At last year’s Taos Wool Fest I bought 4 oz of raw sari silk. I recently finished spinning it.
This fiber was a challenge! It’s tough on the hands, is very inconsistent and hard to draft.
I have no idea what to make with it though!
Since I only had 4 oz I decided to ply it with some thin yellow yarn to stretch the yardage as much as I could.
I have 196 yd total.
During our Durango trip I stopped by Yarn Durango, the local yarn store.
I was feeling stressed over the Las Conchas Fire and being in a pretty knitting store helped mellow me out. The woman working that day was very friendly and helpful.
A simple yet lovely statue outside their store:
If you visit Durango the store is definitely worth a visit. I bought some yarn there that I used in my Bridge piece. I’ll post about that soon.
I’ve been working on some small pieces lately. First up are some felt flowers for Lori’s Yarn Store (FB link).
They are partially felted and need another round or two.
There’s new yarn on my wheel. I’m teaching myself how to spin cocoons. They’re a little tricky but I think I’m getting the hang of it.
It’s probably overtwisted but I’m hoping I can correct that some during plying.
Ok, I couldn’t resist the above title. 
This yarn is made from handpainted merino roving from Strandavarious. I got it from Lori at the Taos Yarn Shop.
I spun this into a 2 ply yarn and have 516 yards.
The color variegation is just lovely.
I decided to challenge myself and spun as thin as I could. My yarn gauge said I spun a fingering weight. Here’s a quarter to indicate yarn thickness.
I turned around and took this quick picture of Sieben.
When I turned back around to the yarn this is what I saw:
Granola loves playing with yarn! Thankfully I got him away before he could start nomming it.
The larger of these skeins is what what won second place in the yarn competition at the Wool Fest.
When I arrived at the second day of the Taos Wool Festival today my friends Laura and Meredith took me immediately over to the yarn competition booth. Guess what? I won ribbons!
My blue Lonesome Stone two ply yarn won Reserve Champion, 1st place.
And my purple/brown Strandavarious 2 ply yarn won 2nd place.
I’m ecstatic!
Merce Mitchell will be in this year’s Taos Wool Festival. Here’s a sneak peak of her awesome yarn.
Merce is known for her felt skulls and people come year after year to collect them. Here’s one for this year.
Her booth name is Pure Felt & Vortex Spinning and is Booth #26 on the vendor map.
Last month Abbey and I went to a yarn bombing in Albuquerque. The event was sponsored by the Yarn Shop at Nob Hill. Crafters gathered at the store to prep the bombs.
Flowers were placed on all the pieces as our signature. One woman crocheted a huge flower that I thought made a great hat.
Abbey having a fun time:
Me practicing a Jane Fonda mug shot:
We weren’t the only crafters getting wild that night.
After the prep work we went out to tag Nob Hill. The event happened on a Friday night and the street was buzzing with activity. There were musicians playing some groovy tunes.
We covered light poles, bike poles, bus station handles, trees and more.
A yarn bomb on a bike rack:
This tag was one of Abbey’s favorites:
We got rave reviews. People stopped to look at our work.
Some wanted to take our picture!
The one was one of my faves-
so simple and darling!
We had a great time doing this. The next day all the tags were still there! Yarn bombing rocks! It spreads such joy and makes a normal street pretty. Street art is so inspiring and I’m so happy to be a part of this movement.
I’ve spun up some new yarn:
This is handdyed wool and a sparkly cotton/nylon core thread.
I used a quarter coin for a size reference pic.
For this yarn I taught myself corespinning. It’s a fun technique. The sparkly thread was my core and I let the core pop out sporadically through.
I have 62 yards total. This yarn is going into my new art piece.
I’ve finished up some new yarn. This is a merino and mohair mix. I started out with eight ounces of roving bought from Yada Yada Yarn in Silver City.
I have 174 yards of 2 ply yarn.
Since this is my first yarn on my new wheel I focused on consistency.
I’ve seen spinners on Ravelry post pictures with coins to show yarn thickness. That’s a clever trick that I’ve taken to using.
The Rose is a nice wheel. I feel like I’m still getting used to it though. This yarn is nice but it’s a tad overtwisted. I’ll have to watch that next time I ply.
Granola loves to play with yarn. I put the yarn on the pillows and turned around to grab the camera. When I turned back around he had already snatched a skein:
A fellow knitter emailed me out of the blue about my Chicken Hat for Grant. She was knitting a sweater and had run out of Knit Picks yarn. A Google search brought her to my blog. Kim was hoping that I had some spare Nutmeg yarn. By luck I had a full skein left.
This scenario may sound odd to some but knitters do this thing where we try to help fellow knitters short of yarn. Of course I’d send her my leftover skein! She traded me Knit Picks yarn in the Bark colorway and gave me some of her awesome handmade soap. It left my skin so soft that I wrote her back and said she could sell it.
Here’s the picture of her completed sweater:
The yarn I sent her was the same dye lot as her yarn so it’s a perfect match. Cool eh?