Counting Assiduously

Counting assiduously seems to be the solution to progress on the Old Shale Smoke Ring. Much better than ripping out work, both practically and emotionally. I have about four inches of cowl done.

Flax Hackle Sighting

I saw a coarse flax hackle at an antique shop. The tines were rusty and bent, and the wood was weathered and missing chunks of itself, so I couldn't imagine anyone buying it to use the thing as a working tool. Still, seeing it was a bit of a thrill.

As far as I know, opportunities to buy working flax hackles are only to be gotten through custom order from the rare person who knows how to make them.

I wonder, when the antique dealer found that flax hackle and put it in the shop, whether he or she thought it was a thrilling object or merely something that would sell.

Instead of hackle, it is labelled as a hetchel. I think that gives it some class, like it's a flax hackle from the Old Country or at least a flax hackle that got to go backpack around Europe after high school.

Advance and Retreat and Pass Me the Chocolate

Knitting the Old Shale Smoke Ring is a combination of advance and retreat. I am thinking of putting in life lines for the next time I have to rip back rounds. I am also thinking of obsessively counting my stitches in every single repeat as I knit.

The second bout of frogging drove me to chocolate. Now, I like chocolate very much and my family's motto could be "Nothing chocolate, nothing gained," but I object to being goaded by knitting to consume the stuff.

While I had the needles out of the stitches to rip back, I tried the piece out for size, wimple style. The fabric ringing my face looked like one of those bandages in funny old illustrations of children with mumps. Should be better once blocked.

Being Careful Not to Twist

"Join, being careful not to twist" is a common direction in knitting patterns for items knit in the round. Neglect this, and you blight your project. I did so when I tried to knit my first hat.

Compliance takes some doing. When I cast on to double pointed needles, my needles hang and twist so I have to straighten them out before joining them. This task feels something like doing those questions on intelligence tests where you have to mentally rotate and match or extrapolate complex shapes.

To cut down on the aggravation, I've taken to inserting a stitch marker into the fronts of two stitches at the ends of adjoining needles. The marker prevents the needles from rotating out of alignment and also gives me a visual clue as to what side is what.

Mulling Gift Suitability

Happy B.C. Day!

I don't know if you ever look at the right-hand column of my blog here, but there is a list of projects I anticipate doing at some point.

One of these is to make one gift in handspun for every family member. Production could take me years, so if you are related to me by blood or marriage, have patience. Better yet, just forget about this project so I can surprise you someday.

I thought it prudent to start with the eldest members of my family. I am fortunate to still have family members two generations older than me.

I've already given one of them a hat.

Another elderly relative will be getting my first lace project, which will be an Old Shale Smoke Ring in my Long Time No Sea Blue Face Leicester laceweight yarn, which is pictured above.

I still have to determine what to spin and make for the other elder family member.

I asked the advice of a fellow guild member and she helpfully pointed out that the item ought to be easy to wash since the person has the washing done by someone else. I guess if superwash wool is called for, then I will spin superwash. I would rather not. For one thing, I prefer untreated wool. For another thing, I want to limit myself as much as possible to spinning what I have on hand in order to reduce my fiber stash.

I thought of felted slippers, as there is no way that I know of to ruin felted slippers by washing. I've neither made a slipper nor felted yet and such a project would allow me meet another long-term goal, trying new skills. However, I would probably get the size wrong and floppy slippers would be a safety hazard when walking.

Hot water bottle cover? Noro/Wurm hat? Miniature knitted wool Christmas ornaments that would not need washing? I have some silk I can spin into yarn. Silk would not felt but still might need special washing care. Must think some more.

fourteenth hat

The fourteenth hat I've made is rather plain Jane. I used two skeins of my early handspun, which was thick and knit up quickly.

This is a Test. This is Not a Sock.

This is a test. This is not a sock.

I have not yet knit a sock, and don't promise to do so any time soon, either.

This is a test swatch for knitting up my Long Time No Sea yarn and its companion ecru yarn into a bucket hat.

