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Author: Leonor

Textile artist, indie dyer, conjurer of fluff.
Two skeins of hand spun alpaca fibre side by side, the one on the left hasn't been washed and the one on the right has.
My wheel gets some maintenance and the alpaca gets a bath

My wheel gets some maintenance and the alpaca gets a bath

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How often do you do maintenance on your craft/hobby/fibre/work-related objects? That is, how often do you oil your wheel, change the needle on your sewing machine, clean your carding brushes? I bet this isn’t a type of question that gets asked much outside woolly circles (although “how often do you wash your hairbrush” really should be a thing in my opinion!)

A while ago, my Lendrum spinning wheel started squeaking a bit. Every rotation, I’d get a “squee, squee, squee” sound that annoyed me to no end. It finally dawned on me that it may be time to show it some love and add a few drops of machine oil onto its metal bits. I pretended I knew what I was doing, hummed and harrumphed a few times (like how I imagined a seasoned mechanic would when looking at an old car) and what do you know? The squeak was gone. Hoorah!

Then it dawned on me that other parts of the wheel might also be in need of some TLC. I bought a WooLee Winder a number of years ago and although that, too, had been subjected to some oiling in the past, I had never once disassembled the thing to do a deep cleaning. To put things in better context, I’ve been spinning raw alpaca… If you know your camelids, you’ll know those adorable guys can get very dusty! My winder had started to stutter and stop in one specific place lately, and I could see dirt accumulating on the outside of the shuttle groove, so I really needed to do something about it.

WooLee Winder on a Lendrum wheel
Photo courtesy of the WooLee Winder website. This one looks pristine, mine looked dirtyyyyy.

Being the independent woman that I am, I forged a plan: watch a couple of YouTube videos, dismantle the thing, clean it thoroughly, drink a well-deserved cup of tea afterwards and enjoy my feminist success.

I did Step One very successfully, then immediately changed tact: I delegated the task to Husband (meaning: I chickened out of playing with an expensive piece of equipment and asked him to do it for me, so I could blame him in case it all went awry).

Two hands are shown in the process of taking apart the WooLee Winder
I was offering useful supervision the whole thing (meaning: I was the backseat driver)

Trust me, the photo doesn’t begin to show how terribly dusty the whole thing was. Once it all came apart, I was aghast at how a piece of shiny metal could actually look dull and brownish. See the amount of fibre I removed from the inside!

Closeup of my hand holding some fluff I removed from the WooLee Winder
This was the fluff that was preventing my winder from working properly. Or so I thought.

Now the plot twist: once the WooLee Winder was reassembled, I was happily back at my wheel and ready to gunk it up with more alpaca; I was spinning away, when the thing kept stopping exactly in the same spot as before it was cleaned. Why, ye gods, why?!

The answer? I only thought I’d cleaned it correctly. Turns out, the amount of fluff you see in the pic was just the tip of the iceberg. Husband, I require your services and tools once again! This time we spent time really looking at every nook and cranny, and managed to remove some more debris. It wasn’t actually much more, but it was enough to prevent the mechanism from moving as it should.

It was finally working like a charm. I felt I went from driving a beaten-up Alfa Romeo to a Ferrari – that thing was faster than I remember and I had to adjust my wheel’s settings because as it turns out, I’d been making my Lendrum work harder than it needed to compensate for my inadequate maintenance efforts.

Now, to illustrate how much dust I’d been adding to the WooLee Winder, I present one of my alpaca skein baths. This was the second wash.

A skein of alpaca hand spun yarn is under very dirty brown, soapy water
Ew.

Is it any wonder my equipment needed some TLC? You’ll be surprised to know I am now planning on cleaning the winder again after I am done spinning this fleece…

Finally, a picture of two skeins of hand spun alpaca side by side. The left one is before washing and the right one is after; notice how the fibre has bloomed. I’m never short of amazed at how much fibres transform after a warm soak.

Two skeins of hand spun alpaca fibre side by side, the one on the left hasn't been washed and the one on the right has.

