Merce yarn shawl project

Posted on August 9, 2009 by Twilight

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:

Merce pink yarn

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!

Merce yarn pink shawl

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.

Merce yarn pink shawl

I’m not sure how it’s going to turn out but there’s a freedom to this type of knitting.

Santa Fe yarn crawl

Posted on August 6, 2009 by Twilight

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:

Santa Fe yarn crawl

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.

Santa Fe yarn crawl

I bought some groovy socks here that I’ll blog about soon.

Santa Fe yarn crawl

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.

Santa Fe yarn crawl

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.

Santa Fe yarn crawl

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.

Santa Fe yarn crawl

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.

Santa Fe yarn crawl

Check out this adorable ball of yarn candy:

Santa Fe yarn crawl

For lunch we ate at the Whole Hog Cafe.

Santa Fe yarn crawl

The food was amazing. The beans and coleslaw reminded me of old fashioned Ozark cooking. Mmmm. But the best part was the ribs:

Santa Fe yarn crawl

There was a six pack of bar-b-que sauces on each table. Yummy!

Santa Fe yarn crawl

I love eating ribs. There’s just something so primal about it. Here’s me channeling my inner animal:

Santa Fe yarn crawl

If you love BBQ this is the place to go. It was delicious!

Purple churro fleece

Posted on July 1, 2009 by Twilight

I’ve spun up the last of my fleece from last year’s wool fest.

purple churro fleece

I decided to challenge myself by spinning this yarn as thin as I could. I made this fleece into two ply yarn.

purple churro fleece

A close up:

purple churro fleece

I made 330 yards.

purple churro fleece

I’m not sure what to make with it. But it’s a good addition to the stash.

purple churro fleece

Handspun blue yarn

Posted on May 30, 2009 by Twilight

Recently I spun up some more fleece that I bought at the Taos Wool Fest last year. This is six ounces of churro from Fiber Studio and Supply.

Handspun dark blue yarn

I decided to do a two ply yarn. My challenge this time was to keep it as consistent as possible. I got around 100 yards.

Handspun dark blue yarn

A close up:

Handspun dark blue yarn

I had some leftover yarn on one bobbin. I also had some leftover acrylic yarn from this ball:

recycled yarn

I plied up the two and it turned out nicely:

Handspun dark blue yarn

Another close up:

Handspun dark blue yarn

Handspun Fisherman Shrug

Posted on May 13, 2009 by Twilight

I finished the Fisherman Shrug and just love it! It fits great.

Handspun Fisherman Shrug

A view of the back. I knit the back piece in the large size and the arms in medium.

Handspun Fisherman Shrug

When I knit up a swatch I didn’t get gauge. But I just knew my handspun yarn would work for this pattern. I played around with needle size until my swatch looked good. Then I just went for it. The arms fit the dimensions. I had to reknit the back and triangles in larger sizes.

Handspun Fisherman Shrug

The shrug seemed like it needed a closure. I went to Common Threads, the lovely fabric store in Taos, for buttons because I always have good luck there. Instead of buttonholes I just push the buttons through the ribbing.

Handspun Fisherman Shrug

The bind off needed to be loose so I employed my google fu to find a loose way to do it. I found directions via Pins and Needles. Her directions worked great.

A close up of the sleeve. I only did four inches of ribbing.

Handspun Fisherman Shrug

This yarn is from some brown and white fleece that my friend Meredith gave me.

The yarn looked like this:

my handspun yarn

A close up:

my handspun yarn

I blogged about making they yarn in this post. The shrug took about 400 yards. I have three balls left.

Pattern: Fisherman Shrug
Source: Lion Brand Yarn
Yarn: my handspun yarn, brown and white variegated, approximately 400 yards, 5 WPI
Needles: 9.0 mm needles
Size: part medium, part large
Modifications: several-see above
Started: February 2009
Finished: May 2009

Green Churro yarn

Posted on May 12, 2009 by Twilight

I bought this lovely green churro fleece at last year’s Wool Fest.

Green churro handspun yarn

Unfortunately the dye bled. After I finished running it through the drum carder my fingers were blue. I spun it up and again my fingers became blue. I washed it with white vinegar and think I saved the dye. More blue came out, it’s not as vibrant in yarn form but hey, it’s still green.

I contacted the vendor and was told that this sometimes happens, even with commercial yarn. Sigh. It’s not like I was expecting a refund since I had already manipulated the fleece. But I would have appreciated an “I’m so sorry about that.” Thankfully this is the only fleece I bought from her. Needless to say, I won’t be buying from this vendor again. To her credit she did give me some washing tips. However, I’ve never had a commercial yarn or fleece bleed dye this bad.

I spun this yarn up as a bulky single yarn. Doing singles is much more difficult. It’s not nearly as consistent as I’d like. But it was good practice.

Green churro handspun yarn

Since Churro is so scratchy I’m saving this for a bag project.

Green churro handspun yarn

Recreating yarn

Posted on April 30, 2009 by Twilight

I loved the element yarn I spun for my Beyond The Fringe artwork. Recently I went through my stash to see if I had leftover material to make some more. I had more yarn and fiber to make the water yarn. My goal was to recreate this:

handspun blue yarn

And I succeeded! The wound up ball is the older skein:

handspun blue yarn

This was a good challenge for me. I learned more about control while spinning. Typically I rush myself when plying, probably because I’m so excited to finish. I am learning to slow down and take my time to ensure the finished yarn is what I want.

handspun blue yarn

I now have about 140 yards of this yarn. There’s some other blue yarn in my stash and I plan to knit up a swatch to see if they compliment each other.

Big Island Yarn Basket

Posted on January 28, 2009 by Twilight

Yarn Basket in Hilo Hawaii

While in Hilo I visited the Yarn Basket. The two women working that day were very friendly and helpful. The store was an ok size-not huge but not too small. They had a lot of yarn. Interestingly most of if was packed in plastic bags. I’m assuming this was to protect it from the humidity.

Considering the climate I wasn’t surprised to see a large selection of cotton and acrylic yarn. Though they did have more wool than I expected a Hawaiian yarn store to have.

The prices were a bit higher compared to mainland yarn stores but not unreasonable. I thought about buying some yarn for myself but none of the yarn said “buy me”. I did buy some yarn for Abbey though:

Abbey Hawaii gift yarn

Originally I had planned to buy her some spun in Hawaii yarn. But I couldn’t find any. This yarn reminded me of all the pretty flowers I’d been seeing so I bought it for her. She tells me she’s already cast on for socks and I’ll post pics when she finishes them.

Holiday gift exchange

Posted on December 24, 2008 by Twilight

For the last knit night our little group decided to do a gift exchange. I got Tara‘s gift of goodies.

First up is a skein of her own silk handspun. I’m thinking of making a shawl or wrap with it.

Tara handspun silk

I also got this pretty ball of bamboo yarn:

Blue bamboo yarn

And then there’s this cute sheep yarn cozy. It easily can hold a ball of sock yarn and needles so I plan to make it my mini yarn bag when my normal one is too big.

Sheep yarn cozy