I long to pay attention to the daily. A grumpy day will pass and it’s not until I’m falling asleep that I realize I haven’t touched any fiber all day (this is rare, but when it happens, I feel it in my bones). Many beautiful days pass without me capturing even a moment, with a picture or a small note in my journal.

Bringing some awareness to these moments and ensuring I get a little fiber time every day would surely remind me to enjoy the daily.

I love challenges that force you to become more aware of these every day moments and how you spend them. Art Every Day, NaNoWriMo, NaKniSweMo: they all make you think about how you spend your time and how you can work a bit more art, writing and knitting into your daily habits.

With this in mind, I’ve started my own little daily project: Yarn Everyday.

Everyday I want to make a least a little yarn, whether it’s spinning, dyeing or carding. And it’s not enough to make it, I want to capture it, on camera.

Beginning tomorrow, April 1st, I’ll be making a little yarn daily and sharing it here. If you’d like to join in and challenge yourself, there’s a Ravelry group, Yarn Everyday.

There’s already so much interest in it (24 members and counting), so I’m putting together a few prizes for everyone who successfully completes the project and creates both yarn and picture every day!

If you’re in, let me know in the comments!

Everyone has a favorite flower. Mine is Daffodils.

Until mid-May, when it’s Peonies

Until mid-June, when it’s Hydrangeas.

Hm…ok, so I don’t have ONE favorite flower!

As buds begin to open and green shoots emerge, I’ve been thinking a lot about flowers and how many of my yarns they inspire.

Wondering what flowers my customers prefer, I recently asked newsletter subscribers to share. I’ve handspun a yarn for every different favorite flower and have listed them, one-a-day, all week.

The Favorite Flowers are:

Daffodils (already sold),

Cherry Vanilla Rose (already sold),

Lilies,

Crocuses, and

Hyacinths (available Friday)

What’s your favorite flower?

I might be a bit obsessive.
I wish I wasn’t.
I wish I was smooth and casual and je ne sais quoi.
But I’m not.  I’m excitable. And squeal-y. And a bit obsessive.
When I learned the new Yarn Forward was available in the States (it’s UK-based), one that I had been interviewed for, I began stalking Barnes & Noble.
I’ve been 4 times in the last month, scouring the magazine racks, looking behind every title.

Yesterday, my mom and I had a bit of free time and we decided to pop into the bookstore for a cup of coffee and magazine perusal. I did my normal magazine-rack-hunting. The girl next to me set down one she had been flipping through and

Wow!
There it was, the April issue.

I called my mom over as I flipped through, and was shaking before I even landed on this page:

That’s me, in the upper left corner!

The article is a discussion with several “ecological experts” (squee!) about what “green” means to them, in terms of yarn and fiber choices. It’s a fabulous article with input from Lorna’s Laces, a Rowan rep and other experts on the subject!

You can find buy Yarn Forward online, at your yarn store or at a bookstore!

Oh, and the geeking out doesn’t end there. My mom and I both squealed, jumped around, hugged and celebrated! This little excitement-party happened again when I told my husband (who, for the record, does not squeal)

The LocalSpun series is my attempt to share the process from fiber (on the animal) to finished yarn. Each is just a glimpse into a moment in the life of yarn and yarnmaker.

Remember these shy little Jacob’s from Rammings Farm?

Well, I bought one of their fleeces, brought it home and stretched it out on an old clean sheet in the middle of my living room (too cold outside!)

I was pretty amazed at how clean this fleece felt. Unlike the Coopworth, it wasn’t greasy at all ! In fact, it didn’t seem to have any lanolin! Since it didn’t feel sticky, I decided to test out washing it in just water and salt – no soap!

I split up the fleece into 3 different pots for washing. The pots were filled up with water and placed on the stove (I’d do this in my washer, but it’s only hooked up to  cold water).

After an hour of stewing (medium low heat), I turned off the heat and let them cool and soak for another 3 hours. After that, I dumped the water, refilled the pots with water, added 1/2 cup of salt and brought up the heat again.

After the second washing the fleece was super clean with no visible dirt, so I laid 1/3 of  it out for drying.

I took the other two pots, dumped the water, refilled it with clean water and some dye.

1 pot was dyed this minty green, the other was hot pink.

This is my first time working with a spotted fleece, so I wanted to try all of the possible combination of colors. First I carded JUST the green, then slowly mixed in some black and then I carded just the black.  My favorite combination is both the white (or dyed) and black in equal bits – it provides a lovely heathered effect!

I really loved working with this fiber, it is SO chushy and squooshy and SOFT.

If you want to get your hands on these batts, you can find it in the shop today!

