Hand-spun Yarn

Halloween at the Farm, Alpaca spin Turned into Hat and New Hats for Warmth Start

/ LDSVenus / 10 Comments

This was the Halloween celebration at the farm this past Saturday :). The first two pictures are some of his decorations, then there are several pictures of the alpacas wearing costumes, lol, some of them had trouble leaving them on! You can see the male behind the fence with a bow tie and little Apollo also has a tie on, some of the females were wearing hats. Libby the llama said, nope! They will be decked out at Christmas too :).

The next to the last picture is some sport weight hand spun I turned into a hat for my friend that gave me the smaller wheel that I use at the farm during alpaca days to show spinning to the people who come out to enjoy the alpacas as a thank you. It’s a paid for pattern, Husband Request Hat on Ravelry. I changed it a little so I made it a little longer and knit 4 purl 2 so it’s a little more stretchy, but I wasn’t sure of his head measurements and I am not a fan of the hats that fit skin tight so I thought this was the best way to go. Hope it fits him :P.

The last picture is the new hat I’m working on with the Hats for Warmth project I work on for our local homeless shelter. This will be hat number 5 this year, one more after this and I will send them off to the shelter. I am using a #6 16″ circular needle and I Love This Yarn in the print color #red tweed. It’s not really a tweed, it’s a darker red with black speckles on it, LOL, but it is pretty. I am enjoying knitting it.

Camel/Red Eri Silk Update and New Fiber Purchase

/ LDSVenus / 8 Comments

This is so soft to spin, the silk is a long staple but the camel is very short so I imagine the camel might make a slight halo on the finished yarn. Finished the 1st bobbin and started the 2nd bobbin, but haven’t been able to spin on it very much, will spin on it tomorrow, I’m excited to see how it looks when it’s finished and I’m hoping it will be a sport weight. The colors are never correct on my picture on the reds, this is actually looks like a very light orange on my screen, but it’s a bit brighter than shows on my screen. Not sure if it’s my camera or my computer screen.

Opps I might have bought another fiber to spin, it’s called Smooth Bark (the color looks true) from Camaj Fiber Arts, but to be honest I bought it last month and just didn’t get to put it in on my blog. I’m trying to stick with no more new fiber going forward until I’ve spun down some of my deep stash fiber, :D, but we can see how that is going. This is very soft also, but it should be since it’s 40% superfine merino, 20% alpaca, 20% camel and 20% mulberry silk. This shop frequently has very good sales on their fiber. I was thinking it would be the next spin, but I promised myself that if I spin a new fiber, I would also spin a deep stash fiber. So when I am finished with the camel/red Eri silk, I will go diving in my deep stash because I must love them, I bought them :P. Maybe I can find something sparkly or put sparkles on it with my drum carder :).

Hope you all are well, and surviving the hot summer we are all having, just think, Fall will be here in a month or so :).

Tour de Fleece Update and Weather

/ LDSVenus / 14 Comments

1st picture is my progress on the 50/50 camel/red Eri silk for days 16 – 18. This is spinning faster than I thought, I’m around 1/2 finished on the 1st bobbin. Because the silk is very slippery, even tho the camel being soft and short would normally require a very short draw to spin, the length and slippery nature of the silk allows me to draw it out more than a short draw but not a long draw, so it is going faster than I estimated. I love the softness of the fiber as I spin it. I’m trying to not let it be very thin, tho it would be easy to do that, because this is a gift for my previous sister in law, who I feel pretty close to. She has a medical disorder that makes it harder now with tremors to handle smaller things, so I thought if this yarn is more of a heavy fingering or light sport weight maybe she could still knit something with it, and if not, she can just feel the softness of this fiber, which is amazing. I will definitely have to get more of this fiber when Camaj Fiber Arts gets more in! Post Script, my ophthalmologist loved the skein of yarn and said she had had a very hard last couple of days and that this skein of yarn had just made her day! Giving is a blessing for the receiver and the giver :).

