Something new and fun I've been playing with is spinning up singles. They are harder than they look, and take a lot of getting used to, but very satisfying when you see the bobbin filling up so fast! I finally felt like I had the technique down enough to try some thicker singles and got out my delicious 100% British Southdown. I ordered a bump of this for the shop, knowing that I'd find something great to do with it. Originally I thought I was just going to make similar yarns to my BFL collection, but with a different fibre. Nope. Sometimes things change for the better.
Southdown is a little more robust and perfect for pencil rovings. My tension is still a little tight and I absolutely can't watch anything while I spin this (audiobooks and podcasts only) but there is so much joy in the fat fluffy twists and filling up 4 bobbins in a few hours (and knowing I don't have to ply them!) that makes Pencil Roving a new favourite of mine. Just take a look at this big stack of full skeins that I produced in under a week:Don't you just want to cuddle it?! These are going to look so great dyed, I can already tell. Thinking I'll have to sell these in 100g skeins because they are so thick and juicy. Yum yum yum. Fibre Diet.
Hey! It's Wednesday! Sometimes I do what I like to call 'Wool On The Wheel' on Wednesdays. Pretty much I share with you a yarn that I've spun up recently. Sometimes it's actually 'on the wheel' when I photograph it, and sometimes I share the end result. This week I want to wet your appetite a little bit for a shop update that's in the works.
This yarn was my first real experiment that turned into a new Collection called 'Medieval'. It's a sock weight 2ply yarn and completely natural! Dyed BFL fleece with natural dyes (here, Logwood, the purple!) is mixed with natural brown and grey BFL to create a more 'earthy' and 'old world' colour and texture.Originally I was inspired by the elaborate garments shown in paintings of Royalty at the National Portrait Gallery- but I also wanted it to be a bit more down to earth, so I started watching programs set in that era (and also fantasy like King Arthur and Game Of Thrones) and found that there were a lot more knitted and handmade looking garments in the lower classes. I love the big stitching on jackets especially.
Anyway, I digress. This yarn brings back all those feels. It's an absolute pleasure to spin, although because it is so skinny, it takes me AGES to get through one batt of fleece and even longer to fill up one bobbin. I like to imagine a slower pace of life and the spinning for a need (i.e. a family member needs a pair of socks because they got eaten by a dragon or something... haha) rather than a want. I usually listen to Shakespeare radio plays or watch Merlin while I'm spinning this.
Pictured above is the skein tied with some White fleece. I washed and fixed it with this in place so I could see if the dye ran. It didn't!
There will be four colourways of this wool up for sale in the Shop soon. Are you excited? I'm excited!Above is a close up of the yarn, with a little cheeky bit of turquoise that weasled it's way in to this particular skein. Naughty!Lots of Love, Kimxo
Mmm. Delicious Madder Reds. Mmm. Bright Buckthorn Yellows. Let's put the second exhausts together and see what we get... ... some Pale Peachy Oranges:
I love it that Natural Dyeing is always surprising me with it's colour combos. Always blow away that these colours come from nature and plants. The earth really does provide enough. Some more yummy eye candy & experiements:
Wool on the Wheel this week is something I spun up just for fun. :] I bought a big bag of reduced turqouise wool/synthetic mix fleece (months and months ago) & it's been really fun finding projects for it- it's such a great colour. The only thing about it is that it's not 100% natural... which is kind of my thing. But I'm not one for waste either. This is mixed with a soft BFL in a grey to tone down how bright the turquoise is. it's also got bits and bobs of other things... kind of my favourite thing to do- just add a bunch of other little bits to keep it interesting.It feels like a DK in most places, but might be more on the chunky side. Not sure what I'm going to do with it yet... maybe a hat or a cowl? It's so soft!
This weeks Wool on the Wheel : This is a little skein I made up for my friend Amy's birthday/christmas. I had some left over fleece from another project, and they just looked like Amy's colours- so I went with it. It's plied with some grey machine thread & is chunkyish.She made a lovely stripeey circle scarf & used it! Isn't she beautiful? (below photo from Amy's blog.)
Around christmas, a lovely neighbour friend of my Mum's (and mine!) commissioned some beautiful handspun from me. She saw something I'd made for Mum and wanted something similar. So we got together and chose colours. I'm pretty proud of this, cause it's mostly naturally dyed colours! But the really cool thing about it, is that it's spun in a gradient so when she knits it up, it will go from those dark blues through to the magical purples and into that bouncy pink. There's just enough for making 1 cowl, so it's really unique! You can see that I've plied it with a thin sewing cotton, to give it strength. :] It's also nice and thick'n'thin so it's fun to knit with!
During one of her visits, I also gave her a refresher course in spinning and here are her results:Pretty good, eh? :] Kimxo
Here is another batch of fleece that I dyed because I couldn't throw away the dyebath without exhausting it completely. Such beautiful pale colours.Due to my (most probably late night) neglect, you can see bits of white where I didn't prep the fleece properly and dye didn't get. Nevermind. Good thing I'm a fan of loving and embracing all mistakes!There's enough here to make a nice shawl I think. Or matching jumpers for twin babies maybe? Or some mittens and a hat for a cold spring day. We shall just have to wait and see what it wants to become. kxo
I have a really hard time throwing away dyebath. Like- I just can't. haha. At least until I've exhausted it a few times. So I end up dyeing loads of fleece and end up with a pile of light shades from leftover dyebath. These particular colours were from when I dyeing Pink and Green for the 'Bi' exhibition. (I combined the blue and yellow to make green). It was using commercial dye and I kept getting it confused with my natural dye bits SO I decided to just spin it up and just add whatever there was to my stockpile of yarn ready for knitting.A very pleasent thing happened as I was doing this. I had two shades of each colour (the first exhaust, and the second). Instead of just mixing it together, I spun the first exhaust and the second exhaust seperatly and plyed them together. The result is a pleasing two-toned effect. And I like it so much- I think I'm going to try this with the next batch of Natural dyeing I do.Subtle but special. Also it was super fun to spin so tiny. I usually don't have the patience but I kind of wanted to make it go as far as possible. I know. I'm a dork. It's not enough that I've already saved some dyebath from waste. Sometimes my need to reuse & recycle gets me into trouble. Like all the paper I've been stockpiling for years... Perhaps I should make up some kits and sell them? Love you. kxo
I know it's not a wednesday- but here are some pretty fibres that's on my wheel at the moment.I haven't had much of a chance during 'exams' to do any spinning just for myself- so as soon as the exhibition was over- I carded up this lovely bluey fleece and just went for it. it's got bits and pieces of curly sheeps wool, mohair, and some dyed & undyed english wool. The natural fibres give it a really great crimp. It'll be a nice chunky once I ply it up. Plus the subtle change from light-dark makes it really interesting to spin. <3 Have you started working on anything 'just for you' yet? Summer is here! Kimxo
Hello! This is a blend I made- originally to be half of a yarn that would be used in my first jumper- but now that it is all spun up it's almost too pretty to combine with the turqouise below...What do you think? I wanted it to be playful and vibrant (as this will be the only handspun in my jumper, and the rest of the colours are browns, creams and mossy greens)- which is why I added in lots of touches of other colours. In the 'Apricot & Mustard' blend, I added bits of orange, yellow, grey and a teensy bit of red. And in the 'Turqouise', there are hints of apricot, mustard, jade(mohair!), grey and a pale lavendar.No idea if I'll ply them together or not. It was really really fun to design, card and spin so no doubt I'll make some more in the future... or something similar at least! Kimxo
