Up to my ears in spindles and fibre!

I haven't written anything for a while, because I have been very busy organising things. My surgery that was supposed to happen on August 17th was cancelled and rescheduled for September 7th (they called me when I was on the train to go to my preadmission appointment no less, would have been nice to get some notice!) so I have been madly trying to rearrange all the things that I had arranged for while I was in hospital, and all the stuff that I had to arrange around being out of commission for a while. Not overly happy, but not a lot I could do about it, so I'm just getting on with stuff ;)

I have a TON of news to write, so lets see, I'll try and put it in order lol. Firstly, I mentioned in my last entry about the Whorled Domination! spindle club signups - these are still open till September 5th. I have just finalised the first shipment of club fibre - I can't say too much about it because I don't want to spoil the surprise, but I can say that it's a beautifully soft, unique blend that I absolutely LOVE, and it is being prepared and hand-dyed in a special club colourway by a very talented fellow indie fibre artist right here in Australia :) It's a very special fibre, and I have 1.5kg of it coming my way soon, to be divided into club packages for all my lucky Whorled Army spindle club members ;) First spindle club shipment is due to go out on October 5th, and when everyone has received their spindle and fibre, we will be having a SAL (spinalong) so that everyone who has never spun this type of fibre before can learn the best way to spin it, those who have spun it before can enjoy it, and we can all show off our finished spun yarns on the Whorled Domination! Ravelry discussion group :)

In addition to the spindle club, I have now opened Whorled Domination! on etsy - I currently have quite a few new spindles listed and will be looking to add more items once I recover from my surgery. I have started making the club spindles already too, and have released some new pocket and ultralight spindles that weigh as little as 5 grams (and have a tiny price to match).  Check the pocket/ultralight spindles out on etsy, they fit nicely with my philosophy of providing good spinning tools at affordable prices. I will be putting up listings for the spindle club and my knitting patterns at some point soon too, and later in the year I hope to have some new spindle bags and boxes to put up (I'm working on the designs right now). Here's a pic of the ultralights and a couple of the new spindlebebehs that are up on etsy for sale right now:

So it's all go on the fibre front lol! I also having a lot of fun with another new venture - raising silkworms! I purchased 50 white silkworm and 50 zebra silkworm eggs from Peaceful Silkworms a couple of weeks ago, and they have just started hatching in the last 3 days. I currently have 40 zebra babies and 34 white ones, so not too many left to hatch now :) I plan on letting them make cocoons, hatch and breed so I can keep the fertile eggs to raise more silkworms, and I'm going to degum the cocoons and stretch them into silk hankies for spinning. If I get enough silk hankies over time, I may even consider selling some of them in my etsy shop (or they may even be a Whorled Army spindle club fibre at some point).So I have quite a few future plans for my fibre-related ventures! I have been posting updates and photos of the new silkworm babies on the WD Ravelry group and facebook, it's a whole lot of fun and quite educational to boot :) Here's a photo from yesterday of some of the babies on a mulberry leaf (yes I know it's a bit blurry, it's a webcam shot lol):

I have also recently got interested in two types of spindles I hadn't used before - Turkish and Russian. So I have had a bit of fun buying some new spindles and stuff - I purchased a medium and tiny Turkish spindle from Thomas Creations LLC, a lovely Russian style spindle from The Dragonfly Workshop, 2 more Russian spindles and a lovely zebrawood spindle bowl from SpinDizzyChick, and a couple of mini spindle bowls from Spinerosity. I also purchased some AMAZING silk hankies in a whole rainbow of 18 colours from Zebisis Designs - so I have a lot of spinning fun headed my way. I will post photos of all the spindles as they arrive - here's the Tiny Turkish spindle from Thomas Creations aka Threadsthrutime, which has Mora arms and a Cherry shaft - the entire shaft is 4 1/2 inches long and the arms are 2 1/2 inches. And yes, that is fibre being spun on it - it's a silk hankie that I am spinning cobweb weight (5c piece in the pic for scale) - the single is almost as fine as human hair!!

I will post pictures of the Medium spindle in my next entry, as it's 4am here and I need to get some sleep! :P