Recent Entries

Every Kind of Craft now open!

Do you make crafts? Do you like to look at crafts? Would you like to get (or give) advice about crafts? All crafts are welcome. Share photos, stories about projects in progress, and connect with other crafty folks.

You are welcome to make your own posts, and this community will also do a monthly call for people to share what they are working on, or what they've seen which may be inspiring them. Images of projects old or new, completed or in progress are welcome, as are questions, tutorials and advice.

If you have any questions, ask them here!

spinning update

I thought I'd share my process a little bit. Spinning lace for me is a combination of two main challenges: the weight of the spindle plus cop and the speed of the spindle. So, even though supported spindle is giving me really good fine singles, I don't ply as fast as I like on the ones I have, so I'm still using a bigger drop spindle (and one with a metal tip) for the plying (which, in the end, needs to be supported anyway so I don't break the yarn). On the other hand, I find it makes no sense for me to chase for bigger cops of singles at this gauge - inevitably there will be a snarl and later, waste. Which is why I've turned to chain-plying - I get to do manageably sized cops, and I get to join the singles by more spinning rather than splicing or spit-splicing.

I thought I share because I feel like I'm not exactly doing something commonly shared. :) what's your respective processes?

anyway, yarn porn:

updated photo of my current plying spindle. and you know, the more i look at it, the more i'm tempted to call it 'sweetcorn'.

over in my meatspace blog, i also wrote a small post on weaving traditions thanks to my visit to my country's national textile museum, if you're interested.

laceweight handspun - the only thing i like to do

hiya! I just thought I should also add to more of the comm's activity. I've been spindling for just under 9 years now (whoa!) Because of my location, I've never managed to justify having a spinning wheel, not when toy spindles are so cheap...

But lately, I've gotten into supported spinning with a Russian spindle. I have always been a laceweight spinner (I just really like fine gauge yarns!), so I'm quite pleased I've managed to go even finer. Also, I've realised in some ways I'm really quite lazy, so I've started chain-plying my singles instead of spinning multiple cops and plying them together (partly also at the weight I'm doing, I find trying to guesstimate by weight still leaves a lot left to be Andean-plied).

So, just sharing some of my 2018 spins (only some, even at this age, i'm still mucking about with unfinished yarns). Sometimes I do feel my process is quite crazy, but on the whole they seem all right. Can you believe I'm spinning too much I hardly ever knit/crochet them? I just end up giving them away.

The green one is silk-merino (25:75), the purple/pink is 22micron merino, the white is merino-angora (50:50) which is from World of Wool and I'm gutted they've stopped stocking angora mixes, because it was so affordable and well-blended. I'm not sure about the yellow... it was given to me by a friend, lol. That one is just with a plain drop spindle (bottom-whorl).

my current spinning

I've been spinning on drop spindles for maybe a year and a half now? I'm getting to the point where I'm really into collecting new breed-specific fibers & trying to plan spins big enough to knit something with, as well as trying different techniques for consistency. Starting this jan, I'm trying to spin at least 15 minutes a day... there seems to be a hashtag/community thing for this on Instagram, but as I currently don't have a personal Instagram account I'm mostly just doing it for myself at this point. And look! I've been getting nice work done on 2/3 projects I currently have on spindles so far :)

blue/purple fiber spun onto a drop spindle

blue/purple fiber spun onto a drop spindle

a basket with a floral liner, filled with white fiber, a drop spindle, and a sample card

details for these spins can be found at their respective project pages on Ravelry - voidfish for the blue/purple and sea glass for the white - although I'm happy to talk about them more if people are curious!

anyone home?

Hi! I recently joined Dreamwidth, and it seems like this is the most recently active spinning community... which is still not all that recent. I'd love to try to be part of an active spinning community if anyone's still around (or if anyone can recommend where the activity's at now).

Spinning with bast

Does anyone do any spinning with plant fibers? I'm a novice (wool) spinner, but part of my interest in the craft is because of its ancient roots, including the fact that people have spun with hemp, flax and nettles. I know it sounds crazy, but I'd love to try spinning with some of the tall weeds in my garden. Is this a ridiculous idea?

hand towels

~claps~

handwoven

machine hemmed

and see those candy color stripes on the front one?

i spun that yarn, ya'll

oh yeah, uh huh( ~wiggles~ )

Current Mood: confused

Processing a fleece

I was just gifted about thirty minutes ago with a raw fleece about two hours from the sheep.

Help?

How do I process this rather smelly, greasy yet delightful gift?

this is my first use of my hand spun cotton singles

i would have chosen a better warp color, if i didn't hate warping so very very much (this grey was already on the loom for the blue dishtowels)

it was grand fun watching each new color strip appear ~claps~

there were definite under spun sections, and a few drifted apart having lost their will to be yarn. this is a particular issue with me and singles (generally, i'd solve this with plying two or more singles together). so now, i can pay more attention with the next batch of spinning - seems you really can't have too much twist for cotton

for the most part, this experiment rocked and i'm excited to both weave up the rest of the yarn already spun in this color way *and* to spin the next color (oranges/yellows/pinks)

if i run out of warp before i run out of enthusiasm for spinning my own cotton, i'll ponder a more neutral color for the next set of towels (mebbe something dark to set off all the lightly colored/muted hand spun?)

i spun cotton!

using the long draw technique

which was crazy hard to learn

am ridiculously pleased with myself

Some gorgeous handspun socks and a rant

Because I can't stop staring at this, and I think you should stare for a while, too:

These socks were knit by an online acquaintance of mine, out of her handspun yarn.

