Spinning

I started spinning with some of the fibre from my exciting box! I'm calling it "Purple Dragon" because I like to have names for things. This is the first time I've spun from a batt, it's very exciting but I'm still working out the best way to hold it. It's got bits of firestar fibre in it, which is fun (sparkles!) but they seem to keep not getting pulled into the yarn properly.

I decided to make this a slub yarn, and I started spinning without really paying attention, and it ended up being ridiculously even! Which is awesome (yaay I spin evenly reliably) but still kind of silly.

Oh my GAWD

It's happened. I went to Herrschners to pick up some Mirasol Hacho to finish my scarf. I had PROMISED myself that I was ONLY going to buy that yarn, and NOTHING ELSE. I was quite determined, I swear.

But the bus only came every half hour, so I had to wander around the store for a little while...

It's not ...a LOT of yarn, right?

I swear I don't know what happened. I was just wandering around, and then when I went to the cash there was all this yarn in the basket! I blame the sale room in the back. And the sale on the yarn in the non-sale room. Oh dear...

This is neat though:

It's like a cheap acrylic version of Noro! The colour aren't as nice, and it is acrylic, but Kureyon is always rather rough feeling anyway? It's nice to have cheaper alternatives, this was only $5/skein.

Also, new glow-in-the-dark needles!

I think my stash has grown significantly in the last month. In addition to spending FAR too much money on yarn today and yesterday, this magical box arrived in the mail:

Wait till you see what's inside:

I swear I got tingles when I opened it. 2lbs of fibre I got from a lovely person who was destashing on ravelry. Gosh, there are soooo many wonderful inside it! Happyhappyhappyhappy.

Happy.

Happy!

:D

I am using things though! I made a hat with some of the yarn from Michaels last night, it knitted up super fast because it's sooo chunky. I like it! It's a cloche (and looks a little large here because Cassie has a tiny cute head!).

Also, some handspun:

I spun and dyed it yellow in the summer, but I was unsatisfied, so I resist dyed it the other night, with elastics. I like how it looks spotty, so I call it "Spotted Frog." I plied it with itself...plying from either ends of a centre-pull ball works, believe it or not. (I was sceptical, I thought it would turn into a tangled mess, but no!)

So yes, a good day. Despite my COMPLETE AND UTTER unfaithfulness to my purported yarn diet. Oh well, I sort of knew it was lies.

But now I'm on a yarn diet FOR REALS THIS TIME, I swear.

Unless, you know...

Something comes up...

Woodstock Fleece Festival Part 2

What a horrible week. I was going to rant about the fleece festival (rest assured, I still will), but I ended up with four assignments and a midterm due this week, severely cutting back on my internet time. I've hardly had ANY time to craft this week, it's super upsetting!

But on to better things.

That is what I bought at the fleece festival! I might have got a liiiittle overexcited, but it was my first fibre festival and I just couldn't contain myself. Plus, it was (almost) all really well priced! I haven't quite worked out what I spent yet, I've been avoiding thinking about it. I might have spent all my grocery money for November. Well, if I run out of food I'll just go to everything on campus with free food, that's the best way to deal with that problem, right?

Now I'm not going to go on (and on, and on) about everything I bought, but I have to share a few special things.

I WON this! I had my eye on it when I entered the raffle, and it was still there when I won! So so so so exciting. The price tag said $50, crazy eh?


This is really cool, it's two skeins of different fibre dyed to match by Fleece Artist. I don't have any fixed plans for this yet, but it was too nice to pass up! One skein is merino, the other is "angel hair" - 70% kid, 30% nylon.


These are also fleece artist, lovely laceweight purple! 66% Mohair, 24% Wool, 10% Nylon. I got one dyed straight purple, and one that was varicoloured with sections of the same purple, I'm planning on using them for a lace shawl, because I am sort of in the mood for a lace shawl.


4oz of border leicester locks. They have fantastic texture and colour variation!


This bag is a pound and was $10. For dyed wool! Oh man! They had all these bags with different colours and you got to pick your own, it was super exciting. I also got some bamboo-merino blend from here.


I got a new spindle! It has a really wide whorl, and it's pretty heavy. I really like the grain of the wood that's visible! I actually sanded it down a little because the varnish was a little bumpy in places, but for $22 I'm definitely not complaining!
The fibre is merino-viscose, and I am entirely in love with it. It drafts beautifully, is wonderfully soft, and I love how it's dyed! I'm going to spin it all into a lace/fingering weight single, and make something lacy with it.


This was my particularly indulgent purchase. I'd told myself NOT to buy any yarn that was more than $20/skein, but this was so EXACTLY my favourite colours, and it felt soooo nice, and the stall took credit cards....
I have no regrets. The fact I only bought one is a credit to my self-control.