Well today was very nice in the upper middle 80’s and less humidity, however you can see where our weather is headed starting tomorrow though next Tuesday. The blue picture is the normal temps and the red one is with the heat index (the dew point and humidity level will be high.) I will be staying inside most of the time. Sunday I will go to church but it’s an air conditioned building and I have a/c in the car so I should be ok :P. Monday however, I’m not going anywhere. August is normally our hottest month of the year, so I shudder to think what next month will be like. Well actually I can imagine, 2 years ago when my daughter had an outdoor wedding in August, it was 118 with the heat index (that’s abnormally and obnoxiously hot for here), yeah, everyone was melting! Told her if I melted she could pick me up with a stick and a spoon and carry me inside to the reception :P. Everyone stay safe!!

Tour de Fleece 2025 update

/ LDSVenus / 6 Comments

The first 3 pictures are from day 14. The 1st picture is what was left from plying, I’d say I did pretty well not having a lot left over! The next picture is the open skein after washing before twisting it up in to a skein, I measured 252 yards, which should be a DK weight for 97 grams.  This was BFL-Corriedale cross 64%, Alpaca 27% and Sari Silk waste 9%. I have to say that the blue bled in the water when I washed it, so I rinsed it in vinegar (it helps to set the color), but nope it bled in that water too. So I rinsed it a 3rd time using a conditioner for the fiber, and there was still some bleeding in the water. I’ll have to tell her to make sure that she doesn’t hand wash it with anything else until the blue is done bleeding :(. A friend told me blue is hard to set, and so it is! I was very pleased because the skein was very balanced, no twisting to one side when held up in the open skein, just hung there straight up and down :). This skein, except for the blue not staying put in the yarn :P, was a pleasant spin and great looking yarn. You can enlarge the pictures by clicking on them.

The last 2 pictures are the camel/red eri silk, day 15. I weighed it and it was about 120 grams, so I split it into two 51grams balls, I just have one in the picture. The 2nd picture in the start of the spin. It is much thinner than the skein above, which I assumed it would be, both of those fibers spin thin. But this spin is going to take a bit longer because it takes longer to get the same amount of fiber on the bobbin because it’s thinner. I am going to guess that this will end up being a fingering weight. I will use the left over fiber, after dividing it, to card on my drum carder with other fibers for some fun batts. I will have to spin more than 30 min a day on this fiber to get anywhere close to being done by the end of the Tour de Fleece! I’ll see how far I get with 45 min or maybe bump it up to 1 hr.

The weather yesterday was ok in the lower 80’s but today is supposed to be 89, and 92 on Wed and 91 on Thursday, and up to 101 with the heat index and the muggy meter said sweltering. Sigh, and next month is our hottest month of the summer, that’s a bit scary!

Tour de Fleece Update, 2nd Bobbin 2025

/ LDSVenus / 9 Comments

This is days 7, 8, 9 (a rest day) and 10, so only 3 days of spinning. I’m closer to having the 2nd bobbin done and then plying, but not there yet :P. I think maybe 3 more days. As long as it’s done by the end of the week I’m ok because it’s going somewhere next week. Then I will start spinning that beautiful camel and red Eri silk. I generally let the singles on the bobbin rest for 24 hrs before plying when I finish to let them settle. So for that next day after I finish the bobbin I will work on some alpaca I have on my Rick Reeves wheel, I’ll insert a picture when I spin on it. That alpaca, from a cria (baby alpaca), is like butter, it’s so soft and spins much faster than the wool I’m spinning now. Smoother fibers means more glide as you spin so it goes faster.

My new Tour de Fleece tee came in, isn’t that just too cute! She always comes up with some cute stuff! Love that this one was in color, now I can be obnoxious with “I’m a spinner” when I go shopping, lol. If anyone wants one you can get it at Fiber Love Diary‘s web site. I also bought a sticker with that same design to go on a 32 oz glass I bought from her last year, that had last years sticker on it. I think I can get two more stickers on it for the next two Tour de Fleeces, lol. For my fellow spinners, she also has spinning fiber!

Our weather is up and down temp wise and storms coming in tomorrow, typical summer weather. Grateful for air conditioning!