Next on my cleaning list is coming up with a way to clean my (currently very dusty) wool carders without water. Any ideas? How do you maintain yours?

I hope this post has inspired you to look at your precious tools and offering them some love. They help us be better at our crafts, after all. We need to keep them in top condition! Don’t be like me…

 

Closeup of the hap on the blocking mat, showing the wire stretching the lace section.
The magic of blocking lace

The magic of blocking lace

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Ah, lace.
Occasionally I crave a knitting challenge, so lace patterns (preferably with a chart) grab my attention and I just need to finish that thing and see it in all its glory.

Unlike a run-of-the-mill stocking stitch jumper/sweater however, lace looks absolutely dreadful and underwhelming before it’s blocked. If I were to show my finished lace project to a non-knitter and ask for their opinion, I’m sure they’d wonder why I wasted so much time hand making something so wrinkly and ungainly.

Give it a warm bath, a gentle squeeze and some vigorous stretching with wires however, and the thing blooms into beauty.

I recently decided to use some of my stashed lovely Mongolian cashmere yarn. As it happens, I saw a pattern in my LYS that I really enjoyed and cast on. A Hap for Harriet is a simple enough knit, with a lace border to keep you entertained.

Looks quite underwhelming, doesn’t it? The stitches have no particular definition or structure. There’s something missing. No wonder, it’s not blocked yet! Out come the foam mats, the pins and the blocking wires. Mine have memory, so they move as I want them and go back to their original structure, giving me more control than the wires I usually see for sale.

After a warm soak in wool wash, this hap was quite vigorously stretched. I showed it no mercy! It showed no mercy to me either, I was doing this on the floor on my knees. There’s other things I’d rather be doing in my mid-40s… my poor back. The sacrifices one makes for one’s craft.

My knitted hap on the blocking mat with wires and pins to keep it taut, with my black cat Kenya at a distance staring at the whole thing.

This was a big one. Kenya in the background for extra cuteness and (maybe) size reference. I wonder what was going on in my cat’s mind as she saw me on the floor practicing human shenanigans…

After a couple of days of drying under tension, my lovely hap is now looking amazing and cosy! I do have to say though, a while after I’d finished blocking it a friend told me cashmere should be rubbed when being washed, so the fibre can bloom and make it extra fuzzy. Lovely to know, thank you, but I’m definitely not soaking this thing again for a long time… blocking is magical but also a lot of hard work!

Do you love or hate blocking? Any tips to share? Tell me in the comments section. Thanks for reading!

A stack of bowl cosies
A quick handmade Christmas present: bowl cosies

A quick handmade Christmas present: bowl cosies

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I had this big idea of creating a step-by-step tutorial for this post, but the flu is doing its rounds and I just didn’t have the energy. Sorry! Here’s an abridged version.

A few months ago, I went to a friend’s flat and she warmed up some food for me in microwave at dinnertime. She used a weird sort of mitten that she placed under the bowl, so that when we took the hot food out, we’d grab onto the fabric and not burn our hands.

Mind. Blown.
This thing was, she said, called a bowl cosy and I immediately wanted to make a dozen and hand them out.

 

A hand holds a handmade bowl cosy to demonstrate how it works. The background is blurred.
Now imagine a bowl on top of that fabric. No burnt fingers here!

These cosies are super easy to make, especially if you batch-sew them. They’re also great to use up scraps of fabric (some of mine were made with patchwork bits).

How to make a bowl cosy

  • Cut two 10″x 10″ (25cm x 25cm) squares. Fabric must be 100% cotton or other natural fibre.
  • Cut two 100% cotton/wool batting squares, slightly smaller than the fabric ones. I made mine ½” (1.25 cm) smaller all around.
  • Sew the fabric and batting together by making an X (see images above).
  • Sew darts as shown below, towards the wrong side of the fabric.

