"Mostly Harmless"

To celebrate International Towel Day, I have spun this very special yarn. The basic yarn is a wool/alpaca blend hand dyed is shades ranging from midnight blue to intergalactic black. Included in this are various other fibres, like sari silk, angelina and angora, representing stars, nebulae, planets, and the various other features an intrepid galactic hitchhiker might encounter on his travels. the singles have been plied together with the cassette tape of the BBC recording of the Primary Phase of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and of course, a towel.

Imagine, if you will, a hat knit from this material - you would always know where your towel is and therefore be in control of your life, and enjoy all the benefits of having a towel, and there are no known reports of anyone wearing such a hat ever being bothered by Vogon poetry. You would also be popular among your friends, and have a decent chance of being stood a round or two of Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters to share and enjoy.

This will be available for sale in Maggie"s Etsy shop.

More Art Yarn

Maggie is making more beautiful art yarn for her Etsy shop. This one has vintage fabrics, rick-rack, thread, handspun wool, and buttons!

For more details, go to her store!

A Bowl of Yarn

Maggie and Becky are joining forces in a fabulous online giveaway next week. At stake is this collection of goodies that includes a yarn bowl, a skein of handspun yarn, a pair of wooden knitting needles, and six handcrafted ceramic buttons. They asked me to photograph the prize - here are my images:

Look out for Facebook posts from Girl With A Sword Productions and Willow Avenue Pottery for details of how to enter the draw for this cool prize!

First Projects on the Columbine

Well, we finally got the Columbine up and running, much thanks to my good friend, John Fleeger. Because of the wheel's smaller diameter, it needs to be treadled a bit faster than other wheels, which is challenging for me as I have been trying hard recently to slow down. It does take a bit of getting used to, but we are becoming good friends now. Here are the first two projects I did on the wheel:

This is a bulky single (I only have one bobbin for the Columbine at the moment) made from "day's end" roving from High Prairie Fibers in eastern Iowa, it's a blend of wool, silk, mohair and angelina. The skein is 4 ounces (114 grams), 214 yards (196 metres).

This is sock yarn that I spun on the Babe, and plied on the Columbine. It's wool - we think it may be Corriedale - in natural colour. The skein is 8.65 ounces (245 grams), 1112 yards (1017 metres), and took about 24 hours to spin and four hours to ply.

Knitted Up!

Remember this spinning project? Well, at long last it's finished, and Maggie has turned this yarn into...

...these beautiful socks!

Spun Up

I have finished spinning Marianne's lovely green roving. I'm not sure what it will become, but I think it's really nice.

Being spun on the Schacht Ladybug...

...plied and skeined.

I took these pictures with the RB67.

In a spin

Here is my biggest "real" spinning project to date:
12 ozs "smoke" roving from High Prairie Fibers (80% Suffolk, 20% Mohair) + about 30 hours' work = 1379 yards of 2-ply yarn :)