Recently in All about Yarn and Fiber Category

Condition: All the things I'm selling are packed well, mostly unused and sometimes unopened. My house is smoke- and pet-free. Buy in good conscience!

Contact: Email me at maryjoy73 at yahoo dot com and let me know which lot(s) you're interested in. First come, first served.

Payment: I accept Paypal only.

Shipping: Shipping via USPS First Class ranges from $2 for small lots to $?? for bigger lots. I can ship USPS Priority Mail, if you want. I'll try to give you a more accurate estimate if you purchase multiple lots.

Colors: Due to the inconsistencies of computer monitors, the colors displayed on your screen may not depict an accurate reproduction of the actual yarn, fiber, or fabric color. The actual colors may appear slightly different than the images on your computer monitor.

STILL ON SALE

Handspun Peachy-pink merino 5 skeins
Content: 100% merino wool
Yardage: 283 yards
Weight: Worsted to bulky
Color: Peachy-pink
Comments: I blogged about this lurvely merino here. Bright color good for a little girl sweater.
Asking: LOWER PRICE $25 plus shipping

    (click to enlarge)

Joann brand bold florals
Yardage: 1 yard of the teal ground; 1/2 yard of all the others.
Comments: No longer in the mood for florals. They're not the softest fabric, so think aprons, placemats, tea and egg cosies, etc.
Asking: $6 plus shipping

Perhaps Adrian was thinking of the Blue Hen Chicken when she dyed this colorway as part of my gift order last year. It's mostly reds: brick and brownish and pinkish reds; some smudges of green; flashes of brilliant blue. I wish you could see this up close, as the spun-up yarn is a tantalizing palette of faded, but at the same time still achingly vibrant, colors.

I firmly believe in pre-drafting. When I first started spindling, pre-drafting was just a formality; the spinning was what made yarn! Well, yes, but pre-drafting holds the key to a lofty, consistent single. By not attenuating the fibers, you don't encourage air to flow in and out, your fibers remain compressed, and when you spin, those compressed fibers clump up. My first few handspuns were clumpy; there's a market for that, but my goal was consistency.

At a meetup, I had the pleasure of pre-drafting roving for Julia and Lori while they spun on my wheel. Julia told Marnie, and Marnie emailed me and.... Well, nothing happened for a while. If you think about all the different ways of coloring fiber, either through dyeing or carding, it's apparent that there isn't one solid way to pre-draft to get the results you're looking for in a final handspun. So with this entry I start my series on how I pre-draft colored fiber. Please feel free to add your thoughts at the end of this!

Yarn in three stages: as unspun roving, singles on the bobbins, and plied and skeined yarn. Whenever I spin, I divide my fiber into manageable quantities that I can easily remember. Therefore, you see one ounce of roving. Two ounces of singles, one on each bobbin. Four ounces, or four single-ounce skeins of yarn.

It also depends on what weight you're planning on spinning. I'm still doing my exercise on spinning for softness, so thick and thin yarn will fill up a bobbin much faster than laceweight or sportweight. I've been able to get 4 ounces of merino/tussah singles on one bobbin.

At our first spin-in, Julia gave me a few handfuls of fiber from her stash to sample. I'd mentioned that mine was in fact pitiful (some 3 pounds of various fibers, plus a sampler box) and she came to the rescue, along with Andrea. For a while I just petted my handfuls, gushed over the texture to BF, and pretty much bundled them away. I thought I'd keep them as part of my samples, but how would I find out if I really liked them? Besides, I could always get more, right?

So I spun the lot. (Also? I accidentally washed a red hallway rug with our bedroom rugs. *sniffle*) A little Hue/Saturation, an overlay, and tada! Bedroom rug back to normal. Long live Photoshop!

Fiber: Bamboo, white
Yield: 4 yards
Notes: Long staple, and quite shiny. Spun worsted; short-draw. Feels a bit stiff. Mm. I don't think I like bamboo very much.

Fiber: Pygora (Pygmy/Angora goat cross), brownish gray
Yield: 5 yards
Notes: A mix of silky guard hair and finer fleece. Spun woollen; short draw. Surprisingly easy to spin, but easy to overtwist. I do like this interesting mix of fiber.

Fiber: Spunky Eclectic Blue-Face Leicester in Tahiti (see Julia's handspun here" and here) and natural-colored tussah silk sliver from my stash
Yield: 74.5 yards
Notes: I planned on a marled yarn to extend Tahiti's vibrant colors. The neutrality of the ecru silk made it a good match. The BFL was easy to spin, but the silk. Boy. It was fine, wispy, and kept separating all over my pants. After plying, I had leftover silk singles, so I joined it to the end of the BFL and kept on plying. BFL spun woollen, long-draw; silk spun woollen, from the fold. I do like the BFL; I'll have to do more with the silk.

PS: Wendy noted in Friday's comments that browser Firefox's latest version comes with a spell-checker. Nice.

Okay, so apparently "segue" has been misspelled "segway" quite a few times even before the product ever came out. Huh. Whoddathunk.