Spinning Tuesdays

Don’t faint, but I’ve finished something else. My handspun Annis: I started spinning for this January 1 and have the shawl blocked and finished February 1. I still can’t believe that I worked on a project from start to finish, until it was done. No sidetracks (well, not many), no timeouts. I spun yarn that was almost DK, so the shawl is larger than the original, but that’s what I wanted. The spectacular thing about spinning your own yarn is that you can make exactly what you want, by blending color and fibers, and by the way you spin your yarn. I wanted my version of Annis to be a littler ...

I’m not quite done knitting Annis, but it’s still gorgeous, even unblocked: I almost didn’t choose Annis to knit because it has nupps. I have issues with nupps; I love how they look and hate to knit them and this patterns has 7-stitch nupps. So I went trolling the wonderful world of the web and found an amazing technique by Myra Wood. She calls it Easy Peasy Nupp, In fact,it’s so easy it saved this pattern for me, and tranformed my thinking about knitting nupps. No lie! Brilliant isn’t it? I like it because it’s easy, but also because you can choose the size of nupp you want. ...

This past Saturday my spinning group took a field trip to The Spinning Loft. One of our group of our group is in the market for a new wheel, so we piled 6 spinning women into an SUV big enough to hold 4 Schacht Matchlesses in the way back. We may have sung the Partridge Family theme. While our wheel shopping spin sister tried wheels the rest of us shopped and spun. I feel deeply in love with this Yarn Hollow roving, 50% Cormo/50% Alpaca. My question to the room was – how would you spin it, woolen or worsted? The room answered, annoyingly, with another question, “What will you make with it?”. I have ...

Our winner of a $30 Gift Certificate to any store at The Fiber Cooperative is comment number 29 – Betsy M. Hooray! Happy spinning Betsy! Some days all I need is just a little something to make me smile. I love color and I try to infuse as much as I can into every nook and cranny of my day. Take spinning leaders, for example. I use leftover sock yarn as my spinning leaders. It works wonderfully and it’s all kinds of colorful. The bobbins above are strung with Koigu, aren’t they fun? Just what I need on a gray winter day.

I am a list maker. I love making lists. This time of the year I carry a little notebook and dream of all of things I might do in the next 365 days or so. Occasionally, I look back at the last year and take stock of what I learned. In my spinning life in 2010 the biggies for me were: Learning to spin fat yarn Learning to spin art yarn And it really, finally, hit home for me about how important and varied sheep breeds are, and how lucky we are to have so many to spin with. For 2011 my big three (so far) are: Knitting with handspun. I find handspun yarn so different than millspun yarn — it has a liveliness and ...

When you find yourself with an empty wheel how do you choose what to spin next? I was recently faced with this dilemma, and instead of just grabbing something I went through the choosing more methodically. I didn’t have any have to spinning, my work and gift spinning are all done. I didn’t want to do any should do spinning, practicing techniques or sampling breeds. I have no projects that I specifically want to spin for. Leaving me wide open to choose. I roamed my stash; friends offered suggestions that I loved: your oldest stashed fiber, a color or fiber you hate or love, a forbidden too special to spin ...

Have you seen the new spinning magazine out of England? It’s called YarnMaker and is a wonderful spinning resource. I just received the first two issues and haven’t spent much time with them, but what I like so far is: lots of sheep and fleece talk, a two part round up of British spindle makers, natural dyeing, spinning and sheep people out and about, art yarns, history and quick projects. Mostly, it’s lovely to have a different spinning point of view than our North American one. I’m ready to subscribe. Our Spinning Winner The winner of our Miss Babs giveaway is Terri C. Congratulations and ...

Miss Babs Hand Dyed Yarns and Fibers has donated 8 ounces of  80% mixed BFL/20% tussah blend top in her Bog colorway for a giveaway. If you’d like a chance to win this yummy goodness, leave a comment before Wednesday December 8, 2010 at 11:59 pm EST. If your comment is chosen by our random number generator, you’ll be asked to answer a skill testing question before being declared the winner. If you don’t win our giveaway, don’t fret. Miss Babs is offering a fiber special that runs through December 31, 2010. Buy 5 tops and get one free with the code SPINDEC (not to be combined with any other ...

When I went to Fiber Expo I was deeply smitten with these batts. They are Whimsy batts from Frankie Loves Fiber, wonderful blends of merino, corriedale, shetland, silk and sparkle. I couldn’t choose between them. To me, colorwise, they belong together, so I brought home all three. I know, twist my arm. Weeks later when it came time to spin them, I felt even more strongly that the three should be one mixed colorway. It had become an idea I couldn’t shake, a bee in my spinning bonnet. So I went with it. Here’s what I did to combine them. Open, the batts had even more colors: I divided each of the ...