Image of a square with darts inserted where they should be sewn

  • Sew the now two bowl-shaped squares of fabric, right sides together, leaving an opening for turning.
  • Once sewn and turned, press and topstitch.
  • Tah-dah!
  • Make sure all fabrics are 100% natural, so they don’t melt in the microwave. I used nylon thread without issues but you might want to use cotton thread to be on the safe side.

I found a great illustrated tutorial by Lovely and Enough here.

These make great handmade stocking fillers and show you care about your loved ones not getting scalded hands. Nifty. You can even use themed fabrics to suit their preferences.

Two bowl cosies, one with cat-themed fabric, the other with dog-themed fabric

That’s it. I hope you found this idea useful, if you do, let me know in the comments or tag me on Instagram @eleanor.shadow 🙂

A stack of bowl cosies

Happy sewing, happy holidays, and see you next year 🙂

Eleanor Shadow with someone who had more colourful hair than she did
I did two yarn festivals in a month

I did two yarn festivals in a month

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Are you familiar with that feeling of agreeing to do something far away in time because you’re sure Future You will deal with it with grace and organisation? Since you’re sure Future You is much better at things than Present You, it’ll be a breeze when time comes. No? Just me?

As you can tell, I fell into this trap. I had already said yes to doing The Scottish Yarn Festival at the end of August, and when an invitation showed up in my inbox for Summer School mid-August, I thought, “easy breezy, I’ll be prepping for one show already, what’s the problem with another?” Famous last words.
(By the way, I wasn’t the only one flying by the seat of my pants, the Summer School roster doesn’t even include me in the website!)

For those who don’t know me, I am an indie dyer of yarns and fibres going by Eleanor Shadow. I run everything on my own, from admin to web design, to aaaall the hand dyeing of gorgeous fluff for the pleasure of the spinner and knitter. I do love what I do, but it’s hard work.

 

Top view of a hand dyed sock blank in rainbow colours, with sprinkles
An example of a rainbow I love to create, but that comes in multiple steps and takes longer than I ever remember

 

The passion I have for hand dyeing often makes me underestimate how much work something is; pair that with a neurospicy brain and there might be trouble!

The months of July and August were spent in a frenzy of planning, dyeing, sewing and art-batting (I know, not a word, but it represents the nervous energy spent at the drum carder extremely well). I never had enough time.

 

Multiple rainbow yarns drying on a rack, with a cheeky hand spun rainbow yarn in the middle
Rainbow hand dyeing and hand spinning drying. Behind the camera there’s one seriously dishevelled human trying her best to Do All The Things.

 

Top view of yarn in a dye bath, this is Apocalyptic Tweed in the sprinkles phase
Adding sprinkles to my colourway Apocalyptic Tweed

 

The end results, however, were wonderful. I had the most stock I ever had for any show, and consequently sold the most I ever had in a month.

Another fun thing about yarn festivals is meeting lots of different people. I was out-coloured by a lovely yarn-loving truck driver! Behold.

 

I didn’t have much time to peruse other people’s stalls, but I was sorely tempted by this prize-winning black fleece by BeautifulFleece.

 

A glimpse of BeautifulFleece's stall, with a luscious black fleece on display with the winner ribbon on top
Look how shiny those locks look! That prize ribbon gives me grabby-hands feels.

Finally, click here if you’d like to watch a video of my stall (which I’m not uploading directly here because it would be a chunky file!)

All in all, it was a blur of activity and also fun, and I wish I’d taken more photos… neurospicy brain, remember? I’m just glad I got all the yarn dyed and could put two sentences together during the events.

Tell me all about your own festival experiences, whether as a seller or buyer. Got suggestions? Leave them in the comments section, I’d love to know. Thanks for reading!

The handsome Hector the white alpaca, fleece shaven, looks straight into the camera
My first foray into plant print screening

My first foray into plant print screening

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I just looked up the meaning of “foray” and I must say, I really didn’t plunge into this activity with any violence. Sorry if I mislead you. If anything, my incursion – is that a better word? – begun because of love.

