I did it...

At least, it looks like it.

I finished the multicoloured batts from the previous post.

I had some purple metallic embroidery thread and I plied it with that.

According to everything I´ve read and seen I believe I have produced my first balanced yarn:And a close up:

Now back to knitting!

It's oh so quiet..

But I have been really busy!

I have spun most of the Bordeaux/pink/purple, have got 1/4 batt left. Didn't fit on the bobbin...The first skein is already on the needles, the second I still have to set the twist. I decided to go for a very simple lace pattern because I haven't done any lace knitting in a while but want to do a lot more. (It´s a free ravelry pattern, you can find it in my projects) So this will be the warming up...I started on needle size 4 1/2, but then frogged it and went to needles 6 and less stitches. Maybe I can get enough length with the first skein, I will wait with the second skein so if I don´t need it for this project I can ply it with something else! I did discover there is too much twist in both of them.

I had some more leftovers from the bordeaux, pink and purple adn decided to card it with some of the green I have. I hope I can spin really thin with it and maybe ply it with sewing thread. I can make more if I like it.

I carded all the greens. It is a lot, but I don´t think it will be enought for a sweater so I decided to card it with the brown (still washing some of that).

Half of it will be 1/3 green and 2/3 brown, the other half 1/3 brown and 2/3 green. Make a nice mix of them. And then I will ply it. I think it willl give me a great sweater yarn!

I have also been doing a knitting marathon on the Moebius. It is really growing now! I hope I will see the end of it soon...

The spinning wheel is terminal. It looked good when I bought it, ofcourse I had no idea what to look for. It works good (I think). The only problem is...it is falling apart. every few days it falls a little more bit apart and I have to tie a new rope to keep it together. I guess it wasn´t used very much...So, I am looking around for a good deal on a new wheel. Don´t want a second hand anymore, and I only bought second hand to see if I liked it. If not I could sell it again...But it will have to do until I get my vacation money end of may.

Meantime I am still working on my goals. First step is to create a routine for myself to get the "have to do" things done. It is not really working yet, I am just not a routine person. But I decided I need to have some (besides going into work every day). There is so much I want to do, I have to have routines...

"Have" to do some more cleaning right now so tomorrow I can spend the biggest part of the day on creativity...(and homework, need to dram some 1/2 scale bathing suit patterns)

I had a vision

And it started out with Stress.

Because I was a little stressed out, I decided to do some more dyeing, it really relaxes me. I took the Dylon Bordeaux Dye and a batch of the "white" wool and came up with this result:

Immediately the vision came, I saw some nice Bourdeaux, Pink and Purple yarn. So I started with carding the Pink and the purple (which turned out quite blueish) and when the bordeaux was dry i carden some of that too. Resulting in the below batts:

Then I had to decide on how to mix up the colours. I decided to go for layered batts. I just took the drum carder, started filling it up and look, a nice layered batt:

So now I am spinning. Don't want to overdo it (I am known for it) and agreed with myself, 1 layered batt a day. What you see is the result of 1 1/2 batt:

Next decision to be made, what to do next. I am spinning a 15 WPI yarn. Do I want to keep it as singles, do I want to ply it? I am not sure if I can keep it single. I would sure like to make something nice from the singles, but did I give it enough or not to much twist...Dunno..Guess I will have to decide sometime (soon) and take the gamble. If it isn't working, I can try again. I can work it through the wheel again and add/remove twist I guess...

I think it will make a nice Moebius V2 (I renamed the green one to V1.03)

And, because I like this picture very much, here's one extra:

And now, back to the wheel!!

Completely mine

well, after the sheep donated it's fleece that is...

So I arived home yesterday after work with my drumcarder and of course, had to use it right away. Here you can see the orange wool on the drumcarder.

I ended up with 2 nice big batts.

Here I am ready to spin the first bat. I used 1 1/2 batt and then the bobbin was almost full. I plied it with the navajo 3-ply method. When doing my research I really liked it because you only need 1 thread which you ply onto itself. As I don't have a lazy kate (yet) this was very appealing to me. With the red wool I made a 2-ply using the bobbin holders on the wheel and got tangled up. When doing the navajo 3-ply I found the thread was much easier to handle, but that could also been because I spun this wool better. I will try 2-ply again, but for now I think this is the way I will ply my yarns. Here you can see it drying.

