Crafting has been going very slowly for me. Tuesday evening we had Mr. Ink’s family over for a visit, so of course no crafting got done. Last evening I finally had a free evening, and Miss Bug went out to dinner with her dad. So, I was able to get some corespinning done. I know it’s just a progress picture, but I did manage to finish this bobbin full and start the next!

I love love LOVE spinning corespun yarn out of chunky batts. I am spinning along quite smoothly and then BAM, chunky sections that won’t draft smooth. It’s so exciting. A constant surprise. I REALLY need to be spinning a lot more corespun yarn I think. The entire time I do so, I am saying to myself “I wonder how this will look knit up, or woven!” It’s just too exciting.

Last I spoke  of it, my Inglenook/silk hankie crepe yarn was interrupted. I ran out of the silk hankie singles. It was quite disappointing, since I was absolutely loving the plying of it. And I was so close to done!

But, I had to wait to order and dye more silk hankies, and then get them spun. Which I did last week, and I finished the project!

So, here’s the resulting crepe yarn, and it looks appropriately springlike I think! I’ve got 750 yards of this gorgeous stuff!

If I were to do a crepe yarn again (And I will!) I’ll probably spin thicker singles all the way around. I suspect that will give it a more crepe effect. In this case, the very thin inglenook 2 ply kind of just looked like it’s own single. But, it does have great texture, and I look forward to it telling me what it will become!

Happy Easter everyone! I’ve enjoyed my long weekend so much, and will be enjoying one more day of it tomorrow!

Hey guys! First of all, I’ve got a new skein of yarn to show off!

It’s my 80s jam from dyeabolical yarns, the fiber is corriedale cross, and I spun it with loops!

I’ve got 280 yards of this goofy stuff, and I am really unsure if I’ll ever try it again. However, it does work toward my goal of working my way through Spinner’s Book of Yarn Designs. And, the reality is, I haven’t worked with it yet, so I might yet change my mind.

I threw some silk hankies into a dye pot the other day, as I needed them to finish my inglenook crepe yarn project. I decided to dye them while I was putting together a crock pot soup for my family.

It was a great, fun, fast project that gets me toward my next finished yarn.

And as for painting, we did lots and lots of that. Here’s our wall with the stripes being added.

It looks pretty silly there, but once we were done, we had a really nice looking wall!

And that was only the beginning, next up was priming furniture.

We got really smart (Or rather,  my mother did) and used spray primer. It was super fast, and probably saved us half a day. And then we got started painting furniture.

Everything got a major overhaul, and I am hoping to have the final pictures up tomorrow. I even finished painting the inside of the closet in that bedroom, which  makes everything look complete and totally fresh.

This week, my parents are in town, and we are officially beginning the renovation of Miss Bug’s room and furniture. We’ve decided on stripes for one wall, two different colors of teal with a creamy yellow stripe in between them. My parents arrived in town on Wednesday, and after running some errands, we got started on the prep.

There was a lot of measuring happening, and chalk lines, and discussion. As with all home improvement projects, the prep is the part that takes the most time, but good prep also means an easier project.

Miss Bug learned how to use a level.

And she got quite good at it! She’s actually a surprisingly good help when it comes to home improvement projects, but just like her mother, the destroying of the old is her favorite part. There really wasn’t anything to destroy this time around.

At the end of the evening we had a fully prepped wall!

Painting happens shortly!

After all the prep I had an opportunity to sit down at my wheel and do a little plying.

After spending 9 years learning how to NOT allow small pigtails in my plied yarn, I am now deliberately putting them in. Seems odd!

I just got a couple new support spindles! Both of these are local destashes, so I didn’t go purchase them. But, I got them on Friday, and was pretty eager to try them out!

I decided to pull out an 8 oz bump of Crown Mountain Farms superwash merino since that’s basically my favorite ever fiber to work on long term with support spindles. My plan is to just keep filling as many spindles as possible until I run out, then ply up a skein, and then more spinning on spindles.

But naturally, I had to try out the two new ones first!

That’s a new Texas Jeans to the left. It’s the same style as my first two TJs, but it’s lighter and a little smaller. Very pretty! And a lovely smooth finish as well. And to the right is my first ever experience with a Twisted Grain Thorn, which is absolutely a joy to spin with. In addition to that, making a cop with that one is very easy, and quite a pleasure.

Both of these are a win! I am so glad that I’ve had the opportunity and inspiration to spend more time with my support spindles lately.

That thunderboom turned out so well, I decided to spin up another Dyeabolical braid I had on hand. This one is ’80s Jam on corriedale cross wool.

I am spinning this one as a fractal yarn, and will be trying loops from the Spinner’s Book of Yarn Designs this time. I am enjoying working my way through the different ways of plying at the moment. Spinning itself remains about the same, with a little interest added to the plying actions. That’s great for a busy time in my life, I get all the fun of something new without a ton of stressing over the majority of the project.

I finished my Thunderboom spin over the weekend, and the stacks came out pretty well, I think! They aren’t perfect, but no new technique is. I do, however, have 260 yards of yarn with interesting texture, and I think weaving with it would be a great deal of fun.

