Spinster

Isn't this gorgeous?

My youngest daughter, Melissa, 14, learned how to spin nearly two summers ago.

She is quite the fiber artist.

For her birthday last year, in addition to several sheep's worth of roving, she received a small drum carder.  Actually, she paid for about a third of the carder - as with most things, spinning supplies and tools are quite expensive.

A drum carder allows her to custom blend fibers in spinning-ready batts.

Here is a fiber "sandwich" - various types of wools and colors are layered before carding.

These sandwiches are then fed into the hand-cranked drum carder.

It takes a fair amount of muscle to turn the crank.

As the fibers are run through the combs they are mixed and smoothed.

Henry is always willing to supervise; unfortunately he has a penchant for stealing whole hunks of roving.

Here you see a completed "sandwich' ready for the carder.

And here..

Here is the finished batt.

And another one.

Melissa then takes these batts and spins them into yarn.

The yarn with the blue and gray is what she spun from the batts pictured earlier.

She also spun all the yarn you see above.

For me!

This yarn represents a huge amount of time and effort on her part - and it's all for me.

I have a project planned.

I've been dragging my feet a little, but hope to start it this week!