2 sleeps to go....

Onto the final countdown before going away on our big trip.  Camping grounds are booked, my friend Jane is all set for us to arrive next Monday.  Got a new tarp for under the tent after the other one got shredded when we used it on the new couch.
Almost sorted for having the stall at Mt Barker.  Need a board to put my stitch markers on.

So the last few days I processed some East Friesian fleece.  It's not widely known as a spinning fleece (more commonly used as carpet wool) but I prefer it to most other fleece.  It's a bit higher in the micron but I have worked closely with the breeder and she has some beautiful soft genes that she kindly grabs for me when shearing is done.

My pet hate is processing fibre.  And this lot had a fair bit of vegetable matter in it which I painstakingly picked out.  Batts are time consuming at the best of times but I think they turned out really well...

I did about 800g of just plain white..it looks gorgeous and is soooo nice to touch..

I also dyed up about 1400g of coloured batts, they looking rather flat before recarding.

Now they look like this.....

After doing that, I realised that I don't have anything to spin myself while I am away.  I am taking my little travel wheel with me, Jemima the Majacraft Little Gem.

So I pulled out some fibre Jane gave me for helping her at Bendigo last year.

I had three lots and chose two similar ones to take.  The white one is English Leicester/Finn, Border Leicester, Corriedale x.

It was a lambs fleece so the staple was quite short, about 4cm in places.  This would have been a hand spinning nightmare if I didn't have the drum carder.

This is it on my Ashford carder.

Here are the batts...

They are really soft, just gorgeous...

and spins up a treat....

The second fleece is a lovely black, it's English Leicester/Finn x.

This fleece was also coated, this basically reduces the amount of vegetable matter that is in the saddle of the fleece.  There was still a fair amount of dust in the fleece when I washed it...

This was the first time through the carder.  I put it through a second time and found I was putting two batts onto the carder without over filling the drum.

I was thinking these batts were kinda big and heavy.  Normally the average batt out this carder is about 50g so I was shocked when I put this one on the scales and it came up....

105g!!!!!!!!

I do have a bit of a rep with my friends for not doing anything by halves but this one even shocked me...I didn't intentionally set out to make a mega batt..

I don't have a knitting project for this wool yet.  I am thinking a bit of a fairisle pattern on a top down jumper..So I'll be doing some black and white ply as well as black and white balls..

Might make one more post before hitting the road.  Friday we'll leave fairly early and head down to Warrnambool...