What do you do on a blustery afternoon?

Q.  What do you do on a blustery afternoon? 
A.  Card, spin and take a few photographs.

Having browsed through The Ashford Book of Carding by Jo Reeve I decided to rummage through my stash of  coloured fleece and play with my drum carder.  I have had a drum carder for a year now but have only recently put down my hand carders.

I decided to blend two different shades of green with red and a burgundy.  I passed the layered slithers through the carder four times. Layering the colours one on top of the other gives a 'heathered' yarn as you can see below.  Had I fed the slithers of different colour in side by side the end result would have been stripey.

The following picture gives you an idea of the final batt

I produced six batts and set about spinning and playing the fleece.  I produced a 52g hank of double knit wool. 



Yesterday's attempt was orange.

This orange hank was the result of blending three different shades of orange and only two passes through the carder.

The beginning of the week saw me experimenting with shades of grey - each hank was produced from different proportions of grey, dark grey and white Shetland fleece.  Nothing to do with a book you might of heard about. 

All of these will be incorporated into scarves for sale in the Smithy on Shapinsay and the Made in Shapinsay event at the Venue in Kirkwall next month Monday 17 - Sunday 22.  I have been thinking about selling hanks of hand spun wool. 

I haven't just been spinning, oh no, hats have also been on the agenda - more later.