Tuesday, December 18, 2018

Amazing What You Can Do in Less than an Hour

We had another beautiful day - sunshine and fairly warm - so washing and dyeing fleece were once again on the top of the to-do-list. Yesterday we started dying JDub's fleece in our tanzanite mix.  This morning just as it was put on the drying racks it looked like this:


After a few hours in the sun, it is very fluffy and ready to move the the next stage of processing: carding.  Adrienne and I will fight over who gets to spin this, I think.


I also wash some of our silver grey alpaca Smudge's blanket from this year.  He doesn't work well on his own as yarn, but has a wonderful color that we mix with our fawn Rio's fleece to make our Marble yarn line. We also use his fleece in a lot of our felted items.

This afternoon after Micah and Rio's annual vet visit - they needed a few routine shots and a once over that they both passed with flying colors, I actually got in the studio for almost an hour!

I worked on Bonnie Hunter's Good Fortune Mystery clue number 4.  It has been a while since I did any foundation piecing on paper that wasn't paper piecing a specific pattern. It went very fast and I have 12 pieces to add to the other clues. 


Tomorrow is supposed to be our last sunny day for awhile - possibly snow on Friday night. So I will try to wash some more fleece and hopefully will get more than an hour to work in the studio.  What I really need to do is clean up in there - between quilting projects, curtains, fleece, rearranging for a new cabinet, and wrapping Christmas presents - it is a bit of a disaster. 

Day 16 of the of the 31 Day Blog Writing Challenge

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6 comments:

  1. VireyaDecember 19, 2018 at 1:24 AM

    The dyed fleece looks lovely! And so do your mystery units.

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    1. MarshIsleFiberArtsDecember 19, 2018 at 3:59 AM

      Thank you - I have really enjoyed working on the mystery this year- even if all I do is make the units.

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  2. Cathie in UtDecember 19, 2018 at 2:12 AM

    Beautiful mix of color in your wool. Color inspiration there.

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    1. MarshIsleFiberArtsDecember 19, 2018 at 4:01 AM

      Dyeing alpaca fleece is always an adventure - we know how our dye mixes turn out on wool yarn - but the alpaca is always a bit of a suprise.

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  3. MarlyDecember 19, 2018 at 6:38 AM

    Your pieces for the mystery quilt look great. I'm interested that you dye you fleece before spinning; I was taught to spin first as the lanolin on the wool makes spinning easier on the hands. The dyed fleece looks very pretty.

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    1. MarshIsleFiberArtsDecember 19, 2018 at 2:57 PM

      Alpaca fleece does not have lanolin - which makes it great for those that are allergic to wool as it is usually the lanolin that causes the problem. We dye both fleece before spinning and spun yarn - just depends upon the look we are going for. Regardless of whether or not the fleece will be dyed, I always wash our fleece first - my daughter does not like to spin raw fleece.

      Delete

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