Mending jeans and other things

I know, it's Tuesday not Monday, but this is all I've got this evening. 

My favorite pair of jeans ripped on the front of one leg and I didn't want to downgrade them to the little better than sweatpants category. I had an idea that I wanted to use embroidery to repair them. But that is as far as I got for several weeks. Then, at the linen weaving class, a friend of mine had a really pretty multi-colored warp. I got to thinking that linen would be an excellent thread to repair the jeans because linen is hard-wearing and strong. So I took some of her loom waste home. Yesterday I finally had a chance to play with it. I'm kind of pleased with how it came out. 


A slightly closer view.


I've thrown them in the wash, so I'm curious how it will change afterwards because linen gets softer with washing. 

I'm also in the process of washing our sheep's fleece. I'm about halfway done, but the weather is going to need to improve for me to finish that task. In the meantime, I decided to do some sampling with what is washed to see how it cards, combs, and spins. This will help me figure out what I want to do with the rest of it. 

First I combed some of the fleece. 


Fred's is on top and Clark's is on the bottom. The fiber in-between is a combination of the two in various amounts.

Then I combed some, doing the same types of blending. You can tell the combing blended the fibers better than carding did. 


I'll be really curious to see how the differences play out in the yarn. 


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