a little bit of everything

So a little free time this morning, the youngest is to her playgroup, and the eldest is in school. I could start on ironing or cleaning, but somehow that feels as a waste of those 2 hours... so i better write a new blog to show you what i've been up to.

Last week was filled with all sorts of things, on tuesday there was a big fabric market overhere. And i have a wonderfull old chair, my mom got from a beautifull hotel. I found an older picture online of a bedroom in the hotel with  chairs like mine! I love this style chairs, and they are really comfy!

Once before i changed the fabric on the chair, but our cat decided it was the perfect place for his claws.... so on the fabric market there was a man selling last years collection for 10 euro's per meter.
I preferred a flower design, but that wasn't for sale. So i finally choose something else with a little help from my youngest. And it took a little time and mussle power...

but now the chair looks great again... untill i will find the most beautifull floral fabric.. and yes we do need to tell the cat he can't put his claws in it again. But luckely i have 2 little volunteers who are very keen on telling hem NO!!

I also did some spinning. A little while ago i got an order in with nunoco, a beautifull etsy shop filled with batts and blends in amazing colors!!
They also sell harmony packs, color themed, filled with tops, silk noil, silks, blends, firestar. Perfect for playing with blendingboards or carders.

I orderd a harmony pack in the colorway mizzle. It contains soft purples, grey, magenta, and also a linen blend.

 

 

the right one on the picture, the left one is a rockpool colorway merino pack.

 

So one night i spend with my blendingboard making rolags. And after that started spinning. I used the spindles my dad made me.

 

 

I tried to spin a bit thicker, not really worked out..

So i ended up with a big plying ball, i don't enjoy plying on spindles at all, so i got my spinningwheel.

After plying i decided it was still to thin for what i wanted so i started knitting with 2 strands.... what i was knitting? Well somehow i managed to wash both of my handspun hats in the washingmachine, they probably played hide and seek in the dirty laundery, or they were helped by a little 3 year old?
Anyway i got 2 warm winter hats which probably will fitt one of the dolls in this house....
So i'm knitting a new hat :) very warm and soft and long enough to cover my ears :)

And i really like, but i'm not sure which side i like best....

So goes for the cardigan i'm knitting, i'm always more of the stockinette knitside, but this time i think i like the inside better...

 

 

Yesterday the girls and i were enjoying some crafty time with polymer clay, the eldest made beads and the youngest made some ''dolls''. I however made some new spindles. Just simple ones made of a short double pointed knitting needle and a piece of clay. They spin very well!

 So last night i started on a batt from nunoco. A so called batt dropping, i really like those. You never know what you're going to get, they are made from leftover bits and pieces. And suprises in the mail are always great fun! I really like this one, black wool fiber mixed with soysilk and silk noils!

coming weeks i'm going to make 2 packages, in about 2,5 weeks the annual meet of the dutch spinners group is taking place. It's actually a whole weekend, but i'm only going on saturday. A wonderfull day filled with fiber, spinningwheels, workshops, a market and offcourse lots of spinningfriends!

And with a little group we're doing a fiberswap. You make a package with 4x25 (or 5x20 grams) samples of different fibers and you'll recieve a similar package of someone else. Great fun to try new fibers, and new colorways. A bit like phat fiber but in a free version.

So now i'm going to drink a cup of tea... hopeing you'll have a wonderfull day!!

dyeing wool with reed flowers

A little while ago i was reading a topic in a natural dyeing group on ravelry. Someone from Sweden or Finland (if i remember correctly) showed a picture with 3 skeins, all dyed naturally. There was a  beautifull green one. She said she dyed it with reed flowers.   There aren't much ways to get green with plants, or you''ll need indigo or woad and overdye a yellow.

Common reed has red ''flowers''

So a few days later my girls and i took a walk, and while i cut off loads of reed flowers, the girls had an amazing time catching lots of small frogs and toads in the grass beside the pond.
They had more then 20!!!

At home i got my dyeing pan and put in the flowers... boiled them for a while.

