Posts filed under 'Yarn'
Abbey and I had a girls’ day last weekend and exchanged holiday presents. Here’s what I gave her.
These two skeins are 226 yards total and are a wool/silk blend.
I bought 4 ounces of handpainted roving from Fiber Fanatic Roving at this year’s Wool Fest. I plied it with some silk yarn Abbey gave me for my birthday.
Here’s the roving:
And here’s some of the yarn on my wheel:
Last year I spun her almost 400 yards. Somehow I thought I had 16 oz of this roving. But double checking the tag I only bought 4.
I found a wool scarf at the local free pile that I frogged for the yarn. It was single ply and had a nice orange/pink/yellow variegation to it. I plied it up with the silk yarn to make two more skeins.
These two skeins are 200 yards total and are also a wool/silk blend.
She liked the yarn! Next up is her present and our adventure at the movie theater.
December 14th, 2009
I’m working on my woven piece for next year’s Beyond The Fringe. It’s going to be a long narrow strip with felt and needlework on top. I wasn’t sure if I’d have enough blue yarn so I recently spun up more.
This is stash yarn that I plied together. These two skeins are a little over 250 yards.
November 23rd, 2009
My yarn and socks are rinsed and dried. I’m very happy with the results!
I used Jacquard Acid Dyes in Kelly Green and Chartreuse.
The natural heathering makes the dye job heathered.
I’ll be using these for a fiber art piece. I’m making a Green Man and will be knitting a ton of green leaves.
I’m working on the background now and will post pics soon.
Here’s the original natural gray for comparison:
Awhile back Thebes bought several pairs of kilt hose. One pair ended up being too small so he gave them to me. They’re a wool, angora, nylon mix. But they were white. I’m clutzy and avoid white clothing because I just end up staining it.
I put them into Laura’s purple dye pot.
They turned out pretty cool. One of the fibers must have resisted the dye or reacted to the dye differently.
These socks are toasty warm too.
While doing the photo shoot Sieben came over with his toy bunny. How can I resist such cuteness?
November 10th, 2009
Recently Laura and I got together for a dye day. It was so fun! I brought my gray heathered yarn and some commercial socks to dye. She had yarn and roving to kettle dye and handpaint.
Laura gets ready to mix up dye:
Here’s me filling up a pot for kettle dyeing:
Presoaking the fiber:
We both used Jacquard Acid Dyes. This is Chartreuse.
Laura dyed silk roving and Knit Picks bare yarn. My white socks are in here too.
I brought Sieben along for a doggie play day. He was SO excited to play with her dogs Bobo and Didi.
Our dye prep area:
Here’s Laura handpainting some mohair roving:
Our friend Meredith had suggested dyeing darker colored yarn. I decided to try it with my gray yarn. Here’s the Chartreuse:
From the left-my socks, Laura’s bare yarn and silk roving.
From the left-her handpainted mohair roving and bare yarn.
I split my yarn into two batches. I’m dyeing the second batch in Kelly Green.
Her metal grid table worked great for laying out the wet yarn.
We learned some things that day. We ended up using too much water and too much dye while kettle dyeing. For the Kelly Green I used less water but forgot to use less dye. Laura liked the way her handpainted roving turned out but didn’t like the look of the handpainted bare yarn.
We also forgot to rinse out our fiber. The smell of vinegar was pretty strong! I rinsed out mine yesterday. More pics in the next post.
The weather was wonderful for a dye day. Sunny, warm, no wind-a wonderful fall day. We had such a good time and will definitely do it again!
November 9th, 2009
Merce will be selling her yarn and felt art at this year’s Taos Wool Fest. Her work is called Vortex Spinning. Neat eh? Here’s some pictures of her creative handspun:
And here’s an example of her felt art.
She’ll be in Booth #26 with Abbey.
September 29th, 2009
Lori from the Yarn Store had me spin up some alpaca to sell at her shop. This was my first try with alpaca. It was interesting. The staple is much shorter than wool. I put it through the drum carder a couple of times and that really helped the fiber stick to itself.
I spun up a total of 421 yards.
I’m enjoying experimenting with different fibers. Maybe I’ll try a silk blend next.
I made a mini skein:
A close up:
This alpaca is now at the Yarn Store. It’s pretty exciting to see my handspun in an actual yarn store!
