Back on the wool again

I have not been well - really bad cold - possible swine flu - stuck in the house.

I need to improve my wool techniques, so I decided to make the most of the time and practise preparing fibre for worsted spinning.

So I have washed some fleeces, got my dutch combs out and practised wool combing with Dutch combs and practised using a diz to making rovings - I am more pleased with my fibre preparation and am beginning to enjoy combing better than carding but my spinning is still not good enough. So I haven't dared to post any pictures of my sample yarns and I haven't posted any pictures of my rovings and fibre prep as I may want to use them in the body of work that I will be submitting for assessment. Below is a pic of some Masham - the curly one on the left and some Romney that I have scoured. They both came from the wool marketing board and I have to say that the Masham was a bit on the rough side - still - it will make good practise - I just hope that if I decide to use Masham I can get my hands on a good fleece for my final submission work.

Fibre Stash

I have been collecting different fibres for spinning practise for my Certificate of Achievement. Here is a picture of my stash. There is alpaca, possum, yak, cotton (in various forms), lots of silk - caps, bricks, throwsters waste, filament, cocoon strippings - all sorts, flax line and tow, tencel, ramie, viscose and nylon. I have also got about 14 fleeces in the shed waiting to be picked over and cleaned. Hopefully, by the time I have worked my way through this lot, I should be pretty darn good at spinning just about anything.