Tour de Fleece Update

/ LDSVenus / 2 Comments

The first picture is day 5. I finished the first bobbin (sitting on the top of my wheel) and started the 2nd bobbin, the one behind it. The 2nd picture is day 6, progress on bobbin 2 :). My hope is that I will have both bobbins finished by the middle of next week and plied. I’m spinning this yarn for my eye doctor because she’s awesome ;). I have 48 grams of singles on the 1st bobbin, and I weighed out 48 grams of roving to spin for the 2nd bobbin. I weighed the bobbins a few years ago and wrote the weight of the bobbin on the side in magic marker, that way I can just weigh the bobbin filled with singles and then subtract the weight of the bobbin from the final weight and I will have the weight of the singles. Who knew math would actually come in handy and the high school math teacher was actually right! Kudos to all my math teachers :). Hopefully that will make it so I don’t have a lot of left over singles on one of the bobbins when the two bobbins are plied together. That will also depend on if I get the singles similar in diameter (thin-ness or thickness). We will see. I think this will be maybe a heavy sport weight, but less than DK (double knit weight).

Tour de Fleece Days 1 -4

/ LDSVenus / 4 Comments

The first picture is day 1 and 2, tho some of that was already on the bobbin :P. The 2nd picture is day 3 and 4. I have been spinning about 30 minutes a day, I should be finished with this bobbin and ready to start the 2nd bobbin tomorrow :).

Tour de Fleece Update & More Mail

/ LDSVenus / 5 Comments

Almost finished with the 2nd bobbin, then the plying can begin! More mail too, the Tour de Fleece tee shirt arrived so now I can spin with a 2024 Tour de Fleece shirt (I need to wash it, it’s bit wrinkled) :). I try to get one for the current year each year. And I may have ordered some Angora rabbit fur to blend with some wool :). It was 2.5 oz, that is a lot of rabbit fur and oh so soft!

We will be having a heat wave Saturday through Monday. Low 90’s and with the humidity and dew point it is suppose to be upper 90’s to 102, sweltering I believe they said. Stay cool everyone, I’ll be inside being grateful for the guy that invented the air conditioner :).

Tour de Fleece Update and Mail

/ LDSVenus / 11 Comments

I’m about 1/2 way finished with the 2nd bobbin, have missed a few days, hate when life gets in the way of stuff you’d rather be doing. But I’ll be working on catching up and spinning on the riders days off to rest.

2nd picture: I may have accidently purchased something I saw on Etsy, from Friends in Fiber, it was shipped quickly and is gorgeous. I promised myself I wouldn’t buy anymore fiber until I got some of the older things I have spun up. Fail :P. Hopefully I won’t have any more failures, but this was so pretty. Guess I need to quit looking until I have some older stuff spun ;). I am S.A.B.L.E. in fiber (stands for Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy), in the meantime I will leave it out to look at until I have at least one older fiber off the wheel :). Oh, the little piece of fiber at the top of this roving was a sample that was sent with this and the little gold thing is a beautiful charm of a tree of life, so pretty! I will be making this into a stitch marker or a progress keeper. Will show it off when I get it made :).

In the mean time enjoy your knitting or spinning or whatever hobby keeps you busy and happy :).

More Snow, A Blizzard, Spinning and Some Roving

/ LDSVenus / 11 Comments

Yeah, more snow. Started early this morning about 1am and should be stopping soon, looks like about 4 inches extra on top of the other snow, so total about a foot of snow? The winds have kicked up gusting to about 50 mph off and on and causing blizzard conditions until about noon tomorrow. We also get wind chills from now until Tuesday morning. I think the coldest will be down to -35 or -40 on Sunday night with the wind chill. Ok, it’s officially brrr.

On to nicer things :P. I am working on the Tweed Pop Rox color roving, it’s so pretty, not quite to the point yet that I need to make up my mind about how I want to ply it, but I’m getting there. The last picture is a roving I bought, oh my gosh maybe 10 to 12 years ago – a long time ago. I saw it and fell in love with it. It is 64% BLF-Corridale cross, 27% Alpaca and 9% Sari Silk waste (left over when the silk is processed that will give some texture to the yarn as I spin). You can see the black wool blended with I think the blue is Alpaca & green Sari Silk waste. I am trying to work on older fiber purchases that I bought because I loved it, to work my stash down a little. The Pop Rox color way was newer, but it was calling me to be spun :P. The After Midnight color way will be next :).

Stay inside and warm, it’s chilly out there!