An Epic Undertaking

So a LONG while back I bought this lovely roving from Shunklies on Etsy:

And FINALLY, just last week I believe, I finished spinning it! A good month of spinning, good lord!

Purpura Regia, 4.5oz 70/30 Merino/Silk blend, 16 wpi, Navajo plied, 350+ yards

I’m so excited about this yarn, it is simply GORGEOUS and quite the labor of love. All done on a spindle! Woo!

Some more stuff I did while for a brief day I thought I had lost my almost-full spindle of the singles for the above yarn!

Rose Garden, 2oz hand-dyed Falkland, 108 yards

From the roving previously known as “Heard It Through The Grapevine”, I renamed it because it was less purpley and more pink.

If the Purpura Regia experience tought me anything, it was that I need a wheel. Badly. Well, my birthday was Friday and guess what I got???

Her name is “Caroline” and she is a gorgeous Ashford Traveller. Dad and I bought her at this wonderful shop in Greensboro, Gate City Yarns. I wanted my wheel to be a bit more interesting than just plain old brown wood, so I got some blue stain to spice things up. Dad stained everything and then we both worked on coating it with polyurethane. Then he put it together and it was ready for me to try out on Friday evening! I was so excited. I’ve spun a bunch on it already, but I’m still such a noob on it. I just dyed some yarn that I spun, I’ll be showing it in my next post as well as sharing my progress with the wheel!

 

Yummy Yarns

Spinning is slow going with only a spindle. Especially since I’m not satisfied with small yardages – I feel like I MUST have enough to make something substantial! If it’s not at least 100 yards what’s the point…haha.

For the past month or so – gee whiz has it been that long? – I’ve been working on spinning up a yummy 70/30 merino silk blend dyed in various purples. Into sock yarn. Which I am making 3-ply. Yeah. It’s taking me a LONG time. I am crazy. And I still have something like an ounce left to spin…BUT I HAVE MISPLACED MY FIBER!!! Aaaah, I think I left it in my art teacher’s car….but school tomorrow so I can see if it was there.

Here’s the fibery goodness I worked on between the Who swap and now…

Planet Earth, 4oz Falkland top

Dyed with food coloring, of course. One of my favorite color combos. :]

And spun up…

128 yards, roughly 10 wpi

Took me ages, though not as long as my current project! I Andean plyed it…whoooo-ey was that a gigantic bracelet! I’m knitting it into a Quant. Currently on hold though…trying to finish some socks and my other spinny projects. But it’s the first thing I’ve started knitting with my handspun!

Aaaand what I’m spinning since I’ve misplaced my other WIP:

"Heard It Through The Grapevine" 4oz Falkland Top

Also dyed by moi. I’ve started spinning it into a fingering-weight single, and since I see how it’s spinning up I’ve renamed it. It’s now called “Rose Garden”. And since I’m going to attempt to make thing easier for myself, I’m going to do it in 2 skeins instead of trying to spin EVERYTHING onto the spindle at once. Wooo.

Can’t wait to get my other spindle back….must…finish…yarn…

 

It’s been a while….

…my goodness!

I’ve been so wrapped up in school work and college preparations that I haven’t gotten around to posting any lovely craftiness!

This stuff has been too long ago for me to spend too much time talking about, because if I did that I’d never get caught up with all the stuff I’ve done since I last posted! So for now, just enjoy some picspam of my swap package I made for sajona for the Doctor Who and Spinoffs Swap on Craftster. :]

Adipose Plushie

"Time Vortex" Yarn

Fifth Doctor Scarf (w/ celery)

K-9 Shirt

Dalek Shirt

My favorite is the scarf! It took ages and ages but turned out absolutely lovely.

See you next time when I post lots of lovely fibery goodness!

 

Just keep spinning…

Mmm, yarns!

Spinning is such a blast…

I figured out where I was going wrong with drafting, and now I can’t help but spin thread-thin yarn! Hee. So this next batch I plied. It’s half the weight of my first skein but almost the same length…and it’s Navajo plied! Wooo boy that is some skinny yarn. Mmm.

I call it “Blueberries and Honey” and it’s 1oz, hand-dyed from the drop spindle kit I got. It goes from yellow to brown to blue to yellow to brown, with a little teeny bit of green in the blue-yellow transition. It created some really neat colors when everything was spun up.

Blueberries and Honey, 1oz, 51 yards, Navajo plied

I bought 1/2lb Falkland Top while in Chapel Hill this week. 4oz is soaking in some vinegar water right now, and I’m going to dye it tomorrow! (er, later today rather, as it is past midnight technically…) I can’t decide what colors to do yet though…

 

You Spin Me Right Round

So, I’ve got a new hobby.

Spinning!

My new spindle and crappily spun crappy Joann roving!

Yeah, I know. Dangerous. I make minimum wage on 10 hours a week – this can’t be good for me! Hahaha maybe if I’m good enough and find cheap fiber and dye it myself and learn to spin well enough I can make money on etsy. WE’LL SEE.

Anyhow, I bought a drop spindle kit from Pacific Wool & Fiber which came in Monday. It came with 2oz undyed Corriedale and 1oz hand-dyed. First I practiced on some crappy roving I bought at Joann (which was really made for felting, to be honest), and then I spun up the undyed stuff! I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. Quite a bit slubby, but not horribly so. I’ve never done this before, after all! I don’t want to mess with the dyed roving until I’m good enough to get it to look the way I want it to.

THEN I dyed my new yarn with food coloring! It came out looking quite delicious. It could have been brighter, but I ran out of vinegar, boo. Plus I was doing it in a sink that doesn’t plug up 100% so the water kept draining…in the end I think I went out on a limb and tossed in some red wine vinegar ‘cuz I was desperate!

skeiny goodness!

