An author's collection of thoughts and stories
I decided to practice “spinning from the fold” with this one. Here, give me a second, and I’ll find a video tutorial for those who want to know what that means.
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So, it took me forever to get this one spun up. I’m pretty heavily into “Five minutes here, five minutes there” territory, so it took at least a month — I can’t remember exactly when I started. Maybe even two or three months. I don’t know. Forever.
Through Paradise Fibers
I’m moving pretty slow these days for some strange reason … XD
For March, Paradise Fibers sent out neon merino wool. All of my kids were just as excited about this one as I was, and we agreed that the colors were delicious enough to eat, lol.
So rainbowy and beautiful. 🙂
Through Paradise Fibers
My phone picked up wildly different lighting with the pictures, and I’m too lazy to act like a professional photographer and care.
The fun part is, I’m now pregnant enough that there are very few activities that don’t result in something starting to ache. I can only sit at my spinning wheel for so long before my back needs a rest. 🙂
I’m including a link to a video on how to spin the bubblegum surprise roving into self-striping yarn. Personally, I like the blended colors better and adore the “candy cane” effect that you get with spinning multiple colors together, but it’s interesting to see how the same roving can be spun in different ways.
The fiber of the month club through Paradise Fibers
I know, I’m late for a number of reasons.
In January, Paradise Fibers sent the Humbug Merino, and the Silver Glitter Merino. I decided to ply them together for lots of sparkly silver yarn.
Aiming to make a lace shrug out of this, so hopefully I’ve got enough yarn to pull it off.
I signed up for the fiber of the month club with ParadiseFibers.com, and every month they send some sort of fiber along with miscellaneous goodies.
Here’s the yarn that I made with December’s fiber:
The one with Christmas colors is a merino/alpaca blend, and I followed the instructions for fractal color spinning that came with it. I’m very curious about what it will look like once knitted.
The white one is yak down. It is incredibly fine and soft … and far outside of my skill zone as a n00b. I really struggled to maintain any semblance of control over the fiber while I was spinning it, so the end result is … artistic. My skirt also looked like I had been snuggling a white cat during shedding season after I finished, lol. But hey, I have a book on spinning that advises to “press on and keep practicing,” so that’s what I did.
All told, it was quite fun. I’m glad that I’m getting exposure to different types of fibers, especially since I tend to default to what sounds practical and rarely venture outside of that (having 5.5 kids will do that).
I’m looking forward to January’s haul. 🙂
I am really good at coming up with catchy poetic names for my color palettes.
Maybe I ought to change it to ‘tangerine cream’ or ‘copper twist’ for more curb appeal, but I set out to make orange yarn, and by God I made orange yarn.
ORANGE.
One of my babies really loves the color orange.
I dyed some merino wool roving, to spin into yarn, to knit into a winter hat for her.
Sandalwood Merino Wool Roving from Busy Bee Fibers
I definitely spin yarn like a beginner, but the fun thing is that it doesn’t matter. Seriously. Once it’s knitted/crocheted, you can barely tell that there were any inconsistencies.
Normally I don’t go for earth tones, but that roving was too scrumptiously beautiful to resist. I don’t know what it is, but that combination of colors just tickles me.
Now I need to figure out what to make with it…
You’re a hard core loser if you don’t own at least a dozen of these bad boys.
Also, I’m kind of addicted to spinning yarn. I made the green meself (I bought the cream online a couple years ago for some project or other i dont remember).
The pattern can be found here.
Also, because I know that you’re dying of curiosity, I finished making this out of the pink and yellow roving:
By Autumn Rain 