( And now I'm going to talk about how awesome they are in the form of a rant about the ways people talk about handspinning, because apparently this is what looking at beautiful handspun makes me think about. )

So, anyway. I don't have much of a solution, except: we need to see photos like this, and we need to stop diminishing ourselves by suggesting that this is not achievable, or that it's not normal, or that it's not what handspun "is."

Entry tags:

news

"Respect the Spindle" on mega-sale

Interweave Knits is offering the downloadable video edition of Abby Franquemont's Respect the Spindle for ten cents right now. According to this Rav thread, the price is good until next Tuesday, but I don't see documentation of that on the IK website.

This is not an endorsement of the video, its creators, or Interweave, and I am not affiliated with any of those parties, but I reckoned folks might be interested.

Entry tags:

tour de fleece

Tour de Fleece goals

Happy Tour de Fleece Eve!

Tomorrow kicks off three weeks of awesome spinning time. What goals have you set for yourself? What are you aiming to achieve? What do you hope to get out of your TdF work?

Entry tags:

tour de fleece

Le Tour de Fleece

We are three days out! It is not too late for Team [name of Dreamwidth team here] to form!

I'm referring to this version of Tour de Fleece, which is wildly active.

I will be spinning for TdF, and

rooibos will be joining me (not that she knows it yet). Hi, honey!

If we, the spinners of Dreamwidth, want to make this go, we should probably have a name so we can submit it to the TdF organizers. Suggestions? Interest?

Entry tags:

Tour de Fleece?

Hey all! Anyone potentially interested in a

spinning Tour de Fleece team? Well, "team" might not be the best description, maybe more like spinalong. For those who haven't done the Tour de Fleece before: it takes place during the Tour de France, and the idea is that you set yourself some kind of spinning goal and try to achieve it. The homepage has more info, although it hasn't yet been updated for this year's rules. I'm just feeling things out in advance. :)

Plying hack: teapots

I only have three bobbins, which really hurts my ability to have multiple projects on the wheel. To that end, I spend a lot of time thinking about clever work-arounds that are also fun and awesome. I'm also someone who likes having items that are multi-use to keep me low on the stuff scale so I have resisted buying a lazy kate or other very specific spinning sort of thing.

Sometimes, when I want to ply a project, I have zero free bobbins. Like today. So I wound the yarn off one bobbin and put that bobbin back on the wheel. Now, plying from two loose balls is a bit of a pain, what with them jumping and flying around. Lots of people sell boxes and things that you can pop your ball into to minimize the jumping, but I'm not keen to spend that money. I'm also not a tissue user (I switched to handkerchiefs for sustainability and style reasons.) so I don't have a tissue box sitting around. So what is small, lidded, and has a relatively narrow opening that can contain my ball of yarn as I ply?

If you read the subject line and guessed this is where the teapot comes in, you'd be right!

I popped the yarn in my (clean, dry) little teapot (which is very nearly this one, in a dark green), set the teapot on the floor at the correct angle, and plied my little heart out.

This was a great arrangement and it made use of things I already have and use in other parts of my life. (I would like to think it's also just the right amount of quirky.)

Spinning

Hi guys!

I just found out about this community through

pinesandmaples and she suggested that I post to drum up some interest! I'm in the middle of a project right now and I don't have decent pictures, but I just made these fingerless gloves for a friend out of my own handspun!

Anyone else want to share their recent projects?

Current Mood: curious

Tips for consistent spinning?

I'm an absolute newbie at spinning. Actually, I've only tried to spin my first bit of yarn three days ago.

My spinning-wheel is a single tread, bobbin lead and it's got a leather strip to tighten and release the tension (I'm sorry, I forgot the word for it in English, I'm Dutch), which I found second hand on a local sheep sheering festival. Anyway, like I said, I only just made my first bit of test yarn and it doesn't seem to be very convinced of its own state of yarn-ness. Bits of it are nice and thin and then it's thick and fluffy and back to lace-thin again. I understand that practice makes perfect, but I was hoping that people might be willing to share tips on how they get their yarn to be one weight and stick with it. It might help newbies (like me). Or any stories about your first spinning adventure?

Current Mood: cheerful

gauging interest

I was wondering if anyone'd be up for a fiber swap.

A Fiber Swap is an an event in which everyone involved finds or puts together a skein, or roving, or some set form of fiber (possibly around a theme) and sends it to another. It's a bit like Yuletide for knitters and spinners.

EDIT: Apparently, my poll-fu fails me. Please respond in comments.

Argh, what am I doing wrong?

So I've been trying my hand at spinning with a drop spindle. And first it was drafting that was kicking my butt. But I'm better at that now.

Now, it's my yarn . . . twisting up on itself if I'm not holding it straight. I thought it would work itself out in the plying, and it didn't. So my first handspun yarn is just a twisty, tangly mess. How do I get it to stop twisting up on itself, by itself?