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3 New Yarns on Sale at Etsy
I just put up 3 single skeins of yarn on Etsy. Sometimes when I am spinning for a customer or a personal project I will get the first skein a little fine or a bit too thick for the order or I may have a skein left over from a knitting project. These single skeins will appear as only 1 available but you can always custom order most of the handspun yarns in your choice of yarn weights and hand dyed colours. To see these skeins on Etsy: special prices available The Eastport Alpaca in DK weight and natural snowy white colour, 2.1 oz. 132 yds The New Zealand Merino…
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A New Design in Progress Grace
A new design in progress – I guess that would be a DIP, right? Along with the Custom Fit Sweater for Amy Herzog and her team (beta testing) I’ve been working on a few custom orders and a new designs that I will call Grace after my Mom who just passed away last year at this time. Mom was my mentor, my soul mate, my best friend and the one who taught and inspired me to knit and be creative in so many way. She was also my biggest fan and alway gave me so much encouragement. Well, anyway, the new design is Grace. It will be an elegant but casual…
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Managing Color in a Raw Fleece
If you’ve been keep up with my adventures you will have read Spinning a Fine New Zealand Merino Fleece where I talk about spinning a beautiful fine Merino fleece into lace weight yarn after washing it lock by lock and hand combing it. There were some mistakes, and I leaned a lot from them, but I found myself spinning a lovely lace weight yarn that would be excellent in a handknit shawl by the third skein so I started to knit. I choose a pattern from Nancy Bush’s book Knitted Lace of Estonia, the Queen Sylvia Shawl and cast on. The knitting was fun and after a few days I got to…
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Preparing a Raw Wool Fleece for Handspinning
Yesterday I got out one of the wonderful Polwarth fleeces I imported from New Zealand where they are able to produce some of the finest and highest quality wool in the entire world. Polwarth The Polwarth is not a rare breed but its fleece certainly has enough wonderful characteristic to make it a favorite among hand spinners, knitters and those who wear their creations. It is a dual-purpose sheep, developed in Victoria, Australia in 1880; they were first introduced into New Zealand in 1932. It has been crossbred to 75 percent Merino and 25 percent Lincoln. Polwarth wool is similar to Merino in softness but has a longer staple length…