Hand-dyed Merino Wool

Yesterday I decided to indulge in some retail therapy at one of my local yarn shops. They carry merino wool sliver hand-dyed by Fleece Artist. I love spinning with this wool, it is so soft and the colours are really vibrant.

This morning, I admired my new wool and thought about what I am becoming – a small business owner. Yay! I think yarn spun from these braids would be great first items to list on the Etsy shop that I plan to open

Fleece Artist does an amazing job with their labels, check out a few from my collection:

I love how even though there is no picture of yarn or fiber on the tags the feel of the company comes through because of the great use of colour and the ram logo.

 

Some things I like to take pictures of

a passion flower

a clematis

a pink tulip

or two

I forget what this is called (zinnias?)

I have no idea what this is

blood orange

tangelo

a yellow rose

the grass covered in dew drops, shining in the early morning sunshine

My stuffed animal modeling a hat I made (ravelry link to this project)

a drop spindle full of falkland wool yarn that I spun for the shawl I’m knitting

 

Spinning hand-dyed BFL

On my drop spindle over this past week has been a beautifully hand-dyed green and purple (and many other colours) BFL wool roving. I purchased it at last year’s Ottawa Weaver’s and Spinner’s Guild Annual Exhibition and Sale from Judy Kavanagh. Her website features her really nice hand-crafted spindles and some great resources for spindling and buying fleece on her links page.

Here is a small sample of the drafted wool, all shiny and lofty:

I spun two “spindle-fulls”:

and ended up with two beautiful skeins:

I am adding these to my growing pile of bulky hand spun yarn. Does anyone else have this problem at this time of year? I really am a seasonal knitter. I guess I am hoarding them until the weather gets cool again. Until then, I amuse myself by knitting lace. I have been very monogamous to my optic waves handspun shawl and was really pleased to see it on Cosy’s blog. I don’t have anything else on my knitting needles right now which is unusual but not that weird because I have become consumed with spinning yarn. The knitting of it has become somehow secondary. Now that’s weird I have some projects in mind to knit but I (of course) want to spin the yarn for those projects so a bit of planning is involved. I’m planning on having these projects on the needles soon: a summer shrug, a blanket, and something for a baby (yay!)…

… and the most all-consuming project of all, my upcoming line of hand-spun yarns, soon to be offered for sale!

 

Handspun Corriedale and BFL Wool

Do you recognize this fiber?

This is a plied yarn using the same roving as I used to spin a bulky single (the yarn in the blog header). It’s a three strand navajo-plied yarn, spun on my Ashford Kiwi spinning wheel. I love spinning a chain ply yarn for many reasons, the most important one is that the color patterns of the spinning fiber stay fairly intact in the final yarn (a compulsion of mine).

Yarn that I spun from wool purchased at Maisy Day Handspun’s esty shop, two colourways with really great names:

Anemone (Corriedale wool):

…and Life Aquatic (BFL wool):

 

Craft Business

The exciting announcement alluded to in the last post is that I have decided to start my own business! I am really happy about this because being self-employed has been my dream for a long time.

Over the past few weeks I’ve had some really positive feedback on the yarn I’ve been spinning. That gave me the boost to start taking my crafting hobby seriously and take it to the next level. At this point, I am developing a line of hand-spun yarns. It is a lot of fun, frustration and hard work!

As I have been immersed in the “business” side of the craft business recently, I thought it would be nice to make up for the lack of spinning and crafting content on the blog and share some of the links I’ve been gathering. I would love it if anyone else wants to add their thoughts or links to relevant websites in the comment section.

Here are some high-lights from my growing list of craft business resources:

-Craftypod.com has a number of great podcasts with a focus on crafty entrepreneurs – one of the interviews that most struck a chord with me was Kim Werker’s Craftypod interview “Making a Creative Career”.

-The Craft Sanity Podcast has a category for craft business featuring some great features on self-employed crafters.

-Chris Campbell’s blog has a great recent post full of advice on starting and running an Etsy shop (originally written by Susan Sheehan).

-Etsy.com has a huge collection of resources in blog/article form and in the forums for small craft businesses. My absolute favourite Storque column is “Quit your Day Job”, featuring stories of how people have taken their craft from a hobby and into a full-time job. It is very inspirational to read how others made it happen! I read it when I need a pick-me-up and to remember “This is possible!”

-The groups and forums of Ravelry.com are an amazing source for finding answers to questions about starting and running a business. This site requires registration at this time but is well worth it if you are a knitter, crocheter or spinner. Some groups specific to entrepreneurs there are Entrepreneurial Dreams, Yarnies United, Small Business Owners, and Etsy Shops which has over 3700 members!

The pictures in this post were taken by me last year.

 

Small skeins and samples of hand-spun

I finally spun that milk fiber into a more substantial-sized skein, and it looks really pretty. It seemed like a good fiber for lace to me, so I decided to spin a fine 2-ply with it. Here it is pictured with two skeins of navajo-plyed yarn, one BFL wool and one organic merino wool:

From left to right: milk fiber 2-ply, BFL wool navajo 3-ply, organic merino navajo 3-ply.

I have also been plugging away at my hand-spun shawl:

But the biggest project I’ve been working on that is taking up the most of my time is still in the top-secret planning stage. Here is a hint (organic merino handspun yarn in a variety of styles and sizes):

Any guesses on what those are all about? I’d love to hear them!