I also did some dying on thursday. I used the purple eggpaint, and then added the red and blue I had left because again, I threw to much wool in the pot...It resulted into this:

And here you can see the end result of the Carmine from earlier this week.

I think this will end up a pretty solid colour too like the orange did.

Although I haven't tried the Dylon dye yet (I want to use them on carded batts) I couldn't help myself and bought some more colours: Bordeaux (one extra, I really like that colour), Olive Green (another colour I really like), Windsor Purple and Pagoda Red. I have saved 1/2 batt from the Orange because I really want to make some combined colour batts. The portion I spun will be used for a beanie for a colleague. But next, I am going to card the whole brown fleece first. Will start on that tomorrow. And I need to draw some bathing suit patterns for school, and the laundry, and some fleece washing, and house cleaning and I thought Sunday was a day to rest? That's what you get for working on Saturday once every 4 weeks, which was today..

Tonight I am going to knit on Moebius #3. It was a good thing I decided to frog it. It was way to big. I counted the stitches as I took it of the needle, measured how much to big it was and ended up casting only 2/3 of the stitches on #2!!!

So, I got myself some nice very dark chocolate with caramel and my blankie (it is cold here) and do a little Moebius Marathon!!

Stable smell

I bought me some nice wool!!

I bought some lovely coloured Black-Dark Brown-Light Brown wool. The colouring is beautiful, but now that I am washing it I have encountered a few maggets. Luckily I used to go fishing a lot when I was a little girl so I have handled a gazillion of them and I can handle these few too, but I don't like them in what I hope will someday become a nice sweater. I don't know what it means for the quality of the wool and how it will end up, but I just keep working on it. The first batch is outside drying. My kitchen smells like a stable...i have the door open, so it isn't to bad, kinda feels like living on a farm.

I also bought some light beige wool, a part of that first batch is now on the stove in the leftover I had from dyeing the shopping bag holder (I also dyed a cotton fabric so I can make another bag to go in the car). When I was finished with dyeing that I decided I didn't want to throw the leftover away, I decided it was better to see if I could use it to dye some wool. So I added some vinnegar and some washed wool and we will see what happens, the coulour is named "Fluorescent Green"....Maybe, if there is still some pigment left and it holds on the batch which is now in the pot I will add some more...

I also bought some red Merino roving with which I am now trying to spin. Just trying and trying and see how it turns out.

I added a wish list on the right , I discovered there are some things I really want/need/have to have. The first is a drum carder. I have some hand carders that came with the spinning wheel, but I don't think they will give me much pleasure... I will receive my end year bonus next week and I might be able to stretch that with some things i need to pay and go for the junior drum carder. The way I see it, I can experiment with the wool, put everything online except for the wool I am sure I want to use for myself, and take them of the website if I decide to do something with them anyway. This way I will also let my wool pay for itself (I hope).

My shopping trip

Been shopping today. Bought the shelves for my workroom, decided it was better to do it today so that whenever I feel like it I can work on it. And I did. Until the last screw of the second didn't want to go where I wanted it to go so I stopped. I also bought some supplies for painting wool. I have done a lot of googling on ways to paint wool. I haven't found an adress in the Netherlands where I can buy Acid dye, but I have found some other methods. I also found the green dye I wanted for the cotton shopping bag holder. It is now soaking in some detergent so the discolouring can disapear, and it does! So I can start to dye that tomorrow after, or maybe before, wool shopping.
I bought some liquid watercolour. I have found a posting on a forum from a lady who dyed wool with it so I bought some: Deep Orange, Carmine, Burnt Sienna and Deep Green. I bought the smallest containers, and if it doesn't work, I am sure there are othere things I can do with it. I also bought 2 packs of egg dye, each packet contains Yellow, Red, Violet, Blue, Green. Seen some youtube movies with egg dye dyeing. So will try that too. I also bought som Dylon hot and cold wash fabric paint. Hot: Cherry Flame and Bordeaux. Cold: Koala Brown.
Furthermore, I bought some big buckets used to mix cement. 2 of 12 liters and 2 of 20 liters. I will use them to wash the wool. They really smell very bad so I guess I will give them a good soap rinse before putting anything in it.
I have also practiced keeping the wheel spinning, stopping it and changing direction. I have to say, it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. But I have to oil it a bit. I think the neighbors were going mad from the noise it made!!!
I will keep notes of the experiments and post them here, including pictures.

