I've had a little blogging holiday; in truth I think I was sulking a little bit because my internet connection is so unreliable, and it was so infuriating trying to update the blog when a photo took two hours to load. If it loaded at all.   However, things have been a little better lately, so I will give it another go.

I've been busy with the usual round of postie work and quilting and designing.  I haven't even been in my sewing room much, too distracted by piles of fleece. One was 30 years old, bought for me by my mum before I moved to Queensland in 1981.  All these years I have treasured it; I didn't have a wheel in Queensland, so I couldn't spin it there, and anyway, it was too hot and humid to even think of working with fleece.  It's been bundled up all those years, and I didn't once unpack it completely, knowing I would tangle it up.  But I finally decided the time had come to deal with it, so I dumped it all out on the floor and started to sort it.

It's terribly 'crispy'; the lanolin has hardened, and the locks feel quite dry and brittle; I wasn't even sure that it was worth spinning, but I had to give it a try.  I've been handwashing the locks a little at a time, then combing them and spinning them into a sockweight yarn. 

 Amazingly, the fibre is still so strong that almost none of it breaks in the combing process, and the resulting yarn is lovely.  All these years I thought it was just dark grey, and it turns out there was a beautiful light grey patch hiding inside.  The yarn is still a bit uneven, but I choose to see that as 'charming', rather than a fault.

I've also been spinning up some blue roving I purchased a couple of years ago.  It's so nice to be able to spin it without any preparation, and I do love the colours. 

 But somehow I love raw fleece so much more, even with the lengthy sorting, washing and combing time.  I just love taking something so basic and turning it into useable yarn.  It satisfies the peasant in me.


 I think I've been spinning ,because my sewing room is in such a state;  I just stand in the doorway, shaking my head over the piles of scraps, and a bit paralysed by the amount of them.  Yesterday I got stuck into sewing HSTs for this scrap quilt,

and today I want to sew more blocks, and then tackle this drawer full of 2.5" strips. 

I need to see the back of this lot, I can't even get it back in the cabinet it's so full.  So it will be a major cutting day today, and we'll see if there's any progress to report tomorrow.

It only took 35 minutes to load these pictures, things are improving.....