The Romney Story

Back in the fall when I attended the annual Maritime Spinner's Retreat in PEI, I made a few purchases which I never shared with you all.

Over this past week, now that Christmas is out of the way, I have started to prepare some of the purchases I brought back with me.

Before Christmas I had picked and washed the almost 1lb of Romney locks, which were various colors of beiges and greys. The staple length is really quite long for me at about 5" and it had nice curls throughout but not really crimpy.


Line came over to assist me putting on a dye pot for the Romney washed locks this past week. This was the first time I tried dying locks instead of roving. I mixed a mason jar full of dye stock in the color I wanted (vermillion with a little black and blue). I then put 1/4 cup of the stock into the dye pot with the water and added a couple glugs of vinegar. Then came about 1/3 lb of the presoaked Romney locks. I had to split it into 3 batches because my pot was too small for all of it.


While the locks were stewing we enjoyed tea for two with this fancy tea I received in my stocking (I bought it myself on a trip to Providence in December in case Santa didn't know I wanted it).

I had Belgian Mint and Line had a chocolate flavor that was really chocolate smelling. I can't believe you can even get tea in those flavors. And aren't the tea bag rests awesome! They have tea pots and cups to go with these that have covers but allow the leaf to come out a hole... too cute.

The locks took the color in all different intensities which is just what I wanted.




As a side note, here is what Line dyed using the cold pour method.

This was her first dying attempt and it turned out beautiful. These colors really put Briggs and Little into a new category.

As soon as the fleece was on the drying rack, I called Manon to see if I could still take her up on her generous offer to use her drum carder. She was as enthusiastic as me so we planned a time for 2 days out, fearing that the next day may leave the wool still damp. Then came the snow and that was cancelled as carding wool is not worth risking your life in a snow storm (I actually debated that with myself for quite some time before coming to that realization). Another time was set for Sunday and I packed my bags of now dried wool up and off I went to Manon's winter wonderland palace to dirty her kitchen with bits of dirt and wool which her kind husband didn't seem to mind at all.

The drum carding was awesome!
The colors, subtle as they are, blended together so nicely.


Here I am taking the batt off the carder.


And carefully with full concentration rolling the first batt.


Ta Da! The first batt of carded Romney fleece hand dyed by me and Line and carded by me and Manon. This is like a friendship fleece... any volunteers to help me spin it?


The batts are fluffy and soft and I can't wait to spin them up!


There are 11 batts in total and together they weigh 14 ounces.


Thanks to Line and Manon for joining me in the fun of preparing this fleece!