This one is a very smooshy single-ply of a wool and nylon blend. I think it would make gorgeous scarves, cowls, or even a shawl. I’ve already gotten to dye some up as a test, and this yarn is begging to be dyed in rich tones of a kettle-dyed nature.

As a side note – I will also be carrying a more familiar fingering base. The 70/30 merino/silk blend I’ve had in before. It’s a nice four-ply, non-superwash yarn with a little bit of shine to it. Lovely lovely.

In case you’re wondering, I’m moving Maiden Yarn to mainly fingering weight (my favorite to knit with) and spinning fiber at the beginning of October. It’ll simplify things for me, and allow me to offer a wider range of colors in the same weight (if not same fiber blend) of yarn. Plus, who doesn’t like fingering and sock weight?

I’m really rather excited, but I shall try to remain rational.

One moment while I get a grip on myself –

- ahem -

The second new base is this two-ply superwash merino. I’d call it more of a lightweight fingering, but we’ll see what it does after being dyed. I haven’t worked with this particular yarn before, and I’m really eager to see what it does. If I’m reading it right, it will probably have a lovely shine, and look great in variegated tones.

I bet it would do great fingerless gloves. Or maybe a hat. (Ooh, a tam or beret! I must try this now.) The two-ply construction seems fairly durable, while still being plush enough for comfort. (Yes, definitely a beret.)

Alright. Back to the subject at hand.

I have grand plans to have skeins in each of the two new bases dyed and in the stores during the first week of October. We’ll see how it goes! I can hardly wait to get that superwash one in the dye pot.

~Rebekah

As for me, well, I’m up to my elbows in a pile of spinning projects. Lovely projects, for lovely people, but there seem to be tons of them.

First off, I’ve been working on spinning up some Aussie fur for a good friend. (Yes, dog fur.) It’s really soft and fluffy, and has been washed. Definite bonus. I’m spinning it on a spiffy new gadget I’ll have to tell you all about in a future blog post.

Theoretically this yarn will end up as a two-ply fingering weight, although there will be some DK weight bits in there, given the nature of the fiber. I carded the fur into batts, but it’s so fine that it spins more like a cloud, which results in a lot of difficulty keeping things even. And there seems to be different lengths of fur in there, which also makes things interesting.

All in all, it’s spinning up to be an interesting taupe color. Almost like sand.

Another fiber project I’m working away on is some more indigo merino. Remember the indigo merino from last year? This is more of that. Thankfully it’s going much quicker this time, although it’s having to share space on the wheel with a different project.

It’s been audio book city around here as I work away on all this. Nothing like a good audio book to make spinning go faster! Or at least, to keep me sitting there longer.

The third project, and the biggest, is some wool that I’m washing and spinning for a lovely new friend. Her parents have some Corriedale sheep, and she and I worked out a swap where I would wash and spin a portion of their fleeces for her, and then I could keep the rest of the fleece for myself. And, given how it’s behaving, I’m really excited. The fleece is gorgeous. But you don’t just have to take my word for that, you can see it.

It washes up really white, and has a great feel to it.

It also cards into beautiful, fluffy batts. I’ve already spun one and a half of those little fellas into the first skein of probably eight or nine at least. A nice two-ply light worsted.

I’m happy to report that the fleece is well worth any hassle to work with. Including the somewhat amusing event that occurred on my hour’s drive to pick up the raw fleeces.

Picture me in my father’s little blue Honda, trucking happily down the highway with my Google Map printout. No cell phone, but I had directions, so who cared? I followed the map step by step, turned off the highway, and started along a nice little country road. Then a sign loomed up.

Pavement Ends.

The last thing I wanted to do was drive my dad’s car down a little one-lane gravel road, but there was no obvious alternative. I drove along, watching the mailboxes for the right number and keeping an eye out for any enormous pick-up trucks who might want to pass me.

Then the road got narrower. And suddenly it ceased to be a road and became a grand canyon with a rushing river in the bottom of it.

