Preparing for the Tour

I promised myself last year that this year's tour would be colorful. For two years in a row, I spun only white or natural colored fleece on all three wheels. Never again. I had this bag of Corrie locks that needed carding so I decided that this would be one of this year's projects.

Teasing apart locks is one of my all time favorite pastimes. I never get tired of watching the colors change as the locks become a giant pile of fluff.

Stuffing the fluff into the carder is tricky business but with so much practice lately, I'm happy to say that I get fewer boo boos than I used to. I used to keep band aids in with my carding tools and I even got a tetanus shot to be on the safe side. I handle some pretty yucky stuff

Pulling the batt off of the carder is always exciting. You can never tell what the colors might do.

My fat little batts are so cute. My hand is included here for scale. People are always asking me about the size of my carder. It is a Strauch Mini and it makes a decent sized batt for such a small machine. I am so happy I bought mine when they were still affordable. The price of them now is shocking.

I could store my batts as is but I prefer to turn them into nests. That way they are ready to spin when I am.

It also gives me an excuse to keep playing with the pretty fiber. I split the batt into 4 pieces before winding.

 Pulling them around my hand straightens out the fiber and makes them silky smooth. It also gives me a chance to pull out any yucky stuff that

I could do this all day.

 I only run the batt through once so that I can keep all these big chunks of color. It makes them so much more fun to spin.

I ended up with quite a pile of pretty little nests.Not bad for about an hour's worth of work on an absolutely gorgeous June afternoon.

After weighing every nest, I have exactly 108 grams to spin. That is not going to keep me nearly busy enough for the full Tour so I am going to have some more washing-and dyeing to do before June 30th gets here.