Yeah I’ve been carding batts and building spindles instead.  I am so swollen with water and puffy from being prego - that my hands go numb very easily.  So if I try to spin or knit I loose all feeling within about 2 minutes.  So, I have put that aside and I have been making spindles and batts instead.  I went to a local fiber festival, and the stone spindles were a huge hit with the spinners there.  I sold nine, and still had some left, so I have opened an Etsy shop.

I have filled it up with the products of my labors.  I have a few of the hand carved spindles available, at this time only through the spindle and batt club.  The  club is actually quite a lot cheaper than purchasing individually, I may have to raise the price some.  The fiber you get with the spindle, although super nice isn’t the level of luxury that the batt club is though.  The spindle is actually made and glued together though, instead of using a grommet.

The grommets are nice, because you can assemble the spindles quickly, but the thing is that you always have a little wobble, and have to adjust the whorl quite often.  Still, is this batt not georgous?  I am loving the angelina and soysilk blended with wool in these “Bling” batts.  That is this months theme.  The subscriptions are coming in, and I only have a few left for the next three months, so I guess it is catching on and doing pretty good.

Another shot of a spindle for the club.  I am still working on putting wpi tools on the ends.  I will probably be doing some carving on the tops of the shafts too, but I’m starting small.

I have also been making some hand carved wooden spindles, not just using the stone beads.   Here is one I made with a horse on the whorl.  It wobbles a bit, but still spins very well.  I cut a little too much out of the face part.  I may try to take more off the other side to balance it out.  I don’t know if I can sell this one, as it wobbles so at the end.  Other than that it is fine, but it might bug some people, what do you guys think?

It is beautiful, and that counts for something, it is made to be more of a showpiece.  The battle between form and function is always a struggle when you are producing art that is used for something.  I dropped the function side on this one just  a bit than I normally would, but I like it all the same.  The wood is purple heart and this is the natural color of it.  It reacts to sunlight and turns this lovely color.  When you carve into it though, it is brown like mahogany or something.  Once it sits in sunlight for a few minutes though it turns purple.  It’s really cool to watch.

Two more wooden whorl spindles, one in maple and one in purple heart.  These are just plain flower motifs.  I am working on more designs.  My sister requested a cat.  I was thinking it would be fun to have people commision a spindle with their logo on it, or a special pet.  What fun! These are also destined for the spindle club.  I need to prefect the design and get them more consistent.

So I have been dying and carding too, in generall enjoying myself while waiting for the baby to come.  Seems like it will be forever before it is time.  I am seeing lots of pink coming out of the pot, mixed with purples and blues.  You would think I was 9 months pregnant and expecting a little girl baby with all this fiber…heh heh.

Here are a few batts I made for pictures in the Luxury batt club -  Purples!  and Pinks!  I can’t seem to help myself, I am hopelessly trapped in a downward spiral of girlie colors.

But OOOHhhh so lusious anyway, this stuff is something else!  It’s half 16 micron merino and 1/2 Optim!!!  To say it is soft, is just an understatement.  It feels like nothing you can even imagine…I love it.  But I can’t spin it right now, I have to wait 

Oh look, more purple and pink!

well, I may have it out of my system, excepting of course the angora, optim and 16 micron merino laying on the table that his hot pink, dark purple and pale purple….I think that is going to do it for my pink fix.  I hope.  Anyhow, this is the stuff I am making theluxury batts for that club out of.  It is going to be SO hard to ship it off, that’s all I can say.

I also got my hands on some BABY suri alpaca fleece, a whole POUND of it!  I dyed some purple of course lol.  Like most locky type of fleece it dyed all sorts of colors, and I will be very excited to see how it actually looks carded.  The natural color was silvery gray.  It feels like kid mohair to me, but nicer and softer.

Finally I dyed two skeins of yarn that Heidi my friend in Norway sent me.  These are just beutifully spun and so soft.  Of course I had to dye them baby colors.

They still turned out beautiful, and will make something very very nice for a baby.  I will probably use the blue for a lace scarf, it is subtle, periwinkle color with some slightly more purple places.  It is a little more gray than it looks, so it will make something really nice for a grown up.  The other will be made into something for the baby or one of the girls I imagine.  I may spin more to match for a sweater or something.

