A Mystery Spin ... My First Spinning Commission

An Instagram friend (@amberweinberg) recently contacted me to say she had a mysterious lot of fiber that she didn't know what to do with, and didn't want to spin it for herself.  She went on to ask whether I could spin it for her but this was a tricky request as it was an unknown weight of fiber of an unknown origin. Needless to say, I was intrigued and excited all at the same time. I had never been asked to do any spinning for someone else before, and I didn't know how to answer any of her questions such as how long it might take or how many balls of wool it would make.

After a few to-ing and fro-ing of emails, we decided I would give it a go without many of the decisions being made, as I would have to weigh and feel the fiber first to see what I had to work with. Amber requested that I attempt to make a sock weight yarn with the fiber, and I agreed to give it my best effort.

Within a few days I received a lovely fluffy delivery in the post. Here's the reveal photo ... seconds after opening the parcel:

It was a lovely naturally coloured ball of fiber which weighed 262 grams. I could tell it was sheep in origin from the smell, and it looked pure and not blended with another type of fiber. The staple length was longish (about  4-5") and the crimp quite relaxed. It felt and looked almost like fine hair in comparison to say merino fiber where you can't distinguish the individual fibers due to the fluffiness. This was an unknown entity to me, as I had never spun fiber like it before.

Even after a little online research, I couldn't isolate the breed of sheep this fiber was from. So I decided I would just have to wing-it!

Putting down other WIPs in eagerness to begin this new project I decided to do a test spin that evening to see how it would behave.

After posting this early progress pic on Instagram, someone suggested that the fiber might have some Angora in it. Although it looks this way, it just wasn't nearly soft enough to contain any.

Backing some of the spun fiber up to see how it would ply, I took this photo for Amber to see:

It looked like it would produce a lovely fluffy looking yarn of fairly even consistency.

Here I am, mid-draft!

Quite a few evenings later, I finally had two full and contented bobbins all ready for plying:

And here is the first of four skeins pre-bath and set.

So the yield from this interesting mystery spin was:

• 2 large skeins


• 2 small skeins


• approx. total yardage: 371 (or 339 meters)


• sock to DK weight 2-ply

I was very happy with the result, as it washed up beautifully to become even whiter and even more lofty.

What's more, Amber was delighted with her new yarn. Here's a photo of the yarn back with its rightful owner (courtesy of Amber's IG feed):

I would be grateful to hear from any spinners who recognise this fiber and can tell me the sheep breed it might come from.

All in all, a very enjoyable and satisfying spin :)

A Great Day Out: Unravel 2013

I was very fortunate yesterday as I spent a lovely day in Farnham Maltings at the Unravel 2013 Fiber Arts Festival.

What a sight for lovers of colour and texture! The organisers had done a marvelous job of decorating the whole of the building ... inside and out. The whole place was yarn bombed in one way or another. It was difficult to take it all in, and I didn't want to miss a thing.

There were even a pair of sheep in a pen near the entrance!

Anyway, I was excited in the lead up to the festival as I'd planned to meet an Instagram friend, Amber Weinberg, and go around the show with her, as well meeting up with Danielle Alinia who had a stall at the event for her A Stash Addict business.

Amber and I happened to arrive in Farnham at the same time, so after brief introductions in the freezing snowy car park, we bundled into Farnham Maltings and begun to work our way around the show. That's Amber on the left and me on the right:

The lovely Unravel 2013 mascot greeted us in the foyer.

If you've ever been to Farnham Maltings you'll know how higgeldy-piggeldy the layout is. Needless to say, Amber & I struggled to find our bearings, but we simply followed our noses around the building.

Loving the sheep theme I just had to take a photo of this lovely fellow:

Being an enthusiast of spinning, I was excited to see many people sat around with drop spindles on the go, and there was a room where you could even try spinning on a variety of wheels.

And more evidence of yarny-arty-installations everywhere!

And I loved the pretty yarn creations hanging from every available wall and ceiling space!

Doing my very best to try not to spend a ridiculous amount of money, I carefully made my way around the festival, vowing only to part with my cash if I properly fell in love with something and couldn't part with it!

My first purchase was this 100g braid of Merino fiber in colourway 'Pale Jungle' from a company called Skeins. I simply had to buy this as it features my favourite colours ... beautiful earthy greens, browns and rusts:

After a LOT of walking, and losing our bearings in the maze of rooms, we finally found Danielle of A Stash Addict's stall, and I can hands down say that there was more colour on hers than on any other. It was simply stunning.

