I love boxes!!

Even more when they are filled with this:

This arrived friday, 3kilo wool roving, 250 gram silk, 250 gram bamboo, 500 gram mohiar, dyeset of 11 colours, 10 gram tins from ashford and some brown/purple beeds i really like.I really love the wool, it is so soft...so much better than the fleeces I started with. Can't wait to feel how it spins...

Yesterday was open house at my sewing school so I spent the whole day sewing there, finished a 1/2 scale strapples bathing suit (picture will follow later). When I got home, the dyeing party started!!!

The first 250 grams of wool was dyed in Dylon Pagode Red. It came out of the pot a little felted, but I managed to rescue it all. I dyed some silk with it, which came out all different shades of pink.

The second batch I dyed Dylon Cherry Blossom, this came out of the pot in a better shape. It is a little bit darker than the Pagode Red. In daylight you can see the difference better.

This is some Bordeaux. It started to rain outside so I had to hang it inside.

These three colours and the silk will be combined for a vest.

I also found some food colouring so I dyed this one orange/red. This was the first I tried in the microwave. It didn't come out saturated enough so I died it again with some Orange Ecoline, now it is really bright Orange! This will become a hat for a colleague.

I haven't tried the ashford dyes yet, I wanted to get some more practice dyeing with some stuff that is easier to get, so if I mess it up, at least I can get more dye.

Work....

So this week, and probably next week and maybe the week after that...I will be working extra...
I am working on a special project, and they need it to be done ASAP.
They want me to work more, I rather work less
I will be working 11 hours a day, not much time left for my fun activities.
But, I will make time to do them!
I just placed an order for wool, silk, bamboo and mohair and real dye (and some beads) I hope it will be delivered this week, but I am not sure.
Meantime I have carded half of the brown/green and spun 1 bobbin with it. I don't think it will be enough for a sleeveless sweater on its own, so maybe I should ply it with brown, got enough of that. I will decide tonight.

Last friday I received a funny phone call, I could win a prize and had to answer 1 question. Guess what...I answered correctly! My prize: 20 tickets for a whole month in the lotto. The Jackpot is at 13.000.000 euro, wouldn't that be nice?
I will probably only win the tickets, and maybe a small prize like an extra ticket, but it is nice to have won something...

I am still at work so I have to go back to working again...

I did it...

At least, it looks like it.

I finished the multicoloured batts from the previous post.

I had some purple metallic embroidery thread and I plied it with that.

According to everything I´ve read and seen I believe I have produced my first balanced yarn:And a close up:

Now back to knitting!

It's oh so quiet..

But I have been really busy!

I have spun most of the Bordeaux/pink/purple, have got 1/4 batt left. Didn't fit on the bobbin...The first skein is already on the needles, the second I still have to set the twist. I decided to go for a very simple lace pattern because I haven't done any lace knitting in a while but want to do a lot more. (It´s a free ravelry pattern, you can find it in my projects) So this will be the warming up...I started on needle size 4 1/2, but then frogged it and went to needles 6 and less stitches. Maybe I can get enough length with the first skein, I will wait with the second skein so if I don´t need it for this project I can ply it with something else! I did discover there is too much twist in both of them.

I had some more leftovers from the bordeaux, pink and purple adn decided to card it with some of the green I have. I hope I can spin really thin with it and maybe ply it with sewing thread. I can make more if I like it.

I carded all the greens. It is a lot, but I don´t think it will be enought for a sweater so I decided to card it with the brown (still washing some of that).

Half of it will be 1/3 green and 2/3 brown, the other half 1/3 brown and 2/3 green. Make a nice mix of them. And then I will ply it. I think it willl give me a great sweater yarn!

I have also been doing a knitting marathon on the Moebius. It is really growing now! I hope I will see the end of it soon...

The spinning wheel is terminal. It looked good when I bought it, ofcourse I had no idea what to look for. It works good (I think). The only problem is...it is falling apart. every few days it falls a little more bit apart and I have to tie a new rope to keep it together. I guess it wasn´t used very much...So, I am looking around for a good deal on a new wheel. Don´t want a second hand anymore, and I only bought second hand to see if I liked it. If not I could sell it again...But it will have to do until I get my vacation money end of may.

Meantime I am still working on my goals. First step is to create a routine for myself to get the "have to do" things done. It is not really working yet, I am just not a routine person. But I decided I need to have some (besides going into work every day). There is so much I want to do, I have to have routines...

"Have" to do some more cleaning right now so tomorrow I can spend the biggest part of the day on creativity...(and homework, need to dram some 1/2 scale bathing suit patterns)

I had a vision

And it started out with Stress.

