Drum Carded Batts
I've been playing with my Fancy Kitty drumcarder. The resulting batts are between 1/2 and 1 1/2 oz. in size. My registered shetland flock provides the fiber. The colored fleece has been dyed at Zeilingers Woolen Mill in Frankenmuth, I use natural colors too. Blending primary colors produces fascinating new colors, striping the batts gives some flexibility in spinning for a different color effect in the yarn. The addition of mohair gives it a polished feel. Alpaca is a luxe, warm and soft fiber, I generally use it with the naturals. Angelina adds a little glitz. I have also blended dog hair, but find it easier to hand card my shelties' undercoat as it tends to fly away otherwise. Anyway, here are a few of the color combinations I've come up with. They are for sale if anyone is interested and I welcome suggestions for other colorways. Price varies depending on what fibers are used, but for the most part the batts are $4.00/oz.
Georgia
Georgia is made up from fibers from two sheep. The yellow is Nutmeg (a fawn katmoget ewe) and the red comes from Loblolly (white ewe). There's a bit of salmon left over from several years ago and I don't recall what sheep that came from. I love the sparkle the angelina adds, I think this one is Raspberry Sparkle, though it might be Flamingo. Guess I'd better write up my "recipes" so I can repoduce the color.
Dragonfly
This batt is the result of carding a roving that had been kettle dyed by Leah Cope. She called the colorway Dragonfly and it was a combination of pinks, red, purple with portions left undyed. The fleece came from a light gray ewe I named Thistle, probably not the most appropriate name for a fiber animal. Drumcarding the spot dyed roving homogenized it into lovely pink and lavender batts. I couldn't resist adding a bit of sparkle.
Ocean
I love blue. It's been a favorite color from childhood. Here, I was trying to come up with a blend that reminded me of deep water. Then I couldn't think of a name for it. I tried Deep Blue Sea, Great Lakes (being a Michigan girl), finally thought of Ocean Blue, then just Ocean. The blue fleece is Magnolia (light gray ewe) and the green came from a combination of Marjoram and Cayenne (both white). There's a bit of blue mystery wool with the character of mohair that I got from Patti O'Dell. We had a stash swap at the Chickasaw Farms farm store last fall. Hey, here's where I put in a shameless plug for our coop, Dances With Wool, and Sheila Henry's spring shearing open house April 14, 2012. Check out Sheila's website for our Event Schedule:
Dances with Wool and Chickasaw Farms Event Schedule
Peacock
Okay, the idea for this batt came from a peacock feather I picked up in my brother Dave's yard during our visit to Idaho last fall. It's not quite where I want it yet, not brilliant enough, but I like what the copper glitz does for it.
Dance Hall Girl
I had quantities of hot pink and salmon roving with no idea what to do with them. They weren't selling all that well, the colors are a bit....intense. Anyway, I was manning our Dances With Wool booth at the Michigan Fiber Festival and looking for a project to work on between patrons. On a whim, I picked up both rovings and started to spin, randomly drafting the colors together....hmmmm, they were still pretty vibrant. I added some black glitz and voila! it started to look like something fun. Sheila was hooting at me, laughing at how obnoxious my new skein was. I tossed it in with the rest of the handspun and moved on to something else. The next morning a woman browsing through the booth picked up the skein and asked how much it was and....she bought it! Now I was hooting at Sheila. There's more to the story involving my 8 year old brother David rooting through Mom's lingerie drawer, but Mom gets a little bent out of shape when I tell it. It's printed on the back of the label if you buy a batt:-)
Denim
Another case of keeping myself occupied during a fiber show, this time at the Castle in Charlevoix. I brought the drum carder and was entertaining the crowd by cranking out new batts. While searching around for a new color idea I decided to try to match the color of my blue jeans. It came out pretty close. I used white mohair to get that washed denim look.
Sirocco
This was actually my first attempt at blending on the drum carder. I was aiming at a heathered look, blending that obnoxious salmon roving with fawn shetland and just a touch of dark brown alpaca. Not as brilliant as some of the other color combos, but warm and soothing.
Burning Embers
Going for the glow of a firepit here.