Making progress on my new jewelry displays. This...
...became these:
...and these:
By the way, the solid copper were done in smaller containers proportional to the size of the piece (soup can sized). The colorful ones were in larger containers (coffee cans and small cookie tins). Same glaze on all, just differences in the amount of oxygen available to burn. Cool, huh?
I like both the colorful and the solid copper. Since they're for my jewelry counter, some colored ones will be eye-catching, but too many would be distracting. But they all go together. Btw, my counters are green, so all copper and color shimmers should look awesome on them.
This last raku firing was a good learning experience. Learned the control thing mentioned above. Learned that the small jewelry cabochons we had on a clay shovel and just dropped the whole thing in a container worked great. The little volcanoes on the shovel though...bad. It acted as a heat-sink and the glazes didn't mature. Small amount of those will have to be refired. No big deal.
Also learned how to deal with lots of small pieces. Just dumping several smaller pieces in one container won't work. Tried that the week before. Not good. Too hard to control. If they touch, the glaze sticks to each other and damages both. Have to refire.
Prepping and pulling lots of individual pieces is tricky with logistics of numbers of containers, opening the kiln a lot (losing heat) and dealing with minimizing smoke.
Normally the process is pull a piece, drop/cover, rush it away from area so we can breathe (tons of smoke boiling out). Come back. Rinse and repeat. No biggie with a few larger vases and bowls, but a lot of little things (30+) it's much more complicated.
So combining a couple of ideas, we tried this below:
Soup cans nested in wet sand. To the left, tray of slightly larger and taller cans to act as lids. Instead of wet newspaper to seal the lid (tricky up in a can), just plopped the larger can over, made sure edge was buried and the water in the wet sand acted as the seal. Worked great.
Helper (my teacher) pulls the glowing hot piece from the kiln with long tongs, drops it in the can, the combustibles explode into flames, then I quickly slide the slightly larger can over the flaming smaller can (heavy leather gloves up past my elbows!) and push it all down into the wet sand. The sand starts boiling and steaming like crazy. Some smoke, but not so bad it has to be moved outside the kiln area. Great! Open the kiln again, repeat. Once the cans in the tray are filled, then move it all away to cool. Wait a few minutes for the kiln to heat again, and start pulling the next set of stuff.
I'm just tickled about my new displays I'm working on. I've been wanting to upgrade my jewelry displays for awhile now, but had some very specific needs for the replacements. (See a couple of blog posts ago.) I've been taking pottery classes for awhile and it hit me recently that clay would perfectly solve the problem. I've been playing with raku firing, love the coppery look...well, you can see where this is going.
The coppery tones will look beautiful with my exisiting displays, have an earthiness that goes with my current aesthetic, and meet the specific requirements I needed. Best of all, made them myself. Love blending several skills in one project (clay, wire, metalwork). I have the last couple of steps to finish them off this weekend, then I'll do a blog post at some point with the final products.
Also have been making some other displays:
These are some rose leaves I got from the bridal section at the craft store, pair them together and wrap with floral tape, bend, then hang them from a manzanita tree on my counter. Earrings go in them and it looks like leaves and jeweled flowers/fruit hanging from the tree. Very pretty.
Also for earrings, I need hang cards. I don't like the commercial shiny black plastic ones for display out at the renfair, so I found these neat little stick-on backs that I can use to convert anything to a hang card. I have some nice paper cardstock with a slight shimmer that I use elsewhere. Looks nice and ties everything together.
I've got a wooden display with bars and one of those normal spinner-type displays. I like the tree better, but it takes more space or if I'm low on earrings, I use these instead. Plus if someone buys earrings for a gift, it's a way to present them and I can write the name of the stone on the back.
A lot of big changes around here. I'm completely reworking the website to a cleaner look, reorganized, with more content and PICTURES. I had a lot of "coming soon" on the old website and not very many images. The old software I was using had a big learning curve, proving an impediment to regular updates. I discovered Wordpress, which is much easier, and very customizable. Once I get the basics built (in progress right now), I'm switching out my old one for this site and moving my blog over here as well. I think it's going to be awesome!
Other changes, I just totally revamped my business cards. Love the way the new ones look and much more representative of me. I put a graphic of a close-in view of one of my personal favorite custom pieces, added background color (mine have been white for 20 years), and found a nice clean but artistic looking font that's actually very similar to my handwriting. Very cool.