Because I was a little stressed out, I decided to do some more dyeing, it really relaxes me. I took the Dylon Bordeaux Dye and a batch of the "white" wool and came up with this result:

Immediately the vision came, I saw some nice Bourdeaux, Pink and Purple yarn. So I started with carding the Pink and the purple (which turned out quite blueish) and when the bordeaux was dry i carden some of that too. Resulting in the below batts:

Then I had to decide on how to mix up the colours. I decided to go for layered batts. I just took the drum carder, started filling it up and look, a nice layered batt:

So now I am spinning. Don't want to overdo it (I am known for it) and agreed with myself, 1 layered batt a day. What you see is the result of 1 1/2 batt:

Next decision to be made, what to do next. I am spinning a 15 WPI yarn. Do I want to keep it as singles, do I want to ply it? I am not sure if I can keep it single. I would sure like to make something nice from the singles, but did I give it enough or not to much twist...Dunno..Guess I will have to decide sometime (soon) and take the gamble. If it isn't working, I can try again. I can work it through the wheel again and add/remove twist I guess...

I think it will make a nice Moebius V2 (I renamed the green one to V1.03)

And, because I like this picture very much, here's one extra:

And now, back to the wheel!!

eh..wasn't I supposed to do stuff??

I did some of it.
Sort of.
I did card a (little) bit of the brown fleece. I brought some of my sewing supplies to my workroom (that counts as cleaning the house right?) Did do laundry (Need to fold some to, that's becoming an issue)
When I wanted to start drawing patterns I couldn't find paper so I had to open up the big pack of paper I ordered a while ago and organize it. It came in a big roll so I made smaller rolls of 10 sheets. That took quite a while. Then I laid out a few sheets and my book and pencil and couldn't motivate myself. It is still lying on the table next to me...
Instead I started browsing the internet. I have found some good webshop software, it is open source so it's free, but it will cost me more time. I also did some research on spinning supply webshops in holland. I then did a search to find out if there was already a company with the name I want. Then I did some reading on the website of the chamber of commerce. And then it was time to cook dinner.
So I now not only have a wish list, but also a goal list in the making.
I want to make it nice and put it somewhere in plain sight.
The goal list will be ab addition to the wishlist. It will be a way to get the things on my wishlist. When I am done with it, it will be a step-by-step guide to make my wishes come true.
And I really do need to take action, now! I know that if I don't I will be working in an office for someone else the rest of my life.

Guess it became quite a heavy post...today was a heavy day...
I will be doing some more thinking...
And working on my goalplan...
Tomorrow will be a good day, with lots of creativity (after work)

Completely mine

well, after the sheep donated it's fleece that is...

So I arived home yesterday after work with my drumcarder and of course, had to use it right away. Here you can see the orange wool on the drumcarder.

I ended up with 2 nice big batts.

Here I am ready to spin the first bat. I used 1 1/2 batt and then the bobbin was almost full. I plied it with the navajo 3-ply method. When doing my research I really liked it because you only need 1 thread which you ply onto itself. As I don't have a lazy kate (yet) this was very appealing to me. With the red wool I made a 2-ply using the bobbin holders on the wheel and got tangled up. When doing the navajo 3-ply I found the thread was much easier to handle, but that could also been because I spun this wool better. I will try 2-ply again, but for now I think this is the way I will ply my yarns. Here you can see it drying.

I also did some dying on thursday. I used the purple eggpaint, and then added the red and blue I had left because again, I threw to much wool in the pot...It resulted into this:

And here you can see the end result of the Carmine from earlier this week.

I think this will end up a pretty solid colour too like the orange did.

Although I haven't tried the Dylon dye yet (I want to use them on carded batts) I couldn't help myself and bought some more colours: Bordeaux (one extra, I really like that colour), Olive Green (another colour I really like), Windsor Purple and Pagoda Red. I have saved 1/2 batt from the Orange because I really want to make some combined colour batts. The portion I spun will be used for a beanie for a colleague. But next, I am going to card the whole brown fleece first. Will start on that tomorrow. And I need to draw some bathing suit patterns for school, and the laundry, and some fleece washing, and house cleaning and I thought Sunday was a day to rest? That's what you get for working on Saturday once every 4 weeks, which was today..

Tonight I am going to knit on Moebius #3. It was a good thing I decided to frog it. It was way to big. I counted the stitches as I took it of the needle, measured how much to big it was and ended up casting only 2/3 of the stitches on #2!!!

So, I got myself some nice very dark chocolate with caramel and my blankie (it is cold here) and do a little Moebius Marathon!!