Handmade Ryan Gosling

I love the blog Handmade Ryan Gosling.  It is hilarious!  My husband also loves it.  Today, he walked into our room holding my newest issue of Spin-off magazine and said this exact thing.  I couldn't help myself.  I had to make one of my own.

Hand spun

I made this yarn with my kids. They helped me card it with my hand cards and they helped spin my drop spindle (for the singles). They didn't help with the whole process but both of them helped out. Then, I plied two singles together using my spinning wheel.

I love how it turned out. I used it for the Hello Kitty dress and bow.

This fiber was originally purchased to be a part of a winter hat. But, upon further investigation I found it to be too itchy. Then my daughter and I read a book called "slow magic" and we carded some fiber. I still wanted to use this yarn for something more precious than a toy. But, my daughter wanted a toy.

I think knitters and spinners are inclined to place yarns on a heirarchy. And for some people hand spun yarn is the most precious of all yarns. Some people won't knit with it because they are scared. I had to rearrange my thinking in order to use it for a toy. It's hand dyed, hand washed, hand carded, hand spun yarn. And it made something very precious for my daughter.

New Yarn

This yarn will be knit into a winter hat for my son. I love how it turned out. I think it'll knit up into a really interesting fabric.

I have approximately 210 yards of it. It's BFL from cloudlover69. I bought it in May at the Shepherd's Harvest Festival. I was very pleased with the fiber and how it spun up! I'm sure I'll be buying more fiber from them in the future. They are having a sale this week! Time to stock up!

Slow Magic

We borrowed a book from the library the other day that my daughter was quite inspired by. The book is called Slow Magic and it's by Pipa Goodhart. It tells the story of creating wool to knit the girl a sweater. There is one illustration of the grandma and granddaughter carding wool. I told my own daughter that I had hand cards and asked if she'd like to try them. Then, my son had to try it too! It was really fun.

If you spin and / or knit your kids might really like this book.

Some crafty fun yesterday

Here's a sneaky duckling peeking out from behind the playground equipment.

I made this mug cake yesterday. It turned out pretty good! CAKE!

Milestone time!

BEHOLD! 590 yards of 2-ply sport weight (I think - I haven't calculated the wpi yet) hand dyed, hand spun yarn.

The colors aren't quite right. I tried photographing this yarn twice and just couldn't pick up the depth of color. No matter.

There's a lot of variation in this yarn. From the color to the size. I still think it'll knit up great into a scarf. I'm casting on today!

This yarn took me 6 weekends to make. I don't have a whole lot of free time but I squeeze it in when I can. I think this yarn represents about 25 hours of my life. Time well spent, I say!

Yarn making with kids

Little kids love spinning wheels. Generally I take the drive band off and just let them treadle. It's pretty satisfying even without the flyer whirring and yarn pulling in. They also like it when I tie some pre-made yarn to the bobbin and they pretend to be drafting and letting it feed onto the bobbin. (In that case, the drive band and brake are on so the whole thing is moving.)

Well, this is what happens when you give a 4-year-old some pink fiber, hook everything up, and let her spin. She loved it! And she was really proud of her yarn.

Hmnnnn....

I decided to dye some of my targhee roving about two weeks ago. I need purple. I need a purple scarf. I wanted to dye some of it lavendar, some of it medium purple, and some of it totally saturated really dark purple. So I got out my baking dish, my microwaveable bowl, and my crock pot. I got out my grape kool-aid and started dying.

As you can see the blue and red was soaked up at different rates. I am not real sure about how this is going to turn out. I've started predrafting it and it's looking much better. But, I might have to go back to the store and over dye the yarn. My adventures in dying have taught me one thing - learn to let go of the idea and instead work with what I got.

handspun handknit

Fingerless mittens! My fingers are so cold at work. My computer is right by the window so when I sit down to prep lessons my hands get really cold. These will come in handy!

The stitch pattern is:

row 1: k1 p1 (repeat all the way around)
row 2: knit the whole row
row 3: p1 k1 (repeat all the way around)
row 4: knit the whole row

repeat repeat repeat!

The merino roving came from Pigeon Roof Studios.

What was once these batts

from knitty dirty girl

Is now this yarn!

I think I'm going to weave this yarn into squares on my multi-loom. If I back it with a soft fabric it would make a pretty cool scarf me thinks.

Some new roving

I bought this from Rachel-Marie over at knittydirtygirl. I have not started spinning it yet. I'm pretty excited to do it, though! It's going to be singles. I'm going to weave it with my little looms.

I have so many scraps of beautiful yarn. I'm making little squares and I'll either make a scarf or a blanket. I'm always cold so spinning, knitting, and weaving are just perfect crafts for me.

Yarn for my Mom: V2.0

So, I overdyed the other skein of yarn and it's definitely more what I was going for. I used tropical punch for this one (and my new crock pot). Love it! I hope my mom does, too!

I don't know why but I've had trouble finding kool-aid around town. Is it seasonal? And then, oh baby, I went to Rainbow. They had millions of all the flavors. I stocked up with the ones I think will turn out the best. I think maybe I'll paint some roving next.

I made this yarn for my mom. This was the first time I made yarn for another knitter! I can't wait to hear how she likes it.

Here it is in the crockpot. I used Wilton's icing dyes to color it. As you can see, I thought it would be a lot darker. I'm a new dyer so I see there's lots to learn.

Even though it's not the color I expected it to be, it has really grown on me. We'll have to see if it's a good color on my mom (she wanted to make a hat with it). I may have to re-dye it.

Hand Spun Hand Knit

I made this scarf from some of my handspun yarn. I worked on this scarf for such a long time! I designed four different scarves trying to manage the fragility of the yarn while also showing it off. It turned out really pretty. Too bad it's so scratchy I can't even wear it. :(

Do you like my scarf pin / shawl pin? It's handmade. You'll probably need one. Go to this Etsy shop and enjoy looking around!

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!

Handknit (and sort-of) handspun mittens

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. :)