TDF Day 7, 8 and 9

Day 7:
After all that dyeing last week I was really looking forward to carding up some beautiful batts and all in the spirit of the cirque de fleece group, this is what I prepared first:
It's a colourful mix of organic Merino, BFL locks, Kent Romney locks with some hand dyed Tussah silk as dark as the midnight sky, some undyed Tussah silk and golden Angelina.

Those two batts are a total of 140g or 5oz, nice and chunky. :) I spun them up into a thick and thin yarn to show off the texture.

Day 8:
I finally started to embrace my personal theme, the snake charmer. Two batts I carded up were in a range of shiny greens, aided by dark tussah silk. The first batt I took along to work to spindle (see how well the fibre goes with my new key lime spindle? :P), the second one was to become an art yarn with some blobs of red Angelina sparkle. The last picture shows the finished skein together with a hand dyed pure Wensleydale yarn I spun yesterday.

Day 9:
Today I have done some more carding, the only picture I have is of a little piece of batt to be spun up. The last bobbin shot shows what I am spinning up right now, it's a thick and thin yarn which will be plied with another thick and thin ply.

Oh, and sorry about the picture overload. :P

TDF Day 3

Ok, I'm really slacking on the blogging here, but daily posts are quite a push for me. :) I didn't have all that much time for spinning today, but I spindled a little at work - it's organic Merino wool:

My spin along yarn :)

Yeah, that spin along....

Well, I had a bit of an issue, I went to charge the battery in my camera, put it back in and suddenly it stopped working! I loved that camera! Anyway, got myself a new one now, fancier of course and I really like it as well.

Sooooo, without further ado, I present to you my Lai Grai SAL yarn:

Handspun shrug

I started knitting a little shrug with one of my handspun yarns, the style is a thin textured single, something I spin quite a lot for the shop, but also for my personal use. :) I dyed some organic Merino wool in different shades of yellow and carded it up with undyed Merino wool, white linen, some silk and silk noil and a dash of golden Angelina sparkle. I hope the yarn will be enough for the main part of this shrug and then I'll spin a complementary yarn for the ribbing around it. More details on my Ravelry page. The pattern is from Drops, who I really like for their versatile free patterns and their yarns are very reasonably priced as well, although I haven't yet worked with any of it.
I really like how it is coming along so far, it's a great pattern for handspun yarns!

The last picture is from the Drops page, just to give you an idea of how it should look in the end. :)
Of course mine is a little chunkier and nice and yellow!

Handspun cashmere and silk yarn

I will admit, it's been quiet around here...

Let's play a bit of catch up!

One of my recent indulgences is 50% Mongolian Cashmere/ 50% A grade Mulberry silk fibre, which I have spun into this yarn here:

It is available here.

This yarn is oh so soft and just a touch of pure luxury...


I've also been playing with lots more Wensleydale - it certainly isn't your average wool, sleek and with a halo closer to Kid Mohair than wool. Right now, a few skeins of hand dyed Wensleydale are drying, as opposed to the undyed Wensleydale lace I am already in love with!

More to come soon, certainly more pictures as well!

Who will be my 500th customer?

To be honest, I thought I had more time! But that is a good, no, a great problem to have! 500 Sales in my Etsy shop will be a very major milestone for me and I will of course add some serious freebies to that order...

I've been pretty busy with getting the shop back in shape and adding lots of yarns which have been ready for a while as well as some brand new, freshly spun ones.

To get into the swing of autumn, I have added some gorgeous pumpkin related yarns, 2 of which are still available here and here.

TDF the very last days!

We're done, we're done!

It was fun while it lasted, but wow it causes pressure, lol. To be honest I was only really active in one group, my lovely LaiGrai girls. :)

Day 21 (23rd of July):
I carded up some pinks and spun them into singles.


Day 22 (24th of July):
Spun up some more singles in a mix of blues.



















Day 23 (25th of July), LAST DAY:
I finally finished this yarn on my hand spindle, lots of hand washed beautiful Shetland wool, hand dyed Merino/silk, silk noil and some Angelina, plus of course those blobs I crocheted a while back.

TDF Day 20

I missed a few days of the TDF, as I spent a long weekend in Edinburgh, which was very nice. :)
Yesterday, day 20 (22nd of July) I worked on an art yarn made from a handcarded batt with lots of handprocessed Shetland wool (from Wonderwool earlier this year) and as inclusions lots of little crocheted balls:

All on my trusted Turkish spindle of course (handy to take along to my knitting group).

TDF Days 11-13

This first picture shows what I have been spinning for the TDF so far. Today's yarn is the one just above the purple invasion, a simple yarn spun from naturally dyed wool (using Redwood).

But let's go back a step...

Day 10 is a resting day, so that is exactly what I did....

On day 11 I spun a corespun Mohair locks yarn:
The second yarn is the Twister yarn I mentioned a few days ago, that was great fun to spin. :)

The third picture shows the yarns I was spinning on for the last few days, all in the interest of destashing! They are pure purple wool with cotton nepps, which is supposed to be tweedy. I do actually quite like it now it's spun up, nice and chunky for sure!