Can you see some stacks? I know, I know, they blend in pretty well.

We also got the first wall done on Bug’s room. This is the wall that will have stripes, added later this week, so we needed to get the initial coat on to make sure that we could actually tape over it without wrecking the base coat.

The color is slightly darker than I expected, but it is REALLY warm and sunny, and lovely. So, I think it’s all good! My original plan was to paint her bed the same shade of yello, but seeing the current white, I might just get a small can of white glossy paint and refresh what she’s got instead.

My parents will be arriving on Wednesday, and we’ll get to do more painting and taping at that point. In the meantime, Miss Bug has plenty more furniture and other items to move, as you can plainly see! (She was gone this weekend with her dad, which is why it didn’t get done. However, she did get everything off her bed last evening.)

That Thunderboom? I plied that with stacks. I figured that was a great next Spinner’s Book of Yarn Designs yarn to try!

It’s certainly a beginner’s yarn, but it was fun! I may very well try another soonish. It’s hanging to dry, and I can’t wait to show it off!

Today is paint day. Yesterday, we moved all the furniture that will be painted out to the garage (except Miss Bug’s bed) and did some cleaning up and prep. Today we actually need to paint! But, I did get a few shots of her rather bland and messy bedroom so you can see the improvement once we are done!

It only took me 2 days to spin up this 4 oz. of Thunderboom from Dyeabolical Yarns. Mostly because I went for a thicker than normal yarn this time. It took some concentration, but it was quick! And the fiber is truly truly beautiful. I probably need more of it in my life.

But, for now, I’ll be plying this up in some manner from Spinner’s Book of Yarn Designs, since that’s my current long term project.

We embark on yet another home improvement project this weekend and next weekend. We will be painting Bug’s room and furniture. I really hate painting, to be honest, so I am not looking forward to it. BUT, for the first time ever, Miss Bug will have a truly matching and cute bedroom, and that I am looking forward to. Plus, she’s finally of the age she doesn’t want pink anymore, and THAT is everything to me!

So, expect lots of pictures as we work through that project! And probably a little less of the spinning stuff for a bit.

Guys, I ran out of the silk!

I was tooling along on my crepe yarn plying, and loving every minute of it. The resulting yarn is pretty, the silk makes it soft, I love the bits and bobs and thicks and thins.

I like the addition of various colors in the silk that make the gradient less of a gradient. I love the way the 2 ply with extra ply twist just acts as if it’s a single when plied the other way. I just love this project!

And then? I ran out of silk. Here:

So I had to order more silk hankies last evening, and now I have to wait until they arrive, and then dye them once they arrive. And then spin them into singles! It’s going to be a bit painful to wait that long for a finished yarn. Especially THIS yarn. I REALLY adore this project!

2 days ago I showed off the inglenook batt color progression as I plied 2 plies together in anticipation of creating a crepe yarn. And I mentioned that I would be spinning the third ply shortly.

I did spin that single! I used silk hankies that I’d dyed a few years ago. Rather than spin them in the traditional manner, poking a hole in the middle, then predrafting out the fiber until all I have to do is add twist, I tried something new. I used each individual hankie as if it were roving. I split the very edge, and then drafted out of one corner as I spun. Now, the trick for this turned out to be really keeping my hands far apart. Silk fibers are long! And it’s really apparent when spinning a hankie this way.

I worked really hard to not care about lumps and bumps in the yarn. It’s thick, it’s thin, it’s got lumps and bumps, and it is BEAUTIFUL as is. That’s all there is to it! This is the single I’ve chosen for my crepe yarn, and I will embrace all parts of it.

I have gotten a little bit of the plying done now, and I suspect I won’t have enough of these singles to finish the skein. Which will require purchasing and dyeing more hankies. However, now that I’ve found a way to spin these that satisfies me, I can’t be upset about more silk hankies in my life!

In other news, some more of the batt creating goodies just walked in the door. Here’s what I got from Nunoco, and quite frankly? I want more!

That’s two sets of wools and two sets of batt food. Great stuff!!!

I’ve got my parents in town shortly, and a room renovation for Miss Bug. Once that’s complete, I’ll pull out my drum carder, take it apart, get it really cleaned, and then it’ll be time to make some really pretty batts again!

I finished my Koi Pond spin over the weekend, but it took ages and ages for it to dry!

As a review, the fiber is from The Dyeing Arts, the fiber content 60% polwarth, 40% silk. I spun it as a 3 ply, with one single going the “wrong” direction in order to create an opposing ply yarn. I put the “wrong” single in the middle of my lazy kate so I wouldn’t have trouble remembering which it was, and got to plying.

Plying with one opposing single is a little bit different, as nothing wants to line up as smoothly as I am accustomed to. Adding additional twist to that opposing ply single makes it slightly shorter, enough that the two regular singles then want to bunch up, so it’s a constant adjustment. But it turned out just fine!

I ended up with 800 yards of 3 ply yarn.

