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.

Making my favourite yarn

For the last while I've been obsessed knitting lace shawls, tidying up my studio and finishing up spinning projects with really slippery fibres. With more space opened up in the studio from tidying up, I was inspired to get out the tools/machines and get some wool carded to make my favourite yarn. Wool, plain and simple.

What I have below is my carding board. It's a great thing that allows me to quickly tease up the washed fibre and open up the locks. I got out some of white and some grey Romney from Acacia Farms.

I teased up some of the white wool and an equal amount of grey. The grey is quite dark so I like the effect of blending the grey with white, spinning a singles from that, and plying it with a singles of the unblended grey.

Here's what this yarn will look like: each skein below is a double ply yarn. One singles is the blended grey, and the second singles is either dark grey (the one on the left) or white (the one on the right).

Here are some drum carded nests of blended fibre. Many more followed, nearly a full pound! Will hopefully get around to spinning this up over the weekend, and then dyeing the yarn. Will keep you posted.

Goodbye to the 100-year oak

A couple of Sunday's ago, a third of the 100+ year-old oak in our front yard came crashing down. You can see from the photos that the damage was due to rot which had been going for on for quite a while. It's a huge limb and we were lucky that it missed the house, or considerable damage would have occurred. And so sadly enough, the rest of the tree had to be taken out.

And here's the stump. There's tons of wood, huge pieces of it that will need heavy machinery to move, and I'm not sure how that's going to happen. That tree provided an abundance of food for the (nasty and pesky) squirrels and the canopy provided shade. 

I'm going to miss that tree.

Elowen: the latest shawl

It's always a great feeling when you have something off your needles, the ends woven in and the item washed and blocked. Here is the latest. It's called Elowen, available on Ravelry. Made in 100% commercial yarn, the only thing 100-Mile about this shawl is the knitter. But go easy on me folks, we all need distractions.

It's blocked with shawl pins, one of the world's greatest inventions. And held down by my collection of river rocks. That's why I collect flat, heavy rocks.

I'm planning to wear it to work so maybe I can entice the youngest to do a photo shoot.

100-mile skirt update V

Here's the last skein of yarn for the 100-mile skirt. It is 189m and I hope this finishes the skirt. 400m took me to about 3 inches above my knee, and while the pattern does start to flare out quite a bit, I think this last 189m will do the trick.

Here it is on the niddy-noddy:

And here it is, nicely dried after a good soak in hot water.

 Now I have to find the pattern and try to remember where I was. . . .

March Fibre club: Wellspring colourway in English Shetland

Here's a photo of the March Fibre club yarn, nearly complete. It's English Shetland wool that is a delight to spin, especially after spinning the slippery silky/merino/nylon Candygram last week. I am spinning this yarn to be a worsted weight and it spun up fast. All of it has been spun it all on my Houndesign Henry's Dervish spindle.

I just have two more sets of singles to ply and then I'll finish them off by boiling and bashing them around. That way they'll get slightly felted and it also may even out the colours a bit.  The dark colours may lose a bit of dye and the lighter ones may pick it up. At least that's what I hope will happen.

Two days later:

I finished up the yarn. And then I put all the skeins well tied up with figure eights, into a pasta pot with hot water and a bit of shampoo. I brought it to a boil and then held it at a simmer for 15 minutes. In that time the twist relaxed, the yarn evened out and the colours became a bit more even. The dark sections lost some of their dye and the lighter sections picked it up. I like this yarn a lot better now.

Not sure what it will be. There's 100+grams of it. Enough to make a set of half-mitts and a hat. Or it could just go into my yarn collection.  I seem to be much more prolific making yarn than I am knitting these days.