The first 5 rovings are up for sale at the Etsy store! I spent the morning outside taking pictures of the rovings I’ve dyed so far, with Jag acting as wool taxi, and the afternoon getting the photos all picked through and post-processed. Then I crossed my fingers and opened the store. I’m reasonably happy with the pictures I managed to get, which use a cute metal cat Greg gave me a few years back as a prop.

Here are some pictures of the three new rovings I dyed on Saturday, with the metal kitty:

Sweet Petunia, Merino top.

Dreaming of September, Merino top.

Rocky Shore, superwash merino.

We’ll see how it goes. I comfort myself with the thought that I really like everything I’ve dyed so far, so if nothing sells, I GET TO KEEP THEM HAHAHAHA. It would sure be nice to sell a few, though!

1.) My crappy new health insurance company (hi there, AETNA), which requires that you mail-order all prescriptions after you’ve had them refilled twice at retail. And doesn’t tell you about this little requirement. And then just flatly refuses to pay their share of the prescription when you show up at the drug store to pick up your latest installment, so you end up paying full price because you kinda need that prescription right now, which is why you have “refills” in the first place.

2.) VistaPrint, the online business card company. I ordered cards from them August 2 and paid extra for their 7-day processing and shipping. The ship notification came on August 4. By August 14, still no sign of the cards. I contacted DHL about the tracking number listed on the VistaPrint web site (which had showed as permanently “Shipping Info Received” since August 4) and DHL had no record of ever receiving the package. I called VistaPrint; the first CSR took my info, put me on hold, and promptly hung up on me. The second kept putting me on hold due to “system problems” and being unable to track down a supervisor, and was unable do so anything for me except order a re-print at the same priority as the last one, which meant waiting at least another week for something that should have arrived days ago. I cancelled the order, asked for a refund, and ordered MOO cards instead with happy imported-from-Flickr pictures of my hand-dyed rovings on them. They’ll ship from London, but I bet I’ll get them before this coming Friday.

Here are the two more subdued rovings I did last night. They came out REALLY fluffy and nice. I’m trying different methods of rinsing/soaking after dyeing to see what works best.

I’ve discovered that 1.) I’m running out of blue dye and 2.) all of my rovings except ONE has some blue in the color mix, so my challenge to myself for the next three rovings is to use no blue dye at all. Apparently I really like blue.

“Sing Blue Silver”, targhee wool.

“Fairy Garden”, a bigger-than-usual 6oz-er of Columbia/Dorset

I forgot to take pictures of these tonight until it was getting pretty dark out, but here are the three rovings I dyed on Tuesday evening:

Jeans and an Orange Sweatshirt, Targhee wool top.

Open Water, Merino wool.

A Day at the Bazaar, Merino wool.

It’s occurred to me that although I like really bright saturated colors, not everyone does, so I dyed up 2 more subdued rovings this evening. Pictures of those probably tomorrow.

I’ve dyed 7 rovings in the past 2 evenings; the first 4 were dry enough to photograph when I got home after work last night. The other 3 dried fully last night and are braided up, but the light this morning was bad (and then there’s the issue of the RAIN making it hard to take outside pictures). I really need to make a light box for photographing these things. I want to have at least 12 rovings ready to go before I start updating the store.

I’ve had my first experience dyeing superwash merino, and it’s a super pain in the ass. It’s like dandelion fluff. Wonderfully soft, but damn does it want to be cotton candy and shred all over the sink. The regular Merino and Targhee I dyed last night were great to work with by comparison, and they dry up so soft, fluffy and plump. I suspect I just don’t like superwash wool very much, period. I have some Wensleydale that I want to try dyeing up tonight.

Assuming that it’s not pouring rain when I get home, I’ll post pictures of the newest three rovings this evening, but here some samples of the first four:

Ice Palace (Columbia/Dorset)

Tropical Sunset (Superwash Merino)

Dappled Firs (Superwash Merino)

Sea and Sand (Columbia/Dorset)

I’ve just posted my first entry on www.crazycatfibers.com, my “shop blog” for the soon-to-open Etsy store. It’s about the same info as I have below, so no need to rush over. I plan to update it every time I do a shop update, the first of which will hopefully happen later this week if the shipment of roving arrives tomorrow as expected. It’s going to be a busy couple of evenings! Stupid day job.

The Autumn Bliss roving that Jag and I dyed is spun, plied, washed, and whacked, and is nearly dry from hanging out on the porch. 4.8oz/139gm of fiber, 520 yards of sport to light worsted weight 2-ply yarn. I’m looking at shawl and shrug patterns so I can get to knitting with it ASAP.

Jag is moving along with his weaving project. It’s been slow going, and there are mutterings about his never doing tapestry weaving again, but he’s finding ways to speed things up and has made a good bit of progress. The fabric he’s making is very sturdy and the color transitions are looking pretty much perfect now.

The lovely, unseasonably mild weather so far this weekend makes me wish it was October already. Jag and I drove down to Little River Park this morning for a walk, after first heading to West Point on the Eno and finding that the gates were still unaccountably chained shut at 8:55am (they open at 8am, according to the signs).

In keeping with the autumnal theme, I plied up the first bobbin of the Autumn Bliss roving today. I’m really thrilled with how it’s turning out. I’m hoping to get the rest of the roving spun up and all plied by the end of the day, mainly so I have something to put on my new “shop blog” (link to come later).

From this:

To this:

This past weekend was pretty good, despite my being on an electronic leash the entire time. (The pager handoff is tomorrow morning; I feel like drinking a bottle of wine tomorrow night, just because I CAN). In addition to Starrlight Meadery’s very tasty and fun Mead Day celebration hosted at the Chatham Hill Winery in Morrisville (in which I regretfully had to limit my participation, due to the above-mentioned leash), there was the predictable craft activity.

I’ve spun up an entire bobbin of the “Autumn Bliss” roving, and I can’t wait to get the second one filled so I can ply them together.

Jag has made some more progress on the wool and cotton 2-color weaving he’s working on; you can see here how the colors are going to zig-zag back and forth.

I finished knitting up the ribbed mini-scarf with my first 98 or so yards of plied, hand-dyed handspun. This is a very cute and useful project if you have limited amounts of yarn. After it’s washed and blocked I’ll be looking for a large button to sew on.

Finally, I’ve decided to stick my toe into the Etsy waters and see if I can sell some of my hand-dyed rovings and various other items. The virtual shelves will be empty for at least another week and a half, but in the meantime, here’s my little storefront, crazycatfibers.etsy.com. If I can sell a few things, great; if not, I won’t have to buy any spinning fibers for many months.

It looks like I didn’t manage to felt the Merino roving; it dried soft and fluffy, anyway, and it sucked up the dye like a vacuum cleaner. The ProChem dyes I’m using don’t want to give me large areas of clear bright yellow, which is annoying since I’ve tried twice with strong solutions of the yellow they label as their primary yellow (with vinegar and salt, too), but I’m happy with the results anyway.

I’m getting a kick out of making up fake colorway names for these. I always wanted to be the person who made up the silly names for lipstick and nail polish colors.

Here we have “The Lupine Bandit“:

And “Red Delicious”:

I’m spinning up the Autumn roving now at Jag’s suggestion. I want a barber-pole 2-ply heavy worsted, so I’m spinning thicker singles than before. So far, so good….