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A lot of yarn, but not really

A lot of yarn, but not really

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I like to spindle spin. I am slow at it, and it is just a fun, relaxing thing to do at a social or demonstration. I don’t knit or crochet. I have what seems to me to be a lot of small balls of 2-ply handspun. I know it’s not a lot really, I don’t suppose there is enough for even one sweater. I do use some in my felting. I never used a lot of it,  but since I don’t really sell anymore, I use even less. I thought about trying some pictures using yarn. I could needlefelt it down a bit and then wet felt it. I have several large freezer bags of yarn. I thought it would be best to see what I have and sort it by colour.

I had 4 bags and some part bags of yarn.

There should be more. I went searching. I think they must still be packed. I did find my bin of short-length mini skiens that I used to sell. More about them later.

I sorted them into colour groups: greens, red/pinks, blue/purple, yellow/orange, grey/brown and mixed. I had no idea I had so much pink.

 

I need to rewind some of the balls. Not sure what happened to them.

 

These are the miniskiens. They are 12.5 yards(11.4m) in each mini skien. That’s enough to do a pretty dense design on an 8-foot (2.4 m)by 1-foot (30cm) silk scarf blank. Enough to add a couple of accent rows to a knit hat or use for a bit of colour in punch needle or rug hooking. I can’t find a picture of them nicely displayed in a basket for sale. I bet Jan has one, but I don’t want to bug her to find it. This is what they looked like when I dumped them out of their box with all the tags on them.

 

I took all the tags off. The are all sorts; thick and thin, and some that are both. I will add the gag of them to my class supplies.  I plan to make some more small skeins from the newer handspun to add to it, so there is more colour choice. I know I saw my 1-yard niddy noddy recently.

 

and all safely back into ziplock bags

 

All in all, not a lot of yarn. I have a commercial yarn stash too, it is a real mix of fibres and styles, and a whole other story. I don’t know if I will try a picture completely out of yarn, but maybe I will make more of an effort to use some of it in pictures and other felt.

And lastly, I have to thank Jan for doing some blog posts for me lately. I have been run off my feet baking to get ready for our 2 Farmes Market Christmas sales. The last one was Saturday. There is a small one that my daughter will go to with my husband. I will be teaching.  Anyway, here is a picture just before opening on the 15th.  No snow this year.

Oh ye, the comment button is at the top of the post.

 

 

Green and Yellow Nuno

Green and Yellow Nuno

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I mentioned in my last post that I liked the effect of the plain green fabric so much I altered another piece I laid out. I can’t even remember what my original plan was, but I made a flat piece with various greens. I added some strips of the green fabric which looks like a chiffon (I haven’t tested to see if it’s silk, yet), and strips of cotton gauze and scrim. I overlapped the strips in places. This is how it turned out:

I always think angled photos show some textures you can’t see straight on:

I need to look at the fabric (headscarf) I tore the pieces from, it seems to have a texture or pattern to it I hadn’t noticed, like a basket weave pattern:

I liked the different textures that resulted from the fabrics overlapping:

Two pieces of scrim, usually very open weave, became a dense pile:

A big tangle of cotton gauze:

I don’t know if you remember the multi handpun yarn I showed a while ago, but I finished of a weaving with it. It looks less grey and dull when you get closer, but overall it looks dingy 🙂

It looks even less dull when you get closer!

Knitting

Knitting

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I know you’ve been dying to know how my handspun yarn knitted, so here’s the little rectangle I made:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAHere’s the other side:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd here’s a close up:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI still can’t do the cast off so it doesn’t pull and seem tight compared to the rest of it. I plan to felt this piece when I get the chance, by hand, not in the washer. This is another piece I’ve made specifically for felting, I promised Nada I’d make a piece with the pencil roving to see how it felted:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIt’s quite chunky:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnother piece I made recently turned out really nice, the colours and shine are gorgeous:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis has a really nice texture:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAWhen you open the yarn out, it’s actually a kind of netting, I bought it with felting in mind before I could knit:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI’ll show the photos when the top pieces have been felted.

 

Present For My Mum

Present For My Mum

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A few weeks ago, my mum was talking about getting her bedroom redecorated. I’d been struggling to think of what to get her for her birthday, so this gave me an opportunity. I casually asked about the colours and she said she wasn’t sure because she wanted to match the paint to the wallpaper she was having on one wall, luckily, she knew what the wallpaper was called, so after she left, I looked it up:

ella wallpaper biggerMy first thought was to try to convince her to have the nice blue and brown version! But, I resisted and downloaded the picture. Then I opened it in Photoshop and tried to pick out all the colours and made an image with a few stripes in the various shades.

ella wallpaper shadesThen I printed out the sample and stripes and started to plan a wall hanging for her new room. I wanted something soft, texturey, not too neat. ‘Raggy’ is the best word to describe what I was after, I think. I spent a couple of days making blended batts in the shades I wanted. Then I spent a few days making twists of wool and fibres and also spun some ‘arty’ yarns for the piece. Unfortunately none of the photos I took came out  🙁  but when I’d finished making them there were at least 150 lengths of wool, commercial art yarns and fibres twisted or spun together. I laid out a couple of layers of wool tops, then carefully added all the twists where I wanted them. I had to take my table outside to felt it because it was so big and I knew I’d make a mess.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis is a close up of it with the netting on:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd a peek under the netting

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIt didn’t take as long as I thought it might for it to felt, probably because it took so long to make sure it was all thoroughly wetted! This is when it was all wet down and starting to felt.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd this is the finished piece:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI knew as soon as it was dried that my mum would want it as some kind of rug/mat and the first thing she said was ‘Oh, this is going on top of my drawers, it’ll be perfect.’ Some of the yarns I made were by plying handspun merino with commercial yarns, but mostly I just plied half thick, half thin merino together. Closer view of the middle:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAHere are some commercial boucle yarns, one twisted in on the left and the one I laid on top is mohair from Marilyn, I think. There are a couple of my yarns in there too:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI’d forgotten I used some organza and cotton gauze in the twists too, you can just see a bit of organza here:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAYarny Texture:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI thought a bit of colour might make a change from all the natural wools and fibres this week 🙂