Spinning and carding our new game!

Hi to the people who stumble uppon this!

Id like to introduce the queen of our house...... Suzi AKA Schnuzel the owl cat!

Now back to business

This is just a quick late night post to show you what's going on here at Innerspiral! We have been very busy lately as the festive markets are going full speed now and we are making new stock all the time. Tonight we have been making a red felt scarf, spinning some yarn and carding some fibre batts.

We have made a new game, Zara cards a load of fibre on the drum carder for me to spin up into an Artyarn. Sounds simple but we have only just started doing this the other day and we are getting some seriously cool yarn coming out! We made mash up da yarn 3, which for all those who dont know means that we card all our left over pieces of fibre from other projects into a bunch of bats then i spin it right up! then we made fairy tale yarn

http://www.etsy.com/listing/86981129/fairytale-handspun-art-yarn

which is possibly the coolest yarn i have ever made... then another 3 yarns since and they all look wicked!!!

I finished this yarn tonight, 240ish grams all on one majacraft jumbo bobbin :)

Zara is now addicted to making batts she's going well batty. Its well hard to keep her away from the drum carder. I dont mind though it means i have a massive supply of fibre to spin up all the time. We will need the yarn as well because all our crochet has been going well on the stall at the moment. So we need to get involved with the crochet over the next few days. Turn yarns into cowls, hats and gloves!!!!

Well that's all thats going on tonight. We will be moving to Paulton soon, well, after new year into a lovely little cottage. We are looking forward to it and we are very excited as we will have more space to go completely bonkers in :) We will keep you posted on the progress of the move and a few pics of the new place :)


Back in spring I bought a drop spindle from S.lissie
(http://www.etsy.com/shop/slissie?ref=seller_info) as i wanted a nice drop spindle to spin with on our market stall.

Since then i have made a whole lot of yarn on it and i absolutely love it. Drop spindles are great as you can take them anywhere with you in a small box. A drum carded batt takes a few hours to spin up so you don't need much fibre with you. The type i got from slissie is a turkish drop spindle which means that when you have finished spiining your fibre you can slide the cob off and use it as a centre pull ball straight away, which is great for plying and also great if you want to crochet it up or knit with it straight away! Basically its not as quick as a wheel but I can make such nice yarn that is just different from the yarn i spin on my wheel. Zara is using up my stash crocheting beret hats for the stall which are actually selling quite well - even though they are obviously more expensive than our regular handspun hats. So all in all I'd reccomend it to everyone. Most people start spinning with a drop spindle as you can try it for next to nothing. Then you can decide if spinning is for you and if you want to buy a wheel... its then something we put aside once we pay for a wheel and get obsessed with wheel spinning.... I did this but i am glad that i decided to give drop spindling another go and that I decided to get a decent spindle to experience the next level of drop spindling. It teaches you a new approach to spinning and then gives you skills you can take back to the wheel and improve your spinning there! S.lissie spindles keep spinning for a long time if you spin yarn at the right thickness of yarn for the spindle, so you don't have too keep spinning it so frequently once you have got the knack. Anyway my drop spindle rant is now over. And to show you how much I love it here's a pic of me on holiday drop spindling on the beach....... I was quite new to it back then (may) so that explains the concentrated look on my face lol.

Me drop spindling on holiday

Now i will leave you with a pic of the joker of the house. Scamper AKA Scamper-tronic (hes the hero, gonna sit on ya lap and purr in your ear hole!) enjoy

So bye until next time!

Woolly pork chopper :)

Treenergy!!!! YER!