Remember Lucy Ewe? She's a star!

Remember Lucy? (See her here.) She's a star -- see her photo in the Summer 2007 edition of the US Spinning magazine, Spin Off, page 13, top left of the gallery of Estonian sheep puppets gallery.  ;)

On the wheel at the moment

I've been busy showing you the fruit of my wheel, but have neglected to show you a picture of the wheel. Here is it, in all it's glory: a maple Lendrum folding castle wheel. And, a close up of what I'm currently spinning (definitely, not too much contrast - nice rich color)

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And, one other fun thing! One of my Bitch and Bitch group buddies (we are honoring the Stitch and Bitch copyright controversy, and using an alternate term ;), Michelle B., has been making some very fun friends and they are for sale. Here is a peek at Sparkle:


She will have a host of other friends available for you at Festival at Mount Si in North Bend, WA this summer. (August 10-12)

It seemed like a good idea at the time...

Remember this roving?

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It became this painful, too TOO much contrast yarn -- the very definition of "barber-pole" yarn:


And, blue overdye, once again to the rescue (yes, the yarn below is in fact, the same yarn as the yarn above!)


In my world, blue fixes almost everything!

This week: work in progress

The yarn that I overdyed last week (here) did not become a hat as planned, it's now a man-scarf. Beautiful, chunky, rich looking. Yarn on the left of first photo is the overdyed yarn from last week. Yarn on the right of same photo is a Manos yarn of similar weight. Completed scarf, photo on the right. As always, click the photo for big.

 

Pattern is inspired by Brooklyn Tweed (he's been doing a lot of inspiring lately...) A simple K1,P1 rib with alternating yarn every 2 rows. On second row, slip first and last stitch purlwise. Lays flat, is the same on both sides. Lovely.

A close up of the lovely yarn for all you true fiber junkies:



PS: Confession. The blue yarn (left, first photo) is almost navy with hints of red/purple in it. I used a somewhat lighter picture last week to indicate the colors in the yarn...if you read regularly, the shots above are a better representation of the two colorways in the yarns.

Roving to Yarn Transformation: I'll Take Two Olives

Space-dyed Merino roving becomes


Triple Ply Yarn (Navajo Style) - 160 yards, just under worsted weight

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First Self Striping Test - did the overdye fix it? Too soon to tell

After I created my first warping board for self striping yarn, I wrapped two skeins on to it, and proceeded to dye with fiber reactive dye. Turns out, this type of dye is not optimal for protein fiber, of which the two skeins were 100%  alpaca. The color happened, but lots of dye was wasted (it doesn't exhaust well.) The colors were totally circus colors (nothing wrong with that mind you...) But, I'm past my circus days, so I overdyed it this weekend. Here is the result...although the jury is still out on it, so the verdict is not known as to whether this will be a good looking project. Overdyed with pale blue. So, maybe overdyeing does not fix all.


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Nothing that a little overdye won't fix

Bought a skein of orange/red/yellow yarn a while back. Got it home, swatched it up and - Yuck, the yarn was underdyed, in that the colors were desaturated and I asked myself "Why did I buy this?" No problem, nothin' that a little overdye can't fix. Overdyed with blue, now sophisticated and waiting to be a hat.

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