Rita!

Here is the pure Rita roving that Sandy from Homestead parted with for me! The center was dyed with logwood grey exhaust, it is barely dyed at all. I thought of overdying it again but I think I'll be blending these up and the white/barely grey will lend a little brightness. Then from the top is cutch, pomegranate, que red, more cutch, madder, wattle and more pomegranate.
Easter egg colors, I was going through all the used dye baths I had a while ago when I did these, just trying to wring out the last of the color and get all the shades possible.


Inspired by Pluckyfluff's beenie mania, I got inspired with some recently washed suri alpaca (right) handdyed (yeah, yeah, synthetic) silk bits, pom dyed merino (from above) and went to town.

I made three little batts, roughly like this. One with distinctly more merino and the other two with a base of alpaca. I've been doing lots of alpaca blends lately with Sandy's rescue roving, they contain wool from her sheep and alpaca from an alpaca rescue farm. When thinking about the twist to crimp ratio it gets a little sticky in my mind for merino and alpaca to be blended this way. Merino is very crimpy and according to some theories, that means it is best spun with higher twist to match the crimp. Alpaca, has no crimp and is best spun with low twist (I naturally excel at this!), enough to hold the single together and no more. Well, what about when they are mixed 50/50? My blend is primarily alpaca, so its pretty clear about how it wants to be spun. I carded minimally so I could have a kooky (but hopefully wearable) textured yarn. It wants to be a hat.

I carded and started spinning these one afternoon while waiting for Baby J to wake up. I had to pick the quietest and most easily put down activity I could find. I'm spinning these up, when the fancy strikes, on my ashford drop spindle. Its the heavy one, I've heard it called the boat anchor. It was my first spindle and for the longest time I never knew differently-I had only one and I was determined to only need one. Now I'm shopping for a new one, not actively, but passively in my mind. I'm determined to come across one at a wool festival someday, something medium smallish and beautiful and hand crafted.