in love with the idea of the new Schacht Sidekick that was just released. I know I want to be able to do some spinning on the go and without borrowing another vehicle, I am limited by the space in the aforementioned Miata. The Sidekick would be perfect! Way out of my price range though. But I'm hoping that the financial area will pick up a bit and maybe I can put enough aside to afford one some time next year (maybe with some assistance around my birthday).
Obviously the spinning bug has hit. Lol.

Basically the whole thing started to 'click' Thursday night and I started producing something I was actually please with and enjoying it rather than enjoying it, then getting frustrated, then getting it again, then getting frustrated again. I finally started to get the Scotch Tension worked out and that is going much better. Also, I was able to slow down my treadling and get a little more control over my drafting so things don't just go to shit all of a sudden and throw me into a panic as often.

I now have three relatively consistent singles spun from the brown practice wool, which I plan to make into a 3-ply. I only done some spindle 2-ply thus far but I really think this yarn will behave better as a 3-ply so I'm going to have to give that a shot. Nervous though.


Since I couldn't make it to the spinning group yesterday, I decided to try my hand at dying some of the new Knit Picks roving. It turned out pretty well, I think.
The pictures are less than ideal because the lighting in my kitchen didn't seem to agree with the camera and I don't have time to tweak them or anything but here goes anyway:

I used food coloring this time. BiLo store brand (Southern Home, I believe) yellow, red, and blue. Figured it would be best to do a test run with the primaries and go from there.

Went with the basic blue -> yellow -> red.

For the sake of time and ease, rolled it up in a pyrex dish and popped it in the microwave for a bit.

Here it is cooling. You can see how the colors did spread out a but more but there wasn't a lot of blending (which was kinda my goal because I didn't want a muddy mess).

And the finished product drying.

I think it turned out well. It has fluffed back up a bit since drying but I think I did poke it a bit too much and cause some felting. I think it'll still be usable though. Lesson learned. I wasn't working with heat until I put it in the microwave but I guess I still moved it a bit too much and may have squeezed too much when getting the water out. Boo. :( I'll just have to work a bit more with the predrafting.

At least it's pretty! (Prettier than the pictures, I swear.)

If it spins up ok, I think I'll dye another 100g in a solid color (same as one of the colors in this one) and ply them together. Or maybe just ply with a white single. I haven't decided yet. For now I'll just admire it while I work on freeing up some bobbins!