Sugar Pie, How I Love Thee

My father had an expression growing up that he'd use frequently when he thought someone had a crazy idea. Always colorful and not really one to mince words, he'd tell them he thought they were "out of their rabbit-assed mind."

Insert Dad's expression here, because I'm nuts.

Last night, I didn't feel like embarking on a major spinning project, or committing to any one batch of anything. And Sugar Pie has been calling me from the wooden chest next to my wheel. You see, she wants to be spun! And there's a whole pound of her white fluffiness waiting for me.

Now I know that a pound of this wool is not going to make me much of anything (the goal, I think, is to try to get enough for a small garment), so I need to figure out what I can combine the wool with and how. Over the weekend, I bought a pair of dog brushes from Petsmart to try my hand at carding on a micro-level. Wool combs are something that I'd love to get as a gift (hint -- my birthday is next month).

Last night, I made some rolags from Sugar Pie to play around, but then I started pulling out my other fibers and carding small bits of the two together. And this is what I ended up with after about an hour:

That's right, it's a bunch of snack-sized Ziploc bags filled with rolags made of Sugar Pie and another fiber. I carded her with purple mohair, with brown varigated merino, with a yellow llama/silk/merino blend, bamboo silk and practically anything else I could put my hands on immediately (not including the beagle hair I have all over the house).

I think my favorite came from combining Sugar Pie with a small amount of moorit wool -- a last minute, impulsive buy in the barns at MS&W. It's slightly tacky (makes me think that not all the lanolin is gone) but it actually spins very well. The problem is, I only have 2 oz in two different colors. Not enough. Oh well. I'll keep playing! The dog brushes seem to work OK to card for now, but I can see why the carders are more popular. They're bigger. If I were to use the dog brushes for the whole job, I'd be carding until this time next year. But they are great for sampling!

On another note, I decided to sample up some plied purple mohair and compare it to the singles that I spun on my spindle way back when. I think the wheel (left) wins. I will try to post a photo a little later. Blogger let me post the other two pics, but it's obviously got a bias against two-ply purple mohair.

Oh, and by the way. Birthday is next month. I'm not in the habit of pointing out gifts, but one of these would be awesome.