This swatch has told me that this yarn will never be a bucket hat. To create a firm fabric for the brim, the needle size needed is a U.S. size zero. There is no way.

Lace. I will knit my first lace project instead. I've had my eye on the Feather and Fan stitch, otherwise known as Old Shale.

The French Shore Tapestry

Have a look at the French Shore Tapestry, 222 feet of work embroidered in Conche, Newfoundland and Labrador to depict the area's history. There is a segment on this CBC News clip around the thirty minute mark, and there's a description and partial image at the French Shore Historical Society website.

Makes you want to do big things.

sixty-eighth skein

Here is my sixty-eighth skein, an ounce of ecru Blue Face Leicester spun to match the Long Time No Sea BFL skeins. I thought that this skein looked underspun and underplied and I was not sure how that happened since I spun in the usual way.

I was ready to quote Thomas Aquinas, that I am changeable by my very nature, when I laid the skein next to the others and discovers it matches rather well. Have decided that it is my opinion that is changeable.

Having said that, I'm going to change my opinion again. My spinning does change when I'm not looking. Well, I was looking but I didn't notice. I knit some blue merino handspun into the K2P2 scarf and created an aggravating line of demarkation where the last skein stops, ending a stretch of thin and strangely hard knitting fabric, and the next skein begins, starting a soft, thicker section.

sixty-seventh skein

Here is my sixty-seventh skein, spun of Ashland Bay merino in their colour peacock for the K2P2 scarf.

Yesterday I tossed the turquoise-dyed wool in the bin. It had developed a musty smell. The rinse water still had dye leaching into it. Who knows if the wool would ever have come clear. I neglected to change the water the day before, a day when the temperature hit 41 C (105 F) outside, and that was probably what did it in. I feel bad and I hate to disappoint those at the dye workshop who encouraged me and were looking forward to seeing the wool spun up. I was looking forward to the spinning part too.

sixty-sixth skein

Behold, my sixty-sixth skein. It's a bit puny.

My digital scale is lying to me. I bought 4 ounces of Blue Face Leicester in the colour Long Time No Sea. I weighed it: 4 ounces. I weighed out an ounce and spun it, getting 102 yards. I weighed out another ounce and spun it into 128 yards. I began to suspect. I weighted out another ounce and spun 114 yards. I went to get the last ounce and somehow it only weighed a little over half an ounce. I spun 70 yards out of that.

I put some undyed BFL on the capricious scale and hit the metric/Imperial button. 28 grams. I took the fibre off and placed it back on the scale. 30 grams, for the same amount of fibre. This is not right.

Honest scales and balances are from the LORD; all the weights in the bag are of his making. Proverbs 16:11, NIV

A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight. Proverbs 11:1 KJV

That Bleeding Dye

The Blue Face Leicester wool is still bleeding turquoise synthetic dye into its rinse water a week after the dye workshop. Looks like a bowl of entrails to me, which is charming, just charming.

sixty-fifth skein

Here is the sixty-fifth skein I've spun, and it looks much like the last two. 114 yards, one ounce of Blue Face Leicester in the colour Long Time No Sea dyed by gwen.erin [natural fibers] who you can find on Etsy.

thirteenth hat

I knit this hat out of some of my early handspun. I added a Nicky Epstein rose, the size and placement of which unintentionally made the hat verge on a bit of a Star Wars shape.

The solution was not to take the rose off, but to add more.



While I had this hat in progress, I took it along to a cookout where I discovered I am incapable of simultaneously keeping track of decreases and carrying on a conversation.

sixty-fourth skein

You'll remember from yesterday's post that I had produced an underplied skein. Did I fix the skein? No. I spun another out of the same roving and plied it with what seemed like much too much twist. The resulting angle of twist looked better than the last skein's had.

Sucess! The skein hangs without twisting.

Here is a glamour shot of the sixty-fourth skein that ever I spun:

I got about 128 yards out of this ounce of Blue Face Leicester.

Washing out the Dye

Went to a dye workshop, dyed some Blue Face Leicester with the one colour the workshop presenters said would leach colour when washing afterward, and now have a large bowl on the kitchen floor in the way taunting me for having chosen a difficult dye.