 

Handmade doll with handspun hair

I am very proud of my little hand sewn doll, Dolly. I made her many months ago, before christmas, I think. I still haven’t made the right thing for her to wear, though I did try knitting her a dress. Still working on her wardrobe. I rarely sew but after having worked on this, I know I would like to do it more often. It’s a really gratifying craft. The best part was sewing her yarn hair onto her head. The worst part was messing up on her face embroidery so you can see the end of the dark thread behind the light fabric. The fabric was a fairly sheer small floral print.

The yarn was some of the first yarn I had ever spun, a fleece artist dyed merino wool. I think this might have been the first hand-painted roving I had ever spun. I love the colours! Her hair also has a slight kink in it because it was knitted and unraveled before becoming hair. I love hand-spun as doll hair. I also like to use it as a replacement for ribbon on presents. What do you use hand-spun yarn for (aside from knitting, weaving, etc)?

I also photographed a tiny ball of yarn in this extreme close-up picture:

It is a really pretty light aqua/ turquoise with some dark gray. This corriedale wool came as a bonus with my order from Maisy Day Handspun. I plan on eventually using it in some weaving.

This is the other half of the braid of fiber the yarns spun in yesterday’s post came from:

Pretty, colourful hand-painted merino wool from alchemy fiber arts. I am still not quite sure how I want to spin this yarn.

 

Rainbow colours in handspun

I’ve been having a lot of fun doing photo shoots with my hand spun yarns! This hand spun merino wool yarn twist is one of my favourite pictures of the day:

This bulky single strand yarn was spun with alchemy fiber arts spinning fiber that was beautifully hand-painted. The merino was mostly green but had many different spots of pinks, blues, orange, yellow, purple, etc in it. I don’t know why I’m referring to it in the past tense because there is still half of the braid of roving left! I am lingering over using this stuff up as it has one of my most sought-after characteristics : all of the colours.

I would usually say “green and blue”, but my favourite colour really is “all of them at once”. So, what is your favourite colour? Or better yet, favourite colour combination? Aside from “all of them”, I really enjoy olive green with bright aqua/turquoise.

Here are all three balls of this yarn:

I found it hard to pick up the green of this yarn in these photos, in person it really is noticeably mostly green. You wouldn’t be able to tell from this next picture! Here is the same merino spun as a bulky 3-ply:

This yarn looks much more purple and less green than in it in person, although it was spun from part of the braid that had lots of purple in it. There is only a very small skein of it but I may spin the rest of it the same way, I love how it looks so much. Watching colour progress in a navajo-ply yarn is so much fun.

And finally, a shot of the full picture my new header came from. I really love how this yarn (and picture!) turned out:

I spun this single strand corriedale wool yarn from Maisy Day Handspun hand-dyed by Sarah, colourway: anemone. I loved working with this fiber, it’s so shiny and easy to draft. Sarah’s colourways and fibers are really beautiful and a pleasure to work with. I spun this same wool into a different style of yarn and will take pictures and post them soon.

 

Milk Yarn and merino handspun

This looks ridiculously luxurious:

…and it is! It’s the milk protein fiber I was writing about in the last post. Here is the tiny ball I spun on my drop spindle:

It was slippery and silky to spin, and the individual fibers were so fine and slick it was a challenge to keep control of it all. I am looking forward to spinning a larger amount of it on my spinning wheel. In fact, I have merino singles on a bobbin, maybe I’ll ply some with this little ball of milk fiber. If you’ve spun this fiber before, please let me know if you have any tips.

Now for a shot of colour! A small one, first. Lots of dove grey with streaks of pale blue, really pretty and soft:

This navajo 3-ply yarn was spun from fleece artist hand-dyed merino wool.

Something a little more bright – Purple and turquoise:

This yarn is also navajo 3-ply and was spun from fleece artist hand-dyed merino wool.

 

Fibres I like to spin with and South African Fine Handspun

I am so in love with spinning yarn. Here, it is raining. And like a spider, I’m spinning. This is a picture I took many months ago of webs in the rain on a bridge:

Recently, I purchased some South African Fine wool and spun up some small skeins of bulky weight yarns.

One 3-ply yarn using the navajo chain-ply method:

One 2-ply:

And one single:

This is a beautiful fiber to work with. It’s properties are in-between BFL and merino, and it is a nice balance of the good qualities of both of those fibers. The only downside to South African Fine wool is that I did find it slightly shed-y under circumstances where other fibers had not shed on me – at least not nearly to that extent.

I have been spinning lots of samples of different styles and weights of organic merino yarn. I absolutely love that spinning fiber, and it is available at my local fiber shop as combed top. Unfortunately, today they were out of stock and are now awaiting the spring shearing’s shipment which should come in soon (fingers crossed, I really want to get my hands on some more of that lovely stuff!)

As I couldn’t leave there empty-handed, I purchased some beautiful BFL (Blue Faced Leicester) to play around with. I have spun hand-dyed BFL before (and really enjoyed it) but have never spun it un-dyed – it is a beautiful off-white cream colour. Its texture is slightly less smooth then merino and it has a light, airy fluffiness to it. I can’t wait to start spinning it!

I also have some milk protein fiber that is (of course) a beautiful milky white colour. It is very shiny and smooth and drapes nicely like silk. Pictures of my experiments to come soon – I’m thinking of spinning a fine two-ply yarn with a strand of the milk yarn as one of the plies. If anyone has any tips for spinning milk let me know!