Art yarn weekend!

After watching many, many spinning videos on YouTube I came across this one by Ashley Martineau in which she uses her beautiful art yarn to create a piece of artwork  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWDxBVKK6Yo  This gave me the idea to show off my yarn in a similar way, so I took a trip to The Range and found these deep box frames for £1.50 each, so I bought 3! They’re painted white, which I thought I’d paint over, but seeing my colourful yarn inside has made my change my mind, as it shows off the yarn perfectly.

I got straight into making when I got back home on Friday, deciding I wanted to fill each box with a different technique but using similar colours. I wanted to try spinning from a cloud again, as I haven’t tried it since going to Wingham Wool Work. For my first mini skein I fluffed up some teeswater locks, alpaca, dyed roving and sparkly trilobal. I spun a single from this cloud and then navajo plied it (another technique I haven’t tried before, but really enjoyed!) At the end of each loop I caught another lock in the ply to add extra texture. (See below)

The second skein, spun again from a cloud, was corespun with a bulky weight yarn for the core, and again navajo plied. (See below). These two little skeins are probably the first true art yarn I’ve ever made, as I’m normally really stingy with fibre and don’t want to waste it on something I won’t use (soooooooo untrue now!) and I’m a bit of a control freak when it comes to colour prepping and spinning. Hopefully this will all change as I had a blast making these little art frames… and I still have the last one left to fill! If anyone has any suggestions on techniques to use for this last one please post below, I’d like to keep the same sort of colours but everything else will be a free for all!

I also spent the weekend plying one of my Spin City rovings (https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/SpinCityUK) which is a gorgeous blend of mohair, shetland, bamboo and merino. I’ve never spun with bamboo before, it’s incredibly slippery and can get away from you if you’re not careful (I figure that’s what spinning silk feels like), but it gives a beautiful sheen. I was aiming for a DK weight so I can make one of the little animals from the Edwards Menagerie book I recieved at Christmas, and for the most part I think I succeeded, though it is pushing aran in some places. Overall I’m happy with it though.

Please let me know what you think of my spin-tastic weekend!
Jen x

Spinning up a storm!

I decided at the weekend that I wanted to try something different. I was looking through my book The Spinners Book of Yarn Designs, (which is beautiful if no one has seen it) and came across the 2-ply slub coil yarn, which is similar to beehive yarn. It uses a slub single, plied with a secondary even spun single. The two are plied together, and when you come across a slub you push it up the length of the second single to create a beehive. I love the texture this yarn creates, with thin 2-ply inbetween these fat cocoons of fibre.

Flamme by Hjertegarn

With time being a factor, I rummaged through my stash of commercial yarn and found a single ball of slubby yarn (above) that was a gift I received last year. It was Flamme by Hjertegarn in the marine colourway, a 100% wool yarn which has stunning, vibrant colours. If you’re interested, I found them being sold here! I tied this and a blue crochet cotton to my leader, and started to spin! I’ve watched a few videos on Youtube of this technique, and remembered after the first few beehives that I should use my secondary thread (the crochet cotton) to lock in each one to make sure they’re secure and don’t move too much on the final yarn.

After this I was well away, apart from the fact that my Traditional Ashford was struggling with each beehive, even with my jumbo bobbin and flyer on. Oooops! I had to stop every foot or so to hand crank the bobbin as the fat slubs were catching on the hooks as well as some being to big to fit easily through the orifice!

One beautiful, slubby, beehive of fibre!

The finished result was well worth the effort though, the yarn came out beautifully and I had such fun spinning it. If you haven’t attempted this technique for any reason please give it a go, I was hesitant at first, thinking what would I do with the finished skein, would I be able to master the technique, and would I be disappointed at the end result, but I’m so happy I tried and I now have a gorgeous skein to play with! I still have to wash and set the twist as some areas have been slightly over spun, but I can’t wait to use this in a project!

I hope you enjoy the photos as much as I enjoyed spinning it!

