Announcing the grand opening of my second Etsy store — Filigree Willow Laceweights
Come on over and take a peek. I’m so, so excited!
And, on that note, I am so, so loving custom orders. You probably remember my first custom yarn (Raven’s Wing) and the gorgeous yarn that came out of that. Well, prepare for custom order number two.
Absolutely gorgeous emerald yarn. This green took forever to achieve (no less than three times in the dye pot) but it was so worth it. The yarn practically glows from within. And it’s superwash, which means it is very soft.
I can’t wait for the next custom challenge, whatever it may be.
I have a total of three laceweight spinning projects going on right now. The alpaca and silk you’ve seen, so here’s the new baby.
Angora cobweb fluffy laceweight. Ahhhhhhhh. You cannot believe how soft this yarn is when it’s plied. It’s like the tactile rendition of feeling warm and fuzzy inside!
I’m actually spinning this on a nifty contraption that a friend of mine plans to make available on Etsy. I’m not at liberty to divulge many of the juicy details, but I will say that I could not spin this delicate of a yarn on any of the other tools I have in the house.
The grand Etsy store updates continue! I just listed a couple more yarns, and soon a nice big order of fiber will come in, and I can start all over again. Hooray!
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Especially when you’ve got two. . .
That’s right. I’m going to open a second Etsy store. Filigree Willow Laceweights. This one is designed specifically with lace knitters in mind and will carry only higher-end laceweight yarns that have been hand dyed or handspun. I’m so excited! Imagine a place where you can go revel in skein after skein of gorgeous yarn and not worry about it being the wrong weight. Plus, I’m documenting how I achieve certain colorways, so I can recreate yarns in whatever amount is needed.
Right now I’m focusing on building inventory, so it’s not quite ready to open yet, but if you’d like to take a quick peek at the space it’s www.laceweightyarns.etsy.com.
And what about MaidenYarn? Oh, it’s not going away at all. I have more fingering weight yarns and batts all ready to go. See what I’ve been working on the last couple days? Some are for MaidenYarn, and some are for Filigree Willow. I can enjoy dyeing twice the amount of yarn now!
So I got to the end of week four and realized that I still had three days left in the month. Of those three, I took pictures on two. And of those two, I only like the way one day turned out.
Here is my first ever cabled yarn lolling about in an abalone shell.
And this is a super close up of which I am very, very fond.
That does it for the April photos! And, while it had some highlights to it, I don’t think I’ll be doing the yarn photo a day thing again. It was a little too stressful to try to come up with the various photoshoots and actually take time to do them.
Tomorrow morning I’ll be heading off to Texas again! It dawned on me yesterday that that means I need to pick a knitting project or two to take along. I haven’t knit in what seems like a really long time. What projects do I have going, again? I remember casting the shawl back on. (And it’s still sitting in the cast on stage, by the way.) Perhaps I should take along the brown socks. . . but that’s patterned chart reading. Something simpler may be called for. Do I fight the urge to start a new project, or go with the flow?
I’ve discovered that I made a mistake in hurrying to get those batts up in the store. While I love the batts, I love creating yarns and fibers even more. I’ve gotten distracted by piles of gorgeous fluffy things to the detriment of my first love. This I have decided to change! I’m hoping to place a good sized yarn and fiber order when I get home from Texas. It’s time to rock the dye world again!
I’m running a sale on spinning batts over at maidenyarn.etsy.com. All the batts have been marked down and will remain on sale until May 1st!
Be amazed! Take a look at this eyeball-searing shade of red. My poor camera hates it, and I love it! This is the result of switching the normal up a bit.
To explain. In the natural course of events, I ran out of my Crimson dye about a week ago.
Now, I’ve used two red dyes before. One is Crimson (my favorite) and the other is Fire Red. I had always preferred Crimson because of the deeper color tones. (The Fire Red tended to go orangey.) Well, when I ran out I hastened to order more, but the place I was buying from didn’t have Crimson!
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So, yes, I did say I wasn’t going to buy any more fiber until I’d made a significant dent in what I already had. (And I can already hear you chuckling to yourself.) 
But, there are certain circumstances that are just plain not worth resisting. And in this case, it was because I had never heard of nor seen this particular kind of fiber before. Well, that, and because it was shiny.
This is called banana silk. It’s derived from the leaves of banana trees, so it’s a plant-based fiber, and you can see how shiny it is in the pictures. I’d heard of yarn that had banana fiber in it, but it had never registered in my noggin that that would mean there was banana spinning fiber floating around somewhere to be pounced on.
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A few days ago I began a new knitting project, since I had finished the sweater. “Wait!” you say. “You finished and you didn’t tell us?” Well, it’s not finished-finished until it’s blocked, and I’d rather not model it while it’s soaking wet, thank you very much. And pictures of it laying flat on a table get old after awhile.
Ahem. As I was saying. I began knitting my first shawl. The Emily Dickinson shawl, it is called, and it’s available for download on Ravelry. (I’m LoveFiber on there, by the way.) This is my first shawl, my first knitted cobweb lace-weight, and my first time adding beads to a knitted project.
And let me just say it now, knitters have things so easy where beads are concerned! You just pull the loop up through the beads one at a time with no fuss. The last beaded non-knitting project I made required loading the seed beads onto the yarn ahead of time. All hundred and something of them. Then I had to keep scooching them along the yarn until I needed one. Crazy.
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Well, my time with the drum carder ended yesterday, but not before I had carded somewhere in the vicinity of thirty-four batts. Not a bad amount, considering I had the carder for a week.
After the wooly mammoth hide experience (see last post) I did some online tutorial hunting in the hopes of coming up with a way to make less blended, but still great batts.
I came across a very helpful series of video how-tos, although I’m loath to post the links to them, as they’re rather hyper and there is a bit of language. Suffice it to say, I went back to the craftroom revved up and ready to go with my fist full of very helpful notes.
Here is the result. My lovely Rose Garden batt.
I found the success very inspiring. Especially because I could sing the song from Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. “Up from the ashes, grow the roses of success. . . ”
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Just as a quick update, I’ve been busily plying away on the Raven’s Wing yarn, and here is the result so far! That’s about three out of the five hundred yarns needed.
The tencel in the blend is giving the black fibers the same sheen as an actual feather! I could hardly believe it when I saw the first finished skein. And no worries about the glitz making it scratchy. I am so proud of this yarn!