The renfair is coming up rapidly. This is my last free weekend for the next couple of months. Not like there's much free-time involved this time of year, mind you. In full swing trying to wrap up a to-do list a mile long and finish up my stock goals before the fair starts. I never get everything done, but I think I'll be able to get the critical stuff done.
It's a little stressful getting ready, but I really enjoy it once it's here. Seeing friends I haven't seen in a year, both fellow merchants and patrons...it's weird. Once I see them, it feels like I just saw them last week and the year hasn't existed. Very nice. Great to see everyone and it's like slipping on a really comfortable pair of old shoes. Like going home. Nice. This season will be my 21st year out there. Hard to believe. Time has flown.
This is another thing I've been up to lately.
All the temperature changes and thermal shocks, on purpose, produce a crazing in the glaze. The burning material will turn any cracks or unglazed areas black.
The oxygen reduction atmosphere and other factors react with the glazes, like with the copper-containing ones, it will create utterly unique and unpredictable results.
Another person is working the sliding kiln door so that it's not open too long and loses a minimum of heat. It's possible with only two people, but it's easier to work more quickly with someone working the door. The idea is to not lose too much heat from the kiln while the door is open, or let the piece cool too much before it is put in the combustibles. Although some let it cool a bit...that whole thermal shock thing, more crazing in the glaze.
Standing ready, one of the students has the lid wrapped in layers of wet newspaper ready to cover the cannister once the piece is in.
Here's some of my little bowls, buttons and the diz laid out. Awesome! Love some of the effects I got. I keep notes on what I did, but by its nature, raku is hard to reproduce. But that is what makes it special.
My week ended like this:
It started with a little dilemma.
The problem with selling jewelry is how to display it. There's a fine line between being boring and ho-hum, but the jewelry stands out...and being interesting and eye-catching, but not so much it distracts away from the jewelry.
My displays at the renfair have seen 20+ years of use with me, and they were used velvet commercial displays to begin with. Plus, being outside, we have additional issues with weather and dirt. Looking a little tatty, to be kind. I've been working on replacing them the last couple of years.
Ideally, I'd like to make them instead of buying, because of the expense (commercial display costs are outrageous). Also be somewhat easily replaceable (my current ones aren't made anymore and my display will look like a hodge-podge flea-market with too much of a mix. Replacements have to be able to be complete or blend in very well. I don't want to have this mismatch issue again). And critically, they need to work well outdoors at the renfair atmosphere and weather.
My wishlist for new displays:
-weather resistant (moisture, dirt)
-inexpensive to make
-heavy (cheap necklace displays sail like kites)
-won't shop-wear easily
-easy packing/unpacking (daily for us)
-easily replaced/reproduced (my dilemma now)
-not overtly modern-appearing (renfair, remember?)
-not an enormous time-investment to make
-unique if possible, particularly appropriate to me
-distinctive if possible (eye-catching but not distracting)
Not a lot to ask, right? Ok, just weather-resistant and cheap, but not cheap-looking, would be lovely.
I'm expanding a little on some ideas I started last year, and finally have come up with what I think will be a solution for nicer individual earring displays, and pendant/necklace displays that a gust of wind won't send sailing off the counter to get bent hitting the floor. I'm sick of taping and nailing stuff down.
This last couple of weeks, along with stock and other renfair prep (it starts in a month--ack!), I've been making more of my normal displays and also some prototypes for the new display ideas.
Speaking of prototypes...
...this followed me home from the hardware store the other day. The clerk by the giant rolls of wiring in the electrical department looked at me a little strange when I asked for a couple feet each of solid-core copper in heavier gauges (10-16awg). He especially looked at me a little strange when I was test-swirling the ends in pretty little loops.
I've had an idea for a free-standing earring display. In the past, I hadn't worked out the balance problem (base either needs weight or size so it isn't tippy, plus it needs to be in my skills and tool availability to make). Plus, whatever goes in the base needs to be sturdy, easy to make, and fit with the look I want.
Now that I'm taking clay this past year, bingo! Clay: has weight, any shape, reproduceable, low cost, weather-resistant, reasonably sturdy, doesn't take too much time investment to make, and unique.
Yippee! And using clay as a medium opens doors on several other solutions to display design challenges. Now, to figure out the top, since that affects the design of the base. And the bases have to be done this weekend so they'll have time to be fired and finished in time.
