More stuff.

Sooo...

I spun cotton (ew) and flax (hooray!). I still have to do hemp. I still have to spin the dog hair for those socks [ASAP, hey?!]. I ordered some more locks from dyeingforcolor.etsy.com so that I can make another fun art yarn. Ooh, I just had a great idea for that yarn. I'll go write it down.

My mom gave me this really pretty journal with gorgeous artsy horses on the cover for a Christmas gift in 2007. I never used it, as I never thought of something good to use it for. Today I decided that I will write down my ideas for fiber projects in there, so that I can look back and see what I was thinking. I show you guys the final product and share what I did and didn't like about things, but keeping the process a secret is kind of a good idea :P

So, the cotton:
So far, I don't like cotton. This is partially because I'm not used to it, and partially because I have always preferred long staple. This cotton had a staple of 1/4 to 1/2", and it wasn't very fun. Because it is so short, it needs a lot of twist. But, I spun it thin, as it was difficult to make thick, and thin yarns need less twist. Anyway, I ended up with too much twist. But I think it makes the yarn more interesting, because it would be a boring old cotton yarn otherwise. Maybe I'm just biased towards plain yarns. Lots of people like them. I just prefer fun ones.
Hm, that's not a very good picture, is it. Anyway, that's the flax I spun. I enjoyed it because it has a looooooong staple. It also didn't take as long to spin as the cotton did, both because the flax was spun more thickly and because cotton is such a light fiber to begin with.

And the roving:
Guess what I did wrong! Yep, I didn't use the turkey baster. Oh, besides that? I don't think I put enough color into the dye. I'm still working out the Wilton's dyes. I guess more is better...but I like the colors that came out where the dye actually took/touched the wool. This is superwash, by the way, so I can redye it all I want without worrying about felting. I'm going to spin it before I do anything else, because I might end up liking what turns out.

Anyway, that's about it. I still haven't finished my first February square, because I'm chicken and it's not working out quite right. That's all for now. More to come (obviously!).