On the Bobbin: Moonlit Sea

I dyed 4 ounces of Superwash Merino roving different shades of blue and green, with the blue at one end and the green at the other. Here is the single after I finished spinning it. I spun the blue part first so the green is on the outside.

So far I've spun just under 2 ounces of it. I navajo plied the single to get a three ply yarn that maintains the same color placement. The yarn gradually changes from blue to green over the skein with no repeats.
Here is the finished yarn!If you'd like to buy it:
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=32391257

Spinning My Drum Carded Fiber

Remember those first batts I carded on my brand new drum carder? I finished spinning it into yarn!

The carding did the trick because the spinning was smooth. After I got the batts off the carder I pulled them apart into 4 long strips per batt. The drafting was easy and it made for a consistent yarn weight.

I think it looks a bit blue in the pictures, but its a dark purple wool with white mohair and white nylon sparkles.Now I need to expand my fiber stash...

New Dyes, New Yarns

I got a few more dyes, and now have 2 reds, 2 blues, a yellow, and black. I was starting to run out of my first 3 primary colors and decided to get the black too this time around. So all the greens, oranges, and purples you see in my shop are all from me mixing the dyes. Surprisingly (to me anyway) I'm not very scientific about it. I look at it more like mixing paint colors. I mix them until I have a color I like and then I put it on the yarn! This blue and green yarn has the new blue
and for something that looks newer, for this yarn I used my new black to make a grey and the new blue in the purple.

Candyland Inspired Yarn

I thought I'd tell you a bit about how I made my Candyland Inspired Yarn for the EtsyFAST challenge for June.

First I chose the colors to match the squares on the path of the gameboard: read, purple, yellow, blue, orange, green. I selected equal amounts of each roving and then pulled each one apart in equal pieces.
I spun the single with the colors in the same order and then repeated the colors, after that my bobbin was quite full!

The first picture shows the single on my lazy kate. In the second picture, I've started plying the yarn. I navajo plied the yarn so that my colors would stay together. I wanted solid color stripes for this yarn instead of the plys being different colors for most of the yarn. In navajo plying the spinner makes big crochet chains with the single ply and twists the three strands together into a three ply yarn.

Here's the very bright and colorful finished yarn!

Custom Dyed Yarn

I was so busy last week that I didn't have a chance to write about it right away, but I had a custom order! The customer was really nice and I enjoyed talking about what she wanted. I was a little nervous about messing up because I only had one skein of that weight left! I was happy with the results and so was she! Success!

Even More Yarn

Last night I dyed three more skeins. Although, I couldn't use the crock pot anymore, since my cat destroyed it. So these three are all hand painted and then baked in the oven.

New Yarn!

I'm trying to build up my inventory a bit before the art show on the 23rd. So I bought a bunch more blank yarn, and yesterday I started dying it! I've been using Jacquard acid dyes lately and used it for this batch too. I'm getting great color results! They have lots of colors available, but I just bought the red, yellow, and blue, so the different colors is all done by mixing.


This blue and purple yarn is a heavy worsted weight, that I got from yarn2spin on etsy. I had the chance to meet her in person at Sheep Shearing Day.


These are both 100% wool, worsted weight and the same length. For the top skein I rewound it to be much longer to get the very long color repeats.

New Items

I listed some more of my Constellation Bead Yarn today. I had fun spinning this one, but it was a pain when I put too many beads on at a time and the yarn broke and the beads went flying all over the room! Anyway, it reminds me of stars in the sky somewhere without lots of light pollution. Enjoy.















Ah, this one is a bulky wool yarn (the blue is the same as in Constellation) that I spun up a while ago and was just taking pictures of to list. Maybe you saw it with me at a craft fair. :p I'm really liking my bulky flyer with this one!

Moonlit Garden Handspun Yarn

For my Moonlit Garden Yarn I started with these:

top left is my handdyed River Garden Roving, top right is some cotton yarn, bottom left is sparkly gold tinsel, and bottom right is shetland roving.


and spun them into this:

My Moonlit Garden Handspun Yarn! Starting with my River Garden handdyed wool roving I spun a thick and thin single. I spun another single with a cotton yarn, white shetland roving and gold sparkle tinsel and I plied those together.

This is an entry in the EtsyFast AugustChallenge.

ETSY FAST'S AUGUST CHALLENGE - CELESTIAL THEME:Fast stands for Fiber Arts Street Team. We work together to promote our fiber art and the Etsy site. Just for fun, we pick a challenge each month for all of us to be involved in. The August Challenge is anything celestial, suggested because we will have both a meteor shower and a total lunar eclipse this month. If you would like to enjoy our submissions Search either "etsyfast" or "augustchallenge".

River Garden- Handdyed Merino Yarn

Things seem to have calmed down just a little and I found time to dye some yarn.
Here it is rinsing in the sink.



And after it dried. :)



Here's the etsy link http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=6478095
I posted this in the EtsyFast JulyChallenge. To see all the entries, just search for "etsyfast" and "julychallenge" on etsy.com .

This was very fun to dye. I started with the blue and added the other colors thinking of flowers.

Newest Yarn

My newest yarn is a custom order.

I Heart Dyeing Yarn

I just thought I'd share that I really like dyeing yarn. It's lots of fun and I get lots of pretty colors. :)

Here's an example:

Some things I've made. :)

Aren't the pin cushions cute!?

Please check out my store at

http://rainydayart.etsy.com