Okay, so it was more like a normal creek bed, but the road tilted down into the water, then emerged on the other side in a somewhat muddy slope.
I am not a country driver. I am a city girl. And I am a city girl who knows better than to take her father’s car through water, thank you very much.

Hope springing eternal, I turned the car around and headed back up the road to see if I had missed the number. Turns out I hadn’t, but the road continued on the other side of where I got on it, so I crossed the pavement road and checked out the other side. The numbers decided to go the wrong direction. And then that road T’d with another road and hope was squelched.

I had no cell phone. I had no map. (Well, I had a map, but I was off the edge of it.) There was nothing for it but to turn back around and pray I could survive.

Now, thank God, the second time I showed up at the creek there was a very nice lady in her four-wheeler who assured me that the water was not as deep as it looked, and that as long as I “stayed far away from that big rock there” I’d be okay. (There were three big rocks sticking out the water, and I never did figure out which one she meant.) So, with a deep breath, more prayer, and a trembling accelerator, I splashed in. And across. And up the other side. (You may sing the “Hallelujah Chorus” here.)

Wet, muddy, and gravel-dusted, I set off along the still-unpaved road to find the farm. The road went on for a bit, then suddenly dead-ended at a nice, paved road, and the sign informed me that the road I wanted continued to the left. Through lovely suburbia. And easy roads. And a little way down that road, there was the farm!

If my web map had routed me one more road down the main highway and come at the farm from the other side, I would have had completely normal driving the whole way.

As I said before, though, the whole trip was worth the wool and getting to make a new friend. And maybe God decided I needed off-pavement driving practice, who knows? I do think next time, however, I will make sure I have a cell phone.

Spinning and general crafting levels have been down as we’ve had lots of wonderful house guests for the last several weeks, but now things are grinding back towards normal and I can get back to spinning. And dyeing. Lovely dyeing.

Here’s my first stab at dyeing some mohair/silk laceweight in my Blackberry Jam colorway. I still get the yarn quivers whenever I look at this. Gorgeous.

I also managed to get way too much purple on a batch of Dawn Treader lace, and it turned out amazing. My only problem is that now I’ve got to come up with a name for the new colorway.

And then there’s the two-skein set of bulky weight that I just amazed myself with. How does one go about naming a combination of black, emerald green, and purple? I may wind up having to put a picture up here and run a name contest.

Spinning-wise, I’ve been working away on some merino/mohair fingering weight. I decided to spin it as a single-ply yarn, primarily for quickness of spinning, but (to make it legit) also for color separation purposes. But that sort of undermined my idea for using it as sock yarn as, supposedly, socks of single-ply don’t stand up to wear and tear as well. (Although I do have a pair knit from Mini Moochi, and they’re lovely and squishable.)

I have a project in mind for the yarn, believe it or not. Really.

Be amazed.

What happened to the days of just spinning at random and letting the yarn fall where it might? I don’t know, but if they ever stop by again I hope they bring some ideas with them, because I don’t think my yarn bin can hold much more. You see, I’ve discovered the problem with spinning. You end up with two stashes. One of fiber, and one of yarn. Trying to get rid of your stash is like trying to have all the laundry clean at once.

But, back to the pattern. While wandering around on Ravelry I came across a very fun scarf/mini-shawl pattern called The Hatter’s Party Scarf. It’s knit from tip to tip, going back and forth across the shorter way, so it’ll help keep my yarn colors from mushing together.

I’m very pleased with how this yarn turned out. Fiber Fancy did an excellent job on the dyeing—not one dye leak when I set the twist—and I love the colors. Ironically enough, they’re not my usual diet of reds, blues, and greens. How did that happen? At least it isn’t a mid-knitting-life identity crisis. I’m just broadening my color horizons.

(Like I need that.)

I’ve been spinning and spinning away on the indigo-dyed merino, and I have three nice skeins done already. Hooray! I think once the whole batch is finished I shall have to get some “big pile of smooshy blue yarn” type photos.

