Handspun collection - a fairly decent obsession

I've been making yarn since February 2000. I've made a lot of yarn in that time and have knit many items with it. Lately though, I've been spending more time making yarn than I have knitting. Until Sunday, I had it all stashed in various boxes, bags, drawers and bins. I knew there was a lot of it, and I felt it was time to bit of an inventory. So I pulled it all out and assembled it on my studio table.

And here it is. Some of it has been partially used as you can see by the size of some of the wound balls. But some, and much of it is still in the skein, right off the niddy-noddy.

I make yarn because I love yarn and I love to play with fibres and blends and colours. I do love to knit, really I do, but there is something about making yarn that satisfies me even more.

I had every plan to organize the above yarn; rewind the balls to make them neater; organize them according to fibre content or colour; separate them into project piles with matching patterns. But in the end I left it on the desk for the entire day admiring it and reacquainting myself with many of the skeins/balls. In the end I tossed the entire collection into a large see-through bin. (I'll eventually sort it out and decide which skeins to sell at upcoming workshops and demonstration, and which ones will get knit into lovely items.)

Then I found more handspun. This is yarn made from the Crazy Batt sessions we've had at the guild. I still have about 8 more batts waiting to be spun . . . and I have no plans for this yarn. I just love the look of it.

I know you understand what I mean by that. 

Wellspring 1/2 mitts - working with the fibre club yarn

The yarn for these mitts came from Sweet Georgia Yarns Fibre Club - this was the March installment. The fibre is English Shetland, a lovely wool to work with. I spun this yarn up on my spindle. After working with the slippery fibres from the January and February installments, it was a relief to work with fibre that has a bit of stick to it.

While they don't look exactly the same, they are definitely a pair. The pattern for these mitts is my own, it's a coin lace with a lovely thumb gusset that grows gracefully out of the coin lace. Knit on 3mm needles with 48 stitches, they knit up really fast. It's become my standby mitt pattern. It's all in my head and I can easily make minor variations to mix it up a bit.

I'll post it on Ravelry soon.