This year, I hadn’t planned on any knit, crochet, or woven Christmas stuff. And usually when I do make such plans, they’re for crochet items, which are significantly faster. But then, as it happened, I had a yarn that I wanted to swatch for photos, and so sometime in late October I decided I’d combine […]

Some recent finished objects with handspun yarn, and one in progress. 1. Triangle, bottom up, improvised variant on “Falling Leaves” lace, bounded by criscrossed diamonds. The yarn: I blended mohair, tussah silk, and a dash of the horrible-looking orange and black firestar nylon, and that is this 2-ply yarn. http://ucan.foad.org/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=mohair-silk-triangle 2. Sampler scarf, including lots […]

What is blocking? It’s when you stretch your completed object out or finish it in one of various ways in order to make it stay a given size and shape. The shawl I’ve been knitting on, here: will not be that size or shape exactly when it’s done, and the pattern will really pop out […]

From ages and ages ago, I had this yarn that I strongly felt should be a sweater, a sweater I even wanted, but which I had no desire at all to knit. A friend of mine kindly offered to knit it for me. We sat down together, talked it through, took measurements, and she designed […]

All yarn pr0n all the time! The past week or so of yarn. Exciting yarn pr0n! Hot mohair action! Thrilling blends! Commercial alpaca! Click any picture to go to the photo gallery (and you can leave comments and questions on the photos there if you like, too). One ply kid mohair, one ply tussah silk, […]

Originally posted on livejournal in February 2005.

Originally posted on Livejournal, summer 2004

I had packed 500 yards and over 5 oz on the Woolee Winder and… http://ucan.foad.org/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=oil-slick I just could not get the last little bit on there. So I wound all 3 plies into a pull-from-either-end butterfly type thing (hey, it works!) and then took the *other* end of the 3, and plied it with a […]

A few highlights from my photo gallery for the study I did in 2004 of handspun boucle yarns, found here: http://ucan.foad.org/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=boucles The first, a blend of New Zealand Brush Tail Possum (whatever that is, it’s neat stuff though) and coopworth, with rayon binder. I tried to do this all 3 strands at once and it’s […]

First you take this: (coopworth/alpaca blend from Jehovah Jireh Farm) and then you make it into this handspun single-ply yarn: Which then in turn gets plied with this iridescent commercial flossy stuff for a binder: And then it looks like this: Then, ply it one more time with the binder, in the opposite direction from […]