Cheese!

A few weeks ago I found the Nundle Woollen Mill through Google and had a look in their Spinners and Weavers section where I found something they were selling called "Cheeses", so I sent off an enquiry via their form which unfortunately didn't get answered so I sent them an email asking for details about these cheeses. This is what I got told:

Our cheeses are 23 micron Polwarth fibre (carded and separated in about 3mm widths)

So I put in an order, and at $25 for a kg I thought it'd be good to try out. Thursday there was a slip in my letterbox saying I had a parcel, which mum kindly picked up for me when she was downtown. Opening up the bag this is what was inside..

Four cheeses.
An individual cheese which weights roughly 350 grams or more. Altogether there's 1.3kgs!

The raw width of the Polwarth fibre and it's so lovely and soft!

Out of interest I got out one of my lovely Spindlemaker spindles and started spinning up some, however the 30g Tassie Blackwood/Wattle one seemed a bit too light so I got out my big 50g
Budgeroo/Blue Gum spindle and started spinning. Without the worry of having to draft it spins up quite quickly and last night I sat on my bed with the spindle over the edge of the bed spinning roughly a metre at a time.

This is the thickness it's spinning up at. I'm very happy with this wool and now I just need to work out what colours I want to dye it when I finish at least 100g of it.


In other spinning news I finished a batch of English Leicester fleece. I did about 120 grams and got over 220 metres of a real fine yarn (roughly 17 WPI), some of the fleece I washed but some still has the lanolin in it cause I started with washed fleece and went back to unwashed when I was comfortable with spinning on the fold.

The flicked fleece, with it's pale tips left in for effect.

A super macro shot of the yarn, due to camera settings the picture has a slight blue tone to it.

The EL in the sun
All skeined up.

This is going to get turned into a pair of Knucks minus the writing at the moment, they're in mum's "To Knit" pile which doesn't have a lot in it but lately it's been way too hot to knit!

I'll have to post again before I head off for Tocal, only 3 short weeks to go!

Introducing.... Ida

On Saturday night I took the 8 hour train trip down to Sydney to meet Tia and pick up my wheel. Getting in around 7am on Sunday morning I was met around 8 by Tia and Issy we then went to Burwood Westfield for some breaky and shopping. Around 11 we went back to the station so I could get the 11:45am train back home.

Introducing.... IdaIda is a Sheridan Matilda, not sure about when she was made but she'd be 30 years old, at least. She's a double drive and so far she's really liking me and I'm spinning up quite fine yarn! After I finish this next lot of 'self striping' yarn I might give some of that yummy angorino stuff a go.

She'll also be fantastic for Tocal, she's so small and takes up less room than a chair, I also have a nice big laundry basket to store my fibre in... and a dozen or so calico bags to store fibre in. Got two things sorted out for college at least! In the next few weeks it'll be time to buy some clothes, get some op-shop jeans for working and next week I go looking for riding boots.

Spinning wise I've done some beautiful yellow, orange, red and pink yarn that I've called "Sunny", it's going to be a lovely iPod/mp3 player bag for my friend in Brisbane, when I can find the right pattern. I got about 170m out of the 100grams, it's finer than what I usually spin so I'm surprised!
Very happy with how it's turned out.