Close to my Heart

Handspun

Okay, as promised, I'm not posting about Zumba tonight.  It's hard though, I found some more great videos since my last post!  And in the interest of full disclosure, I'm playing some Zumba music as I write this post.  

I have some handspun to show you tonight.  This is from the Crown Mountain Farm BFL that I showed you in process a week or so ago.  I've spun up half the bump at this point, will get back to the wheel before long.  Been spending some quality time knitting on my Tea Leaves Cardigan lately.

Here's a few shots of the handspun.  It's soft and squooshy and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, will look forward to knitting it.

Tomorrow is the last day of Blogtoberfest. Phew, almost made it!  :)

A fun trade

Back about ten years or more ago, crochet was my passion and I rarely knit.  I was active in some online crochet communities through yahoo groups, and as a way of sharing my crochet work, because Ravelry or even Blogs were not around then, I had a little crochet website.  At this website, I shared my projects as well as a few free patterns I had designed.  This website, although not updated in many years, still exists, and you can visit it here if you want, and the patterns are available through Ravelry here.

Sometime last spring I believe, I received a PM on Ravelry from Jan, the Etsy shop owner of Friends in Fiber, who had come across my scrunchie pattern.  She was going to be part of a Fall Phat Fiber box, and she thought that my pattern would be perfect to accompany her handspun.  She was asking permission to use my pattern, and I was really quite thrilled that she wanted to do so.  In the end, my pattern was part of this little kit (link to Friends in Fiber Flickr picture).  To thank me for my pattern, she offered to send me a batt.  I received two beautiful samples of fiber, and sure enjoyed spinning them.  Unfortunately, I neglected to photograph both batts before spinning, but did find a picture of one batt on my computer today while preparing for this post:

I also neglected to photograph the singles that I spun, oops!  At any rate, I ended up with some gorgeous yarn.  I've never spun anything containing firestar before, nor do I have anything in my stash.  I love how it turns out so sparkly though, and when I'm once again adding to my stash, I will certainly look for some.  Anyway, here's what I ended up with:

No idea what I'll make from these, but think I'll probably combine the two colours for one project.

Now go check out the Friends in Fiber Etsy shop, there's some gorgeous stuff there!  And tell Jan that I sent you.  :)

What I did today

Remember the beautiful Crown Mountain Farms roving and  bobbin I showed you at the beginning of the week?  Well I finished spinning up the first half of that 8 ounce bump last night.

Today I set to plying up these bobbins.  I had a great afternoon sitting at my wheel listening to podcasts. I always spin on my Lendrum, then move to my Louet to ply.  The Louet does a great job of plying:

And here it is on my winder:

I'll let it rest on the winder overnight, and set the twist tomorrow.  Now onto some knitting, which I haven't done in about a week!

First bobbin

Well the work week is back in swing, as are my after work activities.  Just finished dinner, and headed out to bellydance class shortly, hence need to make this a quick post.

Tonight I thought I'd show you the first bobbin all spun up, of the fiber I showed you the other day:

Not the best picture, overcast dreary day today, and I used the bit of natural light I could find after work, in the window sill.

Here's another picture, this time with flash, with the backdrop of a bellydance veil I recently purchased from my teacher.

I have a feeling this veil may make further blog appearances as a spinning/knitting/who knows what else backdrop!

Some spinning tonight

I was actually going to blog that I had nothing for you tonight, then decided I felt like spinning, and that I might as well just show you what I chose to spin:

It's Superwash BFL from Crown Mountain Farms in the Druidenzauber colourway.  Excuse the artificial lighting, but I didn't decide which fiber to spin until after dinner when there was little natural light left. 

Here's the progress I made tonight, before moving on to knitting:

And now that we are about half way through the month, I'm finding this Blogtoberfest thing is getting more difficult, and am kind of wondering if I'm going to make it through the month now.  Time will tell...

I still blog sometimes....

Wow, I think that is the longest I've ever gone without blogging since I started!  I think Facebook and Twitter have taken away any blog fodder I actually have had, much easier to write a sentence or two than an actual blog post.  As well, my new active lifestyle takes a fare bit of time.  By the end of tomorrow, I will have exercised every single day for five weeks.  I'm also trying to spend just a little less time online, and more time reading actual books (remember those?).