The wool has been in successive changes of water for days now and is still leaching turquoise dye.

sixty-third skein

Here is the sixty-third skein that ever I spun. On the niddy-noddy, the ply didn't look tight enough. When I took the skein off, my suspicions were confirmed. I'll have to ply this more tightly.

Vintage Packet of Moth Repellent

The monarchist and Anglophile in me thought that this vintage packet of moth repellent was pretty cute.

Same Method, Different Results

The singles on these two spindles are spun at the same wpi (40) and weigh the same (1 oz). The blue-green singles are Blue Face Leicester, the bright blue singles are merino. I assume the greater volume of the merino singles is due to the greater amount of crimp in the fibre.

Spinning While on Public Display

The other weekend I spun at a farmers' market, right beside a friend's booth, Ripping It Down. She finds that customers see me, come over, and then shop her jewellery and paper goods.

My friend remarked how curious it was that the official market video camera, bent on capturing the market sights, presumably for publicity reasons, had been trained on us for quite a while. Mmm. Handspinning as local colour?

Some market customers showed interest in the wool and drop spindle and they asked questions, which I always enjoy. There were also some endearing confidences from a couple of people about how they and children had tried spinning for educational reasons, from the fleece up, or with cotton grown in a garden.

I hear backyard cotton-raising is illegal in this state. Also, I consider teaching a child to spin using raw wool or cotton to be about as prudent as teaching a child to write using a quill and fluid ink from inkwells. That said, it's wonderful the adults cared to teach the kids spinning.

sixty-second skein

This is the sixty-second skein that ever I spun, which will become part of the K2P2 scarf.

sixtieth and sixty-first skeins

These are the sixtieth and sixty-first skeins that ever I spun. Actually, I spun them earlier, but got the sequence out of order a bit, so we will put them here. They are spun out of an Icelandic fleece that I washed myself, separated (imperfectly), and combed.

They are the reason I have passed up all ensuing opportunities to acquire free, unwashed fleeces (and there have been at least a couple of Gulf Coast Native and a Liecester Longwool on offer).

Camel Saddles

These are camel saddles I saw at a flea market and a resale shop. Would come in handy for you handspinners once you get your complete fibre flock in place, eh?

I actually don't know if these saddles fit the type of camel that produces fiber suitable for spinning, which if memory serves is the Bactrian.

PVC Spinning Wheel

I had an opportunity to see a spindle-driven Babe's Fiber Garden Big River Spinner in person. Very eye-catching it is, too.

Repaired Spinning Wheel

I may have gotten unpleasantly emphatic and insistent while talking with an antique shop owner, regarding my opinion that the spinning wheel on display does not need repair but rather needs replacement parts. (I look back with regret on my breach of Canadian reticence and good manners.)

Whoever the original spinning wheel owner was, he or she was faced with a broken bit that accepts the threaded adjustment knob. He or she glued the mother of all in place.

Glue the mother of all in place, and tension cannot be adjusted. I spin on a spindle and therefore don't fiddle with tension myself, but doesn't such a repair render the wheel pretty much unusable?

Imitation Spinning Wheel

I suspect that this object started life as a potted plant stand and never was a spinning wheel.

Lovely Spinning Wheel

I saw a lovely spinning wheel the other day at Gates Antiques. If you can go see it, I encourage you to do so. Will do your heart good to know someone spun on such a wheel.

The wood was in gorgeous condition. There was a delicate cage-shaped distaff that charmed me. The spinning wheel was quite tall, with a castle orientation to the whole thing where the wheel sat above the bobbin.

They had some other spinning wheels in various stages of disassembly at the very back of one of the outbuildings, in case you are in the mood to entertain thoughts of rescue and restoration.

twelfth hat

Here is the twelfth hat I've made, using the yarn I made thick by cabling twice. The fabric feels a bit stiff and the hat needs to be pulled tightly over the head so the decreases don't stick out. This was a factor of the thick cabled yarn and the needles, which despite being the largest I own were a little too small.

