Spring Salad

MMM!





I just can't stop! It's another art yarn, in case you couldn't tell. More superwash merino dyed with Easter egg tablets, with gold firestar nylon, plied into mini coils and beehives with a shiny blue-green thread. About 78 yards thick n thin. I love it! Hope you do too. :)

I done up and done it!

...and what I did was open an Etsy shop.

I know, right?? But here is my reasoning. I am spinning a lot more creatively now that I actually know what I'm doing, and as such, I'm making a lot of yarn that I personally don't have a need for. I'm just enjoying the creative process and letting the chi flow, letting the fiber become what it wants to be--and sometimes that means I end up with something that is not my color, not my style, whatever. And so it sits in its little space-bag, unused, which to me is sad! So I figure, why not put it out there and see if it strikes someone's fancy? I know there's a TON of handspun on Etsy already, but I feel like it's worth a shot.

Anyway, the whole thing is pretty bare bones at this point, but if you have any suggestions for my shop, go check it out and let me know! I'd love the feedback.

Fiber Friday: Pistachio

I may have come in last in our office bowling tournament yesterday, but I'd like to know how many of my colleagues who broke 100 (or even 50) came home and did THIS:



I am so proud of this skein--it is my very first novelty/art yarn, and it came out exactly like I hoped it would. I'm calling it Pistachio. It's hand-dyed Shetland wool from the Peachtree Spinning Guild dye day (photo of the dyed roving.) I split the roving into strips with about two colors in each strip, then held them together with the browns and greens on opposite ends of each strip, so that the colors would blend and barberpole as I spun it.



Taken with the flash so you can better see all the green firestar nylon I used throughout, and the gold thread it's plied with.



It came out to around 68 yards, extremely thick 'n thin. I love the big floofy parts!





I couldn't be happier with it. I can't wait to do more dyeing so I can make even more skeins like this!!

Hand-dyed, handspun SOCK YARN!

I actually have done a little dyeing recently! Thanks to some of the lovely ladies with the Peachtree Handspinners Guild who helped us dye noobs and showed us the ropes. Here is some shetland that bore the brunt of my experiments:



And here is the crown jewel of my efforts for that day, superwash merino for hand-dyed, handspun socks! On the bobbin:



Very happy colors. And here is the end result!



This was also my first navajo ply, not too bad I don't think.



Didn't measure the wraps per inch, but I'd guess it's about a sportweight. 300 yards. I am imagining some toe-up socks with big, loose cuffs for padding around the house!

FUBAR Friday

That's how I feel anyway, after this week!! Craziness at work, strange things happening here and there...look at what happened when I opened up google maps yesterday. (Click for big)



Do you see?! Do you see the cat??



Freakin' WEIRD!!! I was asking people to go to google maps to see if they could see the cat too--it was blinking and flashing, by the way--but no one else could. My brother said it was probably a "cache mixup", which is apparently when your computer has a brainfart and pulls a random image from your cache and sticks it somewhere it doesn't belong. In this case, that's someone's avatar from the somethingawful.com forums replacing the google logo. WEIRD!

I spun the merino-tencel from funwithyarn.com (here it is before I spun it) and ended up with two small skeins--I was too lazy to figure out the weight or the yardage!



I spun it from the fold, my first attempt, so it's reeeeally uneven. But I really like how the colors look in both skeins, and how light and airy the resulting yarn is.



I am going to a dye party on Sunday with the Peachtree Handspinners Guild, so I'll finally get a chance to try some real dyeing. I ordered some BFL from one of the members who sells Louet products, and I am so excited to get my hands on it and start splashing colors around! Especially in someone else's kitchen, considering the size limitations of my own--and my dislike of post-crafting cleanup!

Have a great weekend everyone, and hope to see some of you locals on Sunday at the dye party!

It's not Friday, but...

I just have to show off anyway. :D And who knows what the weather will be like later this week? I had to take advantage of the beautiful day and the chance to take some photos during my lunchbreak. Lucky me, I work in an office with a gorgeous courtyard.



Finished this last week--about 250 yards of worsted-weight-ish bluefaced leicester from Sweet Georgia. The color is called "Afterglow."





It's soft as butter.

And here is my first plied yarn on the wheel, two skeins (about 7.5 oz total) of Lorna's Laces wool top in "Glenwood."







I guess it's between a worsted and a chunky weight? I got about 222 yards out of the bump. I was disappointed because the batch I got, despite being labelled 10 ounces, was really only about 8.5. Plus it was expensive. It was nice to spin, though, with a lot of predrafting--it was a bit felted. I don't know if I'd buy it again at full price. :P

And here are all three skeins hanging out on an old well cover in the garden!

Hump Day fiber pron

It's Wednesday and if I'm dragging ass already, I'm sure some of you are too. So here's a little fibery goodness to help get you through your day!

