Spinning Hitch

Mini-Skein Swap Package

This is the package I received in the swap that Stephanie from Knitting Samurai and Her Guys held. My partner Lanois sent me this wonderful package:














Malabrigo Yarn - Mechita





















It is all lovely and I feel very spoiled!

Sunday Inspirations

Almond Pound Cake with Orange Glaze - - this sounds delicious


Steam "hard boiled" Eggs - - this sounds interesting to try and to see if it effects the eggs in any way.

Happy Snowy Easter!

Berry Crush Socks

I recently saw a picture on Instagram of Annettle's Graquellow Socks and loved the texture. I was so inspired I grabbed some yarn I had recently dyed and casted on.

My version is garter stitch between slipped stitches and love how it is turning out. This color is one I recently dyed as a variegated and I love it, but it is difficult to photograph.


It's between the picture above and the picture below.


Love the texture.



The last socks I knit myself were in 2013, before that 2011, so I think I am due a pair of hand knit socks! :)



Are we noticing a recent pink and purple theme? Yeah, I don't know where it is coming from either, but I am very oddly enjoying it, so we will just go with the flow.

Spinning Experiment

So with my Valentine yarn I am plying-on-the-fly, which utilizes chain plying to create a 3-ply yarn. I like to spin thin and was a little disappointed with how thin my 3-ply was, a heavy lace/light fingering. I was given the idea that when plying on the fly I could do it twice and create a 9-ply by chain plying the yarn I had just chain plied.

Here are the two skeins next to each other. I did a smallish sample of the 9-ply, but large enough I could get a good feeling of how it would turn out.


I decided not to do it all 9-ply as that is just a little too thick for me. It's a bit thicker than worsted, by eyeballing it, which will probably grow after it's been washed.


Here is a better comparison.  The 9-ply is wonderfully squishy though!


Started spinning the rest of it, going to stick with the 3-ply to finish it up.



When I start my next fiber I want to experiment with plying-on-the-fly to see what I can get. I think it might be possible to get a 5-ply by double looping, but I'll need to experiment. If I can get a 5-ply/6-ply that would be ideal.

Valentines Spinning

I realized today that I haven't posted any of my Valentine's spinning yet. I have been working on it through January.

Here it was at the start, I am doing plying on the fly, so I spin up a certain amount of singles, wind them on the shaft, ply them, and then wind them on the arms.


Here you can see the ball of yarn wrapped around the arms is the plied yarn and the singles wrapped around the shaft.


I am usually not a pink person, but I have been quite addicted to this colorway.



Here is where I am so far. I'm trying to spin the whole 4oz on my Turkish spindle. It is the Large in the sleeker design from Threadsthrutime.


The fiber is Victoria from Greenwood Fiberworks in Polwarth, which is lovely to spin. I absolutely love their fibers.

Belated Wookie Birthday!

With all the doggy check-ups and court dates we forgot to mention that Wookie turned 5 on Wednesday!

posted from Bloggeroid

Eleanor's ballet wrap

Eleanor's ballet wrap is starting to look like an actual top! I started late, but think I am making decent progress.

posted from Bloggeroid

Dyeing Yarn

I have also been dyeing some yarn.

Here is a recent batch.


This one is teal blue, pink, and yellow-green.  It is not self-striping but it spirals.





This one was an over convoluted experiment.





It started out as a long loop that I tied off in about 16 places and dyed each space separately.  It was way more difficult to dye than I expected, even though I like how it turned out, I would never do it again.


This one had almost no planning and it was my happy accident!


It's mostly blues, but has pinks, greens, purples, etc in it.  Definitely one of my favorites.

Dyeing Punis

I started learning to spin cotton, but the punis that I purchased are white and I love spinning color. So I tried to dye some of the punis with dyes for cotton. I soaked the punis and then painted them with colors.

Here you can see the ones that I painted.


However, when started to spin it, the dye was only surface level. It didn't soak further into the puni.


Here you can see it clearer, how the inside is still very much white.


Here you can see, kind of, how the single is barber poled.


I am next going to try immersing the punis in color to see if I can dye them through or at least more than surface level. I just need to get some more cotton dyes.

Mini Batt - Part 3

This is the most recent one I did, working the other way where each strip torn off would be worked from dark to light or light to dark. So it is kind of a striping effect of light to dark to light to dark, etc.


I was kind of thinking ice . . . yes, I am tired of this winter! :)


This is random wools in pink and a few different colors of purple.

Mini Batt - Part 2

It was so much fun, I of course had to make more.

I blended this one to work from blue to purple to pink, or at least to be spun like that.


This one is also random wools, but in purple, blue, and variegated pinks.

Mini Batt - Part 1

One of my Christmas presents to myself was a blending board!



The process of my very first batt.


This one is made up of random wool in blues, greens, and yellow-greens.


It was so much fun and I love how it turned out!