Oops more fibre

Because I am slowly working through my fibre stash, I thought I could do worse than to add a little more to it.  With a wealth of lovely stuff available on Etsy it was a difficult task to choose what I wanted, but in the end I was unable to resist checking out with these bits from Hilltopcloud.

These are lovely batts with merino, mohair and silk.  I love that they are subtle and dark with occasional flashes of purple, I’m really looking forward to these being yarn.  I’m so often drawn to bright flashy colours which can limit what I’d realistically knit with them, but this will be really versatile I think.

 These are little bits of roving with Shetland, merino and tussah silk.  I'm having a bit of a blue thing at the moment, which is quite odd for me, so this is perfect.  I’m anticipating that I will have an empty spindle very shortly, so now I just have to decide which of these fibres I spin up first.

Wednesdays are for spinning

Once again it’s time for a weekly spinning catch up.  Due to the glorious sunshine we have been having we have spent most of our time enjoying the weather with friends and family so I haven’t really done much of anything.  However the forecast for this weekend looks incredibly dreary and wet so hopefully I should have some time to create something worth blogging about.  This week I have mainly concentrated on two projects, the first of which is the sparkly BFL which is now ¾ spun.

 The plying ball is now looking nice and big and I’ve just started work on the last little bit.  You can't quite see but  I have put quite a substantial stop on the top of the spindle, the whorl of this particular spindle is particularly slippery and even with a one strand stop the leader still slips once the cop grows a bit.  I’m hoping that using three strands will do the trick.  I’m thinking I may have to get Stu to cut a notch in it once I’m done with this batch, I was hoping to avoid it but I think it will make things a lot easier.

My second project is a new one, which is exciting!  I got a new spindle, another Enid Ashcroft from this eBay store.

 Of course I had to start a project on it immediately, just to check it spins nicely so I dived into my little fibre stash and decided to try the little batts I got from KarmicDelight on Etsy recently.  I’d yet to try spinning a batt so I felt quite intrepid.

 All in all it’s going quite well, I’ve spun the first batt and have just started the second.  I plan to spin each of the pink batts separately and then ply them all together to make a 3-ply and then follow suit with the purple batts.  Because the batts are a total mixture of fibres and I guess because I’m not used to batts, my spinning is less consistent than it has been.  This is actually really good for me as I slowly learn to embrace the slub!  I’m hoping that this will become a slightly textured yarn with a bit of personality – at this rate I think I should actually find out quite soon – watch this space.  Oh, and the little Easter egg?  I was looking for little balls to wind plying balls around but all I could find was eggs, they do the same job though.

Spinning Wednesday

Now I’m finally getting around to actually doing some knitting I’ve decided to just dedicate Wednesday’s to talking about my spinning.  Because I have so many projects on the go I very rarely actually finish anything so I think just one weekly update is quite enough.

So what’s been spinning this week?  Mostly I’ve been concentrating on a second spindle full of the sparkly BFL from FeltStudio UK.  I could see the end of the section of fibre coming closer and close and with 2 staple lengths left to go – disaster!  The piece of yarn that I use as a stopper when the spindle has no notch (tutorial here if anyone’s interested) snapped and I discovered that the edge of this spindle has no grab whatsoever and I could not get spinning at all.  I’m sure someone more experienced knows what to do for the best here, but because I’m planning on chain plying this I’m just going to wind it off as if it were finished and ply it as it is.  I’ve got another 50g of this to spin so I’ll add the last little bit to that and try to stop twitching every time I think about deliberately making one skein bigger than the other.  Yes, I have issues (don’t even ask me about people who purposefully wear odd socks!)

Other than that, I am making slow progress plying the first 50g of the merino tencel from FeltStudioUK.  It turns out that plying bores me so I have to do it in small batches.  I’m thinking that chain plying will go faster for me because it’s a little bit more involved.  I’ve started chain plying this black/white/grey merino but I’m going slowly because my toilet roll middle got all squished and it’s making things a little difficult.  I think I may have to pinch the toilet roll holder from the bathroom and see if that helps a little.

And, finally, because I just can’t keep myself away from Etsy I now have some new batts to spin.  Look how pretty they are.

These are from Karmicdelight found here.  They are lovely little batts, each around 0.5oz with loads of interesting stuff in there.  Alison is an absolute pleasure to buy from and showed a genuine interest in what I was planning to do with her batts.  I can’t recommend her highly enough.

Self sabotage

Looking at my spinning projects, all so tempting and numerous, I know that really I should just concentrate on one and actually try to finish something.  Yet somehow I accidentally ended up on Etsy and once again fell in love with some Shunklies fibre.  Luckily I’m really unsure exactly how I want to spin them, so hopefully by the time I’ve come up with a plan I will have possibly completed another project.

These are 2 beautiful bright bright bright merino batts, with little mohair curls.  I can’t decide if I want to spin a yarn which gradually goes from blue to pink throughout the whole skein or if I’d like it to phase back and forth in gradual stripes.  I like the idea of both, but wonder whether the latter would suit my attention span a little better!

This is a blend of merino and silk and once again I just fell in love with the colours.  I’d like to make a 4-ply with this, but I’d also like it to stripe.  I think this may involve me splitting up the entire thing, grouping the colours and laying them out carefully in the right order.  This sounds like effort, so I can’t imagine I’ll be starting any time soon.  I’m enjoying the planning of it anyhow.

And finally, this is the reason I ended up on Etsy having my little fibrey accident.

I was having a little look for jewellery for the wedding and I hope you’ll agree that this is just perfect.  Those two little birdies look so happy and content sharing their little branch that I just couldn’t resist.  The shop is here bird fans.