3 Miles!

...of handspun, that is. I keep track of the yards I spin - that's plied yards... I can't possibly keep track of the singles yardage before plying, so I just keep track of finished yarn. I use a little widget called Knitmeter - it keeps track of your spinning, crochet, or knitting. You can see it in my sidebar, and get one for yourself if you like. I'm a bit amazed that I've hit 3 miles already in 2013! I think completing Mr. Debbie's sweater yarn helped with that...

Speaking of which, here's the finished 4-ply (4 separate plies, fingering weight) sweater yarn. All polwarth, 4 different colorways from Southern Cross Fibre, spun separately and plied together. It's 1800 yards, more than enough for a sweater and matching socks:

Here's a skein of Hello Yarn, rambouillet in one of her shop colorways, "Throwing Stones". 300 yards of n-ply sportweight:

Some luscious merino/silk, from Enchanted Knoll Farm's Hooves club, December 2012, "Rusty Cock". I'm calling it "Rooster"... 150 yards of n-ply sportweight:

And finally, more silk for weaving scarves. This is 2 ounces of tussah silk, from Enchanted Knoll Farm, in her "Gold Dust Woman" colorway. I spun it into 400 yards of n-ply laceweight:

Handwoven Mermaids

I finished the Mermaid scarves. I am completely in love with weaving handspun silk. It feels great when it comes off the loom, but then, oh my! A hard pressing with an iron gives the silk a fantastic gleam and such a soft feel. These scarves are like butterfly wings.

I'm super-glad I have a whole bin of handdyed silk, because I'm going to spend this year spinning it up into scarf warp. :) For instance, I just finished spinning this skein of 400 yards laceweight silk, handdyed by Southern Cross Fibre:

It'll be the next warp on the Saori loom... but today, I'm finally starting the black rainbow towels!

Mermaid In Progress

The colorway of the silk I spun for this scarf is called "Mermaid Tail", and I can see why! I love the blues and subtle greens in this one. I'm using tencel for the weft, in a color called "Greyed Teal" - it really gives a watery feel to the scarf.

I'm glad I had enough silk to warp for two scarves, because I'm nearly finished weaving the first one, and I'm having too much fun to stop now!

Silk Warp

I spun this silk yarn earlier in the week, now it's wound into a warp for two silk scarves:

It's mostly blue with some mysterious green here and there. The handdyed silk fiber was called "Mermaid's Tail" and I think it's a great description. I can't wait to see how the variegation will look in the scarves!

Handwoven Handspun Silk Amethyst Scarf

I spun this purple silk yarn last year, and it's been marinating in my stash waiting for its moment.

This week, I warped it on my Saori loom. I wove it with a tencel yarn in 'eggplant'.

I am so pleased with the way it turned out!







I'm pulling out my stash of silk fiber this afternoon - I see a lot more handspun silk scarves in my future!

Handwoven Gold Waterfall

Here's the first project on my new Saori loom, though I didn't weave it Saori-style. I've had this rayon/silk yarn for awhile - I got it from a Ravelry destash, and have been petting it for months, trying to decide how best to use it. I decided to use tencel as its weft, and wove a shawl as my Saori loom's first effort.  I love how the finished shawl turned out - after hemstitching, twisting the fringe, giving it a gentle wash, and a good pressing, it has fantastic drape and shine.







The shawl/wrap is a generous 75" x 14", with 6" handtwisted fringe on each end. The rayon/silk was divine to weave. I think I need to get some more!

Spin, Spin, Spin

I'm always spinning... spinning makes me happy! Here are a few yarns I finished in the past few weeks:

Silk (mulberry/bombyx), in blood red tones - laceweight, 3-ply, 320 yards:

Fun spectrum rainbow colors, superwash merino - n-ply, sportweight, 100 yards:

Multicolor mix, Fruit Salad - 2-ply worsted weight, 220 yards:

Submerge (Southern Cross Fibre Club), shetland sock yarn - 3-ply sockweight, 315 yards:

There's more silk on my wheel right now - spinning silk is like spinning liquid metal. I love it!

Slowly But Surely

The sweater grows:

I've knit 12" of the body so far. The fabric is so light yet warm - my husband has requested a handspun sweater of his own! WOW - he's Mr. Barefeet-And-Shorts-In-The-Wintertime - I'm excited to be able to knit wool for him. His only experience with wool sweaters has been with big bulky uncomfortably HOT sweaters - he was surprised that wool can be made light and airy. I love spinning fingering weight 3-ply, so that's no burden. I'll dig through the extensive stash and see what I can find - his only requirement was "darker tones". Can do!

