My inner gnome has spoken and I have answered. Frugally.

Last year, I bought some washed fleece at a fiber festival.

Keep in mind, I know pretty much nothing about spinning. Know even less about how to pick fiber, but knew I needed (not wanted- NEEDED) some and the only criteria I went in with were: affordable, nice color, washed. Sure, there were many vendors with amazing displays of roving in beautiful colors, beckoning seductively… “Loook at ussss….we’re ready to spin! All aligned and perrrrfect!” Oh, believe me, I wanted all of it! Wanted it to be mine- ALLLL MINE!

…but no. I was strong.

Fueled by the desire to teach myself, I knew I needed fleece so I could start as close to the beginning as possible. If I could, I would have just come home with some sheep and started there (one day, one fine day..). I had to skip the getting my own sheep step, decided to also skip the washing step because I have neither a big enough sink nor am I ready yet to deal with sheep dingle berries, and started with 3 humble 1-pound bags of fleece. 2 dark brown and 1 cream. One has caramel brown tips, which I suppose some may see as imperfections, but to me, it’s beautiful. Then again, I’ve always found sweet beauty in the imperfect – the runt of the litter, rust, mutts, vegetables that look like they have noses, gargoyles.

One bag I bought was from the first shearing of the sheep. The woman told me this as I was paying her and she smiled a little sadly and patted the bag like a mom watching their child go to their first day of kindergarten. This is my favorite bag and the one I chose to finally do something with.

For the last year, I looked at what I bought and wondered how to prep it. I have no hand cards and didn’t want to buy a set yet because of the cost. How about dog brushes? smaller, but the same concept, right? Well, I priced them and decided it wasn’t cheap enough. I’d be better off just saving my money until I could just get a real set.

But the inner gnome. It wants to play!

So…I went to the Dollar Store and found a dog comb. Guess what- it worked fine! Not something I’d use for the whole bag unless I wanted Popeye arms, but for small amounts, it was perfect. This also allowed me to witness the fibers as they turned from clumps, into lofty clouds. Very primitive, my skill level, and I’m happy walking this slow and imperfect path. If I can understand where something is coming from, I stand a better chance of knowing how ride with it to new destinations.

So here is what I came up with. “After,” on the left, “Before,” on the right. My $1 dog comb peeking in from the top to say, “Hello!”



Now this will be no surprise to most acquainted with wool, but it was a fun surprise to me- dark brown plus cream does not equal light brown! At least in fiber world.



It makes a nice warm grey. Who knew? Not me! The cream roving is actually from some “mandala wool” from the Tandy Leather Company. Never made a mandala, but it was a good price for a bunch of roving. I originally bought it to experiment with felting, but got distracted by knitting.

After about and hour of playing around with the fleece and dog comb, I had a small pile of fluff. Used the CD drop spindle and spun a yard of brown and a yard of grey and liked how they looked in yarn form. Then went on to something else.

Needle felting! Saw this first years ago on the Carol Duvall Show (why did she have to go off air? I miss you Carol!!) and bought a set of needles, but had no good direction on how to create anything beyond lumpy blobs. That is, until a co-worker brought this book by Laurie Sharp in:



I was so impressed by the step-by step photos and the end product, I went out and got my own copy. Check out her blog as well- funny and especially good to read on a down day. Coincidentally, the night I brought home the book, I downloaded some CraftSanity podcasts and what do you know? There was an interview with the author!

Inspired by the book and wanting to make something from my pile of wool, I made…



A pig. Squeal!

This was a gift for a co-worker who wants a miniature pig one day and it was very well-received.








Here’s the oinker from a different angle…I guess you could say he’s HAMMING IT UP! hyuck hyuck!




Alrighty then. I have now made up for the lack of regular blogging by writing one really long one. You still awake?

All this and for what? To tell you about what I did with some hair shaved off an animal.

You know what though? My inner gnome is content.