i tailed right off the fibre work over the summer, it’s just been too damn hot – aside from the crochet blanket i have (intermittently) on the go which looks set to take at least a year. but a trip to the craft fields at the big green has got my juices flowing again so i hauled my wheel out of semi-retirement as soon as we got back.

i decided to splurge a bunch of birthday cash on something fibre-y but dithered excessively about which way to jump. in the end i decided that right now i want to focus on the spinning over the dyeing (plenty of time for that) so went for a kilo of different coloured merinos and a pair of hand cards. at first i thought i’d made a mistake going for the fine cloth carders but after a bit of reading it turned out i just didn’t have a clue on technique and once i was doing it properly it worked a dream (although i still have to use my hands to get a decent rolag – can’t manage it between the cards).

i’m going to have so much fun playing with blending on the cards and just by predrafting various colours together, and the cards are working a treat on the raw alpaca i’ve been struggling with. i remember now how much i enjoyed spinning from rolags at the spinning day and i can’t wait to get the wheel out tonight (i’ve spun up a little on the spindle, but the rolags are a little tricky to handle with it).

yay for carding