I get the test-wire home, get my tools out, and ooooh boy, this isn't the kind of wire that's meant to strip easy. Had to do 1-2" at a time. Took 30 minutes to do enough to bend for the test-run idea. And has a gouge at every cut spot. Will need to source bare wire if this works, since I estimate needing 30-50 feet. For the time involved, I'd rather make jewelry than strip wire.
It works! The 12-gauge turned out to be the right combination of strength, so it won't get bent easily, and bendability, so that I can shape it like I had in mind. I like the shape a lot. Functional, but pretty. Free-handed, so each one will be a little unique. Basically, the design is a magnified version of the swirly-viney jewelry I do, and made out of wire, too, so it's particularly appropriate. For extra strength (well, and it's pretty) I hammered it a bit on my bench block with one of my chasing hammers.
With a successful design and clarity on the amount and gauge of wire, I located an Internet supplier that had what I needed for the tops, plus some copper sheet to experiment on for the other display I'm wanting to make. A few clicks and a couple of days later, we have the picture at the top of the post. Thanks, Internet!
At clay class, now to design the prototypes for the freestanding earring bases, and also for bases to hold the backs for pendant and neckpieces (think glorified recipe card holder, but heavier).
For the earring bases, the urgency on making the wire prototype earlier was because it affected the clay design: how big of a hole for the wire size, how deep to be secure, how much clay for the base and the shape it needs so it won't be tippy or too fragile.
For the look, I wanted something organic, like a little mini-mountain, versus clean and structured. The swirly top echoes my wire jewelry, and a bottom shaped like rough-hewn rock echoes that earthy part of my jewelry. My counters have vines on them and my current display colors are earthy and natural (browns, blacks and greens). With each base uniquely shaped but easy to match, later additions are easier. I'm planning on raku-firing these with a matte copper glaze that will show off the underlying texture and shape. I think the unique results and serendipity of the raku technique will also be very fitting with the overall theme.
In the picture above, the copper swirl is standing in the test-base. The bright yellow rib is in the other base (the final insert will be about the width of the yellow rib, but taller and made of copper too...a coming post, that one.)
With successful prototypes, I made a bunch of earring bases. I only made a few of the other style for pendants since I'm still working out the insert prototype, but it's close. Need something to test. More if it works. If not, back to the drawing board. It's only mud after all.
Here's an interesting set of wire jewelry I recently finished.
This was a custom order, part her stones and part mine. We started off with an alternating brown and blue goldstone beaded necklace of hers. She wanted something more substantial and eye-catching in the front, like a pendant that looked like it was part of (beaded into) the necklace strand. Also a ring and earrings to match. Everything gold and silver, mixed.
I pulled out my stash of goldstone cabachons and she picked out the stones for the necklace and ring. I thought it'd be neat to create this as an enhancer that would be removable so that it could be worn separately or added to different beads or chips.
I did a rough sketch of the design, a similar construction to a piece I did about 12-15 years ago that turned out kinda cool. I hadn't tried to do the enhancer part as opposed to closing it permanently, but no reason it shouldn't work. Kind of figure it out when I get there.
The thing I like about this kind of work is I'll start with a general idea, then things sort of develop as I go along.
The first step, always, with wire is guesstimating the length of wire to cut. I had to cut longer than normal because I intended to wrap the large stone, then split at the top and wrap two more.
Then, because I split the number of wires (V-shape over stone in pic above), I'm short by half the wires I need for the next bezel. Now to add an inner course of wires (arc above V-shape and inner long wires) to complete the interior bezels of both upper stones. The trick is keeping all the wire bundles together and not allowing things to bunch up. I use loose bindings from scraps to temporarily hold things together (little bumps along those long wires).
It wound up a cool serendipity that instead of three or four wraps a couple of places, I did a longer course of permanent wraps for the interior course. The resulting gentle arc between the split-V wound up visually echoing the lower multiple wraps on the bottom cabachon. Neat.
Notice all the extra wire, Just In Case. I can always chop off the extra and use scraps elsewhere, but can't grow wire longer. Get stingy initially with the length and run out later, now have trashed ALL the wire and time.
Once the tops of the second bezels were together, now how to do the enhancer part so that it's secure while on, but removable. And will accomodate a heavy chain or such. I wound up wrapping them with multiple wraps to echo the other components, then curled them over in enough of an arc to stay put, large enough circle for a chain, and just open enough to slip on and off the cord the beads are strung on.
