But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them.
– Jim Croce

I spent today in meetings and doing paperwork for the Craft Council. Since becoming Vice Chair (which entails attending both Executive and Board meetings) I appear to be spending an increasingly large amount of time in meetings, most of which are actually quite well-managed and incredibly productive, but which also severely cut into my studio time. It’s a juggling act that I’m only now getting used to, but worth it (I think).

I managed to squeeze a few hours of productive time out of the afternoon and dyed up some roving. Mostly, though, I sorted out colour schemes and plotted tomorrow’s forays.

The results of the past few days are looking quite promising. In fact, I haven’t had any true disasters yet (touch wool) and everything I’ve made has proven successful. Not always as planned, mind you, but useful. That said, my accuracy in predicting results has shot WAY up since doing all that colour swatching and measurement recording. Tedious as it sounds, it not only worked, but it worked brilliantly.

Here’s a yellow to red progression, prior to steaming. The oranges are more subtle once steamed and dried than they appear here:

And the resulting fibre, mostly dry:

And here are some damp, sad-looking roving:

They always look bedraggled and hopeless when wet, but they plump up beautifully after:

The above fibres include Blue-face Leicester wool, Merino wool, Falkland wool and a Merino-Silk blend.

I’m delighted with how the marine colours have come out and am really looking forward to spinning the test samples. There was no felting of anything (I was particularly careful of this) and the loft and sheen of the various fibres really makes the colours glow.

The great thing about all this is that my results and colour schemes will be replicable, so selling and marketing them becomes that much easier.