Knitting in pink

Yup! No knitting at all! Are you surprised? Actually, there has been lots of knitting, but you wont see it today! : )

Coming back from Rhinebeck and the purchase of beautiful fibers led me to cleaning out some of my bobbins.

I still had some Ashland Bay Trading Co. colonial combed wool top on a bobbin, Still River Mill Mystery Bump on another and 100% merino top from From Mielke's Farm Fiber Arts on yet another bobbin.

I decided to 2 ply together the Ashland Bay and the Still River Mill and this is what I got

I also plied together leftover Ashland Bay with the Mielke's Farm



I got about 172 yds of a lace to fingering weight yarn out of the top skein and about 98 yds of fingering to DK out of the bottom skein.

Yesterday I also did something unusual. I got my sewing machine out. I'd been wanting to try sewing again and decided to make myself an Artsy Clutch from the book Bend the Rules Sewing. To practice, I used some stash fabric and this is what I came up with



The finished product is far from perfect but it was fun to do and it is quite usable even if it is on the small size. The next one I do I'll up the sizing to double the finished size I think. I also didn't use any facing as I really wanted to make it easy for the first time around. But next time for sure. I definitely see more sewing in my future!

I'll have some knitting content in my next post..

I haven't been spinning at all since last Monday. Been pretty busy knitting socks and my Fitted Tank. The Tank is done as of today and two socks need a heel. But since I said I would show you spinning on Mondays I will. Wouldn't do go to stop on the second week already!

Here's what is currently on the bobbins:

On the left is pink merino and on the right is the purple Ashland Bay wool top. I was told that Merino wasn't that much harder to spin so I decided that I'd give it a try. I haven't had much success with it so far so I only have this done:



and this much of the other:



I will be 3 plying these two with this:



Hopefully it wont look too bad! : )

I need to give another try to the Merino, I think that I need to predraft it even more than I already have, maybe that will help me a bit. Now that the Tank is done I'll be able to get some spinning done this week and hopefully will have something more to show next Monday.

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Other people have started a Spinning/Handspun Monday, check it out! Maybe we need a button!

From now on, I'm hoping to post spinning stuff on Mondays, so welcome to my first "Spinning Monday"!

Today I'm going to show you what I finished just a few days ago.

This is the Mystery Bump from Still River Mills that I purchased at the Connecticut Sheep and Wool back in April. I was attracted to the various colors of the bump; yellow, cherry red, purple and black. I was a little disappointed when I noticed that the first two colors were only at the beginning of the bump and nowhere else. The rest of the bump was just black and purple, although it was pretty nonetheless. The bump was a mix of alpaca and Border Leicester and/or Romney. It was quite easy to spin and the alpaca was super soft. I decided to spin 3 2oz sections and 3-ply them together. The resulting yarn was about 250 yds of DKish weight.

You can see if you click on the picture to make it bigger a bit of the yellow and cherry red sections.

I spun up the remaining ounce or so of the mystery bump and am now spinning this:



I bought this roving along with a drop spindle last summer and I believe it is Ashland Bay Trading Co. colonial wool top. Once I'm done spinning it I will ply it together with the rest of the mystery bump. I am tempted though, to 3 ply it with the pink merino I received a while back. I wonder what it will look like?

I finished spinning the Hello Yarn BFL in Slideshow over the weekend and on Sunday morning I plyed/plied? the two bobbins together.

I wanted to take pictures of the singles but I forgot, so here's a shot of it on the bobbin after plying.

The yarn is mostly red with short areas of color; green and grey mostly. I'm getting better at getting an evenly spun single, although it is far from perfect yet!



This time I got about 240 yds out of 4oz so definitely enough to make something.

I plyed together some of the Aqua and Brown and some of the Slideshow that I had leftover and this is what it looks like:



There's about 16 yds of this gorgeous aqua and red combo. I really love it! I need to find some rovings in those colors and ply them together. That would be really pretty.

Yesterday evening I started working on the Still River Mill Mystery Bump that I got at the Connecticut Wool and Sheep festival. It's got Merino in it (I think) so I was afraid that I would have a hard time at it. But whatever else is with the Merino compensates. The single is very hairy and not very soft. So I'm not sure what I could do with the yarn I'll get from it. Any suggestions? I'm thinking that maybe I should ply it with a solid BFL, that might soften up the yarn and tame the crazy color changes of the Mystery Bump.



