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As promised, here's a post about how I'm preparing the fleece I bought at the Royal Winter Fair. This is the fleece as it arrived home in a big shopping bag:

I've done a lot of reading lately on how to do this. I've ordered lots and lots of library books on the topic and read them pretty much cover to cover.

Once the locks are washed they needed to be picked apart before putting them on a drum carder. Then the drum carder combs the fleece into a batt which can be divided into roving so that it's ready to spin. You can also use drum carders to blend a variety of fleeces together. I'd like to try one sometime, but for now they're out of the budget at hundreds of dollars. In the future I may rent one.

Another way is to buy two hand carders (or mini-carders) and comb a small amount of locks at a time. Then you can roll up the fleece vertically into rolags for woolen spinning (lofty and fuzzy) or roll it up horizontally to make roving for worsted spinning (smoother, with aligned fibres). You can also use special sharp combs to comb out long locks.

The last way, which is the least expensive, is to just use a flick brush to comb out each lock. A dog brush works just as well, and that's what I have. As usual I'm trying to do things the simplest way I can without too many fancy tools, so that's one of the reasons I chose a fleece with well-defined locks so I could prepare it this way.

After flicking, I place the locks in a basket always aligned the same way

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Before I show you the mucky job of cleaning fleece, here are some prettier pictures of another finished skein. This one started out with the "apple tree" roving.
If you're learning to spin and finding the drafting difficult the best tip is to pre-draft your roving. Gently pull at the roving until it's thinned out as evenly as you can. When roving is drafted out very thin it's called "pencil roving". After drafting I wind the roving back up into a big soft ball and it's lovely to work from when it's prepared this way.
The picture above shows how the single looked. The colours are mainly distinct, with a small amount of candy caning here and there. This is when you have two different colours of roving that you spin together. I like the way this looks so I purposely let it happen.

After spinning the singles I plied on the drop spindle using an Andean bracelet. At this stage the spindle can get really full. The spindle will still work but the yarn can sometimes slip down a bit. I wind a bit of painter's tape at the bottom of the shaft to keep the yarn secure.

After plying all the colours blended with mixes of red, white and green and I realized that it was starting to look a bit like Christmas candy.
This is the finished skein. This yarn is also in my shop, mainly because while I love the yarn, right now I'm all about the spinning.

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This morning I did a little Kool-Aid dyeing with some white roving I had in my stash. I've been seeing fat braids of yummy hand painted roving online but I'm feeling poor so I decided I should try it myself. We'll see how it goes...

I've noticed that roving with mixed colours can look garish, but once spun up and plied it changes how the colours work together. I've been seeing stunning examples on Flickr which have really inspired me.

While looking up info on spinning I found some tips on dyeing roving. I was reminded about how easy it is to do dyeing with Kool-Aid which allows you to use your regular dishes. I even had some Kool-Aid left over from dyeing yarn a long time ago so I didn't even have to go to a bunch of grocery stores trying to find a range of flavours.

Steps:

1. Add warm water and 1/2 cup of vinegar to a microwaveable dish. I used a ceramic dish. Place your roving lined up in rows to soak. You can push the roving down into the water but throughout the process handle it gently so that it doesn't felt - no twisting/wringing etc. And no moving the wool from hot to cold which shocks the fibres and can lead to felting.
*Don't use a rectangular dish that won't fit into your microwave because you will be sorry when you have to try to move a soppy mess of Kool-Aid soaked roving into another smaller dish and you will be very frustrated and feel stupid. Ask me how I know.

2. While the roving is soaking you can organize your colours. I opened the packets of Kool-Aid into glasses of water and stirred them. You can use some paper towel as a palette to dab with each colour so that you can see it clearly. Mixing can give you colours like brown and olive green, if you prefer bright colours don't mix! Of course you can add extra water to dilute a colour and make it lighter.

3. After soaking the roving for 10 minutes I applied the Kool-Aid. Pour or spoon the Kool-Aid onto the wool wherever you'd like the colour to go. You can use a spoon to gently pat and spread the colour around. Remember it will blend a bit more by itself.

4. When you're happy with how the roving looks carefully place the dish in the microwave. The water should just barely cover the yarn.

5. Microwave for 5 minutes and take out your dish using oven mitts. Tilt the dish a tiny bit so that you can see the water. If it's clear then the wool has absorbed the dye.

6. Let the dish of roving sit and cool down. Once it's cool you can rinse the roving and pat with a towel before hanging to dry. Remember not to twist or wring the yarn.

Next post you can see how mine turned out!

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