Now I am going to try to finish the traingular scarf/wrap. I have one ball of jarn left...I hope it will be big enough...

Where does time go?

Days go by when your having fun, well fun...Today was a lousy day in which a lot went wrong and it started with some idiot not paying attention on the traffic in front of him (me). I was driving on the highway when a came up to a traffic jam. I, ofcourse, slowed my car to not bump in to the cars in front of me, the person behind me wasn't paying attention or whatever and had to make an emergency brake. I saw him in my rearview mirror coming closer very fast, then he started to slide from left to right and then he stood still only a few centimeters from my car. I was surrounded with the white smoke and lovely smell of burning rubber. Guess it scared him enough, when we could move again he kept a lot of distance from the car in front of him (I switched lanes, didn't want him behind me and needed to get off very soon)

Been very busy this week. Finished two projects, started a new one, thinking about frogging another one, done some work with powertools...

I will start with the power tool thing I did...

As I told you in my previous post I bought some shelving and when I wanted to start putting it together this weekend I couldn't find my drill bits. I had my drill/electric screw driver, I had the thing to load it with power, but I couldn't find the case with all the other parts..so I took my hook and continued crocheting. Monday after work I could finally buy some drills, the low budget type ofcourse and started putting it against the wall. Didn't get very far, was tired of a long day of work so didn't do much. On the picture you see the progress made on Tuesday. I bought 4 wide and 4 smaller shelves as that was mentioned to be "normal", but ofcourse I am not, so I need 2 wide and 2 small more. I finished the shelves I had, so there are more now then you see here, but I can't take a new picture now as it is to dark there (still looking for some lighting to hang). I will go to the store next week and buy the rest and do a showcase of my workroom when it is finished.

I have finished a vest I was crocheting, the one I needed to go to the yarnshop for as I was 1 ball short (bought 2, have 1 left over now, maybe it will become a beanie?). I don't know why, but these pictures are all very blurry...I took some different views. It basically is a large circle with 2 holes for your arms. You can do it with any circular pattern, this one is from a magazine I borrowed from a colleague. It still needs to be blocked/pressed and a few ends to weave in (done the most of them..)

The second project I finishe is the hairpin lace scarf. I crocheted all the strips together. I choose to do it in singles. As this was my very first effort at this and the yarn isn't the easiest to crochet I thought I should do it easy and a next one can be more difficult.

The new project is a triangular shawl/wrap. I ha some nice beige acrylic in my stash (and still, no end in sight). I am crocheting this on a hook nr 7, so pretty big, double the size they recommend for this yarn. I saw some picures of this type of stitch so I adjusted it to how I would like it to be and as you can see, it is growing steadily.

The Moebius is becoming the thing I could dream about in a nightmare (don't have them, I am protected by a dreamcatcher). It was getting pretty big, and then I noticed them....dropped stitches...they are too fat from the needles to pick them up again, and with this yarn I don't think I can cover them up very nice. I have put it aside for the moment, put some wool through the stitches so I can find them again if I decide to try to mend them, but I am thinking very hard about frogging it and starting new and fresh...

And then.. I was thinking about wool, and the things I would like to make, and the money it will cost me if I buy all the yarns I need, and I did some searching on the internet, and then I found the solution! The cheapest way to be able to do all the things I want, make it however I like, and maybe in the process earn some money is to make everything from scratch. And I mean really scratch. Start with the sheep. Ofcourse I am not going to keep some sheep, but they produce wool. Something I can't. From there on, everything in the process until the finished item can be done by people. I will have to make some investments, but they will pay for themselves in the long run. So I browsed some auction site and look what I found!! A nice spinning wheel. It was offered, I made a lower bid, the gave me a new price in the middle and I accepted. I am now the proud owner of this spinning wheel and it came with 2 handcarders and some spindle looking thing for only 42.50 Euro. (I guess I should use it to roll the balls on? There is no hook on it so it pobably isn't a spindle). Sunday I have an appointment to go look at some wool. They have some very nice batches. I really like a brown with lighter ends they have (forgot the sheep name), but the lady advised to start with merino. I also searched for ways to dye wool, so I might be trying some of that soon to.

So I have to wait for Sunday to get wool to get started, but in the meantime I will practice keeping the wheel going, in the right direction....

I guess I should stop now..It is a rather long post. Maybe I should post more often to keep them shorter? LOL

Bye for now.