I'm really enjoying spinning and am really glad I did get a wheel. Now I'm thinking of buying a wheel I can travel with easily and owning another wheel with bigger bobbins...

Knitting content in a couple of days.

I've been knitting away on my two socks in progress. I've been working mostly on my 80's punk sock but my May Day sock is almost to the heel.

Forgive the poor lighting on the second sock, I don't know why it is so different from the first one. Yesterday I spent some time trying to make a light box to take better pictures. I used what I had on hand but today I need to go and buy a couple things that hopefully will make it much better.

I've been out most of the weekend and so have been able to knit more on the mindless knitting sock then on the one that requires reading a chart. So it's why the Punk sock is much further ahead than the other one. Also the Scout's Swag yarn I'm using for the May Day sock is a lot thinner than the Perchance to Knit I am using for the other one.

Last week I finished plying my Dragonfibers BFL and this is what it looks like now:



I used my homemade lazy kate to ply it and my homemade niddy noddy to skein it and it worked really well. I calculated that I got about 164 yds of yarn out of the 4oz. Of course it is not perfect, it's quite thick and thin but I'm pleased with it. I started spinning some Hello Yarn BFL

.

I split the roving in 2 then each half in 3 parts. So far I've done 2 parts out of the first half. More pictures when I'm done spinning at least the first half!

Contest

Back in March I participated in a contest over at SweetPea's blog. The winners could win some yarn from Rohrspatz & Wollmeise. I had been drooling over their sock yarn for quite a while so I participated of course. I ended up being a winner and won one set of mini skeins from Wollmeise. That's a sampler of all the colors that they produce. That is over 40 different colors.

I received them yesterday. And let's just say that I was quite impressed. Look at all those colors! Aren't they just beautiful all together like that? I had fun taking pictures this morning and created this mosaic.



I also put them in a set for your enjoyment. You can also see different pictures on SweetPea's blog in her March archives.

I don't know yet what I'll be doing with it but I'm thinking something along the lines of a log cabin squares blanket or something like that.

Spinning

I spun up the Dragon Fibers I received last week and plied it this morning. I waited until this morning because I was waiting to receive this:



My father-in-law made this for me. The lazy kate I received with my wheel didn't work very well and I thought that this kind of kate would work better. My FIL likes to do woodscrafting so I asked him to make one for me. And he finished it last night! Actually, he didn't consider it finished but I convinced him to let me take it so I could try it out... I don't think it's going back to his house!

He also helped make a bigger niddy noddy:



2 x 1/2 inch plastic t-connectors, 4 feet of slightly smaller diameter dowels and some masking tape...
I haven't tried it yet but I'm pretty sure it should work just fine. This niddy noddy should make 72" skeins.

So you want to see the spinning right?



I still have a little bit on one bobbin and about 20 grams left to spin, then we'll know how much I got out of that 4oz of BFL roving. I'm really quite please with my first experience spinning up painted roving and I'm glad I've got much more in the stash!

Let me introduce to you the new member of the family, my new spinning wheel:

There she is, still at the spinnery. I'm going to need help finding a name for her. Fricke is a name difficult to alter in a pretty way so I'll take all the help I can get! Maybe I'll even turn that into a contest... The best name wins something cool and fibery?

I bought my wheel from Twist of Fate Spinnery . They are located in Portland Connecticut.




These are the two owners of the small company. The guy on the right just didn't want his picture taken... Was afraid that his picture might end up on some blog or something! Lol! I did confirm to him that the picture would, indeed, end up on my blog.

I didn't get a chance that first evening to spin on the wheel, but the next day I dug into the 8oz Romney that they gave me and started spinning away. You can see the results of my first few bobbins here and here.

Here I am showing off my 3rd and 4th bobbins all plied up together.

You can click on the pictures to see them bigger.

I've spun up two more bobbins to practice plying some more. Also I ordered the book "Teach Yourself VISUALLY Handspinning". Since I am teaching myself how to spin, I hope that this book will be a great help. I've also ordered some Corriedale pencil roving from Crown Mountain Farm for when I'm a bit better. Also, I still need to buy a niddy noddy (I used a hanger to skein the yarn you see above). I've really been enjoying my spinning time so far. It hurts my back though, so if you have suggestions as to how I should be sitting or what kind of chair I should be using I will gladly hear them.

More knitting content in a couple of days...