Spinnerella!

I've been getting absolutely stuck into the spinning lately! I've really been enjoying the process, and have successfully washed some of the cream raw sheep's wool (felt free this time!), which I've been busy spinning up :)

I found that if I flicked the locks out a little before popping them into the sink of warm soapy water, the bits of dirt and burrs came out on their own - I didn't need to play or pick at it, which I think caused the partial felting in my frist attempt - careful though I was! So I've sorted out my technique I think!! It's quite time consuming, but with a raw fleece like I have in those two big bags it seems the easiest way to get it prepped for non sticky lanolinny spinning. The colour of the cream wool is incredible all washed and spun up! Yum yum!

I'd spun up some of the grey wool straight out of the bag, with a little flick of course before spinning, but no wash or anything. I noticed that some little grass seeds and things were being spun into the yarn, and i knew that even if I washed it once I'd spun it, those little bits wouldn't be coming out in a hurry! So I think I'll start prepping the grey wool in the same way before spinning, giving it a gentle wash and rinse to take out any of those not so nice bits.
My plan is to fill another bobbin with the grey wool, then ply the two together, cream with the grey! The grey has variated shades of brown through it too -gorgeous! I think it'd make a lovely man's beanie or scarf on it's own. But I'm so curious to ply the two colours together, and they're both Corriedale so that'll be a nice continuity.

THEN I plan to over dye some skeins with some green dye to give it an overall hue - I'm so curious to see how that turns out I can hardly wait!
In other spinning news, somewhat more alternative...! Shveetie was fixing the water filter on our shower head and needed to rip open an old pillow to get out some of that fluffy plasticky pillow filling. When I got home he brandished it excitedly and said "I bet you could spin this!!" So Sure enough I hopped by the wheel and had a go - and it spun up just like normal fibre! Obviously it felt horribly synthetic, and had no flow of fibre or anything, just sort of fluffiness to feed though, but it certainly spun! I remembered a friend from work had given me some hot pink fibrey stuff that I had stashed away without a second thought to what I would use it for, and I figured, it's syntheticky too... what if I spin them together?? So I gave it a shot! hehe

Candy cane colours, and a little bit of purple wool when the white bobbin ran out when I was plying... funny stuff! It makes me keen to ply some handpainted yarn with some of the cream..... mmmm.... thinking, planning, schemings... ;)