lovely lovely wool

I love wool, the feel of it and particularly the smell of it. I love it most when it is fresh from the sheep, raw, straight from nature, just like stones, leaves, shells and twigs (I'm particularly thinking of willow twigs to make baskets from). My house is full of these things, they are free, beautiful and can simply go back to nature when I need to move on.

I spent 2 months in Norway 4 years ago rolling fleeces all day most days. It was heaven for a wool lover like me, arm full of wool, taking great sniffs when I thought no one was looking. Unfortunately, apart from the heaven of having my arms full of fresh wool all day, I have never been so miserable in my life...but that is definitely another story..

Anyway...back to wool



nice white wool, washed and drying in the sun




not so nice brown wool, ditto



carders and rolags (I beg your pardon?)



me with my drop spindle in action




drop spindle with nice white wool



jumper front



jumper back



flower on arm that I'm particularly proud of

Well, in case you think I've just whipped up this little jumper recently I'd better set you straight. I finished it last winter and it was somewhere in the region of 7 or 8 years in the making.

I did however spin it all on the little drop spindle seen in the above pictures. I used to live in a very small space and a spinning wheel would not have been very practical. I now live in a bigger space but I am still rather fond of my drop spindle.

 I also dyed some of the wool with natural dyes, mainly onion skins. I didn't use a pattern because the wool was so uneven, and I'm not very good at following patterns. As I'm not much of a knitter it's a pretty weird shape. The left arm was far too narrow for example and if you look in the back view you can see a croched insert. I'm not sure I want any 'good' knitter to get a close up look, I don't think they'd like what they saw, but I love it very much.

I'm not sure what I'm going to make with the next lot of wool. A bedspread would be nice, but I might be about 80 when it's finished.

....and thank you for your comments below, I can't seem to reply. I loved the spinning, it was the knitting that drove me nuts, I'm not much of a knitter but I felt I had to do SOMETHING with all the wool!