August 29th, 2009
This dress was in the box of childhood mementos my Dad sent me:
I knew as soon as I saw it again that it was getting cut up for the mother piece. I remember not liking this dress. Part of me did but another part thought it was too red. Another instance of my Mother putting her favorite color on me. Bleh.
Prana sat with me while I cut it up. He’s such a sweetie.
The dress is so girly isn’t it? It’s just covered in lace and ruffles.
Here’s the two balls of yarn I created:
I corespun the yarn around some other mother piece yarn I created. Remember my baby blanket post? I used that yarn as the core yarn.
I spun the white dress yarn around the white baby blanket yarn and the red dress yarn around the red blanket yarn.
The white yarn I spun against the acrylic core yarns twist. It’s a loose yarn.
The red yarn I spun with the twist of the core yarn. It’s tighter and has much more twist.
Here’s a better pic of the two yarns.
I’m thinking of crocheting this yarn and somehow attaching it to the womb.
Though I’m happy with the end result I didn’t like the process at all. The whole time I felt resentment and some anger. It felt like I was processing my emotions, somehow putting my anger into the yarn.
This art therapy stuff is some weird shit. I mean I like it and think it works and all…but still it’s weird.
August 14th, 2009
Recently Abbey and I went to Santa Fe on a yarn crawl. I gave my yarn store reviews in this post.
At Tutto I bought pre-made Opal socks. It gave me quite a giggle to buy ready to wear socks at a yarn store.
The label says they’re “factory-knit sale sample over-runs”. They came in one size fits all. They’re a little big on the toe but I think they’re comfy. Plus the tops have elastic knit into the ribbing so they stay up perfectly.
Next up is the yarn I bought at Oodles. Ever since reading the Knitter’s Book Of Yarn I’ve been interested in trying different types of fiber. This is Araucania yarn made out of sugarcane.
It has a shine and drape that reminds me of silk. The woman running the store had a top in this exact colorway so I got to see what it looks like knit up.
As soon as Tubey and Che purse #2 are done I’m casting on for a little shrug.
When we were at Looking Glass Yarn & Gifts Abbey found these Knit one, sip one coffee mugs and got us both one.
It’s super cute!
August 13th, 2009
Merce will be selling her yarn again at this year’s Wool Fest. She gave me four skeins to make something so she can show how the yarn knits up. Here’s her yarn fresh off the ball winder:
This is an interesting challenge. Pink is not my color so it took me awhile to get inspiration. This is art yarn which means it’s not as consistent as the yarn I’m used to working with. There’s poofs in random places that surprise me and throw off my pace.
Then inspiration struck. Why not work with the randomness instead of against it? My blog is called Crafting Chaos after all. The free form crazy shawl has begun!
There’s not much yardage so I’m using the biggest needles I have-12mm (size 17). I’m knitting and purling as the mood takes me. When I feel like switching yarn or direction I do.
I’m not sure how it’s going to turn out but there’s a freedom to this type of knitting.
August 9th, 2009
Last month Abbey and I went to Santa Fe for a yarn crawl. We found three yarn stores we hadn’t visited before.
First up was Tutto:
This was a nice sized store with good lighting. Lots of pretty yarn and a diverse book section. There were also a lot of knit samples so you could get an idea of what the yarn looked like worked up, something I particularly like. Abbey got some made in NM yarn here for her Wool Fest projects.
I bought some groovy socks here that I’ll blog about soon.
After that we went to Oodles. I forgot to get a picture of the outside and they don’t have a website yet. If you park in the pay parking by Tutto you can easily walk over to Oodles if you walk around the Hilton hotel.
This store is smaller but they have a good amount of yarn. There was lots of pretty handpainted yarn and several shelves of beads. I bought some sugarcane yarn here that I must put on the needles soon.
Our last stop was Looking Glass Yarn and Gifts.
This store is run by two sisters who were fun to chat with. We laughed a lot in this store.
There’s several rooms to explore with lots of pretty yarn and plenty of books and patterns to choose from. I bought a felted bootie pattern here. Abbey bought some sweet sock yarn and got knitting mugs for both of us.
Check out this adorable ball of yarn candy:
For lunch we ate at the Whole Hog Cafe.
The food was amazing. The beans and coleslaw reminded me of old fashioned Ozark cooking. Mmmm. But the best part was the ribs:
There was a six pack of bar-b-que sauces on each table. Yummy!
I love eating ribs. There’s just something so primal about it. Here’s me channeling my inner animal:
If you love BBQ this is the place to go. It was delicious!
August 6th, 2009
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