Fiber Arts Friday ~ Tour de Fleece Week 3

Last Wednesday I was able to spend the day at Curlytwirlybirds for a lovely day of fiber fun.  After working on some things I wanted to accomplish, she asked if I would like to try making an art batt.  Of course I said "YES", so she started pulling out fibers of all kinds and colors to add with the fibers I had brought.

Now for those of you who know me personally, you know that I can be a bit anal (no laughing).  So the use of all these colors just randomly thrown together was quite a change for me to say the least.  I think I actually had the look of a deer in the head lights on my face and kinda of just starred at her for a couple of seconds.  In my head I was thinking, you want me to do what???... as my heart started racing.  Really, just start putting on fiber with no regard to color???....be still my heart.  Well, I must admit, Melissa did have to get me started but after that I threw caution to the winds and jumped right in.

For those who follow Curlytwirlybird, you know that she is also mad crazy about bling!  I haven't used much bling in the years I've been working with our alpaca's fiber but she quickly won me over.  Well, that is after I would put some on and then look at her with a questioning face...is that enough?  Oh no she'd say....you need to add more.  Towards the end of that batt I was using bling, bling and more bling with wild abandon!

She also wanted to show me how to pull the fiber off the drum carder into roving instead of leaving it as a batt.  That was way cool.  In the end I had 4.3 oz of this beautiful roving......

Can you see all that bling, bling?

this is the art yarn I spun from it earlier this week....

I've spent the rest of the week spinning a blend of Merino/Silk in a lovely blue and using this as a time of reflection on today's TDF challenge.

For this challenge, I knew I wanted to try spinning a monochromatic art yarn.  So I carded up white and fawn suri with white merino, white bamboo and some white bling bling....yup, lots of white bling, bling.

mmmm, I'm loving these fibers together. 

Then I started going through my stash to see what I could find to add to get the art yarn affect.

I found some white brushed mohair yarn, a fluffy white yarn called Ricciolo, a cone of a chenille type yarn and white eyelash yarn. 

I wasn't sure how I was going to put this all together but then, as luck would have it, I found an awesome booked called Intertwined, The Art of Handspun Yarn at Lady Peddler.  This is truly an amazing book!!  There was an art yarn in the book where they had used silk rods.  Have you ever heard of silk rods???...well, I'd never had so I asked Jill if she knew what they were.  Not only did she know but she also had some.  I left the store with a new book for inspiration and a bag of silk rods that I thought would be awesome with the white/fawn fiber.  Maybe sometime I will try dying the rods but for this challenge I'm going be using them in their natural color.

So my thought is to spin the white/fawn fiber and then add in the above mentioned items to create a unique art yarn.  Then I'm thinking of plying it with this beautiful yarn from Ironstone Yarns called Bouquet of Colors Mohair/Brushed in a color called Snowflake/5014.  It has beautiful shades of white and light tan....

I love it when things just seem to fall into place.  Now all I have to do is start spinning!!!!

Happy Fiber Arts Friday and good luck to those who are taking part in today's TDF challenge.  Peddle on...we've almost reached the finish line!