There is a subtle gradation of colour from top to bottom, a result of accidentally getting one dyelot, spinning most of it, and getting a much lighter dyelot later.

Now that I have tried cabling yarn and cabling it again, I probably won't do so to future yarn. As I said, the yarn produced stiff fabric. I regret a little that I didn't make a hat with this yarn at two ply. But then, if I had, then I wouldn't know I don't care so much for this twice-cabled technique.

fifty-eighth and fifty-ninth skeins

Here are the fifty-eighth and fifty-ninth skeins that ever I spun. The colour in the photos is not at all reflective of what this purple-hued yarn looks like in person.

The Frabjous Fibers BFL in stained glass is spun, then plied, then cabled, then cabled again.

Sheep Escape

While visiting the Frontier Culture museum's Wool Days, I saw these Cotswold sheep escape their shearing pen to get back to their lambs. Notice the byplay with a goose in the left corner.

A Royal Escape

I followed the young Charles Stuart on the run, as it were, when I read Georgette Heyer's Royal Escape. He has to disguise himself in a noggin shirt, which I take to be a very rough sort of flax-based fabric, and he is very relieved to switch over later to a fine flaxen shirt.

Merchant of Venice

Happy Canada Day!

While spinning yarn and listening to a BBC production, I noticed that sheep showed up three times in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice.

First, the allusions to Jason and the Golden Fleece, to underscore the concept of desirability, prompting a quest.

Second, the Biblical story of Jacob and his wages of piebald sheep, which comes up during the argument between Shylock and Antonio over how a man ought to earn his living.

Third, the "tainted wether of the flock/ Meetest for death," a metaphor for Antonio's doomed position in the court. How, I wonder, not being a shepherd myself, does a wether get tainted and why?

A Midsummer Night's Dream

I'd forgotten that the character Bottom in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is a weaver.

While spinning yarn and listening to a BBC production of the play, I managed to catch the bit when Bottom, as Pyramus, discovers Thisby's mantle torn and stained with blood, and he rails, saying, "O Fates, come, come/ tear thread and thrum."

As You Like It

While spinning, I listened to an old BBC production of Shakespeare's As You Like It. The conversation between the fool and the shepherd went by pretty quickly but I caught some things relevant to wool production. I am pretty sure I heard the word tar in connection with sheep shearing, which I'd heard about before. (They would daub tar on places they accidentally nicked, in order to keep flies out.)

A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23

I was very happy to get a chance to read a friend's copy of Phillip Keller's book, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23. Very heartening look at the technical aspects of keeping sheep and how that relates to the psalm's content.

I had never connected the line "He preparest a table for me in the presence of mine enemies" or however it goes, with the tablelands for grazing on top of mountains. Mesas, to use another term.

They Appear to be Simple Dish Cloths

I have been knitting some dish cloths for a family member who likes them. The cloths are made of commercial cotton yarn, so you would assume that this project has nothing to do with spinning and therefore has no place on a spinning blog.

To the contrary! These humble cloths are in fact practice for getting the edges of flat knitting to lie flat and not curl. I am doing pretty well.

Why am I practicing? I dream of spinning enough to make a sweater, and construction of the sweater might have to be flat. I don't know if I really like the look of pullover sweaters done in the round, and I don't think I could bear to steek.

Give Me a Push

At a couple of the spinning demonstrations I was at in the last while, I was really glad to have a chance to give a new spinner and an aspiring spinner answers to their questions and give them practical help. One had a drop spindle and the other bought a drop spindle on the spot.

It's curious how much I like orienting people who are new. I guess the match works because newbies need answers in order to move forward and I live to give people useful information.

Kid-Powered Spindle

When I demonstrated spinning at a fibre farm's open house this spring, I got to teach two girls how to use drop spindles. The younger, after trying drafting, preferred to spin the spindle while I did the drafting for her.

I discovered a kid-powered spindle is pretty zippy.

I wonder if an electric spinning machine could be arranged with the orifice pointing upward for a similar effect? No stopping to twirl the spindle or wind on, just drafting.