Want to learn more about the Jacob sheep breed? Check out the Jacob Sheep Breeders Association.

What’s your experience with Jacob? Did you love it? What did you make with it?

Ask Tara is a weekly-ish feature in which I attempt to answer your questions about spinning, dyeing or making videos in a tiny apartment. If you have a question, ask it in the comments and I’ll answer it here with either a post or a video!

When I posted my first video, on dyeing with Easter Egg dyes in the microwave, quite a few people asked: Can you dye on the stovetop?

Short answer: Yes!

Long answer: Here’s how:

Warning #1: You might want to wear gloves. I never do with these non-toxic dyes, but I don’t mind blue fingernails.

Warning #2: You probably don’t even want to use your hands! Get yourself a long poking stick (like a chopstick) and some tongs (so you can flip the fiber)

Warning #3: Don’t agitate the fiber! Add the dye, submerge the fiber and walk away! Let it cool completely before you move it and for goodness sake, don’t wring it while it’s wet! Messing the the hot, wet fiber will cause felting if you’re too rough!

Dyeing on the stove like this is usually called Kettle-dyeing and you can use a variety of dyes with this same basic method. You can also dye ANY animal fiber, in any form (locks, roving, yarn, finished piece) in this way.

When you feel more comfortable, try varying your dye to wool ratio or adding more than one color in each pot. My favorite way to get multi-color roving is to put one tablet in cold water, add the roving, drop another tablet on top, turn on the heat. Once the water and fiber is hot, I turn the roving over a little and drop in one more tablet.

Should you choose to use each of the dye tablets in one packet of Easter Egg dyes, you’ll get a pretty pile of fiber like this:

Don’t want to try dyeing yet? You can find that Rainbow Bright colorbox in the Boutique.

Let me know if you try it! If you dye another way,tell me about it in the comments!

Oceanic

Just a quick note to let you know that I’m joining a bunch of super-fabulous Fiber Artists to offer Free Shipping for the entire Spring!

To find the participating shops, search “SpringFiber0409″ on Etsy. Choose all the fiber-y goodness (yarn, stitchmarkers, spinning fiber) that your fiber-y heart desires and when you check out, be sure to put “Happy Spring!“ in the Message to each seller.  Once you’ve paid, the shipping will be refunded.

Have a lovely fiber-y Friday!

A little departure from the weekly “Ask Tara”, this week I asked a few spinners what their Spin-Life is like. I’m delighted by the variety of places and ways people spin!

Last week we talked about fiber studios and today we’ll talk about when and where they actually sit at their wheel.

(me at the wheel)

These are our spinners:

Liz of Hobbledehoy
Esther of JazzyTurtle
Velma of ColorBOMB Creations
Rachel-Marie of KnittyDirtyGirl
Lacey of In A Circle of Fog
Erin of Wooly Hands
Mia of Knit and Play with Fire

When do you usually spin?

Liz:

I can card for about 5 hours straight at a time- that’s about 16-20 sets of batts.  When I spin, I usually start in the morning and end around dinner time (6pm).  I can usually spin 6-8 yarns during that time if I’ve already carded the fiber or picked out colors for self-stripers.

I spin on my couch most of the time.  I rarely spin in my studio space, because it’s really shut-off feeling.  My husband and I splurged on a 56″ tv a couple of years ago so that we could work from home in a “theater” like space- it’s pretty cool!  We’ve got a Pat Green triple-drum supercard on its way mid-march to early april, and he’ll take over a shift of batt work each day with it.

Esther:

I will spin for hours at a time. If I’m not at the spa doing massage, or carding in my studio- I’m spinning. At least 20- 30 hours a week, depending on my client schedule. If I have a long break between clients, I bring my wheel to the spa and spin there-I had a joy and I just got a new lendrum this weekend.

Velma:

Spinning generally takes place in this main room; during the day I spin next to a window for natural light, and in the evenings I spin in front of the TV. On days when we have nice weather, though, I generally spin outside, on the small deck in our backyard. I love doing that! That’s where I’ve filmed my 2 spinning videos, too.

As for spinning time, since I’m trying to make this a viable biz, I spend all day doing *something* related to COLORBOMB. It astounds me how many non-spinning skill-sets are required to have a spinning business. I usually get going between 8 and 10am, with email, convos, PMs, DMs, & every other possible form of online communication in the morning. When I blog, I usually do that in the morning, too. Shipping is next, if there is any, and I often take packages to the PO myself, riding my bike the 2 miles into town (we live in an auto-free household). When I do go into town, I take some time to ‘forage’ for materials for my Greenish(tm) products that use repurposed items, so I visit thrift stores, the recycling center, etc.

