Spinning & Un-broken Phones

As a method of procrastination, I appear to have spun all of the things.  Summer is here, I bought new oil for the old wheel, I've got better things to do - so obviously I'm spending hours with the wheel!

The steady trundle of my old wheel is hypnotic, & the small pleasure of seeing the bobbin of yarn grow as it fills with yarn is addictive.  

The yarns this month are a wee mixture from a stash that has been slowly building.  It'd be great to say that I'm implimenting a 'one in-one out' policy, if not 'all out', but I don't really trust myself. 

Another *very* exciting event this week is that I had my phone screen fixed!  Once the initial barrage of glass splinters had passed, I had largely grown to accept the dilapidated appearance of my phone.  Yes, there was tape over the top holding the pieces in, but it worked, and I was ok with it.  

I have a rant but, long story short - friends & family teasing about state of phone / concerned about my delicate wee face = not a problem.  Ladies at work implying at the condition of my phone reflects my lifestyle choices and how dilligently I'll do my job = not ok.  It's fixed now, but for the wrong group of people.

 

On to the yarn! (you can also see all of these in my Ravelry stash).   After my ravings about gradient yarns earlier this month, I couldn't help but spin up all of the gradient braids I could lay my hands on. 

I have no preferred method for spinning gradients, I'm aware that many people like to chain ply to preserve the gradient to it's best, but I quite enjoy the overlapping effects achieved by splitting the braid into two, & just seeing how the two halves marry up when you ply them.

In this case, with the polwarth, I left a lot of black on one half & a lot of blue on the other, so the marching is dubious but has resulted in wonderful short-ish runs of 'barber-pole' effect, which worked really well!

 

This lovely grey skein is a sample from Sara's Texture Crafts, (who dyed the beautiful yarn used in the Fearlas Mor sock pattern). 

It's made up of Alpaca, BFL, Merino & Silk.  Is is light, very easy to draft and well blended.  It's dreamy and I think I might have to find some more of this beautiful fluff.  As it stands, I see a little pair of wristy/mitts?  We shall see.  It ended up at 88 yards of... probably DK.

Polwarth from Fiber Artemis.  This one was good.  The fibre itself feels so smooth, and as such feels a little dense so I worried about how easy it'd be to spin, but this was wonderful too.  So even with minimal effort.  The gradient is lovely too - I'd usually go for a more prolonged gradient, in that this one changes colour relatively quickly, but we'll soon see how it knits up!

I've noticed that in this etsy shop, you're allowed to chose which base you'd like the colour dyed onto, which seems like a very nice option!  I have another braid still to spin from this dyer, this time a mix of polwarth & silk, so very intrigued to see how that goes!

Last but not least, Merino/Seacell/Shetland from Hilltop Cloud.  I love how the seacell pops through this yarn a little bit, giving little runs of pearly white through the warm berry shades.  This is another gradient braid, which changes gradually from purple, then pink, through orange to yellow.  Yum.  It's like a fruit pastel roll.

As ever, fibre from Hilltop Cloud is never difficult to draft, and spins up easily.  This lot has ended up around a DK, so I'm thinking a wee cowl might be in order!



That's my lot, I'm off to a BBQ now for my grandpops birthday!  What do you have planned for this weekend?

One Batty Day

The wee Yarn Cake round the corner recently acquired a rentable drum carder...  Well that was just a fleecy disaster waiting to happen really, wasn't it?

Regardless, what happened was that I ended up dragging out all bundles, bales, baggies, tops and scraps of fleece of all shapes and sizes I own, and attempt to mix them all together in some sort of frantic jaggy-ouch-I-stuck-my-finger-in-it-again frenzy of fluff.  

Frantic frenzy of fluff.  Pahaha, I make me laugh.  At least, it would be funny if it hadn't likely been so true.

By the time David came home from work I had managed not only to re-carpet the carpet with a layer of fluff, but to create a mountain of batts which I will likely never manage to spin.  They're oh so pretty though...

Some of it has turned into yummy yarn now, over here.

My favourite:  30% copper merino, 30% brown sparkle, 15% soyabean, 15% brown locks.  

My second favourite: 30% pink merino, 30% brown sparkle, 15% soybean, 15% brown massam

Third, I really did think this would be my favourite - look how pretty it is in that basket!  20% beige camel, 20% white silk, 40% copper merino, 10% brown locks, 10% yellow silk noil.

Oh, and not to forget the harry potter marathon I found myself watching at the same time as this carding marathon.  They may have prompted some 'house' batts.  What the hell am I going to do with these.  Uncontrolled batting got the better of me.

One last element to this odd day was that I did invite the pig inside.  Several times I did think I had lost the pig.  Spot the pig.

