Sunday, August 22, 2010

One of my Summer Projects

ready for sandingThanks to the Ravelry Group DIY tools, I found this tute. Of course I had to try it, I got my DH to do the cutting for me. (b/c I can just see myself sawing something I need off). I'd measured and marked everything for him to cut. Then I needed to find someone with a drill press. Luckily my BIL had one and he allowed me to bring myself and the kiddos over while He and my DH drilled the holes for me. So I had all the parts sawed, and I sanded them till they were smooth. The hardest/longest part was sawing the heads off the nails with the dremmel. After that was done the nails were epoxied in place and I glued the two pieces of wood together and attached a handle. It was from an old grilling tool that I hadn't used in a long time so I re-purposed the handle. I only put a handle on one of the
combed woolcombs b/c I figured I'd be using the other one attached to the table. Then I tried them out. The weren't awesome but worked completely well. I loved it. I'm slowly working on the unprocessed wool a friend gave me. Look at my little nests! So much fun. I'm off to process more wool. Now if only someone would send me a sheep or an alpaca or both!

Friday, August 6, 2010

What to Knit with these wonderful skeins?

A couple of weeks ago I went on a dying binge. I was actually dying some yarn for my etsy store. With the left over dye I thought I would dye some roving. I broke some up into 4oz sections and dyed away. It was a lot of fun. Of course I couldn't let the roving sit that long with out spinning it. 
So first I took the Peacock roving and got to work. I named it Peacock b/c it reminds me of the colors of a peacock feather. I decided to try my hand at spinning a cabled yarn. Which is taking the singles plying them together and then plying those together. (4 ply total) Here's a close up of the yarn.
  I'm unsure of what kind of wool this is. because my sister got it at a garage sale. But it works out fine for me to play with. 
The second 4oz of wool I dyed with the Twilight book cover in mind. I use only 2 colors, black and red. They blended really well and it just turned out LOVELY! I am really amazed at how wonderful the roving turned out.

Spinning this yarn was a lot of fun. The colors changing as I was spinning was exciting to see. I've got to to try dying with only 2 colors again. This yarn I just plied a 2 ply yarn. It's so lovely i'm just staring at it. Here's a closer photo of this yarn. of course there's more photos in my handspun set over at flickr. I really enjoyed how the grey parts and the pink parts plied together and look almost purple.  And I have one more 4oz roving left, from this dying binge, to spin up. This one is named Flaming Forrest. and I can't wait to spin it up.