Spinning generally gets underway around lunchtime, continuing for a few hours & peppered with breaks to look stuff up, check messages on Etsy, Ravelry, Twitter, Flickr, email, etc. I tend to do fiber prep in the afternoons, for some reason. Oh, and photography; that takes an inordinate amount of time, and I prefer to do it in dribs and drabs as I get a yarn done. I try to list items in the evenings, as soon as I get decent photos. At night, I generally spin a few more hours. Most days are 10-12 hours, but I often take weekends off, or mostly off.
This is life at COLORBOMB Creations!

Rachel-Marie:

I spin in the studio, use my laptop everywhere… My studio is right next to my baby’s room so I just gate off the steps and he can play in my studio and his room while I work.

I used to do everything in the living room with my hubby (spin full time) but this works much better for me. He has his desk downstairs and I have my workspace upstairs, when we do spend time together it much better “quality”.

Anyway, I am sooo in love with all of our new space. All I can say is really take your time when planning a set up and system that works because once you get into your daily routine it’s hard to get out of. That’s why I am not letting myself spin in the living room at all here.

(I also get to spin at my part time yarn shop job http://lancasteryarnshop.com! So that’s really cool too!)

Lacey:

My daily routine is this:

• Wake up, brew coffee- haha!
• Dye about 8 ounces of fiber in a pot (one color a day). When all the dye has been absorbed, I turn off the stove and let it sit overnight to cool. Each morning I dump it into the sink for a cold rinse then hang to dry.
• My drum carder is now permanently set up on the back half of my large table (back to back desks- not perfect but wonderfully spacious). Depending on my mood I card one or two hanks worth of fiber. This is usually 6 little batts per finished hank, equaling ~4 ounces.
• Skein the yarn from the day before and soak to set the twist. -My least favorite part!
• Then, around noon or one, I finally start spinning! This usually lasts anywhere from 2 to 5 hours. Usually spinning one or two hanks of yarn a day (about 400-ish yards). I get the most wonderful natural light in my new studio and I love having a place for everything. That room just calls to me!
• I also try to find time to photograph and list finished yarns, usually around 5 o’clock, but this doesn’t always happen…

Oh, when I’m finished carding I put my batts on a flour sack towel (I pick up the towel from the 4 corners hobo style). This makes it really easy to move them around the studio or into the living room if I have a netflix movie to watch. It’s really important for me to keep all of my batts laying in the same direction because I need to spin each of them from the same end. Here is an example of what they look like:

I can also set the towel with the batts right in my light box to photograph without leaving fuzzies behind!

Erin:

Remember the cashmere from Rammings farm?

Jennifer had his fiber blended with a little wool (also from her flock) and it turned out to be a lovely, tweedy gray with just hints of brown.

This color was too rich to dye or card, so I left it natural and spun it with bright colors.

Prairie Sunset is cashmere spun with Hobbledehoy’s Kombucha batt, a fun mix of merino, ecospun and sparkle.

Silver Lining is cashmere spun with handdyed mill-ends (available in the Boutique tomorrow today!)

I have a smidge of cashmere left…what do you think I should do with it? Should I spin it with another color or try dyeing or carding it?

(want to read more about fiber? Check out Alpaca Girl’s Fiber Friday Carnival!)

From the moment I got the directions “just past the big red barn”, I was delighted with this farm visit. Mom and I piled into the car and took off towards Asheville for a day of fun: Rammings Farm for a few fleeces, downtown Asheville for Jamaican food, EarthGuild for dyes and The Chocolate Lounge.

We got a bit turned about on the way to the farm, but the visit was worth it. Jennifer and her family live in a restored farmhouse and “for fun” they keep a flock of heritage breeds of turkeys, chickens and various fiber-y animals.

The fiber-y animals include very friendly angora goats (they make mohair),

a bold cashmere goat,

and some shy Jacob and Romney sheep.

The Jacobs are the smaller guys with horns, while the Romneys have black faces (Angora goats are in the foreground).

All of the animals are protected by this sweet dog (I completely forgot his name) who prefers the Angoras to the sheep – he’ll let the Angoras eat first and only when they’ve had their fill will he allow the sheep to come close to the food!

Jennifer  keeps a small flock which she doesn’t breed and raises them as naturally as possible. When her stash of fleeces and roving began to overwhelm her, I was happy to visit and take some of it off her hands!

I picked out a Jacob fleece, an Angora fleece, 8 oz of mill-carded roving that’s a mix of her Romney and a neighbor’s alpaca and 4 oz of cashmere roving. If you’re part of the LocalSpun Club (currently closed) you’ll have received either yarn or fiber from the Jacob fleece. Tomorrow I’ll show you what I’ve made with the cashmere!