I tell you, though, spinning this is really eating up the audiobooks. I’ve already done most of The Wind in the Willows, The Jungle Books (part one), and now The Hobbit. Thankfully I was able to get to the library the other day, so now I have The Children of Hurin and one of the Mitford series ready in reserve.

On the knitting front, I have plunged into another stash-busting project. This one is of the “knit until project measures x length” variety, and therefore works for movies and such. It’s called The Floopy Hat and is really just for kicks. And to use up the amazingly large stash of this amazingly turquoise and textured yarn.

I launched a new product today (with more coming) and I’m rather excited about them. They’re batt kits for those people lucky enough to own a drum-carder.
Coordinating colors in the nice, small amounts you need for blending a batt. The only trouble is how to go about spreading the word among the drum-carding community.

I also received permission to do something very exciting. Cyan Worlds gave me the green light on creating some Myst-inspired yarns! (Myst is a series of amazing computer games, very heavy on the visual arts side.) I get to make them! Yay!!!! I’d like to have them available in October sometime, but we’ll see what happens. It’s not like I’m creating the official Myst yarns or anything, but I’ll be able to have lots of fun with it, and, maybe, become the official Myst yarn person. I can dream.

And, last but certainly not least, this is the month of the indigo merino. I have almost an entire bobbin of singles done already.

Or, if you want to get really out there, it’s like saying, “You stand up, why would you ever want to sit down again?”

There’s so much to be said for dyeing your own stuff, but every so often you want a break. And, as it happened this time, I found this gorgeous braid for sale. It’s a merino/mohair mix (a blend I’ve never bought before) and the colors jumped right off the screen and grabbed me. (Yes, it was scary, but a good scary.)

Isn’t it pretty? I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. The thought of a hat or smooshy cowl crossed my mind, or perhaps a little shawlette. I could go for socks, as it’s a four ounce braid, but I don’t particularly feel like spinning sock yarn right now. Ha, well, true, I probably won’t get around to spinning this until later this year. Oh, I bought it at FiberFancy, if you’d care to take a peek at some of the other lovely stuff there.

And, along a different train of thought, I paid for not blogging recently. I skeined up this gorgeous single ply laceweight (the one I was spinning on my English wheel) and it turned out to be about thirty-five grams/440 yards. In short, a nice size. It washed up beautifully and bloomed into this amazingly soft fluffy single ply. I was so proud of it. Then I listed it on Etsy and it sold before I could tell you I had even finished it! So, here’s the picture of the now long-gone yarn.

On the home knitting front: Raveling is in the offing. Remember that purple sweater I made? The cowl neck? Well, it was far too big in the body, so about a week or so ago I raveled it clear back to the armpits and commenced re-knitting it in a smaller size. I’m now about six to eight inches from the bottom, and hoping it will somehow finish knitting itself so I can take it along to Colorado in the beginning of August. Things are looking pretty close, but I might just finish in time.

I did have one non-disposable tray left, so I used it for one of the batches: this lovely repeat colorway. (You may recognize the color pattern from way back when. I dyed it first on some of the silver-gray Romney roving I bought at the Yellow Daisy Festival.) The fun thing about the repeats was that it braided up with colors to colors, as you can see. I’m really happy with the way that one turned out.

Then, while I was puzzling over how to go about dyeing the other rovings, as my only big-enough pan was full, I played with that thick and thin yarn I spun. Really deep, rich colors. (This particular one sold the very day I listed it! Praise God! That was quite the surprise.) And I discovered that the “fulling” method of setting the twist on a single ply works very nicely.

With a normal yarn you have two or more plies that combine to even out the twist and make the yarn stay straight. In a single ply, you have twist running rampant from one end to the other. The solution? Plunge it into a pot of hot water, then whack it against something for a little bit. This doesn’t “felt” the yarn (if you stop soon enough) but it does help it behave itself.
Now, granted, for this one I didn’t even have to whack it. The pre-soak, hot water, and dyeing process taught it good manners like nothing else would.