In other news, my crochet blanket is going really well, I have 12 out of 16 large squares completed, and hopefully I will be adding another to that list tonight! I’m hoping that I can start stitching ‘The Beast’ (as I’ve nicknamed it) together this weekend, and that I have enough of the grey to stitch up and do another round on the entire blanket, fingers crossed please! x

Turquoise single

I finally decided to use my turquoise for a bit of experimentation at the weekend. I strung some beads onto beading thread and started to ply the beading thread with the turquoise fibre and some green crochet cotton I had in my stash. I used lime green seed beads and slightly larger green beads . Halfway through the single I decided to change my approach and create some super coils. Seeing as the single I’d spun was roughly dk weight, I can’t really say ‘super’ but I really like the effect it gave. I still incorporated the beads, although the small seed beads seemed to get lost in the condensed yarn, the larger beads poke out every inch or two. I really liked this effect and carried this on for the rest of the yarn. I occasionally put a little gimp in and pushed this up the beading thread core to create the slubs you can see above. I’m thinking of using the supercoiled half for a framed piece of art, and keeping the rest of the skein for details in my knitting. What do you think?! I really enjoyed spinning with beads, although I’m not a fan of knitting with beaded yarn. I do however think that this yarn will work really well as a piece of art, and I’m excited to see how it turns out. I’ve got an old frame at home that I found in a charity shop which I think will look good with this yarn. Keep watching this space x

Granny square blanket update and stumped on a single!

I thought you’d like to see how I’m getting on with my granny square blanket. I started this just over two weeks ago and it’s coming together so quickly. When I started I was so good at sewing in all the ends, but that has fallen by the way side recently, never the less I’m happy with how it’s going!

As I said in my last post it’s going to be 4 x 4 large squares, and I have 6 of these done. I’m hoping it will all be complete by the end of January so I have a few months to use and enjoy it before it gets too hot!

On a slightly different note, I have a 100g of turquoise merino spun into a single, but I’m not sure what to do with it. I thought I was going to ply it with another single I’d spun but the colours weren’t working together. I’ve also tried plying it with crochet cotton but it wasn’t working either. It’s a fairly even single, any ideas on what to do with it? That’s it for now, I’m going to crack on with some more squares! x

Core spinning

At the weekend I made my first full skein of corespun yarn from a batt I had made ages ago. The colours in it are not my favourites as I tend to go for rich reds, purples and turquoises, which is why it has sat at the bottom of my pile for so long. However, once I started spinning it I fell in love with the shades, it reminds me of a hot sunny day, with blues, yellows and white, as well as a fair amount of gold trilobal, which is similar to angelina. I got my trilobal from Wonderwool (Wales) this year, it is quite a bit cheaper than angelina but doesn’t come in as many colours. You can see the gorgeous gold coming through here…

My only issues with the finished skein (which was super quick to spin up, even though my poor Traditional suffered with the thickness and texture, which meant I had to hand wind in places), was that the amount of over twist was incredible (have a look at the final image to see what I mean!). Even though I’ll still be able to crochet with this it will be next to useless for knitting with.

This slight disappointment led me to do a bit of digging around the internet this week to see if I could find any answers. My answer came in the form of Knitty Blog who had written a post on the Core of Corespun, please follow the link here if you wish to read it for yourself, and if you’re having problems with core spinning I do recommend it! I found my answer almost immediately, Jillian spun two yarns, both using the same core and the same fibre but got two completely different results. Why? Because on the second skein she first ran the core through her wheel the opposite way to the way it was originally plied, thus opening up the yarn, and causing it to be re-plied when she started core spinning, but not over twisting it. Ta dah! I knew there would be a way not producing over twisted corespun out there somewhere. I had been thinking about spinning anti-clockwise if the core uses a Z twist, but I think the fibre may not catch as well on the core. I’ll try both methods this weekend and see what results I get. As ever I will post my findings and let you know! x

My latest creation

I’ve been doing a lot of spinning on my new e-spinner, and it is so much quicker than my Traditional, which is fantastic as I have so many ideas as to what I want to card and spin next!

My latest skeins were using a merino roving with apricots, mustards and browns in. I’ve taken photos at all stages, the main photo above being the fibres. Below is a single being spun, I was hoping for a chunky but as you can see I’m still getting thinner areas. I’m not too fussed about this at the moment as it creates such a wonderful textured yarn, but I would like to be able to spin a consistent chunky soon. If anyone has any tips please let me know!

…and here is the final yarn after it has been plied. I have 200g, and produced all the singles in an evening and plied it the next night, which is quite quick for me. I have yet to wash it and set the twist but I tend to wait until I have 4 or 5 skeins made before I do this.

I hope you like my yarn, it’s beautifully soft and fluffy and I’m so pleased with it. Here’s to many more happy hours spent spinning! x