Handwoven Tencel Twill Scarf

At the end of August, I warped the borrowed Megado loom for some tencel scarves in a fancy twill.

My friend Susan Harvey of "Thrums" shared the draft (which she used for some gorgeous bookmarks) in this blogpost. I really liked the pattern, but discovered that the 153 picks per repeat couldn't be programmed into the mechanical dobby on the loom - it has only 130 dobby bars. Hmmm. So I turned the draft (swapped the treadling with the threading) and tweaked it a bit, and then I only needed 119 bars.

I got it all warped up, and then... I got busy with other things (commission spinning, the rainbow towels, etc.) and the warp languished on the loom.

My friend Jenny (who allowed me to babysit her loom while she was in England for 6 months) has returned home, and would like her loom back, thank you. :) So I got busy weaving, and now the scarves are well in progress. I really like the way they're turning out.

The warp is a variegated tencel in blue/purple/green, and the weft is black. The little yellow flower pin is marking my progress - I measure, then record the progress and move the pin.

The Kitsune/Harvest sweater is progressing nicely as well - I'm halfway through the decrease section of the body:

 Of course, it won't be cold enough to wear it until late November, so I have plenty of time to knit!

Handspun Kitsune/Harvest Sweater in progress

I cast on for my new sweater (Bailey cardigan - Ravelry link) last night. I have a self-imposed deadline for this one - I want to be able to wear it by the time cold weather arrives. Here in the Deep South, that's the end of November. :)

I'm sure it'll be finished before then - this yarn is such a delight to knit. I'm loving the fabric... the silk content added to the polwarth wool gives it a wonderful drape, and a subtle shine.

Next Sweater

I've been spinning some more sweater yarn. Pleased with the success of the Kraken sweater, I chose some coordinating fibers from my stash of Southern Cross Fibre and Hello Yarn clubs, and spun up a 3-ply fingering weight yarn. I've got 1950 yards of soft lovely sweater potential, in a beautiful fall color blend. All the fiber is polwarth/silk - the two outer bobbins are Hello Yarn "Kitsune", and the middle bobbin is Southern Cross Fibre "Harvest":

I can't wait to get this yarn washed and dried so I can cast on!

Handwoven SAORI Market Bag

Our guild Retreat is coming up fast. Such a lovely time to relax with friends and fiber, with no responsibilities and no schedule. Wait... there IS one responsibility - every year we're given a different challenge, to create something incorporating some handspun. This year it's a market bag. I was planning to knit something... and then suddenly I realized the time had gotten away from me, and knitting was going to take too long. Enter weaving - so fast, so fun!

I dug around in my handspun stash, and found a skein of fingering weight silk singles I'd spun a long time ago from a pastel-rainbow tussah silk top (in the picture, I've already wound it onto bobbins). Perfect for my main weft. Thinking SAORI-style, I grabbed some multi-colored silk hankies and a small handful of mulberry silk top, along with some leftover bits of cotton yarn from another project.

Then I warped my Cricket loom with black 5/2 and 8/2 cotton, held together, in the 12 dent rigid heddle. This gave me a good background for some color play.

You can see that I used the handspun silk as the ground weft, and randomly tossed in torn-off bits of the hankies and top, creating hills and valleys and delightful textures. In true SAORI fashion, I didn't worry (much, I'm still a structure girl!) about the edges, and knew they would be sewn in anyway.

In practically no time, the piece was done.  The warp was 3 yards, and 7.5" in the reed/heddle. My finished piece was 90" x 6.5". I used this guide on Doni's Deli's blog to create the bag - essentially, the strip of cloth is folded like origami and sewn up the sides.

Et voila!

(That's the bag simply pinned together, before sewing.) I sewed it by hand, partially because I was intimidated by the thought of trying to get the thick fabric under my machine's foot, and also because I wanted to use the same black 8/2 cotton as I had in the warp. I was glad I'd made that decision - the fabric felt good in my hands and the sewing was relaxing.

Here's the finished bag. I folded the strap's edges in and sewed it as a tube (using an invisible ladder stitch) to narrow the strap and to give it strength. There was no cutting involved in the construction.

I am absurdly pleased with this bag. Once I add a lining, it will become my new everyday bag. I'm secretly hoping people will stop me and ask where I got it, so I can proudly say, "I wove this myself!"