My two projects

Today has been kind of low key. I've been going through kid's clothes and getting rid of things that are too small, moving on hand me downs that have been grown into.

I did find a few minutes to knit. I only have two projects on the needles right now. The first is mindless knitting- what I was working on earlier. It is a cushion cover in stockinette stitch worked in the round. It is a lovely shade of blue, but the yarn is kind of scratchy and I don't really enjoy working on it. I bought the yarn at a local harvest festival a few years ago, intending to make a felted basket out of it. Turns out the darn stuff will not felt. It is too scratchy for anything that I would want to actually want to wear, and I don't have very much of it. Hence, the cushion cover that it is finally on its way to becoming. Someday. Once I get another project going, I'm sure it will fade into the background. Unfinished.

The second project is actually half done, and has been for awhile. It is from the Summer 2005 issue of Interweave Knits. It is a shrug with a leaf lace pattern that I fell in love with. I dyed several skeins of yarn for it and took right off knitting (yes, back in summer of 2005). Then 2 of my brothers got engaged and I decided to make hand spun, hand knit mitten sets with a joined mitten for hand holding for each happy couple. That project took me a long time- though it turned out well. I have worked on the shrug a bit since then. I actually enjoy the lace, but I need full concentration, which is in short supply here most of the time. Now that all the kids are in school, I should be able to get back to it. It is worked from the center back out, and is currently waiting for me to undo the provisional cast on and pick up the live stitches to continue on to the second half...

PINK HANDSPUN DONE!

I just posted my latest handspun yarn on Etsy. It has been a lot of fun to make. It is so soft. My daughter wants me to give it to her so she can feel it whenever she wants. I have been knitting some socks with commercial sock yarn, and I was amazed at the contrast in texture when I knitted the handspun swatch. It really is nice yarn.

Hopefully I will get better at organizing my pictures as time goes on! To the right (and below) is the hand dyed roving drying last week. There is also a skein of dk weight yarn on the bottom, and felted mittens on the top. It is always hard to wait for the roving to dry after I dye it. I can't wait to spin it and see how it's really going to turn out!

Below is a lovely picture of the roving in the sink getting rinsed. I have to be very careful at this stage to not felt the wool.

I was going to post a picture of my actual spinning wheel in action, but I forgot to have someone snap a picture. I will do it with the next yarn, for sure!

New Handspinning project

Looks like my yarn picture from the last post did show up!







Two days ago I handpainted some roving that I had on hand. I divided it in half and did two colorways. The first is a blue-white-violet-navy repeat, the other is a blue-pink-navy repeat.





This picture shows one of the rovings painted, and ready to wrap and steam.

Yesterday morning I divided the rovings up. The pink one I pulled apart along the blue and navy divisions. I have been spinning these little fiber bundles from the fold. It makes a yarn with a lot of depth. So here is a photo of my little fiber piles from both rovings.

I also started spinning yesterday. I should have yarn pictures to post in the next few days!

Yarn experiment

This yarn is something that I have wanted to try for a few years. Now that my kids are all in school, I am getting to a lot of projects that have been waiting in the wings. I haven't been spinning much this year, and it is great to have some time to do it.

One ply of this handspun yarn is Bluefaced Leicester wool from Louet, the other ply is silk, from predrafted silk hankies. Both plies are softly spun, and a bit fuzzy, with the wool being much to loose in some places. The yarn is very soft. I have wanted to see the sheen of the silk next to the wool texture. It is a nice contrast in this yarn, but the silk has quite a bit of texture on its own, because of the preparation. I will have to try it again with a silk brick and more twist to maximize the difference.

I waited to dye the yarn until after it was plied. I wanted to see how the different fibers reacted in the same dye bath. I know that silk has a strong affinity for dye, but it was very interesting what happened. I was using a roasting pan (that I use only for dying) and I heated the water, vinegar, and yarn up to just below boiling. Then I poured the fuschia dye in- but only in certain spots. At that temp the dye usually strikes fairly quickly and you can get some great effects. After the fuschia, I added some blue in other spots. Instead of getting pink spots and blue spots, I got pink silk and blue wool. Very few areas look truely purple, which is surprising...

Here may or may not be a lovely picture of the dyed yarn. I have been having some trouble uploading the picture, and currently can only see the dreaded "x". I will try again tomorrow.

Etsy store

I've opened an etsy account to sell handmade stuff. This is an exciting move for me! Later this week I will post some of the yarns and clothing that I have hand dyed. If you haven't checked out etsy.com you should. They sell hand made items. There are lots of neat things there!

My etsy store is http://www.dye4fun.etsy.com/

Spin to Knit

Here is the spin to knit tag. I'm not sure if this is the right place to put it or not!
My favorite thing to spin, or rather the most comfortable thing, is wool. I have a shetland fleece in a natural fawn color that I have been combing. It is a dream to spin. This stuff just wants to be yarn. I used to have sheep (Romney and Finn-Dorset), that is how I got into this fiber mess, but the sheep have been gone for a few years now. I have also spun cotton, soysilk, silk, flax, dog hair, alpaca, tencel, angelina fiber, and nylon. I would like to work with flax a little more. It would be great to be good enough with it to weave a nice towel or something.
I enjoy dyeing very much. I have dyed clean, unprocessed wool, roving, yarn, silk, cotton, and cloth. I enjoy the Twisted Sisters Sock Book. I have used several of their dyeing techniques. I'm not very exact. I add dye until it looks right, though I mix stock solutions using measurements, but I don't weigh anything. Handpainted roving is alot of fun to make and spin (and knit, come to think of it).
Most of the yarn I make is plain vanilla yarn, two ply, good for knitting. I have also enjoyed adding beads. I made a wonderful mohair boucle sometime in the last year that is waiting to become something. That is one of the most exciting finished yarns that I have done, though I really hated the last pass through the wheel. I like to treadle very quickly, on a high-ratio for most of my spinning, and I had to do this slowly so my hands could keep up.
Enough for now!