Like these

These socks really are a pleasant surprise in our oh so perfect world.

In Need of Color

This week I plyed my second skein – some improvement is visible, at least to me (for all of you who don’t see it, the right one is the new one). I found a tip in one of the online Spin-Off articles which said to ply with a higher ratio than the wool is spun. That worked pretty well.

I still have some of the cheap grey wool, but decided, that I really needed a change – and some color. The mixture is called autumn – that fits.

The color really fits the weather after a rainy grey yesterday we have beautiful weather again today.

Tags: handspun, joy, spinning wheel

Other Fiber Related Activities

Forgot to mention that I also have dyed some yarn this september. With plants. That meant, first to treat the yarn with Alaun. So don’t get any illusions about no chemistry when dyeing with plants. But Alaun is ok, I also wanted some Kaliumbichromid (or whatever that’s called in english) but got a bit scared after the pharmacist read all the side effects. And how I have to treat this drug. So i decided to go with Alaun. I used goldenrod, red clover, leaves and shells from walnut. Unfortunately my camera is not very good with yellow and brown, so no pictures so far (I am working on it though).

New fields

Some months ago I thought that after knitting (and sometimes crochet or sewing) spinning my own yarn just would be the logical follower. And end of last month I finally managed to go to a introduction lesson at Spycher’s handwerk. It was fun, even if the result was not very promising.

But they have a good offer, for not too much money you can loan a wheel. Which is perfect to try it out before making the investment. I am quite proud of my first real handspun (2 ply), but I made some typical mistakes:

• didn’t let the yarn rest on the bobbin (not to speak of rewind it on another bobbin – guess what I read)
• didn’t put enough ply twist in it
• was very proud that the singles weren’t totally overtwisted, so at some places the twist is on the small side now (plying really removes twist, especially AFTER the washing)

  

But anyway, got into the flow at some points and am definitely going to keep my JOY…

Made one FO, just in time (didn’t have time to block them, because I actually finished them on the way to the party!). Yes, a birthday gift for C.

Helgi Mittens from Folk Knitting in Estonia, ravelled here