It’s quite a lot! I did try to get a quick shot of what happens to the yarn, but I am not sure it came out that well. When not stretched into a hank, it’s pretty alive, as the yarn tries to pull back in on itself, that opposing ply being so full of energy.

It was great to work through another one of the yarns in Spinner’s Book of Yarn Designs!

Once I was finished with the singles that were spun the “wrong” direction, I had a good amount of leftover singles, and I made them into a small two ply skein.

There’s just 120 yards of this one, but I love it! It goes just as I want it to! So now I have to search patterns for lace projects that take very little yarn. Any ideas?

I began plying my inglenook singles into a gradient yarn. This will eventually become a crepe yarn, so these singles had to be plied with twice the amount of twist one might expect.

So the process was long! I really did spend most of the day at the wheel.

But I decided it would also be fun to grab photos of each color transition while I was at it, so I did. There was only one place I had to mess with the colors a bit to get then to line up as I wanted them to, it’s actually in the photo above. There was a lot more of the green and the blue green transition than I had hoped, and the bluegreen singles together would have been extremely small.

But, I messed with it enough to get me back on track and then kept at it. Here’s where the purple begins!

And well into a duller darker purple. I realized at this point that I have been picking purples quite frequently lately.

And then finally a full bobbin with a brighter dark purple to end it. this picture is taken about 6:30 p.m. and it was fun to realize that I had plenty of light to take a photo in! We may hate the time change, but we love the extra hour of light outdoors.

Next up? The silk hankie singles that I’ll use as the crepe yarn ply. I actually finished them early this morning, but due to that time change, had absolutely no light to photograph them in. It’ll be tomorrow’s post.

In true to sickness fashion, I didn’t get nearly as much crafting done as I had anticipated yesterday. This is a problem for me every time I take a sick day. I somehow believe that if I am sick enough to take a sick day, I’ll be well enough to craft. That’s….not really how it works.

Mr. Ink was far sicker than I was last evening, and he had worked all day. So we ordered in pizza and watched a movie with Miss Butterfly. By that point I’d slept enough during the day to be fairly upright, so I got some spinning done!

Mr. Ink was working again this morning, so I was up early and managed to finally finished the last bobbin full of singles for my koi pond opposing ply project. I’ll tell you what, I must have absolutely given up on moving the bobbin hook, because this bobbin is messy!

I put the opposing ply bobbin in the middle so I could always easily figure out which one was the opposing ply. I should have an opportunity to work on the plying of this today. It’s 8 oz, so it’ll be a little slow.

I had about half a little batt left to spin on a spindle as well, from my Inglenook Hunca Munca set.

So, as soon as the wheel is free of the koi pond project, I’ll get to start plying up these beauties, and then spin the silk hankie singles I’ll use to make a crepe yarn. And that’ll be two more out of the Spinner’s Book of Yarn Designs I’ll have managed to create.

Jumping back into that book has really made me get excited about spinning projects again, and that’s something I just love!

I’ve now spun 2 bobbins of my koi pond 8 oz. wheel spin.

I just need the final bobbin of opposing spun singles so I can get these plied up! That would be good, since I am also almost done with the inglenook singles on spindles, and will need to 2 ply them as well. Lots of spinning in the works, and I’ll have a lot finished in a short time. But I am still in that holding pattern that larger projects create.

Yesterday was a TRUE spinday for me. It involved the first dirt bike ride of the year, which was lovely, though slightly muddy in spots and quite windy. But, I do love riding dirt more than anything else, I love how it wakes up your brain and forces it to be on task. And I love how it feels like a ton of interval training. Like I am getting a better work out in a shorter amount of time. But most of all, I love how riding bikes makes food taste! Even a very basic meal ends up tasting like the best food imaginable.

In yarn spinning news, I finished the first third of a 3 ply opposing ply yarn. Since I started that even before we had our floors done, it feels like it’s a project that is absolutely dragging.

Dragging until yesterday anyhow, since once I finished this bobbin, I got halfway through the second bobbin. And THAT is pretty nice progress!

I don’t have a whole lot more to post about at this moment, since I worked on spinning all day, until the evening where I worked on my latest handspun shawl. Maybe that’ll get some blog time tomorrow.

In addition to the 8 oz. I currently have going on my wheel for an opposing ply 3 ply yarn, I’ve got a project on the spindles.

I may have already mentioned this, but I’ve realized that I much prefer to spin batts and roving, as opposed to top. And most of what I have in stash is top. So, any stash infusions I’ve got going on right now has to do with infusing the side of spinning I really enjoy.

Which is why I picked up some inglenook batts the other day. These are all dyed with natural dyes. And they are lovely!

In order to stay on target with my desire to spin out of the Spinner’s Book of Yarn Designs, I plan to 2 ply these, and then ply it with a silk hankies single I dyed a long while ago that I’ve had sitting in stash, making myself a crepe yarn.

Of course, that means I have to keep after the opposing ply project, since that is an 8 oz. project and promises to take quite a long time to finish.