Fiber Monday - Mill ends

I've actually done quite a bit this week, but not very many pictures to show for it. A lot of time was spent finishing up odds and ends on various projects and getting them put away. This feels good even if it is difficult to photograph. 

In that organizing, I decided to do something with my completely unorganized box of Mill ends. Mill ends are the fibers which are leftover from the fiber prep and spinning processes in woolen mills. They are perfectly good fibers, there's just an odd assignment of bits and pieces. They bag them up and sell them at a deep discount for the types of fibers involved. This is where I come in because I like nothing better than a good deal. I also think they are perfect for using with my drum carder to bake batts to spin. 

I organizing the mills ends (by color), I decided that I really needed to make some batts with some of it. So I did.

I had seen an inspiration photo of dark green pines trees, pine cones, and snow in one of my fiber groups and decided that I had the right colors to try my own version of the colors in the photo. 

These are a mixture of merino, alpaca, and other mixed wools. They are very soft. The camera is also not capturing the color accurately and these are actually a few shades darker than they appear here. I even got a chance to start spinning them. 

I have plans for this to become a knitted hat once it's all finished. 

But back to the mill ends. I ended up with a whole pile of mostly white fiber with lots of random colors mixed with it. 

I decided to see what would happen if I carded it all together. I ended up with this.

They are a little more pastel in person. There are two batts, then for the third one I removed the fiber from the drum carder in a different way (the spirals at the top). I want to see which one I enjoy spinning more. I've put this away for now. I'll get it out in March, the only time of year I am drawn to pastels. These are even softer than the greens because there is a lot of angora (rabbit) in them. 

The other thing I did was to start a major project using the Cotswold fleece that I have. Step one is getting it all dyed. I probably have two or three more batches to get it done. I'm dying in different combinations of a bright red and black. (Once again, the camera is washing out the color, everything is a much deeper shade.)

This is 4/5 red and 1/5 black

All black

1/2 red and 1/2 black 

The last one looks almost purple-ish in person which I find interesting. It's sitting in the drying rack which makes it difficult to get a good picture. I think I'm going to do a straight red followed by 3/4 red and 1/4 black. The next step will be to comb it all which is definitely the most time consuming part for me.