Love, you ask? Yes, my undying love for Hector! My husband knows he is only second to Hector and is alright with it. You’d understand if you saw him. In fact, let me add a photo of that handsome chap for your enjoyment, and then you tell me if you’re not equally in love.

*drumroll, please*

The handsome Hector the white alpaca, fleece shaven, looks straight into the camera

Isn’t he the most handsomest chap ever? Wouldn’t you sign up to an eco printing workshop if you got to spend some time with this beautiful alpaca? That’s exactly what I did.

Allow me to backtrack just a bit: Hector lives in Birkhill House, and I’ve met up with his human Lara on a few yarn festivals to chat and peruse her wares. I bought a few batts from her, and by coincidence they were all from Hector. Coincidence… or fate? I decided it was fate and from then on decided this was the love of my life and I’d do anything to one day meet the grower of the only alpaca fibre I’ve ever genuinely loved (the others I’ve spun/wore feel itchy!)

Fast forward to the day I bought a full Hector blanket to wash, process and spin. No, fast forward a bit more, to the day Birkhill decided to debut their eco printing workshop. I was so keen to finally meet him! I could thank Hector for the amazing yarns I’ve gotten out of his fibre so far.

First things first, I needed to actually participate in the workshop. Fine, I’ll make that terrible sacrifice. In I go to the working shed and play with plants, merino fabric and wallpaper base.

Plants used for eco dyeing on plastic trays
Plants ready to be chosen and laid out
A strip of fabric with plants on top in an "aesthetic" way
My flimsy efforts. Knowing what I know now, I’d definitely have filled the negative space with more plant material.

Like I said, this was my first time playing with eco printing. I had no idea what I was doing. I was well instructed by Sunshine, our tutor! Love her name, very fitting to her personality.

After we had our plants properly squished between the layer of paper and fabric, and tied up, it was time to add them to the dye bath for a bit. Intermission to look at Birkhill’s plant garden.

Wait, did I mention this workshop was a two-parter? After we looked at the plant garden, there was more fun to be had in the form of solar dyeing. I confess I had a little knee-jerk chuckle at the notion of sunshine dyeing anything in Scotland, but then I remembered I get more sunshine here than I ever did in London and shut up.

It was time to peruse the vast sample of plant dyes available for us to play with. Although I’m familiar with acid dyes, it being my bread and butter and all, I’m very ignorant of natural dyes – so I appreciated the labels for me to read and see what colours they’d yield.

We were given two silk and silk-and-merino micro skeins to add to our jars (mine used to house caviar, how fancy) and were given full freedom to choose which colours and how many to add. I chose three in the red-purple family. After arriving home I placed it by the window and waited.

At the time of writing my micro skeins are almost finished soaking up the dyes and are looking properly red and purple. Unfortunately, also at the time of writing, I have a cat on my lap and we all know it’s illegal to move them, so you’ll just have to imagine how lovely it’s looking at the moment.

Now comes the best part of my visit: alpacas! Have you ever booped an alpaca’s nose? They have no cartilage there and it’s like booping a velvety marshmallow; it feels magic. The next best thing? Feeding an alpaca.

Leonor feeds Hector the alpaca through the fence and has a very goofy smile whilst doing so
Thank you Lara for the photo! My happiness is very real.

I heart Hector!

After all this, our eco printing was ready to unravel and dry.

And that was my half day at the farm with eco printing and alpacas. I hope you enjoyed reading it, thanks for letting me share my love of Hector. I’ll leave you with some Hector skeins I’ve spun so far, all with different techniques. My favourite so far is definitely the semi-woollen using rolags, the yarn is so fluffy.

From left to right: spun semi-worsted from batt, 2-ply; spun semi-worsted from batt, chain-plied; spun semi-woollen from rolags, 2-ply; spun semi-woollen from textured batt turned into rolags, 2-ply (my favourite).

Four skeins of alpaca yarn, hand spun from Hector
I hope you like my cat socks, I left them in for your enjoyment.

Thanks for reading!

