We had a great day yesterday at Distaff Day. I can’t believe how far I’ve come in the fiber world in such short time. I went the first time, two years ago and was so fascinated and almost overwhelmed by all the spinning wheels and projects everyone had. I do want to thank everyone who bought something from us yesterday, both destash and Shenanigans products. Every bit helps so that we can expand our line. In the next couple of months we’ll be partnering with Sip & Knit in Maitland to carry Ashford spinning wheels. Please feel free to call Doni at the store about pre-ordering. Here’s a couple of pictures of our new friends:

Kathryn spinning our Wenslydale/Corriedale blend

I just had to show off Nancy’s mittens!! She spun up some of our Sampson Top and knitted these fabulous mittens just in time for our two days of cold weather for this year. Great job!! Nancy is one of the members of the Drunken Monkey Spinners who meet once a month at the Drunken Monkey coffee shop.

Cookies! I haven’t posted in a little while, so I just wanted to let everyone know I’ve been a little busy. We dyed up a huge batch of yarn for Sip & Knit a few weeks ago and then I jumped into making Ultimate Sock Bags. It also ’tis the season to make cookies! Kimberly and I slaved all day to make some yummy cookies. Sorry we haven’t added scratch and sniff to our website yet. We hope to have another huge dye coming up. We’ll also have the December Phat Fiber colors up soon.

Kimberly in the Act

Knitting Knancy sporting her new bag

I had a ton of fun yesterday at the Brooksville Pioneer Day even though it was cold. Yes, it gets cold here on occasion. Thanks to everybody who came by to say Hi. I’m sorry I didn’t catch everyone’s name. Lorel came up with me from Orlando to sit and spin. We had a few other spinners with us as well as a weaver, a crochetter, and a lucet knotter. There was cow milking right behind us which then then churned into butter and ice cream, a turkey caller, and authentic camp of a trapper, a mini barnyard, palmetto leaf weavers, acorn bread, a Seminole, corn husk dollies, and a quilting bee. I was surprised how many of the spectators dressed up. Everyone was super nice and all the kids were curious to try out our drum carder. I think I had the best pulled pork sandwich I’ve ever had.

After the festival, I went to see Kimberly at The Woodland Hills Alpaca Farm . She is a most gracious host and I picked up a ton of goodies from her. If you ever feel like you need an education on how to pick a fleece, she is an excellent choice. I’m excited to be dying some of the fleeces that I picked up.

I promised to show what I’ve been spinning lately, which honestly its been a few weeks and these have just been drying in the tub. I guess I’ll make up for it this weekend at the festival.

This is Rocket Yarn’s Batt –they’re very loosely carded crazy batts. I picked up 2oz at the Fiber-In this year. Hanks Yarn has them on occasion. I love her label and the two colors of angelina in the batt. I’ve had other batts where the angelia is all bunched up in one spot and make for weak and scratchy yarn, but hers are well blended and balanced. I core spun it around a black handspun single.

The next one is from my own batts . This particular one is from some teal BFL that we dyed a few months ago blended with some of the samples from the September Phat Fiber box. I spun it as a really thin single thinking I could core ply it around some lace weight jaggerspun. I’m not sure what i was doing wrong, but it came out all bobbly instead of a good round yarn. I’m still debating on how to ply the rest of it. I’ll probably end up doing a navajo ply on it this weekend so i can have my bobbin back.

The next one is another from one of my batts made of a rasberry bfl and Phat Fiber samples plus some ginned cotton that one of my Ravelry buddies sent me.

And finally a thanks to Dyeabolical Yarns for using my picture and mentioning us. This was a gift from my MIL and I spun up some of her roving earlier this year. 3 ply sock weight.

Everybody have a fun and safe Halloween!

Alan Dart’s Witch in my handspun, Fearless Fibers and Regia. Let her boil over with a little roving too.

Doni has been a huge support for our little company since we started dying. She has let us display our products in her shop, pursued new products for us, and given us helpful critiques. Not only that, but Sip & Knit gave me a new outlet for friends. Tuesday Night Knitting is my Zen moment and highlight of every week. If you stop by today make sure to wish Doni a happy birthday!

yummy- Another Mirium Masterpiece

We’ll be at the Brooksville Pioneer Festival November 6th with the Drunken Monkey Spinners and Knead to Knit. Kimberly and I of course are bringing our wheels.

Pioneer Flyer 8-10-1

When we were first testing this site, my husband made a few fake products to populate that portion of the store. Our favorite was this description:

“100% Genuine Hobo Beard Hair
All of our Hobo Hair Fiber is made from actual hobo hair from actual hobos that have been certified to have ridden a minimum of 1,000 miles on a freight train. Unlike some other spinners, we refuse to allow time spent on passenger trains to count in this total.”

At the time this described this lovely batt from Politically Incorrect Yarns.

Well we now have our own line of beard hair: Batty Blends created by whim and our new Louet drum carder. Most of these can be seen at our Etsy version of this store.

I couldn’t stand it and started spinning some of my own. I’ll post those in a couple days when they’re dry. I do have to say they are really fun and create some unusally textured yarn.

We of course appreciate all of your purchases and love to get feed back.

Alice was nice enough to let me borrow one of her pictures. Not only is she one of our favorite customers, but she’s also taught me a lot about spinning.
She favors her homemade drop spindles made from all kinds of found objects.