Monday, May 25, 2009

Crabapples

May has been a busy month, between gardening, spinning for PhatFiber/my shop and the aftermath of several fiber festivals.

The May boxes have been sold and gone out and so far, I'm hearing good reviews of my handspun. I was really worried I would see a bunch of people on Ravelry trying to dump off my yarn for other samples they liked, but the only time mine has popped up in a trade situation was as "I want more of this". It really made my day to see that. Jessie was also kind enough to do a write-up of my shop on the Phat Fiber blog. It was enlightening to see what people really liked since it didn't match my favorites. The good news is, the top picks were all the colorways I sent in for the May box.

In my haste to send my samples in on time, I forgot to take photos of the finished mini-skeins. I had a mix of my "Sprinkles" yarn, some of the "Pastel Garden" from ArtemisArtemis, and then two of the three versions of "Crabapple" that Extreme Spinning hand-dyed and blended for me.

Before:







After:







My May box has arrived, but I've barely had time to go through it yet. Instead, I've been cleaning fleeces. The Door County Shepherd's Market was a big success this year. My mom and I got there before it opened on Saturday and split up to hunt for fleeces. She found them first and sent me upstairs to stake my claim. I found three amazing gems. They are all from Homestead Sheep and Fiber Products (no website). I bought the yarn for the Purple Bliss Baby Surprise Jacket from them last year. This year, I went wild for the fleeces.

Two are from Romney/Wensleydale/Cotswold crosses and the third is Romney. All are shades of grey, although two of them are closer to white than the third. The smallest is a darker grey that looks like blued steel. I've scoured the two cross fleeces already and will be working on the Romney for a while tonight. They require no skirting since they all have almost no VM or second cuts. Honestly, on the larger of the two cross fleeces, I found enough VM to fit in a teaspoon. I think these sheep live inside the house.







From the same booth, I also picked up about six ounces of Wensleydale locks. I've been looking for Wensleydale fiber since I'd like to work with the lustrous longwools and those locks are what drew me in. The fact that I now have three longwool fleeces makes me really happy. I also bought some gorgeous batts, some "Ocean" Finn roving, a wool/mohair mix roving and a beautiful lilac wood nostepinne. It was a great day, full of fiber-related goodies. We followed up with beer and brats at Shipwrecked in Egg Harbor, dishes of ice cream and browsing through gift shops and a few antique stores. I don't think a spring road-trip can get any better than that.

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