Progress on the bridal shawl

I've been concentrating on getting the yarn spun for my daughter's bridal shawl. It's two-ply, one of merino and one of silk. I'm spinning the merino on a drop spindle that I purchased to spin fine yarn with, and I'm spinning the mulberry silk on my Kromski Fantasia wheel. I've been plying the two together with my wheel.

My spindle and whorl are from www.pallia.net. The merino is from a fleece I purchased at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. I flicked the locks of the washed fiber and am spinning the flicked locks with the spindle.

So far, I have about 480 yards of two-ply merino/silk yarn.

I'm hoping to have somewhere around 800 yards or so when I'm done.

Flower Fairy Doll

 

A couple of years ago I found a pattern in a magazine for knitted flower fairy dollies. I thought they were so cute, and then one of my nieces became pregnant - with a girl! I searched and searched for my magazine and couldn't find it, but then found the back issue in my library, hooray! I photocopied the pattern (since I'd already bought the magazine, but lost it, I figured it's okay to photocopy it).

 

I made the little doll, but she sat without hair, face, or wings for months. I finally put hair on, and then a few weeks later, the face. Over the weekend I got serious, with Christmas coming, and gave her wings and her little flower purse. Now she's waiting to be wrapped up and sent off in a brown paper package all tied up with strings (figuratively speaking, really just taped up with the address written in Sharpie).

 

Here she is sitting on her little flower purse: 

 

 

 

Closing the petals:

 

 

Tucked inside:

 

 

And here is a view of her hair:

 

 

 

She's made out of all handspun, except for her hair - I used mostly scraps of some colorful Malabrigo yarn I had on hand, and a few snippets of handspun as well. The handspun is all hand-dyed, some of it with natural dyes.

 

I got to use up bits of stash yarn on this project. The pattern is a Susan B. Anderson design and I found it in Knit Simple Magazine Holiday 2011. You can find the pattern online here.

Now to finish wrapping things so I can send this off!

Deer and great expectations

Last fall I planted something like 200 bulbs in my front yard. I waited all winter, hoping that my bulbs were doing what they do to get ready for the show come spring. A few weeks ago, I was excited to see some of the plants emerging from the soil. And then the deer struck. They nibbled most of the emerging plants down to nibs, and here is an example of the results:

There have been a few survivors:

But it's nothing like the show I was hoping for:

The few that made it are very pretty, and I've been enjoying them. It's more like a display of 10, rather than 200, but I'll take what I can get:

In the back yard, the wild violets are blooming. They're some of my favorites:

My garlic is a success so far, something between 25-30 bulbs have come up from the fall planting:

And here is the first of my asparagus spears:

Over the weekend, I finally spun up some of the fiber I dyed with natural dyes a few months ago, this is roving dyed with pokeberries and marigolds, ready for spinning:

And here is a skein of yarn spun from the roving I dyed with cleavers root, it's a very pretty salmon color:

My expectations for a glorious spring floral display didn't pan out this year, but my yarns are colorful, and I'm excited about the garlic and the asparagus, and ready for the planting of everything else to begin as soon as the frosts pass.

Can you believe these gorgeous colors are from natural dyes? The yarn on the left gets its color from cleavers root, the middle gets its color from marigolds, and the right gets its hue from pokeberries:

Last Weekend's Craft Fair

Last Sunday I hauled all of my wares to an arts and crafts fair which featured northeastern Ohio Etsy shop owners. Here I am setting up my table:

My husband prepared some of his photos for sale, too:

And my daughter came to help me:

We had a lot for sale and we sold some of everything we brought: homemade candy, hand crafted herbal products, handspun yarn, photos, books. As you can see, I also brought my spinning wheel to show how the yarns were made.

We did okay, but the attendance wasn't huge. I was hoping to do a little better. It's kinda hit and miss with craft shows.

Dyeing wool with dandelions

On Mother's Day, I made my daughter come with me into the park next door to fill a plastic grocery sack with dandelion flowers. My son was happy that he had to work and couldn't join in the fun : )

I used the dandelions to dye a little over 4oz. of wool roving that I had combed up from my Christmas Fleece.

It came out a very nice yellow. I spun half of it into a skein of about 380 yards of two-ply - pictured above.

I only wish I had spun it a little better. It wasn't my best. My intentions were to add it to my slowly-growing inventory of handspuns that I'm going to offer for sale at the two vendor booths I have lined up this summer - one at a craft fair and one at a 'fiber fling' weekend. The quality of the spinning wasn't that great for this particular skein, though, so I might just keep this one for my personal stash.

I'm currently working on the other half of that roving. The first bobbin of what will eventually become a two-ply, is on my wheel right now:

I'm paying more attention as I spin this one. The problem with the last one, I think, was that I had just come off of spinning a four-ply of a different kind of wool and it took a while to adjust back to this type of wool. Hopefully I'll get a sellable skein out of it. We'll see...

Here's what I made with my first batch of handspun/hand-dyed yarn from my Christmas Fleece

This is what I made with the first batch of yarn I made from my Christmas Fleece:

It's a scarf for my mom:

I used a pattern I found on Ravelry, called Easy Drop Stitch Scarf Pattern. It is easy, and it adds texture and pattern to the scarf: