hollesspindle:

This is the result of my latest dyeing experiment.  I’m spinning it now.  At first, I was a tad unsure about the colors, but now they’re really growing on me!  

Drool.

Fiber addiction, warning signs of.

Or: what happens when you cross a spinner and a yard full of weeds.

(about 1.5 yards of handspun, made from grass leaves. You read that right. And when I say handspun, I don’t mean on a wheel or even a drop spindle. I added that twist with my fingers and plied the same way.

I am, however, not entirely sure it counts as yarn….)

ohhellyeahspinning:

kalany:

A swatch of my #knitting #handspun #handdyed #yarn (Taken with instagram)

You’re such a good person to swatch…

Pffft.  Yeah right. See, what happens is the following:

1. Yarn comes out of the dehydrator I use to dry it.  Warm!  Yarn!  Fuzzy!  Must turn into a ball!
2. I have a ball of yarn!  I MUST KNIT IT!
3. I have no project.  That’s okay, I’ll just play around with needles to figure out which needle works best with this particular yarn.
4. Oh look, I accidentally swatched.

I also tend to store my handspun as swatched blanks rather than balls or skeins, because I’ve had trouble with the skeins coming undone in storage, and with the balls unrolling.  Swatches don’t unroll, and I can see the color progression at a glance, as well as the rough gauge/feel of the knitted fabric.  Plus they store nice and flat.  I tie the end in a slip knot, so when I want to knit from them, I just pull the slip knot out, and then one of (a) start knitting immediately, (b) turn the yarn into a ball and knit, or (c) re-skein, wash&whack, dry, re-ball if it’s very kinky and it bugs me.  I actually have some “swatches” that are large enough I use them as scarves on a daily basis.  Of course, you have to be a little careful that the yarn doesn’t felt together through use and that it’s sturdy enough to stand up to this treatment, so I don’t do this with, say, delicate singles (or with some of the yarn that I have several thousand yards of!).  But something like this (a nice solid, tightly-plied chain-ply) will stand up easily to being knitted and then unraveled.

I started doing this because I realized that what the yarn looks like in a skein is almost never what it looks like knitted, so I’d want to swatch anyway, and that the swatches stored more easily than the skeins.  So now I knit almost all my handspun twice: once for storage and once for real.

(PS: this is my [kalany’s] spinning blog, except I’m too lazy to actually post to it half the time, and instagram won’t post to it at all).

slowcloth:

progress. 

still working on my gradient spin. i’ve spun about 7 or 8 oz of singles so far, and i have about 17 more to go. working on fiber in 1 oz bites is very fulfilling. progress is easy to see. have i mentioned how much i love corgi hill farm colorways. and how much i love spinning bfl? 

I love spinning in bite-sized chunks!  I usually end up spinning about 12 to 48 grams of fiber in one chunk — I usually manage 12 grams or so to a bobbin before I get bored, and then the rest depends on how many bobbins I’m plying together.  Then I stop and ply.  I’ve been spinning this Corriedale from Spunky Eclectic by pulling randomly-sized (but smallish) strips off the length of top, swapping bobbins around as I feel called, then plying them together when my bobbins look about the same size.  Then repeating.  It makes for surprisingly harmonious yarn, in the particular colorway I’m working with.

I just caught myself talking to my fiber as if it were my girlfriend. “Look at you! You’re so gorgeous! How did I ever get so lucky?”

No wonder I’m single.

[edit: no wonder I’m SINGLES? Hahaha get it haha. Ha. Ha. I have a problem.]

On Wednesday, I finished spinning up the first of the two 4oz balls that I got from the Spunky Eclectic fiber of the month club. I’m holding off posting those pictures because I want to avoid spoiling anyone who’s also in the club (but damn is it beautiful). I also knit up the yarn into a scarf-blank, because that’s how I like to store my handspun when I can (hey, it’s functional — I can use it as a scarf if I need to — but it also provides much better visual reference for yarn weight and color repeats than a hank. And in wool, I can always give it a hot soak if I need to send it back to its starting condition). I think it’s about medium to heavy worsted weight, on average; there’s some spots where I seriously overspun the poor thing, but hopefully the second ball will go better.