I would miss the hum and feel of the spindle, though.

Demo for the Disabled

I was demonstrating spinning at a living history museum when a woman came up to see my method of spinning. After I told her about drop spindles and she figured out how they worked, she excitedly called a man over. The man had considerable vision impairment. He got to feel the spindle and the strand of spun wool, which was pretty long because I hadn't wound on, and up to the mass of fluffy BFL top. We described to him how the spindle spins in mid-air, creating twist that goes up the strand and forms yarn out of the wool.

I have heard or read that blind people can spin. I use my sight almost all the time to help me control my gauge so I don't know how well I would do.

Spinning? Cool. Now, About Your Project Bag

I was spinning in a park when a woman stopped to talk to me. She said she spun in India when she was young. She talked about the importance of spinning to Mahatma Gandhi and how she sees the relevance of his national vision today: she hopes that India will increase domestic production of goods for domestic consumption in order to make their country great.

The woman's daughter-in-law, who was with her, remarked on my project bag. That sort of bag, she said, is used by grandmothers in India. Everyone used to use them but now younger people use modern plastic.

I made the project bag myself a while back out of a hemp and cotton muslin fabric from Hemp Traders. You can see it in the background in the photo.

I am pleased to find that this bag has pleasant cultural associations for someone. I thought it was just a bag when I made it.

How Old Did You Say The Wheel Was?

I was spinning with my drop spindle outside at a cafe table, and an old man passing by called out, "Where's your spinning wheel?" He said he had one that had belonged to his grandmother's great-grandmother before the American Revolutionary war. That's one serious antique.

fifty-seventh skein and eleventh hat

Here we have the fifty-seventh skein that ever I spun, or rather a portion thereof after knitting and frogging.

Here we also have my eleventh hat, knit from the fifty-seventh skein along with the previous three, one of which was composed of small skeins of blue, red, and light blue each mixed with the base colour.

This hat entailed quite a lot of frogging until I got the results I wanted.

I like how tidy the brim is. I learned provisional cast on for this, and knit the provisional cast on together with the live stitches for a seamless turned hem that covered up all the many sewn ends. You can't see them, but I put extra stripes on the underside and they added more loose ends.

The brim had to be knit twice, since my gauge was off the first time.

I like the look of the decreases. I originally decreased the stitches in two places, after the pattern Whitney's 70s Ski Hat. The yarn refused to drape and stuck out in an unpleasant fashion. I tried no decreases and sewn seams making a four point peak. That did not produce a wearable hat either. Finally I decreased in five places, slowly at first, then more rapidly. This resulted, as I'd hoped, in a natural-looking shape that conforms to the head. As a bonus, the five-point decrease has the beautiful proportion of phi, the golden ratio 1:1.618 found in starfish, the cross-section of apples, and such.

The Look of Naturally-dyed Wool

I got to watch friends dye wool with natural dyes. Madder stole the show for me, producing a beautiful colour like garnets.

The Feel of Undyed Wool

Spinning the undyed BFL wool reminded me of the difference between that and dyed wool. The stuff felt so nice.

No wonder Peter Teal writes in his book about how he would comb dyed and undyed wool together to keep maximum softness in the finished product.

Telling Myself No

The yarn I showed you yesterday was a triumph of telling myself no. No, I will not purchase undyed dark brown BFL and undyed oatmeal BFL to make the stripes even though they would look beautiful and coordinate so well. No, I will improvise with what I have.

Same idea as that poem about how the constraints of a sonnet work to enhance creativity.

fifty-fourth, fifty-fifth, and fifty-sixth skeins

The first two skeins are spun from undyed BFL roving made of 75 per cent plain and 25 per cent natural brown colour.

The little skeinlettes with colour are spun from the same stuff combined with a few clear, intense portions of colour extracted from my leftover Frabjous Fibers BFL in chocolate cherry and deep space.

You can see that the light blue skeinlette looks more clear than the dark blue and the red. I removed some of the natural brown from the undyed wool to acheive this effect.