It came out very striking looking with very clean lines. Bold but feminine. And functions the way I wanted. Also pictured are the earrings.
Forgot to get a pic with it actually on the beads, so use your imagination. Kind of a nice change of pace. I don't do this construction often, and I enjoy creating something that meets that balance of aesthetic and functionality, and working through a technical question.
With this one, I put it on the mental back-burner for a couple of days. I figured something similar, but which particular wires so that it still had strength and then transitioning the orientation of them, I had to work that out. I like how it turned out.
Revisiting a couple of projects...first, an update on the weaving. After threading the loom (previous post), I decided that the sett (how close the threads are to each other) was too loose. Way too loose. Figured out where I erred in my initial calculations, but now to fix the problem.
This particular board holds a max of twelve yards. On this project, my warp is six yards long, so I measured a piece of yarn six yards long and played with zigzagging until I found the right combination of pegs (notice some are skipped) and leave it there as a guide. Then I set my cone of yarn on the floor and and wound 270 more passes. Took a couple of hours.
There's a critical alternating cross on the top row of pegs that is what is used to keep the threads in order once the warp chain is tied to keep threads from tangling and bunching up. When I spread it back out to thread the loom, I use that to know which thread is next.
Before removing all this from the warping board, with regular yarn, I put in several ties to keep everything tidy and manageable. First, a circular one that goes around the cross to preserve it (important!), a couple of tight ones near the ends, and semi-tight ones every few feet to keep the threads together. As I remove it from the board, I start at the bottom and chain the entire group with my hand like a giant crochet chain. This makes it much shorter to manage and is so common, all these threads ready to be warped are often referred to as a warp chain. At this point, I could also throw it in a box and save it for later.
Here, with Rory's help of course, I first spent a couple of hours moving over and rethreading the first set of threads. Four more hours, got the new threads sleyed (threaded) in the reed.
Now it's time to go around to the back of the loom and pull threads through so they're long enough to thread the heddles at the center of the loom. The heddles are thin metal rods (on my loom) with an eye in the middle that are strung on bars on the harness frames. The harnesses move up and down when I step on the treadles and raise pattern threads. The combination of the threaded heddles, which treadles are attached to which harnesses, and the order of the treadling--all these affect which threads are raised, producing the pattern in the woven fabric.
On my loom, it has a high castle (that raised center part Rory likes to lay on to "help"). The floor of the castle is removable, then I can unscrew the harnesses from the treadles and lift them out through the castle.
Rory is a bit disturbed to find the floor of the castle missing. Where's he going to lay to oversee things?!
The heddles are strung on flexible heddle bars that I can bend slightly to get the end loose from the frame and slip heddles on and off.
Now that all that is fixed, it's time to thread the heddles. This is where I'm at now.
The other project update is the fiber blending for a specific style of yarn I wanted to spin and also fiber batts I wanted to use for my spinning group holiday gift exchange (today) . Last attempt, I liked the blend, personally, but not for either purpose.
For the spinning group gift, I wanted something softer and in a color palette most people would like.
I wound up using some soft blue, purple and a bit of burgundy wool from my stash. I Love purple and brown together, so I also threw in some scrumptious brown llama. I wanted a bit of silky softness and shine but none of my stash silk roving was the right color (wanted something purplish), so I stopped by my friend Michele's (fiberlady.com) after pottery class Saturday. I found some yummy bamboo (shiny pile in middle of picture) in a nice purple, touch of pink, and copper.
A little bit of quality-time with the drumcarder and we have a couple of very lovely batts (below).
My spinner's group had their holiday meeting today. The gift exchange is always hilarious. It's the kind where all the gifts go in the middle and we draw numbers, and when it's your turn, you can pick from the pile or steal someone else's. I wound up with 6 ounces of soft brown alpaca roving. I think it will go nice with some black and silver alpaca in my stash for a scarf or something.
Of course, while I was picking fibers to blend from my stash, Alaric found it all very entertaining.
For my other project, a specific yarn (drapey, very soft, highly textured, shades of blue), this pile of bamboo also followed me home from Michele's. I'm in love with these colors. Great for my project, plus some. Part of it I'll spin highly textured, and what's left I'll probably spin very fine (weft for weaving) which should make the colors blend quite a bit and read as a shimmer.
So the good news is that I got my drumcarded batt for the yarn gift spun. Bad news is that, while I rather like it, it's not quite fitting for the project I was thinking (not as fluffy and bouncy), and not quite as soft. Below is the batt I did on the drumcarder the other day (see previous blog post).