 

 

The dyebad turned a dark reddish purple... a bit like red wine :)

 

 

 

 

after cooling it,  i added alum and roving and heated it again.  Actually the next day i put the flowers, fiber and alum all at once in the pan. Brought it to boil, and that worked just as good! Yep i'm actually a very lazy natural dyer ;)

I played a bit afterwards. Putting some pieces of fiber into a rusty nails in water afterbath, and other pieces in a ammonium afterbath. The last mentioned turned the fiber bright green!!!

The hardest part of it all was getting the greens show up right in de pictures... almost impossible!! 

So i had to play a bit with a photo edit app to show the greens as i see them.

offcourse i started spinning as soon as they were dry!

 



Allready have plans to knit a top with these yarns. But first i have a lot more spinning to do!



 great bowl isn't it! I found it during our summerholiday, the town we stayed had a shop where people could rent a table and sell stuff they made or didn't need anymore. So much fun, from fresh baked bread and jams to clothes and toys, books...  on the last day i found this wooden bowl. I'm not sure what kind of wood it is, but i loved the spalted pattern. Spalting in wood is discoloration made by fungi.

All this little skeins of handspun just scream to be to be knittend, but i really want to spin everything before a start knitting.

This reminds me of a moment on a big knitting event a few years ago, there was a booth that sold packages with different skeins of naturally dyed yarn. i LOVED them!!
 But back then i thought they were very expensive.... little did i know back then. But i never could have imagned dyeing such skeins myself one day :)


Enjoy your day!!

big box

Yesterday a big box arrived....

 



Getting parcels in the mail is always exciting, but this BIG box really made everyone in the house interested! What was in there? My husband knows me well enough, but the girls were really curious!

Here's a hint...

when you now are saying wool, you're quite right!

After last blog i wrote i went on a fleece search, i asked around, found a few webshops. But it is a bit tricky (oh my tricky... that reminds me of tricky woo of james herriot :) ) to buy a fleece online, without seeing the fleece yourself.  What a good fleece in someone's opinion is could be for me a dirty felted full of vegetable matter fleece..

But finally i found a man who has real passion for his sheep, and it was a breed i never heard about or spun for that matter.

He has Kerry Hill sheep, he brought his sheep 22 years ago to the Netherlands himself.

He was willing to send me two fleeces, very cheap only € 4,50 for a fleece.

 

 

 

 

 

This wool is very soft!! The only other fleeces i have bought were texelaar, swifter and clun forest. And this is so different, not coarse at all.

 

Today was a warm windy day, so with my two helpers we searched the fleece. Oh look there are my lesser celandine, i love this plant, vibrant green leaves and happy yellow flowers, they don't open when it's cloudy and grey, but when the sun shines they open as far as they can!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

my oldest loves the feeling of unwashed fleece! She also likes the smell.

But she also asked i we could wash part of the fleeces today. Offcourse we could! I filled a box with hot water with a bit of soap.

 

 

 



Look what a great helpers i have!!

 

After washing we used the fence of our '' guinea pigs and rabbit play outside space'' to hang the wool to dry...

 

 

 





 

 

The rest of the afternoon we spend making gigant bubbles, so easy to make and so much fun to do!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

tonight i used my handcarders to card a few bits of fiber... oooh my it's so soft and bouncy!! I'm really looking forward spinning this!
But that's a problem.... i still have a projects going on...  first my summer shawl of the KAL at the dutchwooldiva group on ravelry. And offcourse my cardigan i'm knitting of the handspun swifterlamb wool, i have to do lots of spinning and knitting before that's finished.... and i'm not good with multiple wips..

now i'm wondering i haven't showed my cardigan on here yet. I will try to do it soon, but now it's time for bed.

Bye!

 

 









mary had a little lamb...

Hi everyone,  i do hope you all have had a wonderfull weekend.

Last week i was reading the blog of a ravelry friend, she has a special way with words and it's a real pleasure to read about everything she does! And she inspired me!

Last week i went to bed a bit early and decided to look around her blog for a bit. She was working with a raw fleece. And suddenly there and then i decided that the next morning i wanted to get my lambsfleece. Well it was way past my bedtime by then...

The fleece was stached in a closet next to the laundry machine. So ''getting the bag out'' involved a lot of arm twisting, getting stuck twice. But finally i got it!

Last year i bought this fleece, from a alpaca farm in the neighbourhood. They had an advertisement for raw swifter lambsfleece.