I have two more 4oz balls from the same person sitting in my stash; this dyer has a tendency to dye these amazing variegated tops that just look amazing, but that blend when spun into something slightly less amazing. There were places in the ball I just finished where this was a good thing — I didn’t really like the original color combinations, but blended it was awesome — but the one I bought, I absolutely love the original colors. I’m thinking I might have to strip the hell out of the top and basically spin it without drafting at all, if I want to keep the awesome. But that means really, REALLY short color repeats, and I’d sort of wanted long ones. So I’m holding off on those 8oz for now.

Then I have 4oz of sparkly pink merino that I’m waffling over because (a) I really want to ply it, but (b) I’m not sure how the sparkles will do with being spun as finely as I’d need to for the weight I want to achieve. Also, I’m not sure what I want to do with it yet, and I’m getting to the point in spinning where I’m realizing that matching the yarn quality to the project before I start is a Good Idea, particularly when there isn’t a lot of the fiber to be had.

I also have about 5 lbs of kind of meh roving and top, purchased because they were cheap and I was willing to take a chance on them. One of them is a 1kilo bump, and then I have odd bags of other processed fiber sitting around. The problem with these is that I mostly can’t actually wear them — the fiber from the bump, for example, gives me a rash almost the instant I touch it, for whatever reason — and I haven’t figured out what to do with them. The ones I can wear tend to have mohair in them, which invalidates them for about 90% of the projects I’m in the mood to make. I’m still not sure what it is that makes me break out — there’s a possibility that it would be okay if I could figure out the right washing technique — but it’s made me a lot more nervous about buying unlabeled wool online.

Then I have a bag and a half of lovely soft fuzzy BFL left over from Mom’s hat. I love this stuff. It’s undyed, though, and I love how it takes dye, and I’ve been waffling over whether to dye it in the wool or as yarn, and that means not spinning it because what if I do and then I regret it and….

Lastly, I have about 10lb of unprocessed fleece/hair sitting around in various bags. Of this, about 4lb is amazingly lovely and beautiful merino from a local farm, but it is OILY BEYOND BELIEF and has to be washed before use, which, in a studio apartment, is not only labor intensive but, uh, “interesting”.

Another pound or so is this lovely fiber from a rescue sheep that, once washed, is delightfully fuzzy and bumpy but just soft enough to wear. Problem is, the sheep wasn’t coated, so it’s also full of sheep shit. Literally. Again, incredibly labor intensive — in different ways from the merino, where the problem is felting, but in this case it requires about five hours of 30-minute hot-water soaks to get the shit fully out of the fleece. Then I still have to card it before I can spin it.

The rest of it is hair from a couple of rescue llamas. If I could figure out how to get the guard hairs out, this would be amazing amazing fiber, but I haven’t figured that out yet. With the guard hairs in, it’s scratchy and annoying. Worse, the whole lot was washed with a pet shampoo to which I am Seriously Horribly Allergic. After a year of being stored in my closet, it’s finally getting to the point where I can open the bags without running away.

So, on the one hand, I have a fiber problem (like a drinking problem, but fuzzier). On the other hand, I WANT MORE WOOL SO I CAN SPIN NOW. NOW NOW NOW.

Handspun Coopworth — spun up to about 30 meters; 8.3 grams. Dyed in the wool cyan/blue, then overdyed in a rainbow.

The last mini-skein for my handwarmers (I hope).

The 80s called; they’re missing some yarn. I think I found it.

Toying with naming this colorway “The Whispering Woods”, a la She-Ra.

This is handspun Coopworth, about 50 yards worth, hand dyed in my microwave with a 10/2/9/3 RYBV ratio.

Had a bout of insomnia last night, and this was the result!

Coopworth sliver off my 1kilo bump. About 58 yarns, medium-fine-ish weight (I’m so bad at yarn weights). Dyed in the microwave with food coloring.

Another of my sophisticated nostepinnes. I like this one because it’s pink!