Hello Again!

March is a month I am glad to leave behind! On top of the pressures of work and general family mayhem I had a bit of a health scare that put me in the hospital for a couple days for observation. Add to that a minor knee injury that prevented me from treadling any spinning wheel for nearly 5 weeks and you get the picture of a pretty lion-ish month that never did go out like a lamb! Even the eye doctor got the prescription in my glasses wrong and I'll have to wait until May when he comes back from holidays (must be nice, eh?) to see him again and get them fixed! Beware the ides of March, so it seems!
So what does an avid spinner do to relax when prevented from spinning? Well she knits - and something terribly easy!

My youngest has a rather substantial collection of bears he likes to play Old Bear stories with and he has been pestering me for some time for hats and scarves for them. I drew the line at jumpers though. It's enough fuss making big ones! So I told him maybe I'd sew them some shirts this summer instead (did not go over big *sigh!*). And there are many more bears than just these in the photo but the rest were being employed in their adventures and were not available for the photo! LOL!  I'm tired of little hats and scarves now, that's for sure! It would be wonderful to say I've made significant progress on some of my WIP's but it wouldn't be true! All I know is it's nice to be back on a more or less even keel again and seeing light at the end of the tunnel with all the annual paperwork! Although I can't promise I'll post every day, I'll at least be able to get back here more often now! It's nice to know you missed me! Cheers all! :)

The Difference

Found this while cruisin on Facebook - the artist- Greg Dean-is Super nice- AND his daughter is named Harper too! (Thanks for letting me use this, Greg!) Check out his site REAL LIFE COMICS here: http://www.reallifecomics.com/index.html

 

 

Handspun Yarn Sale!

 

Visit my Etsy Shop GloriaPatre Spin N Knit. All sale prices clearly marked so there's no special coupon code to remember! Everything from Chunky to Fingering Weight to Art Yarn in a rainbow of solids, tonals and tweeds! Shop early for best selection!

Humor For Monday

Friday Freebies Totes

                                                       

This sweet version of the Super Summer Backpack from Lion Brand was knit by my sister in a hard-wearing acrylic yarn. I think it would lend itself well to a hemp or linen blend yarn too! It's knit in a very expandable fabric using yarn overs so using an inelastic yarn won't prevent it from expanding as you put things in it. I would avoid feltable yarn though because if it did felt it would become a non-expanding bag and really reduce it's holding capacity.

Also from Lion Brand is this Felted Hold All Tote. I love the look of their sample tote, all smooth and natural yarny white but I can also see this done without the braided cable in your lumpy bumpy handspun in wild mixed colors. I think this could be a really personalized project!

Borrowed From Handmadeology

More Playing With Fiber

Part of my Christmas present was this pair of art batts. I bought them from a fellow PhatFiber member because they are such a wonderful rich blue and the bits and bobs in it would certainly give the finished yarn lovely textural interest!
Since the wool in these batts was her own home-grown sheeps wool I wasn't expecting Merino-quality softness. Good thing! Turns out is was a pretty good match for the brown mystery wool from my last post! I felt they were a bit pricey for the quality of the wool, now that I had it in hand but I also appreciate that she's trying to make a living (almost half her household income) from her Etsy shop. Still, I think she could have mentioned the lack of softness in her sales listing. I mean sooner or later some customer is going to whine about it and you sellers out there know where that goes....
In spite of that initial disappointment the batts were not too bad to spin. They took quite a bit of tugging to draft and there were lots of lumps and neps. I ended up with two skeins of highly textural yarn which I think will turn into something funky felted, or something really visually compelling as part of a woven hanging.

The first skein came out to approx 100 gm of 2-ply and 112 yds of lumpy bumpy textured fun!

Skein #2 is a slightly larger 113 gms  and 142 yds of 2-ply. And finally, I was done with the rough and ready brown mystery wool singles and moving on to more appealing wares! Yay!