I'm spinning for another hat project. (What a surprise, you say.) The skeinlettes will form thin stripes around the hat.

If you were wondering why the ball of yarn at the back is wrapped differently from the others, they are all straight off the spindle, but that one is the one I swatched with to figure out how many stitches to cast on and what size needle to use.

fifty-third skein

This skein is just like the last one. I've knitted them up into the brim of a hat and promptly run out of yarn again. Must spin more. Must wait until I can get more roving.

Since I took out one of the colours out of the roving and spun chunky yarn from the remainder, this project is using up more wool than expected. The effect is worth the additional materials, naturally.

As a bonus, because the wool is cabled into chunky yarn, there is more spinning going into this hat and less knitting.

Tribble Homage

When I tore the Frabjous Fiber BFL roving in stained glass into strips and made them into balls, I couldn't help but think of Tribbles from Star Trek.

They're no Tribble at all.

fifty-second skein

This yarn is spun from Frabjous Fibers BFL top in the colour stained glass, but with the orange sections removed. You can see behind the ball of yarn there are balls of roving torn into thin strips ready to spin, and these contain the orange sections still.

While I respect the vision of dye artists and understand that the orange is supposed to give the other, darker, colours a lift, the intended recipient of this yarn asked for no orange.

So, no orange it is. I understand. The last time I wore orange I was tying granny knots in my Brownie scarf. The orange sections are saved for another day and for someone who likes that sort of thing.

I spun at the usual gauge and then cabled and cabled the yarn back on itself.

Wrapping the Cop

So many people remark on the way I wrap my cop when they see it.

Their attention always bemuses me. Is the way I wind on so very remarkable?

I read how to do it in some book. I sort of pass the strand back and forth at 45 degree angles while I twirl the spindle. Supposed to put less force on the twist energy and retain the bounce longer, if I remember correctly.

Improvised Gauge Guide

If you look at the photo in yesterday's post, you'll see I drew a few lines on a sticker, which was taken from the edge of a sheet of self-adhesive postage stamps, and I stuck this on the underside of the spindle whorl.

When I want to check my gauge, how thick my strand is compared to how thick I started with, I lay the strand over the lines to measure it. Frees me up from needing to carry a separate tool like a Spinner's Control Card.

The sticker is curling at the edges and the sticky backing sometimes catches the strand as I go which is a bit of a nuisance, but I haven't gotten around to trimming the corners and the way I wind my cop keeps the strand from brushing the sticker much anyway.

Taping up my Spindle

I bought a used top whorl drop spindle that wasn't anything special yet had a pleasing length and weight. I believe the shaft is a softwood dowel.

Unfortunately while spinning, I dropped the spindle and fractured the wood around the hook.

The spindle is now sporting blue painter's tape around the top of the shaft to hold the wood together and the hook in place. Looks about as glamourous as thick plastic eyeglasses taped at the corners, but the fix holds most of the time.

Flexible Ruler

I bought a flexible plastic ruler to put in my knitting project bag. I'm really pleased with this ruler. It's hot pink, my favourite colour. The shape and texture also delight me because they remind me of a candy we used to buy as kids at park concession stands and corner stores. The candy was a wide strip in Neapolitan flavours. Can't remember what the name was.

I have a couple of perfectly good wooden rulers, one I kept from elementary school complete with childish doodles and one clever one inscribed with a list of the rulers of England but I bought the flexible ruler thinking that I wouldn't want a wooden ruler to break in my bag. However, this begs the question, what exactly do I think my wooden knitting needles might do?

Went Back for the Chair

I went back for the spinner's chair and bought it.

Bought it to rescue it from obscurity in a secondhand store. Bought it for a conversation piece. Bought it for fun. Bought it because I don't often discover something serviceable for sale at a tenth the price new.

The fact that I spin standing up with a drop spindle and do not own a spinning wheel, those facts are completely beside the point.

Antique Shop Sightings

I saw a wooden sheep statue, a couple of great wheels, a flax wheel in terrible shape,* a skein winder, and a spinner's chair at antique shops recently.