Four Barbies (three female, one male) and a vintage Cindy doll on a shelf
I have a new obsession

I have a new obsession

Comments 24 comments

Let’s talk hobbies. My neurospicy brain enjoys rotating them – when I go back to a beloved interest after an extended absence, it’s as if I’m rediscovering its joys all anew. There’s dopamine to be had in this sort of novelty and I’m not one to shy away from it (just don’t overdo it if you’re like me).

The past couple of months however, I discovered a new hobby, and I’m not quit sure how to feel about it: sewing miniature clothing.

I like being able to whip up a pair of trousers in an hour, functional pockets included, and getting the satisfaction of a task completed. If I were to put my brain in an MRI scanner afterwards I’m sure it’d be lit up like a USA Christmas home in December.

There’s only so much fun to be had sewing mini clothes if there is no one to wear them, though – so naturally I’ve purchased a few dolls to dress, all of different body proportions to keep things interesting. I’m 45 and never had a particular interest in being an “adult fashion doll collector,” as they are known, and yet here we are. What is going on?

Anyway, meet the posse.

 

Four Barbies (three female, one male) and a vintage Cindy doll on a shelf
Ken is wearing trousers and t-shirt made by me, the sitting Barbie’s skirt is also mine as well as the pink blouse.

 

They’re currently residing in an unglamorous IKEA shelf cubicle but, of course, I have plans to make their accommodations nicer. Miniature sewing is morphing into tiny carpentry, help!

Oh, who am I kidding? It’s already happened. I built them a wardrobe with popsicle sticks and balsa wood rods to keep their clothes tidy and cute. I even bought shoebox templates to store their footwear. I’m in deep.

 

Handmade miniature wardrobe with tiny shoeboxes, clothes on hangers and a handbag with sunglasses
Handmade wardrobe, shoeboxes and the grey pleated slacks are also my doing. The bag is sadly commercial, my hand sewing skills aren’t that good yet.

 

There is definitely something *very* satisfying about tiny pockets…

 

Tiny doll trousers with my finger inside one of the pockets
“POCKETSES!” (I hope you’re a Lord of the Rings fan and get the reference…)

Barbie doll wearing the trousers I showed in the photo above

 

Like I said, it’s a weird thing for me to have acquired this new taste for dolls. What do you think, is it weird? Let me know your thoughts!

A frontal photo of the Side Eye jumper
When knitting rebels against you…

When knitting rebels against you…

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…or, “when you’re a monogamous knitter and can’t bring yourself to knit anything else, even when you’re tired” – that could be the alternative title, it just slides out the tongue, doesn’t it?…

I am the sort of weird person who can’t stand multiple unfinished projects, I’ll definitely forget they exist if I don’t give them my full attention until completion. Sadly, this means I am stuck with a knitting project that challenges the brain even when said brain is clearly too tired to work on it. I’ve been very busy lately but also very stubborn and insisting I can knit something complicated even when I can hardly keep my eyes open.

Clearly this is headed for success!

Let’s backtrack: I got obsessed with a colourwork jumper I saw on Ravelry a while ago called Side Eye. To my eyes it is magnificent and just the sort of thing my wardrobe is wanting. I had some precious baby Yak yarn that would be perfect for it.

A frontal photo of the Side Eye jumper
Photo by Caitlin Shepherd

Of course, I apparently also crave chaos, because the version I really wanted to knit was one that had some colour changes. I wanted the same version as a Ravelry user called Viorelknits had made. Their version took my breath away and I needed one just like it.

Viorelknits' version of the Side Eye jumper
Photo by Viorelknits

To the unconfounded mind, this version might seem like a simple question of creating a couple of extra rounds in the knitting to switch colours and Bob’s my uncle. To my very confounded mind though, this was a bit of a nightmare. My tired braincells just refused to compute the change. Did this mean I rested and came back later? No, this meant lots of swearing and persisting!

