Dyeing and Carding Art Batts

What a great weekend so far!  Daughter is here visiting from Virginia, along with her hubby and my 2 grand puppies!  It has been a whirlwind of activity since their arrival late Thursday night.  Yesterday was filled with carding art batts and dyeing alpaca in preparation for more batts.  

It is always a pleasure to work alongside my daughter who has a great artistic eye for color and blending.  

The dyeing was over a cream alpaca/wool 50/50 blend roving.  Very soft and the cream ground color subdued the dye colors a bit.  They should blend into some very nice batts.  We did a pound and half of fiber with the half pound being the dye sops.  I hate wasting a bit of dye from our dipping basin!  The dyeing was hand dipping first and then placed into pans (dedicated to dyeing), sealed well with foil and then dye set in a 290 degree oven for an hour.  After cooling the fiber was given a good rinse and towel blotting before being ready to dry.

Dye Sops using Suffolk fiber from last Junes shearing (see post June 2012)

One pound of alpaca heaven!  Drying over a door with lots of towels on the floor to absorb any drips.

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 Today I made these four batts with a combination of Merino, Alpaca, BFL, Corriedale, Teeswater, Kid Mohair (yum!) and angelina.  They are so luscious!  Each weighs between 3 and 3 1/2 ounces.

Yummy batts ready to spin!

And THEN the best part of the day was my Fed Ex delivery that arrived in the early evening.  It was a freshly shorn fleece from a farm in Montana.  It is Targhee, Ramboullet, Suffolk mix.  The crimp is INCREDIBLE and the fiber is SO soft and squishy.  This particular farm sends all her fleece samples out for measuring of the micron/spin counts.  This fiber is a 21.6 micron!  This is going to make some beautiful yarn.  I washed up an 8 oz. batch last night and dyed it in a blue/yellow blend.  Can't wait until it dries to see how much of the lock formation pops back!  

Here are the locks!  Aren't they beautiful?

I am thinking that I may spin some of these directly from the locks after a gentle washing and drying.  I may stack them between netting and wash them in lingerie bags to retain their form.  

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I spent time restocking all my dye bottles so that I am ready to dye the remaining 14 oz. of the alpaca roving that has been soaking all night in the citric acid bath.  This prebath will help the dye to adhere better.  Can't wait to get all of this onto the drum carder!

Til later...happy spinning!