Here we all are having a photo together (haha, look at my over the moon face):

I was so happy to see my Drop Spindle Spinning Kits for sale on Danielle's stall, I just had to take a photo to commemorate it. Here's the rainbow kit:

After chatting to the friendly couple for a lovely long time, I finally made my mind up which of her skeins of yarn I would purchase. I decided on one that I've coveted for quite some time ... The Earthy Rainbow DK Tweed. This colourway is just heavenly and coupled with the tweed effect, it looks amazing. I'll have to choose a special pattern for this one:

Here are a few of the other delights on Danielle's stall that caught my eye. First of all, here's a small sample of her braids of fiber ... a spinner or felters dream:

And then I was lured over to the display opposite Danielle's by the sumptuous fiber in batts and braids hanging from every inch the stall. It was Katie Weston of Hilltop Cloud and I was very impressed with her unique and luxurious blends. After chatting to the very knowledgeable Katie I was really inspired by her work, as she had cleverly made beautiful hand-knitted garments from her handspun yarn, using a variety of her very own blends. It was from this that she got the sale of this next beauty:

This is 50% Baby Camel and 50% Silk blend fiber in a beautiful range of purples. No kidding when I say this is the most luxuriously soft and sumptuous fiber I've ever had the pleasure to hold in my hands. But not only that, because I've seen how the finished result comes out, I know it spins up beautifully to produce a very fine yarn that looks phenomenal and feels fabulous close to the skin.

After a whole lot of chatting with store holders and squishing the vast majority of goodies on offer, Amber & I decided to go back to the beginning and make sure we had seen everything properly. I also wanted to buy a few things I'd seen at the beginning of our day.

In the first big hall we'd encountered I'd been impressed by a company called John Arbon Textiles. Amber had been too, as she'd bought a gorgeous pair of Alpaca Fair Isle socks from them. I was drawn to big floor-standing bins that contained  discounted fiber that you could buy by however many grams you liked. They were displayed so you could feel each of the fibers and the quality was very good. I ended up choosing 200g of Organic Merino in natural undyed white:

And also, I bought a bargain 200g bag of Alpaca, Merino & Silk mixed 'Broken Tops' that I thought would be interesting to have a play with:

On our last legs, after several trips around the show, Amber & I were overdue for some food and drink.

We plonked our bottoms down in true weary fashion and tucked in to some well deserved food, chatting all the while.

At 3:30pm, with many stall holders beginning to pack away, and all our energy (and money) , we decided to call it a day.

Going into the snowy outdoors was a shock after being so warm and cosy surrounded by lots of yarn, fiber and a whole lot of people. Amber & I said our goodbyes and then she departed for the train station.

Goodbye Unravel. I hope to visit you again next year ... and who knows ... maybe I'll be an exhibitor?? Fingers crossed.

A New Pattern: The Lovebird Beanie Hat

Well, here it is ... my debut into the world of knitwear design ... The Lovebird Beanie Hat. Now available to download through Ravelry.

Modelled here by my friend Claire, it is a simple fair isle pattern that knits up quickly in DK to Aran weight yarn.

If you go on to make this hat I'd love to see your creation, so please link it to the pattern listing on Ravelry.

You can purchase this pattern here:

Thank you and happy knitting :)

My Handmade Christmas 2012

I had such good intentions to cover the house with an array of wonderful handmade Christmas decorations this year ... it's not happened quite like I had in mind but I think I've done quite well considering I've been a very busy lady over the last few months. From decopatch and paper crafts to knitting and crochet I've made quite a few. And anyway, it's a start. I aim to make a few things each year until I build up a nice  stash of handmade decorations that we will all, as a family, cherish and look forward to getting out of the loft each year.

With that in mind, I'm so looking forward to getting my son involved when he's a bit older. Salt dough decorations are beautiful and fun so maybe by next year he'll be old enough to get more involved.

Here are a few pics of some of my handmade haul for 2012.

First off are these sweet little Christmas Crochet Wreaths.

 

Then a decopatch Christmas Tree and baubles ...

And some German Paper Stars ...

AND LAST BUT CERTAINLY NOT LEAST ...

An incredibly gorgeous painting done (with help) by my little baby boy ...

Christmassy Pom-Pom Garland

Here's a fun tutorial for a Christmassy Pom-Pom Garland that's family friendly and endlessly customisable.

I'm going to be putting my one on the tree, but it would also look good as a garland for the mantelpiece or strung across the ceiling (in between the mistletoe ;)

I've used my 100% acrylic Stylecraft Special DK yarn stash to make these pom-poms in a simple red and white colour-way, but you can use any yarn and colour that takes your fancy.

