TDF Days 4, 5 and 6!

On day 4 I spun a very thick and thin yarn from a very similar batt to the one from day 2:
It's such a fluffy yarn, I can't wait to knit this up into something cosy....

On day 5 I had a go at some of those silk cocoons I just dyed up. The dye didn't go all the way through, but it gives the white a nice touch of colour. I spun it into a textured single to be plied. As one of my goals during this tour I really wanted to use up the neglected singles on my many bobbins, so whilst watching the apprentice last night I plied up these three yarns in the third picture. From left to right: the cocoon silk plied with hand processed brown Alpaca, the cocoon silk plied with organic cotton, organic cotton plied with Merino/Mulberry silk.

On day 5 (so today), I did another lot of dyeing and spun a simple single yarn. The fourth picture shows just a small part of all the freshly dyed goods and the last picture today's yarn. :)

TDF Day 2

 Right, day 2, slightly belated. I spent the whole day dyeing up a storm! My new best, 5 full pots and I can't wait to spin with the fibre. :)
I've also carded up a sweet little batt and spun it into a single yarn - I'm a little bit in love!

I'm still spinning and dyeing. :)

2 months since my last post, really? Is anyone still out there?

Well, I have kept nice and busy, dyeing lots of fibres (mainly beautifully soft organic Merino and lovely curly BFL locks), having many house guests, working hard as well as reading, spinning and knitting.

There is some great news, which I will share in the next post. :)

Mulberry silk yarn

I meant to show off these silks ages ago! Pretty recently I was lucky enough to get a small box of finely spun, pure Mulberry silk lace yarns into my possession. They will eventually be dyed (I am guessing once I get back to the UK) and will be so perfect for lace projects! I will definitely have to keep at least some of it to work on a pretty shawl or something similar. :D

Additionally I just ordered more sock yarn in my 'normal' fibre base as well as a 100% Superwash Merino fingering weight yarn, which would work for socks, but would also be ideal for other projects (As usual, I am thinking lace again). All of these fibres will move with me to the UK in now less than two weeks!

Just one more week at my job as well, so this is really the time to get nervous. Having said that, I am surpirisingly calm, after I realised that packing shouldn't take me all that long I am actually just really looking forward to my move and to getting slightly more settled. :)

The very first hand dyed sock yarns. :D

Remember the white sock yarns I recently ordered? Well, it so happened that I had to get started immediately and so I mixed up some pretty colours in one of my favourite colour ranges: rainbow. :D
I started with 4 skeins, as I didn't want to mess up too many at once, but they turned out just perfectly! I greedily grabbed the least perfect one and started knitting the toe-up sock pattern 'brainless'. So far the yarn is knitting up in small stripes, which I love. One skein is also available in my shop and hopefully many more will soon be joining it. In an attempt to update my ravelry page I added this style there as well under my yarn category, but there is so much more to be done over there yet... I'd rather be knitting this sock, lol.

Sock yarns!

Sock yarns
Originally uploaded by cherrylime

It may seem as if I was gone, but theoretically I actually have more time now, haha.
At the beginning of this month I went down to part time at the day job, which should give me time to finish some things I have on my plate as well as a bit more time for yarning. :)

I have been busily spinning new yarns and adding them to the shop. I also made a small dent in my Alpaca stash, but to me the most exciting step is that I bought some snuggly sock yarn to dye up in beautiful colours. One of the reasons was that I am currently knitting quite a lot of socks and running out of the funky and bright colourways I have accumulated over time, so I need some new favourites. :) The first skeins of this experiment should soon be available and I am curious to hear any feedback about this, as I thought about offering hand dyed yarns for a while now.

Fresh from the dye pot

Some of you may know that dyeing is not my favourite part of creating, but I am always so amazed and stunned by the results (well, except for a few really fugly dye jobs in my past) that I keep going back to it. I guess it is like a bad drug, where you forget about the negative sides of it when you are on a high...
Anyway, yesterday I pulled myself together and finally did some dyeing, I think the first time since before Christmas - thank God for a well-stocked hand dyed fibre collection...

