Bramble throw

Working on a shockingly yellow bramble stitch throw.  Some friend gave me two balls of Lion Brand sportweight Woole Ease wool/acrylic blend a million years ago, and I decided to finally use it.  Unfortunately Lion Brand no longer manufactures Wool Ease in sportweight, so I'm left to find some substitute for the rest of the blanket.  I find that people must be increasingly lazy as worsted and chunky weights are more common that the much nicer sportweights, DKs, and fingering weight yarns that make a better fabric.  I'm hoping that I find a comparable yarn in yellow and medium green so that I can temper the slightly garish hue of the original yarn.  Pattern and picture to come.

Handspun hat set

Knit a little warm winter hat from the previously posted white and turmeric plied yarn i spun.  I made the scarf from some really lovely all white two-ply that ended up quite light and fluffy.  Unfortunately the really good skein was only about 60 grams, not nearly enough to make a scarf out of.  I supplemented it with some (fingering weight?) turmeric and single ply of a chunkier white.  The set should be awfully warm and cozy, and i look forward to using it!  How great to get that out of a big old trash bag of wool.

The early stages of my personal art website.  huzzah.

Dyeing and Plying

Dyed some yarn with turmeric, plied it with a skein of natural.  The skein of turmeric yarn was definitely my best-- even, thin, and strong-- but i decided to ply it with one of my earlier, rougher ones anyway.  Still have some leftover, which i might ply with itself and incorporate into whatever project I use for the gold and white skein.  I'm thinking a simple stockinette hat.  Apparently turmeric isn't super fast, but I don't think that I'd be washing a hat much anyway.

Andean Plying

Well, I tried to ply one skein of my thinner yarn, and it turned out quite nice!  I'm certainly not an expert at plying yet, but I'd say that the technique definitely improves the quality of the yarn.  I'd like to continue to ply the rest of my yarns, but I think i'm going to wait to dye first so that I can ply two colors together and make something fancy.  Not sure how well I can ply after the dying relaxes the twist a bit, but I guess I'll find out.

Here's a useful illustration of Andean Plying.

You spin me right round

I've become addicted to a new fiber art-- spinning!  I bought a big 1 lb bag of wool off of ebay, pulled out my drop spindle, and haven't gotten up since.  I've still got a little under half a bag left and I've cranked out 6 skeins.  Each one gets better.  I'd like to be able to make a nice strong, thin yarn that I can ply.  After I've spun it all I'll have a dye extravaganza.  I'd like to use plant materials and get a range of greens, yellows, and browns.  That white does look awfully nice, though.

While I'm working, I've decided to use my yarn as decor.  It's something that I find beautiful, so I figured I'd make everyone else stare at it too.  Those black hangers are actually wooden plate display holders that I found on the side of the street in San Francisco.  The birdy plate is from the same source.  That gorgeous green yarn is somebody else's handspun creation from Arcata, and it's something I'm striving towards.

Finished Scrap Blanket

All those scraps of wool that I sorted through finally came about to a finished blanket.  I made a bunch of stitch sampler squares and sewed them all together.  It was great to get out my Stitchionary and road test some of the patterns.  I love being able to wrap myself in something that I've made and remember all of the other projects that I knit from the yarns in the quilt.

Despite all of the wool that I've used, I still feel like I have a GIANT stash that I'm slowly working through.  It's mostly the acrylic stuff that plagues me.  I also have a few little odds and ends of luxury fibers that I've squirreled away for some unknown project.    Next up is socks from that leftover Knitpicks Palette, I think.

Palette Gloves

Here's finally a picture of those gloves I made from the knitpicks palette yarns.  I really loved doing fair isle in fingering weight wool.  The colors all go very well together.   These are his and hers gloves.  The green "hers" gloves have flippable fingers so that the wearer (my mother) can easily handle dog poo bags.  Charming!