So I'm using this semi-unorthodox method of pom-pom making in a bid to save time (but if you prefer the good old 'cardboard circle' style of doing them one at a time or you have a pom-pom maker then please continue and make your pom-poms another way).

On to the method ...

I've wrapped the yarn fifty times around the back of my kitchen chair (25 wraps of the red and 25 of the white in this example). If you're using a chunkier yarn you may want to do less wraps, and a slimmer yarn more.

Carefully take one side of the yarn off the chair back and begin to tie it off in sections leaving about 2" between each one. Make sure you pull the cotton very tightly and secure with a double knot. Two pairs of hands are a real advantage here!

Keep going until your length of yarn looks secured at even intervals all the way along.

Being really careful not to cut the strings of cotton you tied the pom-poms with, carefully cut in the middle of the segments in between each tie.

You now have a lovely little pile of pom-poms, but they're not quite done yet.

Squash each pom-pom between forefinger and thumb and with a pair of scissors, trim all the way around until you are happy with its size, shape and density. Keep moving the pom-pom about in your fingers to check for stray lengths of yarn that you may have missed.

So here's my pile of lovely fluffy pom-poms in a variety of solid red, solid white and variegated colours. I decided to stop when I'd made twenty but you can make as many or few as you like. Mine are each about 1" in diameter.

After a well deserved cup of tea it was time for the stringing ... I've used some jute twine for mine, but some ribbon or any fancy string would look great.

Cutting a length of 200" for my garland I've spaced the pom-poms about 10" apart. I now have a lovely christmassy yarny pom-pom garland for my tree, but for now a photo of the finished item on my kitchen floor will have to do (because, erm, we don't have our Christmas tree yet ... blush).

Can't wait to see it on the tree with my other handmade decorations.

n.b. Pom-poms are great fun for all the family but if you are making this garland with younger family members, please remember to supervise the use of scissors and bear in mind that the finished item could be a hazard in little hands. Thank you.

Purple Spindle-Spun Handspun Yarn FO

What a labour of love this has been ... several months of on-and-off drop spindle spinning has culminated in one very happy camper indeed ... my best (to-date) and all-time favourite handspun skein.

So here's the time line in photos :) ... First off, a gratuitous pic of the day the fiber arrived. 100g of super washed Blue Faced Leicester in the most beautiful array of purples and pinks.

The spinning begins ...

Filling the spindle up ...

The first half finished ...

The second half on the spindle ...

Caked and ready to ply ...

Plying progress ...

Plying finished and on the niddy-noddy ...

And finally the TA-DAH moment ...

THE SPEC ...

Length: 330 yards

Weight: 2-ply lace to sock weight

And now to decide what to make with it ... Off I pop to Ravelry then :)

Holden Shawlette Lace Knitting FO

A month or so ago I decided to embark on the Holden Shawlette from Ravelry.

Using my lovely green variegated Zitron XXL sock yarn, I cast on in earnest. After the initial head scratching of getting to grips with two 90 degree turns and picking up stitches, once I had my ah-ha moment, I was away.

And I was happy to see the shawl begin to take shape quickly at first, with the rows becoming longer and longer each time.

Before long I was ready to begin the main lace section of the shawl, and was a little apprehensive, so I added a life line just in case I had to rip any of the lace rows back.

My fears were unfounded as only a few rows later I could see the pattern forming correctly.

Staying up very late one night, I was excited that I only had the cast off to do and was highly motivated to finish the shawlette. Not having done the picot cast off before, I'd underestimated this section of the garment entirely. Not only did I have to log on to YouTube to get a more visual tutorial on the technique, but I then did the first several dozen too tightly and decided to start over. At about 1am I was seeing double and fit for my bed.

The following evening I continued the picot edging and finally fully cast off.

Well, what can I say? It was such a satisfying knit.

Here it is taking a first soak in the bath ;)

Being a relative newbie to blocking, I set to work straight away taking full advantage of using the warmth from the log burner to assist in the process.

Despite the poor lighting of the lounge late at night, I was too excited to miss out on taking a photo of my shawl in its full stretched out glory.

So here's the final TAH-DAH moment ... A very proud FO indeed.

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Joining in with these fabulous memes today. Please go along and have a look at all the lovely crafting people have been doing.

TAMI'S AMIS

NATURAL SUBURBIA

British Wool Week 2012

Let's celebrate British Wool Week and support British wool by crafting with it between 15th and 21st October 2012 (and all year round of course).

I'm joining in by spinning with my Blue-Faced Leicester fiber, which is a British sheep breed.

You can find out more about how to support the British Wool Industry by visiting the Campaign for Wool website which is supported by the Prince of Wales.