Spin the yarn

Handspun socks? I made it!

28th May 2017 Lena

Ok, so I tried to take a nice photo my socks fresh off the needles, but failed. I partly blame my dog, who tried to eat my toes in the process… But here they are, my first ever handspun socks! And I love them!

Ok, let´s talk facts:

I think I spun the yarn some time in spring 2015. I started the socks in July 2015… That´s almost 2 years ago… so about time the socks got finished! I´m so pleased with this project! The wool was bought from Tante Ull. I believe it´s a merino/nylon mix, but I have long since lost the card with the info… So… the facts are a bit blurry…

But, I know the yarn is a 3-ply, I used 2.5mm needles, and the pattern is called Monkey Socks by Cookie A. It has this nice pattern throughout the socks that is easy to remember. The yarn is a bit busy, and the pattern is a bit lost in the yarn, but it kept it interesting. So totally worth it!

But I did a grafted toe…

…and my usual heel.

And that was that.

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I´m spinning again!

6th November 20167th May 2017 Lena

It´s been a long time since I´ve done any spinning. But the other day I had a look at one of my favourite spinning fibre sites Hilltop Cloud, not because I need fibres, – I have plenty, but because I needed inspiration. And it came! I instantly fell in love with two braids. One in gorgeous pink and purple tones with splash of other colours as well, and one in the colour of early autumn. So I ordered those. Because I couldn´t resist.

The pink one is a 50/50 Merino and Tussah Silk blend, and the green one is 75/25 Superwash BFL and Ramie. They are both supersoft! The pink was wonderful to spin, – I haven´t tried the green yet, but I suspect it will be equally lovely.

I started off with the pink braid and my Ashford E-spinner last weekend, and by the end of Sunday, I had my first yarn in months! I love that feeling!

I decided to make a 2 ply yarn, so I spun two bobbins with 50g each. It didn´t seem like much yarn on the bobbins, but I turned out to be a good deal of yarn!

I felt a little out of practice, but I managed to end up with a lovely and soft skein of app. 450meters. I don´t have a specific plan for this skein, but I´m sure I´ll think of something at some point. Right now, I´m just so happy to be in the spinning game again! I had hoped to do some spinning this weekend, but I´ve done some painting around the house, and we had a snow blizzard that made the power go out, so we ended up reading by candlelight and curling up in front of the fireplace instead. Whitch was just as cozy as spinning!

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Spin the yarn

My turkish love…

3rd May 20157th May 2017 Lena

Late last night I decided to put my knitting aside and get out my brand new Turkish Spindle from Kjerringrokk. My spinning guru friend Marianne was so kind to buy one for me at a spinning retreat she went to earlier this year. I could have bought one online, but since she has lots of experience, I really wanted her to find me a good one. And she did!

This little beauty weighs 21g and is made out of Norwegian birch! I picked one of the lovely fuzzlings from Fondant Fibre which is a really nice amount of wool to use for these kinds of “just going to try a little bit” spinning projects. Then I looked through a couple of YouTube videos and gave the spindle a try. And it was so much fun! The spindle spins really well, and I kind of got fixed on winding it up as even as I could, so it would look pretty…

Just look at that fun little turtle shell shaped ball! I´m so excited!

Needless to say, what was supposed to be an hour and a half spin before bedtime ended up beeing a lot longer project. I didn´t get to bed until the fuzzling was gone…
So. Can you guess what I´m up to now? I just have to eat some breakfast and then I´m going to find one of the polwarth sample box braids from Greenwood Fiberworks that I bought in February.

I´m spending my Sunday with my turkish love.

Lena

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Knitting, Spin the yarn

Spin the yarn, knit the shawl

8th April 20157th May 2017 Lena

It is finally done! A shawl I started working on in September. The reason why it has taken quite some time is not because the pattern is particularly hard or boring. The reason is because I spun the yarn myself.

It all started with 4oz of Polwarth Combed Top from Phonenix Fiber Co in the colorway Cherry Blossom. Once I had spun that I knew I had to make a shawl.

I searched for a pattern that could fit, and got a lot of help from some of my podcast viewers. I ended up choosing the pattern Piper´s Journey by Paula Emons-Fuessle. Once I had decided on that, I wanted some neutral yarn to make the applied edge. So I bought some undyed Polwarth from Hipstrings and spun that too. The shawl hibernated while I got around to spinning, plying and caking that. Once that was done, I had to get the urge to continue knitting on it. And finally the urge came! The result is a huge shawl, knitted a bit bigger than the pattern says, because I wanted to use as much of the colored fiber as possible.

The shawl is knitted on 4.0/US6 Knit pro Nova interchangeable needles, which worked well with this project. The total weight of the shawl is app. 190grams.

For those of you who is wondering if you should try spinning, I have to say that you really should! The act of spinning is really meditative, and the feeling one gets when knitting with a handspun yarn that YOU made is hard to describe! Such a great experience!

Lena

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