TDF Day 8 and 9

Right, today I spun one of my blue batts into a single and plied it with sparkly thread, including glass beads, gems and freshwater pearls on the way.

Next up I carded some more batts, including this Alpaca and wool based one, which I then spun up into a simple single yarn:

TDF Days 4-7

Ah yes, taking pictures always takes a bit more determination than one might think...

I have been spinning every day though, including 2 days on a new Twister type yarn.

Yesterday (Day 6), I spun up one of the blue batts into a single yarn to ply with some beads, but I haven't finished that yarn yet.

Today however I carded up another two beautifully summery batts with a mix of soft hand dyed wools and lime green hand dyed Merino/silk - plus Angelina. Those two batts produced a luscious thick and thin yarn.

TDF Day 3

I gotta say, you are such nice blog readers! Having disappeared for 2 months I was just over the moon to get some lovely comments on my previous post. :)

Anyway, before I get all sappy, here is my progress!
The white yarn is called Vanilla delight and is the yarn I spun yesterday, this time skeined but pre-washing.

Next up we have a corespun yarn spun from the batt I carded yesterday. The pictures don't really do it justice, it looks so fluffy and gorgeous close up!

....and theeeeennn, I carded up a really summery, tropical trio, with lots of Angelina and Mohair curls added to the mix. Don't they just look yummy? Can't wait to spin them!

TDF Day 2

Hi there! Well, today I used some previously carded batts, mainly containing wool, silk and soy silk to spin a simple textured single yarn, very 'Vanilla'. :)

Browsing some yarns on Ravelry got me really motivated to use my drum carder again, so I used a collection of aqua tones and some yellow/lime green mohair curls for this batt. Tomorrow I will hopefully be able to finish spinning the yarn out of it!

Tour de Fleece 2010 begins!

Can it be, can it really be? Have I not written anything in exactly 2 months? Well, it is a little scary, but I suppose I did have many other things going on and in a way it was nice to concentrate on non-yarny things for a few weeks. You'll hopefully be pleased to know that I am back with fresh motivation and inspiration - just in time for the yearly Tour de Fleece!

For those of you who are new to the concept, it's basically spinning during the Tour de France (which I don't even watch) and all of it documented on Ravelry...

Unfortunately I was at work for most of this beautiful Saturday, so by the time I actually had some yarn to photograph it was already quite dark.
It's very much a scrap yarn made from some random fibres I carded together a while ago. The purple yarn is a commercial mohair boucle yarn.

Vagabond

A vagabond travels and has no set home. For some reason I also connect the word vagabond with beautiful bohemian clothes, all shades of browns and for the girls some splashes of subtle colour. All in all this is a concept I very much love to work with and this simple yarn fit the draft really well. It is pure wool in moss green and rusty red, leading to this rich brown only through carding.
I have listed this yarn in my etsy shop, hoping it will find a kind home.
Slowly but surely I am getting back into the swing of spinning and creating, but there are still many projects I would like to finish first. A triangular lace shawl I started knitting in September is coming closer to completion every day and I am working my way through a neverending 'to spin' project list. Today I brought out most of my bead collection to put together a few exciting mixes for future art yarn projects. Next I want to card up a storm, it being my day off and all.... I just need to move my laptop first and stop looking at gorgeous handmade jewellery... :D

Stack of rolags

In the absence of a drum carder, I card all my mixed fibres with hand carders. This sometimes results in a huge mountain of rolags. :P

On the top are some blue/white mixes and the bottom is subtly dyed Merino/silk with white organic linen. I will be adding a few meters from my treasured collection of cotton and linen laces to these fibres and spin them up into something with an old time feel to it. :)

Wire core spinning

My latest art yarn is a seemingly simple yarn which has been spun around a wire core. You can therefore bend this yarn and do all kinds of things without even touching any knitting needles.

The fibre is a hand-processed Suri Alpaca, in fact the only bit I tried to comb and then dye, so very one of a kind.

There are so many options for wire core yarns that I might consider spinning more of them, but not too soon as it took such a long time!

TDF Day 12

On day 12 I finished spinning another relatively simple yarn made up of one ply of organic falkland wool and one ply of Merino/silk, all hand dyed. The yarn rests on a bed of handcarded rolags (14 in total) which will be spun into my next yarn. :)

TDF Day 10 and 11

Day 10 of the Tour is officially a day of rest, but I have to admit I did spin on some singles for plying at a later stage. It's addiction, honey. ;)

I don't know what I spent doing all day today, but it really wasn't an awful lot of spinning. My meagre results for today are a brown organic wool yarn with Mohair locks (for a swap) and a Tussah silk single from fibre I tried to dye with natural dyes (redwood) ages ago. I spent a lot of yesterday picking out the little pieces of wood from this silk. Yes, next time I *will* use some kind of a net to put the plant parts in....

TDF Day 9

Today I got my pirate queen yarn done, 'Anne Bonny'. The other one is a skein of my classic, 'Rokoko', a Merino/silk yarn with real freshwater pearls.