My daughter loves pink. I have a motley crew of yarns with which I will knit her a new hat. The one on the left is hand dyed (using kool-aid) romney. It's overspun I think. It's a little stiff. The center one is spun from a batt by artclub. It's called "My Little Pony". The one on the far right is also from that batt. But here's the thing. I mixed some of my own hand dyed targhee in with that batt to extend it a bit. So the small skein on the right is mostly my own targhee. We'll see how these mix together. Should be a pretty wild hat in the end!

Did you know you can design your own fabric and have it printed over at spoonflower? And they also carry their favorite fabrics at their Etsy shop.

Think of the possibilities: quilt cheater cloth, wall art, dining room chair covers, a dress for your favorite little girl, dolls...

I have all these small skeins of handspun yarn. I bought a scrap bag from vedablis a long time ago. It was so fun to spin all the different fibers! They turned out so beautifully but there's such a small amount of each color. I decided to make myself a new pair of mittens mixing stripes of my handspun with a pretty blue commercial yarn.

They turned out great but couldn't hold up to the freezing cold weather lately. So I've since added a little fleece liner. Now they are perfect.

I made these mittens for a coworker. She has horses and loves to ride. Her fingers are freezing at work. I needed a project. Perfect combination. :)

Well, I managed to do one bit of decorating. I made some garland out of construction paper for decorating the kids' chairs! I just stapled the pieces of paper to yarn. It wasn't perfect but it looked cute! Next year I'll start earlier and do them up with fabric but these turned out way better than I could have imagined. We had a wonderful Christmas filled with lots of family time and play.

Check out this garland on Whip Up. I really need to get some candy and make these. Don't know yet if the late Christmas will be celebrated at my house but if it is....oh man am I going to hang these everywhere! These would also be cute to make for a birthday party. You could make necklaces to give to the party-goers as favors.

The deadline for on-time Christmas delivery has passed. I woke up this morning and thought maybe I would just be done all together with my shop. I've taken all my items down and called it quits. I feel good about this decision. I am so loving my new teaching job and when I'm home with my kids I don't want to be thinking about things I need to ship or finish knitting. But, I feel a little sad, too. Selling on Etsy was really fun!

Yesterday was the last day of school before Christmas break. I brought some fiber and my drop spindle to school and taught some kids how to spin. They seemed so excited! A couple seem like they were going to ask for fibers and spindles for Christmas. Very cute.

So, it looks like I'll be closing the shop on New Year's Eve. Since I've gone back to teaching, I just want to spend all my energy on crafting for myself and my family. I have been making lots of fun things and I try to craft a little each day. But come Dec. 31st everything will be removed from my shop. There's a chance I'll want to start selling again this summer when I won't be teaching. But until then it's just crafty crafty around the house for people I know!

Yet another skein of yarn to share with you on this day-o-yarn photos! This came from a Totally Loaded batt from Terrabellaspun (who else?) It is so wild! This was really fun to spin. There are so many bits and pieces of good stuff in it. I originally thought it might make good fingerless mittens (before I spun it) but now I see there are too many bobbles and thingies. I think maybe it should be a scarflette.

Here's a sweater I designed for my daughter. It's spun from targhee wool (awesome - get some!) and dyed with kool-aid. My daughter helped me make it and she loves to wear it. I just ordered more targhee because it's the best!

Here's a scarf I knit for myself out of a lone skein in my stash. This yarn is sheep shop yarn. It's silk and wool. I love my scarf! Pattern here. It's really fun to knit and I think I'll make another one.

And here's my new hat! You could knit one, too with this pattern.

I made this yarn from more terrabellaspun fiber. I plied it with black sewing thread. What do you think? I love it. It's pretty fragile, though. I've been trying to design a cowl out of it. But it's taking a lot of ripping out and starting over again. I'm currently working on a pair of mittens and when they are done I'm going to try this yarn again.

I can't believe how long it's been since I posted to this blog! School started (I'm back to full-time teaching) and crafting has slowed down. The last time I was teaching I didn't craft at all so I'm happy to say that I carve out time most days for a wee bit of crafting. I've been mostly spinning and knitting.

This yarn was spun using hand painted roving. I love how it turned out. It's merino but I'm not sure it's soft enough for a scarf. I might make some fingerless mittens out of it. One of my schools is really cold and my computer is by the window.

This is spun from a batt I bought from terrabellaspun (she's my fiber fix). It was called Jalapeno. I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's an exciting skein but it's not really my style.

This is another skein from terrabellaspun fiber. I love it! It's singles so it really shows off the swirly colors. Don't know what I'll knit this one up into either. Any ideas?

And this pretty skein is made from a batt I bought from shunklies. It's alpaca and merino. It's heaven.