Experimental Yarn

A few weeks ago I decided to dye some wool. I had my soon-to-be-born niece in mind here when I picked the colors. I broke the fiber into pieces to start off with. The majority was in one piece, then 3 much smaller pieces. I decided to go with purple for the main color then teal, pink and yellow for the mix-in colors. I knew that I wanted to try to use my drum carder to blend the colors. Other than that I was completely winging it here.

The dye did not take evenly at all. In fact, there were so many white spots in the purple wool that I dyed it again. To even out the color I decided to try running each color through the drum carder a few times.

Which worked pretty well.

Then it was time to try mixing the colors together. I evenly divided all of the colors into 6 sections and made 6 bats by randomly picking a color and running it through the carder.

Then I randomly chose a bat and started spinning. I was able to fit 3 bats onto 1 bobbin, 3 onto another and then plied them together onto the third bobbin.

Didn't turn out exactly how I expected (although I really didn't have much of an expectation to begin with). I was going for a darker purple and lighter yellow, but too late now. I think it might be ok for a baby jacket or something. We'll see...

After

My craft room is mostly set up and I love it! I got a desk from Ikea that fits in the corner. It's hard to see, but in the back corner of the desk I have my swift set up with the ball winder on the edge behind the chair. I am also able to keep my sewing machine out. It used to live on the top shelf of a closet which means I never used it. Maybe now that it's more accessible I will actually sew once in a while.

Behind the desk is my bookshelf/yarn shelf. On top of this I have my drum carder, drop spindle and all of the knitting needles that I got from my grandma last time I visited.

The closet has the majority of my yarn. The black container to the left of the closet holds all of my spinning fiber.

It's great having so much room for all my crafting stuff. I could pretty much hang out in this room all the time. :)

Merry Christmas! Part 1

Now that Christmas is over, I can finally show all the projects that I was working on but couldn't post because they were presents. I'll start with the moms. My mom got a lace scarf and a matching headband. The yarn was hand spun. 80% merino wool and 20% silk. The colorway is called Black Current but it is a deep purple color. The scarf pattern is a free pattern from ravelry found here: Grapevine Lace Scarf. The headband is just plain garter stitch knit into a rectangle then sewn together.

Here it is before blocking:

while blocking:

After blocking:

My mother-in-law received a lace scarf as well. This yarn is also merino but my favorite part about it is that it has bits of silver in it that make the scarf sparkle. This pattern was also from ravelry and can be found here: Lacey Keyhole Scarf. One side of the scarf has a hole so that the other side can be pulled through.

Unfortunately I forgot to take pre-blocking pictures, but here is the scarf:

Hope you enjoy your new scarfs!

As for me, I got lots of awesome knitting related presents. Including books, bison yarn, blocking supplies and dyeing supplies. My awesomel husband even got me a drum carder that I cannot wait to try out. (Thanks everyone!) Keep an eye out for part 2 of this post where I will show what the guys got... :)