And so the spinning goes on...

It has been a lot of fibers and spinning lately. I have done one more dyeing-experiment.

This time I tried out the "kettle-dyeing". I was thinking having a shaded bright red, but ended up with a solid red. It is a nice color and the wool came out very nice and not so compact as the first time I dyed. I think I can get better at this with time.

Some new things has reached my home, too. Here is a new ball winder, from the fabulous Strauch Fiber Equipment Co. Along with it came a drum-carder:

 
So as soon as the kids where in bed I started exploring it.

First I tried out a 50-50 blend of blue merino with natural white alpaca.

I just did one pass trough the carder. It was so fluffy and weightless, that I just had to try spinning it right away. What can I say - I was in spinning heaven. My first batt of wool gave me stars in my eyes :-)

The single of alpaca/merino was plyed with two strands of the blue merino into a 3-ply.

But I was still very excited about the batt-making, so I dug in my wool-collection and found a horrible wool top from Lornas Laces that I bought almost two years ago. The reason for it just laying there was the colors and the fact that it was very hard to draft. So I separated the colors and spun up the parts with blue, purple and a little bit of yellow into this purple-blueish fluffy wool.

and the pink and yellow into this candy batt:
I used ´theredhead`s tutorial to make it into roving today:

I have spun some of both blends.

The purple colors does´nt come out right in this picture. I will be make a 2ply of this.

This color is not so accurate either. I will take some new pictures when it is a finished 2-ply.