I planned on dyeing entirely different colours, but when I had the dyes so nicely mixed up into a rainbow I just couldn't say no to it. Three batches of different colours were dyed and I am very happy with the intensity I achieved this time (the colours are a little washed out above, but in real life they are really pretty).

Well, and after some dye pot show and tell on the spinner's ravelry forum I crave another dye pot. Just a quick look on a certain auction house page gave me two delightful results, so pretty soon I should be able to almost double my output, yay!

Btw, the fibres above are mainly Merino/silk but also 200g (just below 8oz) of one of my UK souvenirs, a Merino/soy mix. Trouble is, I am really having a hard time distinguishing them from another now that they are dyed! Luckily the soy has different lengths and so I already started spinning one of these rovings. :)

A big pot of ...what was she thinking?

what was she thinking
Originally uploaded by snowberrylime

Well, I did some dyeing and whilst the first pot was filled with a bit of a classic, light yellow with all kinds of different shades of teal and blue, the second was rather, um, questionable....

What happened was: I had mixed upscary amounts of blue and had originally intended to dye something with green for the second pot, but I also wanted some brown, so I started mixing up some red. A lot of red, because it quickly switches into pink. After some fiddling around I had bright red, lots of blues/teals, lots of dark greenish brown with a hint of rusty brown.

Did I ever mention that my colour combination from hell is light pink, pine green and navy blue? Well, in the pot it looked scarily close to that and I panicked a little. The panic passed quickly and I just kept pouring on the ugliness... all of it.

BUT then this happened:
Yes, it actually turned into a decent (and subtle) colourway: the blue is now dark prussian blue, the unidentified dark green stuff turned into a subtle grey with its own beauty and the red become a beautiful dark burgundy on the silk and a subtle vintage rose colour on the wool you can see in the front. These outcomes are why dyeing can be pretty exciting and so well worth it. :)

Saved by the bell!

Bobbin lace pillow and more

bobbin lace pillow
Originally uploaded by snowberrylime

Here is my great find from last Sunday on the Belgian flea market. It makes a little more sense if you read my last entry... I like lace, no secret there, nice, old, cotton or linen lace.... I also love antiques... plus I love trying out every possible technique textile arts have to offer. Well, and the combination of all of these led me to purchasing this beauty of a bobbin lace pillow. Going to the bobbin lace museum in Brussels and seeing demonstrations probably didn't help either. Originally I planned to renew the top fabric and actually use it, but it would be such a shaaaame..... :(
We'll see what happens, but isn't it also just the perfect decorative item? ;)

On other news I did lots of dyeing and am starting to accept the fact that there is lots of pink in my colour palette - who would have thought!?
I also tidied my fibre stash, which was a terribly bad idea - I couldn't quite believe how much there actually was and how many things I had deleted out of my mind. This includes knitting yarns - hopefully I will have time to knit a few jumpers this winter, it would help. :D

There was also a beautiful frontpage treasury on etsy today created by http://lisahopkins.etsy.com, which featured my tree bark silk yarn.

In general all my thoughts are currently related to some upcoming craft fairs, I have made some pretty organised plans (now putting them into practise is another thing... hehe) and ama lready busy knitting some things as well from smaller skeins which never made it into the shop. :)

A hint of peach and a big mess...

...that's all I got from dyeing today! It was a small disaster involving redwood, something went terribly wrong and I am not sure what. Hours of work and barely any colour on it. Plus I thought it would be ok to chuck the chopped wood in with the wool as I did not have any muslin - boy was I wrong. That stuff is as hard to get out of the fibre as vegetable matter from Alpaca fibre, not good.
Oh well, if I can motivate myself I will try to redeem myself with a bit of logwood dyeing tomorrow...
Perhaps natural dyeing was just not meant for me - we'll see!

However yesterday's dyeing turned out nicely, lots of yellow joined by red/orange/yellow and a big bunch of green soysilk will be the latest colours in the shop very soon. I also recently got some Angelina (who are we kidding, *a lot* of Angelina), so I have been working in the sparkle in a few of my latest yarns. I am still a little hesitant and need to muster up the courage though. :)

One of the next styles to go up for purchase is a really funky, bobbly yarn in pure white. I love it and hope they will go to a great home, pictures coming soon!