Midnight Rainbow

The idea behind this yarn was that the shiny plant based fibers would contrast with the pitch black merino wool fibers and be awesome. That’s not exactly what happened, but I still like this yarn. I started out with commercially dyed merino wool, hand-dyed bamboo and linen fibers, as well as blue hand-dyed silk scraps. My favorite color is blue, so I use it pretty often.

merino wool, bamboo, linen, silk

I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to do with the finished yarn, so I carded it up in a very particular way. I planned on knitting this yarn into a scarf, and I wanted the scarf to be a dark rainbow of color. So I carded the black wool and blue silk in every batt, along with the bamboo and linen of the same color. So, purple bamboo and purple linen with black wool and blue silk, and pink bamboo and pink linen with black wool and blue silk …. and so on.

hand carded batt

Then I spun it as a single on my lovely Kromski Sonata.

on the wheel

Finally I made it into a skein.

in a skein

In the end I had about 134 yards of crazy yarn. I also learned that I have a lot to learn about using linen.

Blue Bamboo

This is a yarn I recently spun up for a friend’s mother. I hand carded, spun and dyed this yarn. It contains merino wool and bamboo fiber.

Close up of the finished yarn.

I took 85 grams of white merino wool and carded it with 17 grams of bamboo fiber that I dyed with turquoise Procion dye.

White merino wool carded with dyed bamboo.

Then I spun it as a single on my wheel.

on the wheel

After that, I plied the single with a blue variegated commercial thread.

plied yarn on the wheel

made into a skein

Once it was done spinning I dyed it with three blue shades of acid dyes.

finished yarn made up into a skein

I really like green

Green reminds me of nature and leaves and all that good stuff, so I really like to use it in my yarns. For this yarn I used dyed merino wool, silk noil, kid mohair, and bamboo.

merino wool, bamboo, silk noil, and kid mohair

I hand carded it and spun it up on my wheel. Then I plied it with commercial yarn.

in a skein

The final yarn was 3 ounces and about 150 yards.

purple madness

I think I was going through a bit of a girly phase when I spun this yarn up, albeit a goth girly phase. I started with white merino wool, alpaca, kid mohair, silk noil and pink dyed bamboo. I usually dye the bamboo fibers before I make a yarn like this, because bamboo uses a different kind of dye than the protein fibers.

alpaca, silk noil, merino wool, dyed bamboo, and kid mohair

Then I hand carded it into batts.

hand carded batt

Then I drafted the batts into a thin roving.

roving

Then I spun it up.

on the bobbin

I then spun a single of black merino carded with some kid mohair, and promptly plied the two together.

plied, before dyeing

Then, for added flair, into the dye pot it went. I used pink, purple and black acid dyes and came out with this:

finished yarn.

In the end I had about 2 ounces and 76 yards of girly goth yarn. My husband said it looks like it would make cool synthetic dreads.

purplely goodness

This was my first wheel spun yarn. I was overjoyed when I got my wheel, and could not wait to use it. Luckily I already had a few ounces of fiber ready to spin. Before my wheel arrived I had dyed up a bunch of fibers.

dyed merino wool, alpaca, silk noil, kid mohair, and bamboo

Then I hand carded them on my carders into fluffy little batts.

on the carders

a few batts

Once the batts were made I spun the yarn into a single on my wheel, but I don’t have any pictures of that. Then I plied with metallic purple thread.

on the bobbin

on the bobbin, with a puppy’s faces in the background

Then it was time to make it into a skein.

I was so proud of my first wheel spun yarn, I kept telling anyone who would listen all about it.