 

I'm being mean, you can't see him in the first one because he was hiding under the tree.  But this is exactly my point; sneaky pig.  

Beachy Picnic & A Visit to Old Maiden Aunt

What do you do when you have a little day off?  Well, you take a friend, some yarn, and pink bubbly to the beach.  Cold enough to wear our woolens with pride (but not cold enough to stop us picnic-ing on the beach), t'was a perfect day for a wander.  

For aaages I've been wanting to visit the studio of Old Maiden Aunt, in West Kilbride.  This quaint little place is Scotland's only 'Craft Town', and is lined with workshops where you can see the shop owners at work.   Though she was (supposed to be) busy packing for a trip, Lillith was wonderful - so friendly and ever so helpful :D  We may have spent 2 hours deciding what yarn we 'needed'.  And playing with the woofy dog!

Old Maiden Aunt dyes her colourways onto several different bases - all of which alter the final colour.  I may have bought the same purple twice, one on a silky base and one on a cashmere blend.  Nomnomnomnom.

Some of the two hours may have comprised of a woofy dog photo shoot.

Too much choice!

Yarn Cake?

Trunks full of goodies!

'Tardis' colourway.

My wares.  And a woofy dog.

Woofy dog photo shoot

On the way to the Old Maiden Yarn shop, we came across this gorgeous little glass workshop!  Everything was so teeny-tiny and detailed!  Apparently she also does workshops... I might have to visit again...

Finally, the beach!!  So many woofy dogs.  I actually didn't realise when I planned this trip, but I used to come to this beach when I was little!!  

 

When you go down to the woods tonight you're sure to find a Lauren exploring in the forrest...  All of these forresty photos look a little trippy; apparently trees + fish eye lens does crazy things to the mind.  

 

You still have time to enter the shawl pin giveaway, and the christmas yarny swap!!

AAAlllllso, there's now a GIANT pile of fluff in the shop.  Jus' sayin'.  

The Little Yarn Detective Agency

My first days off in ages - and all the pretty new books I ordered have arrived in the meantime!!  

After settling down to flick though my parcel, I couldn't put this lovely book down - Icelandic Handknits, by Helene Magnusson (There were lots of little extra symbols in there, but our british keyboards do murder them).  It's filled with gorgeous knits I'd want to keep forever, along with stunning little items I'd be happy to make as gifts.  

The pictures inside were just so captivating, all the snow & ice & warm lovely jumpers.  After thinking about them all day, I sat down to hand-dye some fleece to spin & knit into this heirloom shawl.  I'm so happy with the result!!  It's a merino/bamboo mix and, though I'd hoped the bamboo would only absorb a little bit of the colour for an icy effect, it took in none at all, staying gloriously crisp & white - like little icebergs on a deep cold blue sea!   

The little foxy stitch markers have been stolen from the shop stock - they were too adorable to resist.  Mine.  Mineminemine.  Oh, and the little blue milk jug?  It's another of the lovely little wren pottery collection.  

As ever, I may have spent far too many hours bothering the lovely people at The Yarn Cake.  And I fear I may have scared some customers - though they did stay for coffee so I really think I helped, in the end.  

So they walked through the door. Cautious, wary, the intrepid novice yarn explorers.

Quicker than a spinner to a pile of silk I was upon them. In retrospect, it may have been a tad overwhelming. Discounting the fact that I don't work there, I had within a couple of minutes elicited who he was buying for and found her on ravelry. It's not stalking if it's helping.  We shall not discuss the fact that Antje and I may or may not have been stalking detectiving educationally & helpfully looking people up earlier in the day.  

None of this happened within five minutes... It wasn't a whirlwind of two scary ladies getting really excited over someone else's birthday present...

I blame the coffee.

Panda x

Remember you can join in the christmas swap or follow on bloglovin' for updates!

From Sheep to Shawl

Not long ago, you may have spotted a post about some lovely purple fleece I bought from Fondant Fiber!

Well, this week I decided I had to actually start using the pile of handspun amassing in the basket on the shelf, and turned it into this simple shawl :)

Thinking about making a cardigan next, which fleece would you recommend?  Would love a breed which spins up lovely and soft.  Not too floofy though!  It'll aaaall go up my nose.

 The pattern is very simple, and can be found free on Ravelry by Orange Flower.    Nice quick telly-watching knit :)

In case you've forgotten, here's what the fleece looked like a few weeks ago:

then to this:

 It still never fails to amaze me that we turn little piles of pretty fluff into garments :)   What's your favourite type of yarn to spin?

Perhaps one day I will live near some sheep and they will donate their wool to a jumpery cause.