The spinner's chair was my favourite. The style wasn't to my taste, all florid with gilt and turnings. The shape of a spinner's chair's skinny back always strikes me as ill-proportioned, too. But the chair was my favourite find because of the label that read, "Unusual chair, $18."

"Hah!" I said to myself. "Little do they know," I said.

The clerk promised to pass on to the shop owner the fact that such a chair is not at all unusual to handspinners.


*The shop owner told me that the wheel got damaged in the shop because customers would walk by and fiddle with it.

Yard Sale Sighting

A non-spinner friend saw a pair of wool cards in good condition at a garage sale for three dollars. No, she didn't get them. Yes, she choked when I told her how much wool cards cost new.

Weaver's Estate Sale

A number of guild members and I went shopping at a weaver's estate sale. How bittersweet to think of someone leaving supplies and tools behind, and to have a chance ourselves to put them to good use.

I got some dish cloth cotton yarn.

I also got a warping board. Someday I will gird myself and try it, but not right now.

Monster under the Bed

I put two boxes worth of roving into one of those bags you vacuum air out of so I could store the bag under the bed.

We lost containment.

Fortunately, I was able to pull the bag out again but I had a moment of panic there.

Stack of Stash

All my spinning, knitting, and weaving supplies and tools are in these containers. Don't know if that looks like a lot to you or a little. (No wheel, I use drop spindles.)

To me who knows what's in there, it looks like the right amount of tools* but far more supplies than I want to keep on hand.

There are a number of types of fibre in there that I don't plan to replace once I spin them up or judiciously destash, such as merino, mohair, cotton, mixed-breed wool, wool-bamboo, alpaca, Corriedale cross, and Icelandic.

If you are keeping track, that leaves Romney and my beloved Blue Faced Leicester. I'm not sure how I feel about the purebred Shetland. Haven't tried spinning that yet.


*except I dream of a huge and impressive warp-weighted loom, and a couple styles of sprang frames, and maybe an electric spinning machine

Spinning Wheel-Themed Music

Dvorak wrote a piece of music called The Golden Spinning Wheel. How cool.

fifieth and fifty-first skeins, and tenth hat

Yet another watch cap, yet again spun from Frabjous Fibers BFL. This colour is called deep space.

For this and the similar hats I did recently, I tore the rovings into thin strips before spinning. This made the colour repeat frequently and prevented long sections of colour which I feared would pool unpleasantly.

forty-eighth and forty-ninth skeins, and ninth hat

This project was part of a challenge to take eleven separate given colours and blend them into one repeatable yarn.

I improvised the hat pattern. I had to frog the crown and redo it with less length so I wouldn't run out of yarn. This is my first hat with lots of increases at the crown.

forty-sixth and forty-seventh skeins, and eighth hat

The colour of this handspun is very pretty, I think. It's Frabjous Fibers BFL in chocolate cherry.

forty-third, forty-fourth, and forty-fifth skeins

Spun these from the teal sections of my two braids of Frabjous Fibers BFL in redwood forest. Love the colour.

forty-second skein

Spun this skein from one ounce of Gulf Coast Native fibre. The owner of Gem View Farm and Fiber gave this fibre to me when we were demonstrating spinning at Fireweed Farm Alpacas.

fortieth and forty-first skeins, and seventh hat

I spun a fortieth and forty-first skein and knit them into my seventh hat.

Strictly speaking, I didn't really do skeins as such.

I divided two braids of Frabjous Fibers BFL in redwood forest, separating the brown sections from the teal sections. Each brown section was a different brown.

I spun up each section into a little ball of yarn and knit directly into the hat. Didn't even stop to set the twist. The hat had subtle bands of colour because of the different browns. I put a touch of teal at the brim for fun.

sixth hat

Here is the Romney hat in all its springy textured glory, knit from my thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth skeins. I had a little left over.

Mine. All mine.

Gone Fishing

Gone fishing.

Will resume posting when I can. I wish you happy handspinning in the meantime!

Wooly Romney Goodness

I must say again, the Romney yarn in the hat I'm knitting is very satisfying due to its lofty structure.