Big box of tricks

My new toy arrived last weekend; the lady at the post office (who stitches) was very intrigued... I took an hour off last Friday afternoon because I couldn't bear to wait till Saturday...

They do things differently in New Zealand - can't imagine a piece of UK equipment for textiles being advertised by two blokes!

Fabulous minimal packaging - you just slide out the little bit of plywood at the left-hand side and take a wooden block out at the other...

Some (but not much), assembly required...

All sorted...

I know you can make lovely fancy batts with Angelina fibre and so on, and blend different fibres together, and I'll be trying some of that later, but for now, I'm very, very happy to be able to turn this (Jacob fleece from sheep which were reared in the next village)

into these lovely floofy cushions of fibre ready for spinning; all these were done in less than an hour, with a minimum of pre-carding on a hand-carder...

I'm going to be spinning up a lot of grey for the next little while, but I'm so glad to be able to card much faster than I can spin, rather than the other way round - and there are several fleeces around the place (as well as this Jacob, which is the only washed fleece, there are 2 Shetland fleeces, 1 Ryeland (thanks, AnnaT!), 1 Manx Loaghtan and one I bought when I first learned to spin... Unfortunately, the weather isn't really conducive to washing any of the others this weekend so far! The forecast isn't too bad for Sunday and Monday, and I can always finish the drying process in the greenhouse...

I've spun a bit each day over the last week and needed to card another basketful of fleece this afternoon; it's not going to be the finest or most even yarn in the world, but I'm going to try something different by dyeing the singles before plying...