Tag: wool

art

Handspun sock yarn WIP

Autumn

I received the supplies for this project with Paradise Fiber’s fiber of the month club, back in May 2022, and I’ve been sloooooowly working on it since August.

The wool is the Walkin’ On Sunshine blend, which is 75% cheviot and 25% faux cashmere.

I’m only partway done. I decided that I would pause the spinning process to dye the singles before plying them, and as of this moment, the other half is still in the dye pot. I plan on using my spinning wheel to ply, so I handwound the finished portion onto a bobbin.

I used a drop spindle, which is part of why it’s been taking me so long. The other part is my tiny humans providing plenty of interruptions.

Instagrammers be crazy jealous of my breathtakingly beautiful yarn turtles.

Actually, despite how it looks, those little yarn balls are easy to hold in the palm of my hand and wind up into a proper skein. They’re quite handy.

With any luck, I’ll have the yarn completed before too much longer. Who knows, maybe I’ll even get it made into socks for my birthday this month.

art

Petals

Autumn

Petals from Paradise Fibers

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.

…

And here you go.

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.

Flash, yo.
art

Fiber of the Month – April

Autumn

Paradise Fibers’ fiber of the month club

Cherry Blossom

Tea and Crumpets

Yes, I am way behind.

For those who don’t know, I had a baby at the end of April, and this was the first yarn I’ve spun since. Honestly, it probably wasn’t the best choice to get me back into the swing of things, and I had a difficult time controlling the nepps and mixed fibers in the roving. It’s … um … very textured.

But, thankfully, I can always call the yarn ‘artistic’ and use it anyway.

art

Fiber of the Month – March

Autumn

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. 🙂

About Me

Fiber of the Month – February

Autumn

Through Paradise Fibers

Bubblegum Surprise and Twirl

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.

art

Fiber of the month – January

Autumn

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.

art

Fiber of the Month – December

Autumn

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. 🙂