Quite cheap (oh my i actually wrote sheep instead of cheap, sounds almost the same, made me giggle)  so i placed an order for 2 kilo's i think.

When it arrived i spend some nice time in the garden with my oldest looking trough the fleece, sorting the short bits and poo bits out, there was actually not much of poo in it.
After sorting i put it in bags and forgot a bit about it.



But now i've got a big fill bag next to my chair, my louet hand carders, which where a present from my grandmothers sister,

 

 

 and i made little fluffy clouds of unwashed raw fleece.

 

And i gave it my best shot, first time spinning woolen, so you have a little fluffy cloud in your hand, and when the twist gets in you pull your arm backwords to create a single. I like the technique, it goves a bouncy yarn, it's a quick way of spinning. But in my case i have little control over my single.

I do like neat thin singles, and now it has more bumps and lumps... also due to the fact it's raw wool with a very short length.
I guess most locks are about 4 cm's or shorter..

But i do enjoy this spinning, and i want to knit a cardigan from it. But first i want to dye the yarn. I actually planned on getting some foodcoloring last saturday, but after a night of hardly any sleep i decided on a slow day with not to much activity. To bad because this afternoon i did had time to dye yarn, i actually was a bit frustrated with myself, wanting to dye and no dye in the house, or vinegar ;)
So now  my spun yarn is still white... i hope to change that tommorow!! I already have spun and plied 4 skeins.

 But i do enjoy this spinning project, so i defenitely want another fleece, but where to find one? If anyone knows a good shop or has a fleece or part of a fleece for sale?? Please let me know!

more spindles....

Monday i told about my dad, he is really getting into the whole woodturning thing. He has loads of tools, which makes woodworking a lot easyer. All i own is a saw and a hammer and a couple of screwdrivers.

I shows him some pictures of spindles. And he thought i he could make spindles which have wood combinations for the whorls.
He glued multiple types of wood together and then turned them into spindles, and i really have to say he has done an amazing job!!!

He made me 3 spindles, 2 light ones, and one a bit heavier. They all spin great, no problem with the balance.

I can't tell you all the different kinds of woods he used in the spindles, but i do recognise oak, cherry and beech! 


Here we go, number one, a slightly heavier spindle, oak cherry and a shaft is beech. Spins like a dream. Very fine single noticable on the shaft. 
I really like the shape of this spindle!

oh in case you're wondering the fiber is from the Enchanted Knoll Farm, it's a merino tussahsilk blend, in the colorway cleopatra. Supersoft and a delight to spin it!! I got it from a friend from ravelry!

Here are some more pictures. I do say we just got a new camera, and we don't get along very well yet. It's very different from my old one... all the pictures were made at the same time... although the pictures don't show that!

The second spindle, this is a very light and very fast spinner, with a little beehive whorl, it's made out of 5 different sorts of wood. Again cherry and oak and beech.
I really like the fast spin on this one!!

woohoo that fiber really pops off the screen, doens't it? I got it from another ravelry friend Marvelknits, we are both in a fiberswap group.
The idea behind the group is, you have in the USA the phatfiber box, in the U.K you have the fiberholics box. Both are great, but add the shippingcosts and from the USA the possible extra custom fees, those are quite expensive bits of fiber. So i started a small group on ravelry, and we now did 2 rounds. Everybody tells how many packages they want to make with 4x25 grams or 5x 20 grams, and then the swapping begins. Batts, top, roving, rolags everything can be in there. The last time was great fun because we were all present on the annual day of the spinning guild here in the Netherlands. So we all recieved great presents.  one of mine was this fiber. Something i would never buy, due to the neon colors. But i must admit, i really like it!!! It's so much fun spinning those bright and happy colors, with cool colors changes. And those sparkles make it even more fun! I'm guessing it's BFL.
It's dyed by another ravelista, her etsy shop is no longer open, so i can't link her.



But oh wait i was supposed to show you the spindles...

 

 

 

 



And last but not least, a no fuss spindle, with a good balance, nice woodgrain in the shaft. Also a light spindle, just how i like them!!



I'd say my dad has found a good new hobby as spindlemaker!! And i can tell you he is planning to make so more with tulipwood!! I will keep you posted!