I have not woven in 2025. Or most of 2024. Life has a way, doesn’t it? Weaving will happen again. Until then, I’m knee deep is creating yarns to use in woven projects. I have a project in mind where I spin lovely textured art yarn. I’ll pair these up with other fibers in my library (yeah, I’ve stopped calling it a stash, it’s a fiber library). The goal will be scarves spotlighting unique, one of a kind yarns.
I want to document what I’m working on, and what my ideas are going forward. So that’s what I’m doing here. I have 3 skeins completed. One in 2024, 3 in 2025 already. I have three additional projects that are in various stages. I’m going to start with the newest, then work my way back.
At the beginning of April, FB showed me an ad for a really amazing idea a talented artist had for her shop, Greenwood Fiberworks. She’s dying a wide range of fibers in the colors of birth month flowers. These will only be dyed during their designated month, so it’s got a built in urgency. I fell in love with April’s offering, and when I saw that she had dyed a blend of camel and silk, I had to have it. I ordered it on the 9th, after my desire for it hit a fevered pitch. I just got an alert that it’s hit the post office in Utah, heading to Michigan. I’ll have it in my hot hands at the end of this week.
You can see in the photos below that the braid with the camel has a deeper shading since the base is a beige instead of white. That’s what did it for me. I’ve never spun up camel, but I know it’s delightfully soft and luxurious. Add silk to that and we’re looking at something pretty special.
I’ve been obsessing over these braids (I got two 4 oz braids) for two weeks now. I made two decisions. I want to choose a cashmere, alpaca, or alpaca/silk blend to use when I weave this. And I want it to be blue. I want to showcase the yarn I spin so that it’s reminiscent of a field of daisies against a spring blue sky. I also want this to be a luxurious light weight scarf, so I’m sticking to higher end, soft fibers. Here’s my lineup. I’ll choose them once I have the Daisy braids here.
Currently on my Lendrum spinning wheel is a blend of fibers I carded together. Polwarth wool, Corriedale wool, and Tussah silk. You can see the individual bats and roving I blended together. The colors remind me a field of spring flowers in the foothills of Colorado mountains. I am spinning this so that it had a lot of nubs to build a rich texture.
Next up are my finished and nearly finished skeins. The blue and green skein (bottom right) is pure silk that I finished in 2024 that renewed my joy of spinning. The middle skein on the bottom was next, and was made from a braid of wool and bamboo. The blue skein on the left is Malibrigo dyed wool. The purple, still on the spool, is a wool/silk blend. It just needs to be measured, washed and dried to be finished.
Starting with the newest, the purple yarn on the bobbin. On demand dyed yarn from Fresh Lotus Designs. The colorways the artist creates speak to me every time. She’s my first vendor to look for every time I go to a fiber fest. She’s local in Michigan, which makes her work feel even more special to me. This was one she called Amethyst Sparkle. The silk has a gorgeous sparkly sheen to it. I plyed it into 3 ply yarn to keep the long color runs.
Prior to the lovely purples and pinks, I did another of the Fresh Lotus Designs braids. This one just reminded me of pastel candies in a glass jar. It’s Merino wool and bamboo. I also plyed this as a 3 ply to maintain the color changes (see how the colors change in the photo with my hand in it). I ended up with 242 yards of a gorgeous tweed-like yarn.
I have always loved Malibrigo dyed yarns. They just use stunning colors in really appealing combinations. The wool they use is so soft, it’s so lovely feel as you spin. It’s a little challenging because the fibers stick to each other pretty securely. This is where I realized how easy my life could be if I used a diz to do fiber prep. So I do all my tugging and pulling before I start to spin. When I spin from the fine roving I create, it’s a dream, I created a 2 ply yarn, so I was able to get much more yardage. 818 yards from these braids. One thing I’ve learned is that it’s impossible for my iPhone to consistently photograph these colors. The first photo of the braids and the last of using the diz are the closes to what they look like under overcast skies.
And we’re back to the silk yarn I spun at the end of summer last year, 2024. I had purchased this at a fiber show in Saline a few years ago. I just knew it has hand dyed silk, but I can’t find any additional notes on where I got it. I spun it at a very thin 2-ply yarn, and got 390 yards.
You may have noticed that I’m not spinning these with perfect consistency. They do not look like professionally produced yarns. This is absolutely on purpose. If I wanted commercially perfect yarn, I can buy it far cheaper than I can make it. That’s totally not the point. I want something where I can control the texture and put my peace into it. Spinning is meditation. It’s a beautiful, mind freeing act. So I allow my fingers to learn the fiber and to bring out characteristics that will make for a truly interesting art yarn. When it gets woven, I want the yarn to be the focal point. They will each become one of a kinds wearable art.
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