Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Fleece, fiber, yarn...?- Blanket?

As many of my friends know, I am a fiber artist and fleece addict. I am addicted to all the soft, fluffy things in life, but sheep fleece seems to call my name, jump into my car, and follow me around. This creates great masses of washed fleece piled into the wooly room. There are great piles of spun yarn, stuffed in there as well. And all the equipment for making yarn and doing things with yarn has spilled out into the rest of the house.
As I try to make some "order" in the "chaos", I get lost in the fluff for hours and nothing much gets done. Today, I cleaned up some equipment to put away in the wooly room and there were so many bags of fleece I had to clean out a spot. Half hour later, I am sitting in the room, playing with fleece and can't remember why I started. Except, I can't get out of the door because the spinning wheel is blocking my way. This is really way too much fun and way too much stuff.
I have now cleaned out a spot for the wheel, and other stuff has been displaced. More play time, I am sure, will follow. I have many projects "in progress" and will have to spend hours in the wooly room. But for now, I am being proud and happy that I have actually finished spinning and entire fleece. In 2012, I purchased a white corriedale/merino cross fleece from Nebo Rock ranch. I had purchased another, similar fleece for some spinner friends of mine who wanted to try the "fleece thing".
My fleece weighed in at 6.42 pounds/$160.50- $25 per pound and took 3rd place in the judging. After washing, combing and spinning- I have about 3.25 pounds of yarn, 2 pounds of felt pads for a felt project I am working on, and the rest was lost in the wash. This yarn is white and ready to become something or change colors, or who knows what. Which is part of the problem, actually. Just because you spun it up, doesn't mean it takes up less space. Now instead of a bag of fluff, I have a bag of yarn- same size bag. I much now weave it into the blanket I wanted and I will have a blanket the size of the bag when it is folded and put away.
The idea that stuff changes shape but not volume had not occurred to me when I bought the stuff. Now as I survey the bags of fleece waiting to become yarn waiting to become cloth/socks/ shawls/blankets/etc... I have to get rid of some things to make room for the new things. So that is the next step- to exit the wooly room and make some items leave the house. I have a plan, but am so slow at making it happen. Glacial speed. Stuff comes in faster than it leaves. Snow piles up, glaciers form. Now I need a nice warm melt down to move some of that stuff back out of the pile.
Two items will leave today. There will be movement.