My Order from the Woolery Arrived Yesterday

I am soooooo excited!  I didn't even pause to take a picture of the box before I opened it, like I usually do.  I told you in a previous post that I had ordered carders and combs from The Woolery, online.  They arrived yesterday, but i didn't get a chance to blog about it till today.

 

I just threw the paper aside and dug out the combs and carders.  Here is the mess I made on the dining room table.

 

Look at this warning.  How much you want to bet I will stab myself with these at least a few times.  I am clutsy that way.  I am glad for the warning, though.  I will definitely try to be careful.

 

The carders are larger than I was picturing.  They will do very nicely.  I just can't wait for my sewing projects to be done so I can get to work on the fiber.  Molly might get to start on blending her angora with the woolpaca roving before I even get to try these out. 

 

These are 112 tines per square inch with very fine bent wires.  They should work very well for our fine wool, alpaca and angora fibers.  Handles are very smooth and comfortable, as well.

 

Here is a close up.  Lovely.

 

These are the English combs.  I wanted to get the viking combs, but they were a bit more expensive and I don't think i will comb enough fiber to make the added expense worth it.  These are very good quality, though.  The teeth are very sharp, indeed.

 

Now all I need is time to get started.  The angora fiber blending and the wool washing will be our next steps.  That should be exciting.

Yay! Our Fleece and Roving Arrived

 

It has arrived!!!!!

 

I told you in my last post about the roving and fleece we ordered from our friend, Kathy, at lambkamp on etsy.  This is the listing for you to get something similar to our woolpaca roving:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/77274864/woolpaca-natural-alpaca-and-finewool

Trust me you will not be disappointed.  I ordered a whole pound! We will be blending ours with our angora. That is why we bought it, but it is beautiful by itself.

The larger bag is the fleece, Timmy's fleece, which even though it is raw it is so fine and soft I cant believe it.  The smaller bag is the woolpaca roving.  Just the perfect color for blending with our angora.  It will be lovely.  All together this box weighs 11 lbs and 10 ozs That is a lot of fiber.

 

Kathy was also nice enough to include a paper with Timmy's wool washed and unwashed, with and without tips cut and a spun sample with labels.  This will be awesome for Molly's school project report. 

 

 

This is a fun sheet of pictures Kathy also included.  Pictures of Timmy the sheep at different ages and a cute picture of the guard dog having fun outside Timmy's pen.  How cute.  It is fun to know the place and animal the wool came from.  I made sure to tell Kathy to thank Timmy for us.  Thanks Kathy!

 

Now we are just waiting for out carder and combs to get here.  It should get here tomorrow, I've been tracking it on the UPS website.  Oh, and we are also waiting for my cousin's wedding to be over.  The wedding is keeping us all too busy for these kinds of frivolous projects.  Such fun! So much excitement.  We are building a skirting and picking table, and will have to wash and dry the fleece before we can do anything with it, but the woolpaca roving is all ready for blending and spinning.  Yay!  Can you tell I am getting excited?  Hopefully next time I post we will have had time to get something new done.

Getting Started

I am so excited.  I just ordered combs and carders to undertake our first real spinning project using the first harvest from my daughter's angora rabbit, Anya.  We got her this spring from our friend Sue Gower.  She is 25% Satin and 75% German Angora.  She has a lovely coat and she is huge, so there is lots of it.

This is Anya.  Her coat has almost grown back since she was sheared.  It has been three months.

 

This second picture is one that Sue sent us of Anya and her sister a month before we went to pick her up.  We aren't sure which one is her.  They both have the chestnut agouti coloring.  Aren't they adorable?

I also ordered some woolpaca roving to blend with it to give it the memory and body of fine wool and the soft sheen of alpaca.  Angora fiber, spun pure, does not have the springy memory that wool does, and it is very warm.  My daughter is using this endeavor as her SAE project for her agricultural biology class, and will be doing a written report and a scrap book page about it, so I thought why not make a blog.
I also ordered a really nice merino lambs fleece from the same wonderful lady that we ordered the woolpaca roving, Kathy Lambert at www.etsy.com/shop/lambcamp. The sheep's name is Timmy.  Perfect, right?  Anya and Timmy mittens. We have ordered assorted rovings from her before.  She is a wonderful person, and is so great to chat with and order things from.  Her animals are all very beautiful.  She has a wonderful blog: http://ranchoborrego.blogspot.com.
I will post pictures of our supplies as they arrive, our process as we work and describe our entire experience from raw fiber to finished project.  Our plan is to knit/crochet some warm winter baby things, hat, scarf, mittens, booties, maybe even a sweater, for my cousin's baby that is due in November.  We won't have to finish it all before the baby arrives, but hopefully in time for it to wear them before it gets too warm in the spring.  We are looking at patterns now and will post those as well, if possible.  My daughter is not a big knitter, so she may opt to nifty knitter a hat and possibly a scarf as well.

This picture is the fiber we harvested this first time.  Check out the delicate colors striped over the length.

 

The fibers are mostly around  3 inches in length.  There are some guard hairs and baby tips, but it is very soft and a beautiful color blend.  It is, of course, very clean and we cut it very carefully.

 

 

I ordered a pair of Schact 112 tpi curved hand carders and a pair of English mini combs from woolery.com.  I hope they don't take too long to get here.  I am so excited.  Although with all the projects I'm working on for my cousin's wedding, which is happening two weeks from this Saturday, I don't have much time for anything else.