My version of the Side Eye jumper, still unfinished

I have so far managed to knit the bottom successfully, but had trouble interpreting the changes Viorelknits made to their version to make the colour change possible in the section shown on the needles above. This means the beginning of my ram’s head doesn’t look as neat, and now there’s a possibility I might have to frog part of the top bit – can you imagine how much work it’ll be undoing colourwork?

So, wish me luck and keep me accountable, let’s see if my next blog post features a finished jumper, or whether I have instead gone into hiding and hate all yarn until infinity.

See you next time 🙂

Some pre-felt on top of a hessian stabbing mat, with sewn lines made to resemble a postcard
A Christmas card swap, except Jan’s card is still with me

A Christmas card swap, except Jan’s card is still with me

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Firstly, if you’re Jan and don’t want a spoiler about your card, stop reading immediately!

I think I’m jinxed. There, I said it. For last year’s seasonal card swap, I was paired with the lovely Hélène and the card I sent her was returned to me by Irish Customs, who didn’t deign my wares good enough to cross its country’s borders. This year, I am unable to send my finished card to Jan because Royal Mail says no (well, Canada post says no, they’re not accepting any mail until their strike is resolved).

If I take part in next year’s swap, you might want to avoid me as a partner…

This year I decided to take the notion of a postcard rather literally; I wanted something the size and look of one, and so decided to put my sewing machine to use.

Some pre-felt on top of a hessian stabbing mat, with sewn lines made to resemble a postcard

I cut some pre-felt almost to size and marked down the lines typical of a postcard using a heat-erasable pen. See the twisted red wool on the top left corner of the photo? At first I had the idea of felting the lines with it, until I realised it would take me forever and not look half as good as using the sewing machine. I changed tactics.

After sewing those lines I wrote down my seasons greetings. I was ambitious in what I wanted to say, as you’re about to see.

The beginnings of the writing on my wool Christmas card, where I wrote "Dear Jan, Happy..."

Using yarn, I worked with a felting needle and carefully started following the outlines of the words. I immediately realised my “handwriting” wasn’t going to be as small as I intended. Oops. If you look carefully at the picture above, you’ll see the next word I was meant to write was “holidays,” which is larger than the already felted “Happy.”

More words needle felted onto the wool, saying "Dear Jan, Happy Xmas! L xx"

Where did the word “holidays” go? Well, sometimes you have to pick your battles. Let’s pretend this was the plan all along, shall we?

And then, off to the decorating and making it a more seasonal card.

The almost-finished card with a 3D Christmas tree needle felted on the right

There was something missing in the background… so I did the foolish thing of working that part after having the foreground finished. However, I think it was worth it, but you can judge by yourselves.

The same felted card as before but the needle felted Christmas tree has a blue background also in wool felt

Much better, I hope you agree! I particularly like the detail of the present with the bow made from yarn.

Now it was time to cut the card to size and glue it to a real postcard (a blank one made from watercolour paper). I sadly don’t have a good enough photo of the card’s front, so you’ll just have to imagine the above image in the correct size and without the markers that I removed with a steam iron.

Here’s the back of the card:

The back of my card, made of paper. It has some drawn birds, a doodle of a cat in lieu of a stamp and some greetings to Jan

“I hope this card reaches you in time” was written before I knew Canada postal services were not only delaying deliveries but had altogether halted them. Sorry, Jan!

I will have this on its way to you as soon as possible.

(By the way, see the smudge under the flying bird? That wasn’t me being clumsy at all, no siree, that was completely on purpose and represents the movement and plight of the avian creature as it strives to reach its maximum potential. Cough cough…)

Seasons greetings, everyone! Thanks for reading.

 

One frog and one toad, both hand knit, sat on a desk. One is wearing a turtleneck jumper and the other one dungarees and a shawl
When knitting is tiny

When knitting is tiny

Comments 23 comments

Does your crafting mojo wane and wax like the phases of the moon? Mine does. I have a fairly narrow set of interests but it’s up to the Gods of Craft when I work on one of them.