Back From The Dead

A nasty bout of the flu went through our house. As per usual, it didn't hit everyone at once, just picking off one or two of us at a time. When it finally got around to me I was still on clean-up duty with some of the younger family members So I was good and run-down to welcome it! Exhaustion pushed blogging to the back burner! Things are looking up this week though.... knock on wood!
We have been trying to get better internet through Mi-Fi or the 4G network and I won't regale you with the (astronomical) costs of going over your data-transfer limits.... ugh! Suffice it to say that when we could get a strong signal, the speed was amazing - and when we couldn't - which was most of the time - it was abysmal. So after 2 weeks of hardware wars, malfunctions and repeated trips to the city to return things, adjust contracts etc. etc. we pretty much ended up right back where we started with our painfully slow but available satellite internet. *sigh!* All this and the flu too! Gee, it must be February.....

Of course with all the excitement going on here (ha!) I haven't done much spinning or knitting, however, I decided maybe I'd do what I call a bit of snacking - spinning up small lots of odds and ends from my stash. It's a nice thing to do when you have a short attention span from fatigue. You get the relaxation of spinning without the mental exertion required for spinning larger lots consistently. Through the fall I seem to have accumulated quite a few bits and bobs through purchasing mixed de-stash lots from other spinners. Now not everything is baby-bottom soft commercial Merino so I got to be a bit creative with what I did with them.
This bundle is some sort of wool - I'm guessing Romey because it's crimpy and coarse. It's been mill prepped into a fine pencil roving but because of it's self-clingy crimp I couldn't spin it very fine. In fact no matter how much I hunted through my stash I couldn't find anything with a comparable hand so I did something I've never done before - I plyed it with a yellow commercial 100% Mohair yarn I've had forever that I knew I'd never knit with.

Unlike most of my yarns, this looked pretty funky right off the bobbin! The second skein was less overspun than the first. I readily admit that one of the reasons I chose this fiber to work with is because I knew it was going to take me a bit of experimentation to get to know the different ratio settings of my Rose. I didn't feel confident enough to use my really good fiber. The Rose is such a fast wheel that I find it's easy to over-twist, like without even trying. At least it wasn't so over-spun that it didn't wash out. After soaking the skeins to set the twist I snapped them straight very hard between my hands several times. It really helped even out the twist! I laid them flat to dry as I am really opposed to weighting damp skeins to force them to straighten out. The problem that creates, is that the over-twist will come back, usually in your finished project. Best-case scenario it produces a bias fabric, worst case, it can completely ruin the shape of your item and you can't fix it.

It finished out at a 2-ply, 127 yards total, 115 grams. I don't know if you could really call it a chunky weight it has such a thick halo. I'm hoping maybe somebody will buy it for felted slippers or something. I think it would be pretty long-wearing! Cheers!

National Sweater Day

                                             

I pilfered the picture but I hope I will be forgiven in the spirit of encouraging everyone to consider turning down the heat for a day and donning their favorite handmade (and hopefully handspun) sweater. I admit I was a bit disappointed that this wasn't being promoted by the "Use Natural Fiber" movement, which is a very commendable "green" thing to encourage. Too bad. Natural fiber deserves more respect since it's environmental footprint can be very small indeed next to it's synthetic/chemical-nightmare produced cousins. Oh well, encouraging everyone to wear sweaters is still a cool thing to do! Cheers all! Stay wooly warm!

Deep Rich Fog

There was only one spinning project besides my white Llama blend yarn that I completed with the Lendrum. There was a lovely bundle of grey blended batts that I got in the end-of-run lot from Dyeing For Color. I was especially fond of them, being a big fan of greys and I wanted to make something a bit fun.

You can see in the blend there are several shades of grey, a light blue and a dark grey-almost-black striped in them. Next to the blue and white batts on the far left they really almost look green, but trust me, they're greys! And very smooshy soft to boot!
I spun them thick and thin with lots of slubs because I wanted the striping to stand out and the yarn to have lots of texture. I enjoyed working with the fiber but not the wheel.... but I won't go into that, I think I've said enough about that already! I had some very pale blue fine singles to ply it with to add some stability to the slubs and maximize the yardage of the batts.

It may not look it but this skein is 9.7 ounces! But because it's a chunky weight there's only 315 yards. Superwash wool and a bit of Bamboo silk, it will make a moody accessory, like a scarf or cowl and hat or mitts set for someone who buys it from my Etsy Shop...