My husband is so cute.

For the past few days while I’ve been using the Big Tom carder, he would occasionally wander in to my craft room and look around, then give the old Louet an empty crank or two. As if to make sure it wasn’t feeling left out. So I finally asked him if he wanted to make a batt and he said yes. I went to work gathering up only the manliest of fibers. “Make it camouflaged!” he said, so I got some dyed black Shetland, natural gray Lincoln, fluffy white Ramouillet, camel down, gray yak top, and absolutely no sparkles. (I tried to sneak in some chartreuse-green Coopworth but that idea was quickly nixed.)

I did the prep work by floofing all the fleece and layering the well behaved fibers around the more difficult ones, and he fed the fibers sandwiches into the machine. The results were indeed quite manly:

Since he was blasting Serj Tankian at me while we carded, we named the colorway Serj. It will be in the shop for the July 1 update. Maybe whoever buys it will use it to make a felted gun holster, or power drill cozy or some other stereotypically male item.

Gritty Knits will have a booth at Fiber Christmas in July! This year’s festival will be held at the Creek County Fairgrounds in Kellyville, OK (southwest of Tulsa) on Friday, July 29 from 4pm-8pm and Saturday, July 30 from 8am-6pm.

I will be brining all of the following products with me (vehicle space permitting):

• Carded batts
• Dyed fiber braids
• Nom & Foot Fetish yarn
• Handspun yarn
• Hand dyed Firestar
• Sari silk ribbon
• Angelina
• Dyed fleece/locks (Teeswater, Shetland, Romney, Corriedale)

If you’re going to be in the area, come by and say hello! To purchase/reserve Gritty Knits merchandise online and pick it up at the festival, use coupon code FIBERXMAS which will remove the shipping charge and I will set your goodies aside and have them waiting for you at my booth.

I started a Tour de Fleece team for anyone who wants to join me by incorporating carding batts into your TDF goals for 2011. I will be donating 2 batts as prizes: 1 random draw and 1 popular vote. Any team member can also donate prizes if they wish, too.

Here are some helpful links if you’d like to join:

Official Team Tour de Batt thread

Team Tour de Batt discussion thread in the Gritty Knits Fiber Lovers group

Tour de Fleece Ravelry group

Check it: I’ve had my Fancy Kitty Big Tom for 2 days and I have made TWENTY SIX BATTS so far. Yeah, me and Tom are going to get along just fine.

These will be available in the shop promptly on July 1st.

Video of me using it below:

Meet Jolly, the smiling Romney lamb. He lives at the Homestead Wool & Gift Farm in Monroe, WI. It’s a great place to be if you are a sheep. Jolly and his friends get to scamper in the pastures and eat hay and Froot Loops to their hearts’ content without having to worry about being eaten or sold off. I have always been an animal lover, and it means a lot to me that they treat their animals like members of the family.

The Coats for Sheep fundraiser is a really great cause if you’ve got a few dollars to spend. $20 buys a coat for a Homestead sheep, ensuring a nice, clean fleece. For $25, they’ll ship the coat to you and let you decorate it first, and for $50 you get photos of your sheepie wearing his coat and a pound of wool when he’s sheared. Even though Jolly is mine all mine, there are lots of other wonderful flock members who need sponsoring. Click here to donate online.

p.s. Doesn’t he remind you of this cat?

After months of good intentions, I am finally going to make good on my promise to contribute to the Phat Fiber Box. (Reason #5, for those of you keeping track.) I’ve got 56 tiny Nom sample skeins in a brand new color called Henri (pronounced Frenchly, of course: ongh-REE). Phat Fiber's July theme is art nouveau, so I created a color inspired by one of my favorite artists, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

The color in these artworks makes me suspect that it was once a bright, brilliant shade of yellow-orange, but time and the elements have taken their toll and left this faded, almost dirty-looking harvest gold. Henri Nom’s will be available in the shop as soon as the Phat samplers go out in July, along with a re-stock of the top & batt sections.

p.s. Here’s a mini store update to hold you over until the big one:

Teeswater & Romney locks:

Hand dyed firestar:

Best month evar, reason #4: I decided to try buying raw wool again. Even though I’ve had terrible experiences in the past, this time it worked out PERFECTLY!

I bought 2 jacketed fleeces (Shetland and Shetland x Coopworth) and they were so beautiful and clean. I held a pile of it in my lap for a minute while wearing shorts, and my legs are now magically super soft and lanolin-ized. If only I didn’t mind smelling like a sheep, I would use this stuff as an all-purpose moisturizer.

^ Before & After. One soak was all it took to clean the grease out, and on the second soak the water was clear! There was no VM to speak of, and I am now hooked on coated fleece.

When I dye locks, I like to just sprinkle dye powder on top of the wet wool (^ left) and then I add more water & vinegar and gently smash it down with the backside of a large spoon until the dye gets wet and mixes (^ right). Pouring pre-mixed dyes gives an even, consistent (BORING!) color, so I prefer this method because it gives me some nice lights & darks. I always make sure to stuff a little “too much” into the pan, so the fiber on top gets saturated while the fiber on the bottom is usually a bit more pale. Then they get baked in the oven at 300 degrees for 45 minutes and left in place until they’re cool.

My drying screen was made by ripping the canvas off an old painting and re-covering it with nylon mesh from the hardware store. It sits flat on top of a fold-out laundry drying rack. If you want to make your own without ruining a perfectly good painting canvas, art supply stores usually sell the stretcher bars individually and you can create any size that will fit in your tub or drying area. If you need heavy duty, they also sell rolls of metal screen-like the kind on a screen door.