After my knitting took a back seat for a few weeks, I started feeling the need to get the needles and yarn out and create something cute and tiny. I didn’t feel ready to tackle a bit knitting project, my brain was asking for a quick reward. Enter a frog and a toad!

One frog and one toad, both hand knit, sat on a desk. One is wearing a turtleneck jumper and the other one dungarees and a shawl

If you are familiar with India Rose Crawford on Instagram, you’ll know her cute frogs poised in adorable miniature cosy scenes. If you’ve never heard of her, I highly encourage you to have a look, her attention to detail is fantastic.

I bought a knitting kit featuring India Rose’s frog pattern (jumper included) and when the time was right I begun working on it. My first attempt didn’t quite go to plan, as I mistakenly placed the eyes on his bottom… poor thing ended up looking much more like an axolotl than a frog.

 

Axolotl
A real axolotl. Photo by National Geographic

 

A knitted from resembling an axolotl
My “frog” with eyes on his bum, poor thing…

The knitting gods were mocking me but I persisted! A couple of days later I had a new cute amphibian with a wired armature.

An unfinished knitted frog with wires for arms. My hand is holding his torso.

Knitting an i-cord around wire isn’t easy, let me tell you. It’s fiddly work but the end result is super worth it. And yes, the background for the photo above is my pyjama bottoms – evening knitting works best in cosy loungewear.

A knitted frog next to a mini knitted jumper, still on the needles

The gods played tricks on me once again as I didn’t have enough yarn to finish the mini jumper, so I frogged it (if you’re not familiar, “frogging” refers to when you remove a project from the needles and undo the stitches, the resulting “rip-it” motion being similar to the word “ribbit.” Fitting for this post, no?) After adding some blue stripes this dapper gentleman was ready to stay cosy.

I seem to enjoy making things in pairs, as soon as I was done with the frog I decided it needed a friend and Toad was born. I even bought a tiny dungarees pattern for added whimsy. The front pocket was my own creation.

A hand holds a small knitted toad wearing knitted brown dungarees.

And there you have it, two quick dopamine-inducing knitting projects that eventually led me to a human-sized jumper a few days later. I’ll have to frog that project too, but that’s a subject for another day.

A hand knit frog is sat on the edge of a table with a standing knitted toad next to it.

And, finally, here is an image of what India Rose Crawford does with her knitted frogs. Amazing, isn’t it?

Photo by @indiarosecrawford on Instagram

Maybe I’ve inspired you to knit something tiny. If you do, let me know in the comments section. Thanks for reading.

Textured art yarn made from locks on a skein winder
A bit of this, a bit of that

A bit of this, a bit of that

Comments 14 comments

Hello! The writing of this blog post comes to you on a day where I am quite sleep-deprived, so you will have to excuse my possibly being a little off my writing game…

Allow me to start by showing you some art batts I created a little ago. I love art batts in general, there’s so much texture and colours to look at. I do so enjoy the batt-making process as well, looking at all my fibre and deciding what goes where, and how much… Anyone else feel this fascination when creating textured fibre sandwiches?

Speaking of textures, I recently spun an art yarn using some Leicester Longwool locks in their natural formation and I swoon every time I look at that texture…

Textured art yarn made from locks on a skein winder

This will become a weaving of some sorts, I am handing over the yarn to a fellow Edinburgh guild member so he can create some magic. I told him I wasn’t sure whether I was handing him treasure or a lemon (I believe textured weaving is new to him and I also have some plying inconsistencies on this skein), and he replied saying he would think of it as a pomegranate instead. I thought that was quite funny.

It is one heavy skein, as you might attest by the silly photo I took of it on my head.

Eleanor holds a massive skein of art yarn on top of her head

Finally, I also have news on my needle felted raven! The photos aren’t the best, forgive me, but this chap is almost complete. Unfortunately my customer didn’t like his blue eyes (a colour only present when they are young) so I have ordered some new ones to replace these. Once I do that I think he is complete. What do you think, is he finished? Would you change anything? Feedback welcome.

That’s it for today, let me know your thoughts and have a lovely week!