Oh yes, I've been doing some serious fiber stash enhancement. So much so that I'm putting myself on a restricted fiber diet for the next couple of months! I've hit my own personal critical mass when it comes to stash. But just look at all the goodies waiting for me to spin up!



That's some merino-tencel from Fun With Yarn, the color is called Starlite. I loooove her fiber! I also ordered some Wensleydale, in color Baked Spice. (I love that name!)



Some lovely corriedale from an Etsy seller, called "Faded Tapestry"...



Here's some merino from Spunky Eclectic, 8 oz in "Toronto", and the shiny stuff is genuine BMFA merino-tencel in "Bleeding Hearts". 9 oz! The thing is huge.



A sexy closeup of the BMFA merino-tencel...I love the gray and fuschia and purple all twined together.



Yeah, I really don't need to buy any more roving for quite some time. At least until I finish spinning all of this up! (Let's see how long that resolution lasts, shall we?) Oh, and here's my favorite new gadget...I should have gotten one of these ages ago.



That's all for now! Hope that little bit of fiber pron gets you through your day. :)

It's Fiber Friday! And I'm invited.

Here it is...my first Fiber Friday! Complete with photos of my first completed yarn on the Fricke.



That's the corriedale pencil roving I posted earlier, in its completed state. I ended up with two skeins--no idea on the yardage, guessing it's bulky weight. Yeah, I'm real scientific with my spinning so far!





It's not perfect, but it's exactly what I wanted. The pencil roving was a great choice for a wheel noob like me--minimal drafting meant I could pay more attention to what the wheel was doing, how adjustments affected the results, etc. So what's on the bobbin now?



BFL from Sweet Georgia, in Afterglow. Here is what it looks like spun and plied on my spindle, but I think I will keep the wheelspun in singles form, to maximize the yardage.



And I can't neglect to show a couple of pictures of my spindle-spun merino tussah--I just completed a shawlette with this, and will post some photos when I get a chance. This is an extra skein that I'm keeping for sentimental reasons. :)



It's Ashland Bay MT 50/50, in Sea Mist. The stuff was heaven to spin.



That's all from me, folks! Can't wait to see everyone else's Fiber Friday posts. :)

The Cotton Gin

Not a lot of time to blog this morning, but I did want to show you my new toy.



There it is in all it's glory, my Fricke wheel! Put together by me in about an hour, plus the time it took to run across the street to the hardware store for a wrench. This wheel has been dubbed the Cotton Gin by my boyfriend.

And this is what I spun up on it! Corriedale pencil roving from Crown Mountain Farms in colorway Pueblo--I got about two bobbins' worth.



Before setting the twist...yow!!



I've got a lot to learn, but I think the Cotton Gin is going to be the perfect companion to learn with. Now if only I could create more hours in the day to sit on my ass and spin!!!

Gimme gimme!

What a week it's been. After the MLK holiday, coming back to work was really rough--a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it. I think things have settled down today, and I'm feeling better (sleeping for nearly 12 consecutive hours last night helped significantly. I'm a girl who needs her sleep!)

Exciting things are happening! If all goes well and UPS does not pull a fast one on me, my spinning wheel should arrive tomorrow. It's a Fricke S-160 double treadle, and I absolutely cannot wait to get it home Friday afternoon, put it together and start spinning!! I even joined the local spinning guild, after attending their Distaff Day celebration (my friend Claudia from the Intown Knitters Meetup took some great pictures, I'm in there spinning on my spindle.) I can't believe that I've gone from being someone who said she'd never, EVER take up spinning because it would just turn into another addiction, into a person who will in 24 hours have her very own wheel! Actually, yes, I can believe that. Because I have no willpower, really. I'm all id. Me want, me get.

Speaking of no willpower, I also joined the Blue Moon Fiber Arts Rockin' Sock Club. I pre-registered months ago, and went back and forth about whether or not to actually pony up when the time came. I did, but then after the whole bank fiasco they had where everyone's payments were refunded, I took it as a sign that I should save the money. But dammit, I couldn't help myself, so I went back and paid. I'm trying not to beat myself up over it and ruin the enjoyment of it! I want the anticipation of a surprise package in the mail every couple of months, the excitement of getting a pattern and color that's completely new to me, and to be a part of the community of other knitters in the club. And despite the part of me that wants to buck trends and do something different from everyone else, I've loved the patterns and colors from last year's club and don't really care that I'd be knitting the exact same socks as hundreds of other people!

So that's what's going on, and a cookie to you for reading it! Pictures of my new baby will, of course, be posted soon. And I might even have an FO to show off as well, out of my own handspun no less!

(And I almost forgot--I have to mention that I finished watching Six Feet Under this week. Ooooh, that show. I cried like a baby during the last episode of the series, it was just that moving and powerful. There are so many inspiring and important messages that I've taken away from watching it, lessons I've learned about life and death and what it means to be human. "You can't take a picture of this, it's already gone." I can't recommend it highly enough.)