Even apart from all the gorgeous fibre, the fleece festival was thoroughly enjoyable. After I'd spent all my money I wandered around with my new drop spindle and chatted to people. So many people who love fibre in one place! Wondrous. I'm going to start saving for next year RIGHT NOW. Well, maybe after I've saved enough for this one yarn I really want...

Fleece Festival Part 1

Oh man, I just got back from the Woodstock Fleece Festival, and I am completely exhausted and penniless but I just had to post about how WONDERFUL it was!!! *happy sigh*

More about it later.

What I did on my summer vacation

I just got back home after being away for about a month. Classes started today too, which was a little annoying; I'd have liked to have a bit of time to prepare, I had to use a shopping bag as a backpack today because my backpack was still full from camping. But at least there was only one class, and we didn't really do anything, so I'm not really sure what I'm complaining about.

I spun some yarn! I'm getting better at making it even-ish, which is nice, and I've also now made 3-ply:

From this top:

I made this yarn:

(The colour is more accurate in the second picture.) I split the top into three before I started spinning, but they didn't all end up the same length, so I made the single underneath with the leftovers. I quite like the way both bits turned out. No plans yet for what the yarn will be used for...ideas?

This yarn is made from recycled sari ends, which is my new favourite fibre! It's kind of tricky to spin since it isn't really prepared all that much, but you get a great texture from it, and I just love the colours! I ordered a bunch more sari ends off ebay, because I enjoyed making it so much!

I also finally got around to using my people stamps I got aaaaages ago. They're unmounted, so kind of annoying (I should really figure out mounting stamps), but I really like them!

I also finally used the silver pigment ink pad I've had for a while! It doesn't seem to like to dry, particularly since these two cards are coated in mod podge, so the ink had a tendency to rub off a little. But I really like how they turned out, so like whatevs, right?

In other news, Harvest was amazing! The property (which was huge) had all this really neat art, and they had made fantastic deco! It was spread out all over the place, so you could wander around and find random things in the middle of the woods. My favourite thing was the hammerhead sharks they made out of chicken wire and clingfilm. There were 3 stages, which all had really good music. I blew so many bubbles, decided I was part of a circus, wandering around, somehow ended up serving soup off a truck, and was eventually found by friends cuddling with people in the woods a couple hours later. It was wicked fun, but I burned out pretty fast, so I've decided that next year I will actually try to sleep more and eat regular meals instead of just when I remember. Everyone there was really friendly, there was a real sense of community. Oh, and I want to learn to hula hoop properly, because there were people with light up hula hoops and it was SO AWESOME! I can hoop around my waist, knees, and arms, and I can toss it from arm to arm, but that is it and I am UNSATISFIED.

Discoveries

I've found out that Harvest Festival and the Knitter's Fair are on the same weekend!

VS.



THIS IS SO UPSETTING.

It makes me wonder if anyone else has this dilemma, though. I'm going to Harvest since I haven't been to a festival ALL SUMMER, plus I shouldn't be spending all my money on yarn (which I totally would).

Plus, I really want unspun fiber more than yarn at this point (though a nice large batch of white wool would not go amiss...) and apparently the vendors have been told to focus on knitting, not spinning (so sad).

PLUS, I found two more yarn/fiber/etc fairs coming up soon that DON'T conflict! The Woodstock Fleece Festival is in October, and the KW Weavers' and Spinners' Guild Show & Sale in November. So exciting!!!

I also found this wonderful site today, it maps yarn stores and has reviews of them. You can also save "crawls," mapping a set of stores you want to go visit. I've made one of the yarn stores in Ottawa, since I'm visiting there soon! I found a yarn store RIGHT around the corner from where I used to live. Such a waste, I didn't knit then! Heh.

I navajo plied my remade yarn:

Vacation and Neat Things

I've been on vacation with my family for a little now, another two weeks to go. Spending extended amounts of time with my parents always makes me a little crazy, and having little to no internet access doesn't help. I've gotten some spinning done, which is nice, and a little bit of knitting. Here's a ball I'm going to ply; it's Lion's Brand Homespun (I can't remember the colourway).

I'm planning on chain-plying it, since I've only tried that for a very short length of yarn (and also so I don't have to break the ball up). Next: recycled sari ends! (below) Oh, and I've plied the green handspun skeins (that I mentioned in my last post) together without redying...I quite like the pale green, I have to say. No pictures till I'm back home though.