I think the percentage of one of the blends I added had a little too much adult mohair and Romney wool. I like the strength, body, and hairiness, but the percentage of higher micron sized fibers is making it slightly prickly. I had some merino wool, silk and kid mohair, but the balance is a bit off. Didn't use as much of the merino because the dark color of what I had was muting the overall color.
Also, the majority of the fiber was a longer staple length (length of individual fibers). That makes it trickier to not spin as dense. And density adds to the prickle-factor. This yarn came out with a nice halo, as planned, but dense and not as lofty as I'd hoped. It'll be great for showing stitch definition, but a light-weight fluffy yarn it's not.
I do like the electric green kid mohair I added. I've found adding a small amount of a slightly uncomfortable color (in thus case a high-value complement of the dominant purple color) gives it a pizazz. Squint your eyes and visualize the blend without the green. Much duller, huh?
On spinning the batt, the first thing I usually do is tear it into fluffy strips.
Then pre-draft or attenuate the strips so they're thinner and longer. Once a strip is attenuated, I wind it into a loose nest and pile those up, ready to spin.
When I have a bobbin of single-ply I can leave it as is, spin another bobbin or two and ply all that, or just self-ply it back on itself. Or to preserve color shifts and have less blending, can ply making sort of a long crochet chain 3-ply. Or can play with tension and make something highly textured. In designing yarn, there are all sorts of choices.
In this case, I wound a center-pull ball and plied from both ends for a two-ply yarn. Once the spinning and plying is done, then I wind it in a big loop on a tool called a niddy-noddy. It's the wooden stick in the picture that has the cross pieces on both ends. This is a simple tool that is pretty ancient. I've seen a book with a picture of one found in an unearthed Viking ship. Quite a few fiber tools today have changed very little from their ancestors. I like that feeling of connection with ages past. We do it for enjoyment rather than necessity today, but the basic action is the same. Kinda neat.
The idea of making a big loop is a couple of reasons. If the yarn is going to be dyed, it needs to be loose so the dye can penetrate, but contained so it won't tangle in the water. (I tie loose figure-eights at least a couple of spots always, with each end of the yarn. If submersion dyeing, I'd secure it with more like six ties.) Along those same lines, when I wet-finish, I don't want it to tangle while I'm swooshing it around in the water and hanging it to dry (see a couple posts ago regarding wet-finishing). Also, it can be twisted into a skein (below) for storage. I like skeins for storage, rather than balls (unless loose), so that it doesn't put a lot of tension on the yarn and stretch it out.
So, time for Plan B. Next week I'm going to get some dyed alpaca and bamboo, and then use a different spinning technique. That should give the texture, sheen, and drape I'm looking for.
As for this yarn, really like it. I think I'm going to go ahead and spin the other batts since I've switched projects, so I'll have a bit more yardage. I'm not hung up on everything being next-to-skin soft out of fine wool or luxury fibers. There's a use for everything. What makes a scrumptious scarf makes a crummy hard-wearing sturdy bag.
Hm, speaking of bags, this would probably make really good weft for a woven bag. Would need to spin the warp still. This yarn ain't it. Remember the deliberately making it hairy? Hairy yarn is grabby and insanity-inducing in a warp. There's ways to work with a hairy warp if you just want to. I don't. Not at all. A similar fiber content, prepared and spun differently to be worsted-style or smooth versus woolen-style or fuzzy will work. Hm, will have to dig through the stash. Sounds like a project for next quarter...
And also on the subject of bags, made some clay buttons in class. I was wanting some buttons to use on woven bags that had larger holes (and no rule it has to be 2 or 4-holed). I like the darker mottled green of the bigger on and the subtle beige-pale green of the smaller two. I think they'll look great with natural or earthy colored wool or the neutral-palette cotton I'm thinking of.
These few days off during the Thanksgiving holidays, I've been working on several random projects. The ongoing weaving project will be in an upcoming post.
Next week it's back to work and clearing the decks of old business before the turn of the year. That means some outstanding jewelry stuff, plus my fall projects and house goals. Start the new year fresh and new set of goals (the standard long term goals, but also very specific goals that I focus on quarterly).
On the jewelry front, did a batch of earrings for a shop. I like to get out little piles of beads within a particular palette and play with them until I'm happy with the combination or the look I'm going for.