I eventually decided to just layer the remaining rovings into my medium sized pots (as the biggest was full of wool locks) and pour in dyes as I went. This created a really cool watercolor effect and produced these two rovings.

The one on the top is called Tempest, and the one below is Dragonfly Wings.

This was my first time using fibers from a new dealer, so the dyeing was a bit of a trial run. The merino (red/gold/green/blue pictured at the top) took up the dye really well and got a pretty good intensity of color, while the other two Corriedale Crosses went a little more middle ground.

I have more of each fiber, so I’m looking forward to giving them another test run. It could be that the Corriedale just didn’t get as intense of a dye solution as the merino. So many factors! It seems like so long ago that I was a beginner, just dumping dye in as I felt like it. The amount of knowledge anyone picks up while learning a new hobby is just amazing. And there’s always something new lurking around the corner!

There. The painful bit is over. And so is the silence of the blogger! I didn’t have many projects of a fibery nature going, therefore I had nothing to blog about, therefore I didn’t blog, which led to more ventures into non-fiber hobbies, and you get the idea. It really was the Bermuda Triangle there for a bit. But, everyone needs a little lull from life-consuming hobbies at least once in a while, and I’ve had my lull. Now clear the pool, I’m coming in!

I spent a fairly decent portion of the last two weeks spinning the above result. Feast your eyes on the first skein of indigo dyed merino! Yes, it’s actually there. This is not a photoshop stunt. I finished skein number one. And it’s five ply. And it’s in the proper weight. (I think.) Yay! Triumph!
The rest of the project is on hold while I send this one to its new owner so she can test knit it and see if it will work.

Remember the dilemma I faced about what to take on the Texas trip? Well, I wound up taking along some gorgeous stormy blue sock yarn and the Hedgerow sock pattern. On the trip I wound up with a grand total of the leg of one sock. Now I’m waffling between knitting away on the almost finished pair of brown socks, and the really pretty but not nearly begun blue sock, resulting in a virtual stalemate.

And do you like my cool, double sock photo? It caused quite a bit of humor in the house when the batteries in my camera died right after I wrangled the socks on. I had to pick up an attached ball of yarn in each hand and walk clear to the other side of the building with my spiked anklets. I felt rather like a dangerous marionette.

By the by, if you’re wondering what non-fibery hobbies distracted me, here’s one of them. I took up bookbinding and made these two journals.

But, for spinners there is a magic about garbage bags because, when found in the right places, they usually contain fiber in vast quantities. Quantities so large, your ordinary bag won’t hold them. Sound exciting?

Well, while in Texas I was given an early birthday present. Two garbage bags full of cinnamon colored alpaca. Oh my goodness. Major fluffy soft.

And I even have a project idea for it! But, before I get to new project time, I have to overcome another project. Remember the indigo dyed merino? It’s decided to haunt me for some reason.

I had four lovely full bobbins spun and reeled off, awaiting their moment to shine. Imagine my dismay when I began plying them only to discover that something had happened. Somewhere along the line they had lost a large amount of their twist to the point of not being able to wrap around each other. Easily fixed, right? Just run them through the wheel again?

It wasn’t that simple. Because somehow, someway, I had spun every single one of those spools in the wrong direction.

AHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

I must have begun spinning it before I learned the proper direction to spin the singles. Technically you can spin them both ways, yes, but commercial yarns stick to one way because – according to my sources – that’s the easiest way to work with as a knitter or crocheter. Something to do with the way the yarn behaves when it’s wrapped around the needle.

Sigh.

So. I’m over five months and four bobbins into it and having to start again. I’m seriously thinking I’ll make it a three ply instead of trying to manage a five ply. That would make things go a little quicker, but it would mean a less finely plied yarn. MamaMentor, do you have a preference?