Wintertime, and its time for fiber - Jen

We are coming to the end of breeding season, the sheep are all healthy, the rams are getting along well, pens are clean, the barn is full of hay and straw. Its winter, and that means its time t0 shift most of my attention to playing with fiber. To that end, I opened an etsy shop, which has been really fun and a nice outlet for my handspun stuff. I recently managed to secure a variety of raw fleeces including more shetland, border leicester, lincoln and corriedale. So will have fun processing those. I've started dyeing a little more, and also experimenting with needlefelting. I have a million ideas for new things to do, am bored with current projects, and am actually happy with a couple of finished items. For example, here is a yarn I just posted on etsy.
I've named the color, "Stepped on a caterpillar". I think the color looks like the goo that comes out of a caterpillar, all swirly and mixed together. The wool was provided by Lilly, this is the last I have of her wool, since she is now thriving with a nice family near Syracuse.

The color mix was arrived at very unintentionally. The story is I was messing around with handpainting, unsuccessfuly attempting a variety of methods I won't bore you with, but never was happy with the results. After about 5 frustrating dye sessions, I decided I am not a handpainter. So I took the whole blob of dyed wool, drum carded it together and produced this lovely hodgepodge of color.

Its a two ply, lighter weight, 13 wpi (that is if I'm measuring correctly) and I ended up with 2 skeins at a total of 320 yards. Easily enough for a hat, or some cozy socks.

For this week I hope to complete some wool I dyed turquoise, scarlet and orchid which I'll be blending and spinning up, a natural lace scarf and some natural shetland roving. I LOVE winter!!!