I tend to deliberately not do a lot of duplication of identical earrings because it gets boring really fast. I like to just sort of follow my inspiration at the moment. I do have some regular styles I do, but there's a lot a variation within that style. Below are several earrings I thought turned out especially pretty.
At pottery class, I picked up several items that were done with the final step, the glaze firing, and brought them home. At this stage of things, I'm focusing on learning control throwing pottery on the wheel and experimenting with various glaze combinations. I have a notebook I keep everything in. Pottery has so many steps over many weeks, once more than a few pieces are in process it's hard to remember what's where or what you did if you want to reproduce it. So, I write down everything.
These two bowls I threw maybe my second or third week of class. They're a bit thick, but the walls are nice and even. Will be perfect for soup or icecream. The first small bowl, the picture doesn't show it great, but it came out kind of a mottled blue-green with bits of brown. Glad I wrote it down since I'll try this glaze combination again. Glazes can be tricky since how thick/thin or application method can affect them radically, and layering them can be unpredictable since the chemicals will sometimes combine between them in wholely unanticipated ways. This little bowl is a good example of that.
The larger of the bowls, different set of glazes and application method. The black on the outside really traveled (was just around top edge). Notice the carved rings filled with black on the sides? I didn't do that. It just filled in on its own. Couldn't have done that if I'd tried. Interesting, huh?
The small items in my hands are diz, a disk with a hole in the center, and is used as a tool with fiber combs when processing sheep fleece to prepare it for spinning using a drop spindle or my spinning wheel.
I'll do pics of fleece combing some other time. The metal one is explained below. The other two I did in class to see if I could make them out of clay. I put a lot of texture on the outside (showing) and then iron oxide to turn them that leather brown color. The functional surface is actually the inside, concave and smooth glazed to funnel fiber smoothly toward the hole.
Overall, I was experimenting and am pretty happy with the result. The only thing, I was guessing on the hole size. The older metal one has the hole at a size I like. Seeing them all together in the picture, the holes in the clay ones are much bigger. Will see if okay when I try them out. If not, it's just hardened mud anyway...and back to the drawing board. I'd say they're a success, but need to test-drive them.
The diz below is one I made a while back in jewelry fabrication class. The back is copper sheet and the design is inspired from a 10th century illuminated manuscript that I had in my sketchbook (in background). I used a jeweler's handsaw to cut it from thin brass sheet and solder it to the copper. Tricky to get them both hot enough to solder without melting the brass (way less and thinner metal than the copper). I did melt it in one spot, but that's okay. It was a learning thing.
I think I have a thing about pretty tools. Tools you use alot should be good quality and enjoyable to both use and look at. Plus, I tend to prefer making pretty but utilitarian things, no matter what the object or medium.
Anyway, I really like that viney motif I did in metal and thought I'd try it in clay. This is a hollow form I threw with extra thick walls so I could carve it. The item is a paperweight or breadwarmer.
I waited until it had dried to leather-hard (not gooey anymore, but still moist and not crumbly). I made a small version of a wire loop tool that I had but needed something more delicate. I took some half-round wire from my stash, bent it, and an old ball-point pen and some super-glue later, the perfect tool! Then, using a point, I lightly free-handed the design, then slowly carved it out using my new improvised tool. Cleaned up the details with my needle tool. If I do much of this, I may try to get a set of wax carving tools from my jeweler's tool supply.
For a first carving effort, I'm pretty darn pleased with it. Now to let it dry so it can be bisque-fired (first firing to harden it), then to glaze (I'm thinking iron oxide) and fire it again.
Next, I needed to blend some fibers on my drumcarder for an upcoming holiday gift exchange, and also some for me to spin into yarn for a gift I'll need soon.
This pile of fibers is wool, silk, and mohair from various parts of my stash. The fluffy ropes ("roving") are technically ready to spin, but they can also be blended together into something new. I want the resulting yarn to be lofty, bouncy, textured, and a little hairy, so that made a difference on the fibers, in addition to the color palette. Also added some metallic sparkle.
This is the fibers being blended in my drumcarder. This is basically a bigger version of traditional flat hand-held cards, just more volume.
The resulting sheet of layers of fiber is referred to as a "batt". The most common way to spin it is to tear it into strips, attenuate those, then spin the yarn.
And of course no project is complete without Rory making himself at home. It's especially enticing if he thinks I probably don't want him to lay on it.
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