I've only been knitting intermittently, when I can't spin easily (like when I'm in the car, or reading in bed, etc). I'm using up those annoying little balls that are always left over when you finish a project - I have SO MANY of them, and have no idea where half of them come from. But they are going to good use, I suppose...I'll probably send the tags I'm making with them in the Yarn Bombs Away! swap Kadie is hosting on swapbot. My partner is my new roommate, so I can make them as big as I like without worrying about shipping. Heh. Anyway, here's what I've done so far, rumpled up a bit:

I'm using my treasured glow-in-the-dark needles! They are so wonderful, I can knit in the dark! I embarrassed my father because I was knitting at the grocery store and dropped my ball of yarn in the parking lot, and it rolled away without me noticing. But a nice lady told me I'd dropped it, so it's ok!

My website really needs some work, particularly since I label my yarn bombs. I almost went to a seminar about how to use photoshop to make webpages, and now I'm regretting that I didn't, because that is pretty much what I want to do now. I'd like to learn site design, I think, but I'm not passionate enough about it to teach myself. Probably the thing to do is to decide what I want it to look like, sketch it, then talk to people who know what they are doing. For the mean time I guess I will just put some info about yarn bombing up?

Tonight I have learned to not listen to this mix right before going to bed. I like it, but it keeps me awake!

Here are some cool things:

• Dewey Decimal Crafts - "Crocheted skulls for all occasions. No two skulls are the same, and no skulls rival these." I feel this is an accurate description.
  
• plastic bag mushrooms yarn bomb - hot damn this is awesome!
  
• insubordiknit handspun - I want to make yarn like this one day! Though I think a lot of it requires a wheel. Sigh.
  
• yarn-holding coffee can cubbies - These are neat, but a) I don't drink coffee and b) I have too much yarn!
  

Re-making Yarn

Lion Brand Homespun Yarn is, in some ways, really great yarn. I just love how soft it is, and how the colour blends, but it is incredibly frustrating to work with! It's corespun and then plied with thread (this is my guess, I am 100% willing to be wrong on this!), so it's very textured and bumpy, which makes it super easy to push needles or hooks through the middle of the yarn. Arg!

I made a couple hats with this yarn a while ago, so I had a little bit of yarn left from a couple skeins, but not enough to do anything useful with. Since the yarn is SO FRUSTRATING to work with, I tore it apart and respun it, since I liked the fiber so much. I've decided to make a tutorial, in case anyone else is interested in doing this!



1. Pick your yarn! You want a bulkier yarn, ideally one that is a thick single plied with thread. You can use whatever yarn you want really, but the thicker the singles are, the easier it is to separate and card.




2 - Look at yarn. This yarn has a fluffy part (the part I want) spun around strong thread (in the middle), and plied with a single white thread (which is visible here).




3 - Un-ply. Pull apart the yarn: here I'm starting with the thread the fluffy party was plied with. The thread I'm taking out is visible from the outside of the yarn.




4 - Remove the core. Remove the strong core of the fluffy part. Not all yarns will have this, but this brand does. You need to hunt for strong, thread-y parts in the fluff, then pull them out.




5 - After removing the core. The yarn will probably bunch up like this - that's fine, just straighten it out so you can see where to break the yarn.




6 - Break the yarn. Pull off the yarn that has had the thread-y parts removed. If you can't pull it apart easily, there may still be thread in it, try moving closer to the end. In this picture, the yarn on the left still has thread-y bits, the yarn on the right has all the thread-y bits removed.




7 - Different parts.
A - These are the threads from the middle of the yarn and the thread that was plied with the fluffy bit.
B - The fluffy bit of the yarn - this is the part you want! You could probably spin this fiber as is, but it would be trickier to draft, so it would be harder to get different weights.




8 - Break fluff into smaller parts. You're going to be separating the fluffy fibers, so break them into smaller parts. They're much easier to pull apart when they're this size.




9 - Pull apart fluff. Separate the fibers in each section.




10 - Separated fluff. This is what the fluff should look like when it's been separated.




11 - All the fluff separated. Put all the separated fluff in a pile, you're going to card it next! You actually get a decent amount of fiber from not much yarn, this is all the fiber from B in step 7.




12 - Card fiber. This is a pretty good guide to carding fiber. If you can't afford hand carders (they're pretty expensive), you can use two dog brushes! The carders in the photo are dog brushes.




13 - Rolags. The fiber has been carded into rolags, ready for spinning.




14 - Bucket of rolags. These are purple rolags from some yarn I took apart previously. Ready for spinning!




15 - Spin the Fiber. Spin the fiber from the rolags! This is some more reclaimed fiber I'm in the process of spinning.




16 - Yarn! The finished product! This is the purple laceweight yarn from the rolags in step 14. Now I have a usable amount of yarn from a tiny amount left over!


I hope someone finds that helpful! Spinning is fun, and this is a great way to try out small amounts of different fibers.