57 yards, I call it "Orangeaid"

Then because I was QUITE itching to spin some more but lacking fiber willing to practice with, I started cannibalizing some of my old skeins of Lion Brand Homespun which I will never ever use again for as long as I live. SO not worth it for the aforementioned reasons coupled with the fact that it was lots of effort, but interesting nonetheless to do!

Frankenskein

Next paycheck I will probably order a couple of pounds of fiber from The Sheep Shed Studio – they are quite cheap (although the price sort of evens out with the shipping…haha, that’s why I’m going to order several pounds!) and I’ve heard lots of good things about them from the folks on Craftster.

Also, today I went to the nearest thing I’ve got to an LYS – A Row Of Purls, which is something like a 20 or 30 minute drive from where I live. I talked to one of the ladies that works there about a good place to buy spinning fiber in the area, and she put me on their mailing list and gave me information about a woman who can teach spinning classes! I’m very excited. Hopefully one will be available soon. Talking to people online and watching YouTube videos is all well and good, but there’s nothing quite having someone right beside you showing you exactly how to do it! I can’t wait.

 

Learning to Love Crochet

I started my foray into yarn crafts with crocheting, but truth be told, once I picked up knitting, crocheting became second best. Yes, it’s still quicker and easier, but I found myself not liking it nearly as much. I didn’t think it looked as polished or professional. I just didn’t think it looked as good. When I joined Craftster, I became aware of the world of amigurumi, and thought to myself, “Why do people like this? It’s ugly!”

So when I found this Luna Lovegood Scarf pattern on Craftster, I was excited. Finally, crochet that is pretty! I instantly fell in love with this pattern, and it has inspired me to re-discover crochet. I still don’t like amigurumi, or anything else that has a uniform, all-one-stitch sort of look to it, but I’m now looking into patterns that are more lacy like this one, utilizing shells and picots, etc.

The pattern’s author suggested using a lighter weight yarn than she had initially used in order to get a thinner, drapier scarf, so I decided to do that. I did, however, want to use nicer yarn, something that would really fit the project, as opposed to whatever I could find that was the closest match at the local A. C. Moore, Michael’s, or Joann. Since I have no LYSs near me, I bought this yarn at a shop in Chapel Hill when I was up there for a doctor’s visit. Rowan Purelife Organic Cotton, whooooooey, is that stuff expensive! $9 for such a small little skein. It’s lovely though, and I’m excited to jump into the world of natural fibers (I’ve only been using crappy acrylic stuff up to this point!) I bought two, thinking that’d be enough, but ended up running out with just a few rows left, so bought another off YarnMarket. I am never doing that again, let me tell you. The color is noticeably different, so on one side the color is a bit darker. It’s not too bad though, and no one should really be able to tell unless they’re scrutinizing it.

 

Commissions, commissions

Sometime around November, my art teacher asked me if I could knit her and her daughter each a hat, scarf, and pair of gloves. She offered to pay me. I said sure, I probably wouldn’t have them done by Christmas but yes, I could definitely do that.

I did some searching around for patterns and finally settled on 70065A Hat and Scarf Set for the hat and scarf (with some modifications on the scarf at my discretion) and Fetching for the gloves. I’d done that beanie pattern several times before and really liked it so thought it would be a good choice. I used Lion Brand Homespun yarn for everything, with Windsor and Apple Green for my teacher’s set and Black, Apple Green, and Cotton Candy for her daughter’s set. I started in early December, working here and there around exam studying, and then worked like mad over Christmas break. Last week I FINALLY finished. I felt guilty because she payed me back in December and I had everything spent before break even started!

Anyway, pictures!

I’m really pleased with the results, and I’m glad they both like them, but I am NEVER EVER using Homespun again. I’m so sick of it. And the worst part? I totally overestimated the amount of yarn I’d need, and now I have about four skeins of various colors of Homespun that I will never use probably. I’ve got enough of the stuff already that I acquired as gifts about eight years ago that I haven’t used, and now I have even more! Ack! Oh well, I’m sure I’ll find some use for it. I could try to sell it…

Knitting for money is totally not worth it though. You get peanuts compared to what the labor is really worth. But a little compensation doesn’t hurt.

 

New Year New Yarn

I’ve never really been much of a “resolution” type. I’ve tried a couple of times to come up with something that sounded like a good idea to me, but nothing ever really came into any tangible success. Last year I said I was going to draw one picture every single day in Moleskine cahiers. I succeeded (excluding a couple of slip ups here and there) for about 2 months, but after that, I just got burnt out. I don’t regret trying, as I still enjoy looking back at the work I did, but somehow I knew in my heart all along I wasn’t going to succeed.

This year, I finally found something that I know I will be able to achieve – to knit (or crochet) at least five days a week. January is 2/3 over and I’ve only skipped one day, so I’m currently well on track! Last year, I felt that I had to force myself to keep up with my resolution, and the results showed it in being totally sub-par most of the time. So far this year I haven’t once felt that I didn’t want to dedicate some of my time to yarn, and I don’t see me slowing down yet.

Last year, I started the 2008 12″ Squares Crochet-Along on Craftster, but as you can probably guess, did not get very far. Two months, four squares, to be exact. This year, however, I am determined to make a full afghan during the 2009 CAL! And instead of just using whatever yarns I happen to have in my stash, I decided to go with a color scheme and bought yarn for it. Brown and blue, my favorite!

Esther's Square - January's Square on Craftster

Mandala - January's square on Ravelry (my filler)

Up until now yarn has just been a casual hobby of mine, but recently it has become a much larger part of my life. I’m excited to see what 2009 will bring for me (or more accurately, what I will make in 2009)!