justification

last week after finishing the shetland, i was searching for the next thing to spin. being the owner of a pretty sizeable fiber stash, it was hard to choose among so many delightful options. my eye kept wandering towards the corner of my living room, where my strauch drum carder had sat idle for at least a year. at the time i convinced myself that the fairly expensive purchase would be worth it because i'd use it frequently. but i quickly found that although rewarding (because it produces my very favorite prep to spin--batts) it's amazingly time consuming. working full-time and doing eleventy-thousand other crafts just isn't conducive to hours of drum-carding. finally the guilt got to me, so armed with some shpherder mill end superwash merino and some recycled silk threads, i got to work.

one thing i learned was that it is much easier and less time consuming to card already prepped fiber. these mill ends were uneven leftover bits of top that just needed one pass through the carder to be spinable. most of my previous experience has been with fleece, which requires a ton more prep work.

i carded the fiber twice to ensure a fairly even blend of the silk threads. i quite like sari silk with wool. on its own it tends too look too crazy but i think it's really pretty carded with the black heathered wool.

i ended up with 76yds/86g of 3ply chunky weight. i should have carded more fiber but i got impatient (big surprise there). i wasn't quite sure what the black fiber content was before spinning but afterwards the characteristic drapey shininess of superwash wool showed through.

i even started carding another fiber to spin after i finished this one. of course mentally i've already shifted my attention to another project so who knows when i'll finish it.