Yarn Pirate Shop →

Whoa, I made a lot of stuff this month! Want to see?

Weaving

I wove 2 scarves this month. For the top scarf I used Louet Gems sock yarn in “Ginger” for the warp and some handspun merino/tencel singles for the weft. For the bottom scarf I used Indigo Moon sock yarn for the warp and handspun merino for the weft. Both scarves came out to be about 8×60 inches. To finish the scarves I fulled them a bit and steam-pressed them with my iron. I’ve already sent the merino/tencel scarf to my sister. She loves it :). I’m keeping the other one for myself.

Weaving is getting easier. Warping the loom is still a pain in the butt. It takes me about 2 hours to make the warp and get it on the loom (down from 5 hours!). Once everything is all set up the weaving goes so fast. An hour or two and you’re done. It’s so much faster than knitting!

Spinning

I was a spinning maniac this month. I decided to try spinning during H’s morning naps. As you can see, it was a fabulous idea. These 6 skeins are some of my favorite yarns to date. Starting in the upper left corner we have a crazy rainbow-y scrap yarn from an Art Club Jumble Bag. I love spinning scrappy yarns. My Jumble Bag was sort of rainbow colored so I arranged the batts in that order and Navajo plied the yarn to keep the colors separate. I wound up with 150yd of worsted to chunky weight yarn. Next is a Totally Loaded batt from Terra Bella Spun. These batts have every bit of fiber and fluff imaginable. I can’t get enough of them. They’re like crack for spinners! Next up is some gorgeous Yarn Wench merino in “Mahogany Peacock”. More on that a bit later…

Aaah. That beautiful skein in the lower left corner. THAT is my pride and joy (of yarn). A few weeks ago I had this crazy idea to incorporate gemstones into my spinning. I saw this beautiful Terra Bella battand knew immediately that I wanted to ply it with a string of freshwater pearls. Which is exactly what I did. I think it deserves a picture all on it’s own, don’t you?

My precious. It’s 44yd of bulky weight awesomeness with 65 natural freshwater pearls plied randomly throughout. Ok, back to my final 2 skeins. The next skein up there is from this amazing batt from Gaslight Dyeworks. It was an Arrested Development themed batt. How could I resist? It was really fun to spin. I loved the little pieces of shredded denim. My final skein is some Zen String superwash merino in “Hopi”. I spun it into a 2-ply sock yarn. I really want a pair of handspun socks. I don’t know if I can subject this beautiful yarn to my feet though. I don’t think they deserve such lovely yarn.

That was a lot of spinning, right? But I’m not done yet. I also knit a lot of stuff this month.

Knitting

Ok, so you’ve seen my silly baby hats already. I won’t repeat the details for those projects; you can find them here and here.

I knit H a new pair of longies earlier in the month. I swore off knitting any new longies for him once he started crawling. Army crawling trashes longies, and army crawling on a sisal rug REALLY trashes longies. He gave up army crawling for the more traditional cross-crawling in December so I decided to cast on for some Belladonna Designs longies.

Details:

Pattern: Belladonna Designs Options
Size: XL, baby!
Yarn: 2 skeins of Zen String Ahisma (rav link). “Williamette”. Left over Malabrigo for the trim.
Needles: size 9 addis. magic looped the whole thing.
Mods: well, the pattern is customizable so i customized it (in theory) to H’s measurements. As you can see in the photo, the butt is pretty saggy. I did 4 sets of short rows but I wish I would have done a few more to prevent saggy butt. Next time. Next time.

Finally, I turned my big skein of Mahogany Peacock into a shawl. I liked the shawl I knit for my grandma so much I decided to make one for myself.

Details:

Fiber- Yarn Wench merino, “Mahogany Peacock”, 9.25 oz
Spun- 240 yd of Bulky 2-ply.
Pattern- Simple Yet Effective Shawl
Needles- size 13 circs.
Mods- None, except I ran a bit short of yarn and used some leftover black wool. I like the dark, solid color along the edges.
Ravel it.

Whew. It was an unusually crafty month for me! Have a great weekend :).