Ethel Photo Challenge

Just for fun I’ve entered one of Ethel’s weekly photo challenges. When I saw her topic, “Under the Pink,” this old pic came to mind and I couldn’t resist entering:

Click on pic to biggify

Handspinners will recognize the picker in the background. (It isn’t mine, I borrowed it from the Blue Ridge Spinners.) A picker is a rather wicked, medieval torture looking device which serves to open up a sheep's fleece. It can be done by hand as well, and is then referred to as "teasing." The purpose of this step is to separate all the individual fibers, making it easier to control the spinning of yarn.

I had dyed an entire fleece pink and was using the picker to prepare it for color blending on my drum carder. As fiber was flying everywhere and floating down in fluffy pink clouds, Rascal made a little nest for himself as you can see.

He never can resist burrowing into a pile of clean fiber. He particularly likes napping on neatly stacked batts fresh off the drum carder.

After extracting cat, blending, spinning, and weaving, this pile of pink fluff eventually became this poncho:

This was the first time I wove with my handspun, using it as weft with a commercial wool warp. It pleased the recipient (my husband, who is not the model in the above photo) and it pleased me to have a successful first go weaving my own yarn.

© 31 May 2006 at http://leighsfiberjournal.blogspot.com

Related Posts:
Better Than Catnip
Kitty Crib
Got Fleece?
Yarn Guard