Wensleydale boucle & beaded yarn

Here are two of my experiments:

1. A beaded yarn that I made from a commercial 2 ply & sewing thread (with beads strung on it). I tried it both counter clockwise & clockwise & didn’t like the twist either ways. Fortunately, because the sewing thread is a good color match, it doesn’t show how poorly it plied. I assume it won’t be very easy to knit with because you’d have to be careful of ‘spitting’. However the blue beads on this cranberry yarn look lovely. They are iridescent & look beautiful in the evening which leads me on to believe that I DO want to make a scarf out of this yarn.

Some time ago I’d plied a handspun single with small wooden beads & THAT turned out beautiful! I guess since it was a slightly overspun single, it plied beautifully with the sewing thread. That skein’s buried somewhere in my stash…

2. The boucle is made from Wensleydale. It has close to the stiffness mohair does (for the purpose of boucle) & turns out pretty soft! I was SO pleased. Let’s see…you spin one bobbin overspun clockwise & the other bobbin underspun counterclockwise. Then you use the underspun as the core & spin clockwise, pushing the overspun single with your hand occasionally to get the boucle. You need more yards of the overspun since it loops on itself to be able to use up all the underspun. WHEW!

The rusts, pinks & reds is a blend of mohair/wool/soy 60/20/20 silk that I bought. I spun & 2-plied it & later entered it in the FFF at Montpelier & won a 2nd on it.The white is a lace weight yarn I just finished spinning from a blend of wool/angora bunny/silk 60/20/20. It feels heavenly. There must be at least 800 yards in there. My right wrist hurts from the spinning.

Hand woven scarves.
I had been waiting for some daylight to take photos of these. So, finally, here they are.
The teal & red is a "Swedish Rose Path weave" (took me forever) in merino & a blend, the blue-yellow-rust is an "undulating twill" in cotton, rayon & wool. The other 2 (mohair & chenille) are plain weaves.

Dyed yarns in fall colors & naturals (& some not so natural)...
These are some of the yarns that I dyed before my trip to India. I'm getting ready to take them to the farmers market. I feel like dyeing some more but it's too cold out!

• The natural greys are Lincoln lamb spun from the fold & plied with sport weight merino.
• The off-whites are non dyed South African Fine whites spun single & 2 plied.
• The pinks are all South African Fine whites spun in different techniques - the pink on the extreme right is a 600 yard singles.
• The blues in the basket are a mix of hand dyed Alpaca & Merino.
• The lovely red, rusts, oranges & purples are hand dyed Alpaca.

My mother.
Camp Wadachi Wadi near Pune 5 years ago. She's sitting & embroidering as usual. She's wearing a shawl that a friend of hers swapped for one of her embroideries. What I love about this image is that she looks like a gypsy!
Her blog is http://creativeembroidery.blogspot.com/

Shawls & scarves

These are some of the scarves & shawls I wove. I swear never to weave mohair again or learn to do it better. My husband hacked up fur balls for days :(

The first 2 scarves are mohair with several combinations of wefts. They're the same warp but the wefts make them look so diffrent :)



















The shawl is a dark brown alpaca weft with the border of a lovely golden mohair/silk blend (which looks kinda yellow here). The rest of the weft are some handspuns & commercial yarns I had in shades of rusts & reds.

The pattern's from Marguerite Davison's book.

ACK!! It's late. Gotta turn in.

3 skeins

The skein on the left won a 3rd in the 'hand-painted' category at the FFF at Montpelier.
The one in the middle is a wrapped yarn. The core's a lovely yellow-orange that's not very visible here.
The one on the right is one of the skeins that I knitted the slubby scarf out of.

I spun this singles from South African Fine white roving that I dyed. Its about a 132 yards. For the longest time I didn't feel like spinning the roving because it didn't look too...well - appetising?
The yarn turned out delicious.

I wish I could take more photos of the things I made in daylight. But with fall on, that's not going to happen as much as I would like.

I'm off to India in a few days to see my family & friends. Can't wait!

This one reminds me of peacock feathers.



The scarf isn't quite so orange. Poor color correction.

Here are my prize winning babies from the VA State Fair 2005. Both the skeins were handspun (they won 1st & 2nd in that order). They were both dyed & spun by me. I still have to phtograph the other winners :)
The scarf is more recent. I knitted it out of hand-dyed, handspun.

Finally! I have my own blog spot.
Images of my adventures with yarn to follow soon...