Not sure if my blogging will become any more regular, but I'm here now anyway.

I have a few fibery things to show you tonight.  In honour of Tour de Fleece, I pulled out my Lendrum for the first time in months.  We enjoyed spending some quality time together, and turned this pretty roving

 

Into this:

 

I haven't checked the wraps per inch yet, but there's over 500 yards and I'd estimate it at being heavy fingering or DK weight yarn.

In the last few days, I've been on a bit of a sock knitting marathon, thanks to being on my annual summer vacation.  I finished both second socks to the first socks I showed you in my last post those many weeks ago.

First, these are the Port Ludlow socks, which are Ravelled here.

 

And these are the Longjohn socks, Ravelled here.

 

Tomorrow I'm off to Vancouver to visit my sister and enjoy the city.  Am also looking forward to a fun filled yarn crawl with my friend Uli.  Not sure that I'll be blogging my adventures in the city, but I'll definitely be tweeting, since I always have my iPhone with me.  If you're interested in joining along, I tweet as closetomyheart.  My tweets are protected, but if you mention that you know me from the blog (you'd be surprised at all the spammers who think I should friend them there) I'll happily add you.

Until next time, whenever that may be. 

Some pre-Olympic handspun

Final day of the work week today, gotta love a 3 day week!  Tomorrow I'm off to Vancouver for Friday's Olympic Opening Ceremonies.  To say I'm excited would be an understatement!  Heck, the ringtone on my IPhone is this!  I plan on tweeting my time in Vancouver and hopefully even through the Opening Ceremonies.  If you're interested in as it happens tweets, follow me on Twitter where I'm closetomyheart.  I currently have my privacy settings so that I have to approve any followers, so you can't see me without requesting to be a follower.  I may change that for the Olympics, but haven't decided for sure. I'll also be updating my Facebook page. If you know my name in real life, you can friend me there.  You can also find my name on my Ravelry profile page, but I don't want to post that here.

In the pre-Olympic excitement I've been neglecting my blog.  I thought that today I'd share some handspun that was finished a few weeks back.  It's some Falkland roving from the depths of my stash, purchased at the Victoria Fibre Fest a couple years ago from vendor Knotty by Nature, who now has a storefront in downtown Victoria.  I purposely set out to spin this a little thicker on the middle ration of my regular lendrum flyer.  In the end it's about sport weight I think.  The plying is a little loose, but that did make it come out nice and soft.  Not quite sure what it wants to be yet.  Here's the pics:

 

There's about 440 yards.  First time spinning Falkland and I really enjoyed it.

Catch you all in a few days!

Shadow on the Wall

I am so glad to finally have this pencil roving in the "Shadow on the Wall" Colourway from Crown Mountain Farms all spun up, 8 ounces spun thinly takes FOREVER.  I started this at the spinning retreat I attended this past October, set it aside for Christmas knitting, then went back to the last half of the fiber this month. I showed you the singles on the bobbin a few weeks back.  I'm very happy with how it turned out.  It's Navajo plyed, light fingering weight, and about 1000 yards.  I spun this on the fastest whorl on my Lendrum's fast flyer. Destined to be something lacy, but not quite sure what, any suggestions would be gratefully appreciated.  Here it is all plied up.   

 

And finally, a close up:

On my wheel

This past weekend, I chose a fiber to spin up from the depths of my stash:

 

The last fiber I spun took forever as I spun it super thin on my fast flyer (it's all done and plyed and I'll show it to you as soon as I can photograph it).  I wanted some instant gratification so this was spun on the middle ratio on my regular flyer.  Before too long I had one bobbin done:

 

The remaining fiber for the second bobbin, shown here has now been all spun up.  I had planned to have it all plied by now too, but am unable to tear myself away from the lacy baktus I showed you in the last post.  Soon though.

Full

I hope you don't mind, but I'm showing you pictures of the same singles two days in a row.  What is significant about these pictures is that they represent the first time I have ever completely filled my bobbin. 

 

SO close to finishing with the remainder of the fiber!

Plying isn't going to happen until next weekend now, so you have at least a week before you have to look at this same stuff here again.