This is a round up of projects recently completed and current ones on the go. Last year I did very little spinning, largely due to fatigue and knee pain, so I’m getting myself back into a regular habit. At some point I really ‘should’ study the books I have to produce different types of yarn, but the reality is I am an intuitive/lazy spinner and just spin how I feel. However if I don’t know how to spin in different ways, eg. corespinning, I’ll never get intuitive about them, so somehow I’m going to nudge myself towards the books and learn some new techniques. Anyway, to projects completed…..
1. I called this project ‘Bootese’. All the fibre used was hand-dyed by Flora Fibres. It consisted of Bamboo dyed with red onion skins, Tencel dyed with berberis darwinnii, and Rose dyed with woad and onion skins. I span each as a single and then plied them together. I had some leftover Rose and Bamboo so plied that together to create the smaller ball of yarn. My typical weight spun is around a 4ply-DK and this came out as a DK for the main ball and 4ply for the smaller. I love the yarns created. No plans for them yet, maybe part of a top.
2. We’ll call this one ‘A dark day at the beach!’. The main fibre is Carbonised Bamboo and I decided to have a go at spinning thick. I then plied it with a thin single I spun back in 2018 that I didn’t know what to do with. It was another Flora Fibres dyed fibre of Mint, Rose & Bamboo and the colourway was called ‘A day at the beach’ hence my title! I don’t have a note of the dyes but the fibre came as a rolag and there were three different colours striped adjacently to each other, pink, green and yellow I think. I’ve got to be honest the final skein doesn’t make me happy. I think I needed a stronger coloured single against the black. I was thinking of giving it away, but I’m going to hold on to it for now and see if something comes up.
3. Next up ‘Sunset on the sea’. Loved the colour of this fibre so much I decided to spin and ply it just on its own (you might have noticed I like to combine different fibres normally). It is Seacell and again dyed by Flora Fibres using madder and onion skins. Its a 3 ply, for some reason I like to ply 3 strands, and came out at DK weight. Its good that I can create 4ply to DK weight yarns as these are my most commonly used weights in projects! I actually spin my singles very thin half the time but it all sorts itself out somehow.
4. Arty yarn, not very original but this is my first go at spinning a proper Art yarn. Well this was fun! I used a small bag of purple, blue, and greeny-blue Ramie I bought from Spin City at Festiwool a few years ago, along with some off bits of blue cotton, and then I blended in lots of yarn scraps, you know the sort you cut off when you’ve woven in the ends on a project. I had no idea how well that would work but it did. I span thick and thin as this is an art yarn. The cotton was pesky and wouldn’t draft at all, so it created lovely slubby lumps instead (I think slub is the right term). I lost quite a few yarn scraps in the spinning process, note to self the carpet gets a bit messy, so I think more rather than less in blending is the way to go. I love looking at this yarn. Its so beautiful with all the different colours and textures. I might use it to make a basket for my craft room.
5. Finally, the current project, untitled as yet. Again this is very much an experimenting project. All fibres dyed by Flora Fibres: Hemp dyed using Lapsang Souchong, Soybean dyed using indigo, and Pineapple dyed using indigo. Its the first time I have used Pineapple and it feels more like Ramie/Hemp, fibrous! I blended half of the fibre together and will be spinning that as 3 singles then plied together. And then I am spinning each of the other half of fibre individually and then plying together, so I’ll have half blended and half ‘barber pole effect’. It’s going to be interesting to compare how the yarns look.
And that’s it for now. I still have some dyed fibre lurking upstairs which should see me through the start of the year. I’m also thinking of having a go at spinning things like the plastic nets you get from oranges. I’m not sure how safe that is, I need to investigate. I’m also debating whether to save up most of my handspun to use all together in a top, or use here and there as I have been doing so far. As always I have far more ideas than energy!