Beaus sweater is coming along, he has started the sleeves now, but I haven’t any pictures.  I am really likeing how the handyed fair isle looks.  It is a EZ yoke sweater, and I have ordered a pattern he liked from School house press for the neck.  I’ll get a pic soon - here is one of my sample sleeve.  If you recall I started this sweater and he took it away from me in the hospital when our daughter was having her belly button closed.  Bye bye beautiful sweater….

He’s been slow at finishing it, but he has picked it back up and is working on it.  I’ll get some pics of his version, as this was just my test swatch for the sweater.

My point is, that the pink handspun looks fantastic for the fair isle and the gray is just some plain yarn I bought in a huge hank.  It makes for a really nice looking effect, shows off the handspun, but is a much smaller spinning committment.  You still get all the satisfaction of the handspun look though.

Speaking of fair isle, I want to encourage all of you to learn how to knit with the other hand.  I knit contenental normally, but with patience I have also learned to knit very well american style and now fair isle is so easy and quick too.  It really is worth the time to learn to knit both ways.  Just spend a few minutes a day, maybe 5 or 10 on an “other handed project” something simple like a hat knit in the round or something.  I think you will be surprised how quick you can pick it up!  Good luck!

I don’t know when you’ll hear from me again, but I will pick a contest winner before next post.  Thanks for hanging in there with me!

So I am going to be making an article about batts. You can blend fibers on batts, in lots of different ways. Then stack the batts and transform them into a nice continuous roving. Did you know that?

I had considered the technique for changing a batt into roving, but never actually tried it for some reason or another. Well I did it finally and was pretty darn happy with the results.

This yarn was my first batt, and I just made it with three scrap peices of fiber I had. The colors didn’t really do so well, although the yarn looks pretty enough. I think it needs a bigger, bluer section lol.

Anyway, the batt, went from violet color on one side, and gradiated to a lime green on the other. The effect on this yarn is so so, but if there was a nice blue section, I think it would have been spectacular. There is an important lesson here, in case you don’t know it. The first attempt is rarely what you wanted, but it can prove if what you wanted is possible. Sometimes it might take 10 times to get what you actually wanted…. This yarn will make a swatch that will be lime green on one end, and purple on the other….cool huh? It is much easier to do it this way, then to dye finished yarn to that effect.

So I then pulled the batt into rovings, and the roving was basically lime green on one end, and purple on the other. Pretty roving! I wish I had photoed the batt, but I didn’t.

I navaho plied the singles, and I am sad to say that I stink at it, but then it was only my first try and I did manage a balanced skein dispite the odd variations in the plying. Beau actually commented that he liked the effect. Well, ok, but that only counts as skill if you do it on purpose lol. But the effect could be used in an interesting way, so I filed that away for later. It looks like socks to me, but call me crazy! Might be fun to try, one sock would be purple to blue, and the other sock would be blue to green heh heh. How fun. There is enough here for a pair of baby booties, a small scarf, hat or something. It is around 13 - 14 wpi. Good size for those things.

I will give this skein to my little friends who are learning to knit. Regina, Michelle, Felicity, and Jacinta. They are all under 12, and I give them all my odds and ends, plus any sample skiens like this one. When I have something nice like this, I go and ask their Mom who has been extra helpful that week, and then they get it. If you need to destash, or find a home for left overs, please contact me. These little girls can’t afford nice yarn, and we all know how I feel about WalMart acrylics. Do a great deed of charity, and send some to these little girls who are knitting feinds. That reminds me. Someone offered to spin them some yarn if I donated some fiber, but I don’t remember if I actually sent the fiber. If that was you, can you email me? allena at spindleandwheel dot com.

So, for the article in the magazine, I will be doing much nicer color gradiations. So I did a little dyeing yesterday - well ok a lot of dyeing, about 3 pounds worth.

I dyed very dark jewel tones, in 4 ounce lots. That will give me a lot of carding and blending materials in all colors. I dyed them so dark because you have to card the fibers once, before you blend any together. So for light colors, I will just blend these with some white for now. Once I have a definite project in mind, then I might dye them to actual desired finished colors.

So, this is a sneak peek to the next issue which will have the theme of “Batty About Batts!”