zaubernuss - witchhazel

handspun #4

i haven't posted about my spinning in a long time, partly because i always forgot about it and partly because i haven't done any spinning in quite a while before just recently. (it turned out that spinning wasn't good for my hands just as knitting wasn't good for it - but it's okay now, as long as i don't overdo it.)

i've showed this picture before (more than two! years ago - i really need to keep on top of my posting!) and this is the finished yarn:

then i've already shown a picture of this yarn while it was still on the bobbin:

and this is the finished skein:

it's not the most perfect yarn but it's fluffy and has lovely colour variations and it most definitely looks handspun.

next up is this one. it's 100% merino and it turned out quite chunky but rather nice, i think.

this next one displayed a wonderful rainbow while being spun even though there was nothing rainbowy about the roving and it's not really visible in the skein either:

(i rather love this one as you can probable tell by the overload of pictures.)

i'm sorry i forgot to take a photo of the roving before spinning up this next yarn because i always find it so interesting how the fibers, the single and the finished yarn can look completely different from one another. i did take a few pictures of the single on the bobbin while i spun it tough (and i often get carried away with it a bit):

this one came out rather "artsy" but i'm sure it will knit up lovely.

the next one is a blend of merino wool and mulberry silk in lovely soft shades of lilac, pink, grey and hues or teal. the silk gives it a beautiful pearly shimmer:

now, i have no i idea if i posted all the above yarns in the same order as i spun them. i tried my best - with the help of my photo file but that can't really be relied upon because sometimes i simply forget to take a picture of the finished yarn right away - but it doesn't matter really...

i do know though that this one is the last one i spun:

my mum and i bought the fiber at an arts and crafts show we went to and she was very surprised at how the yarn turned out because the colours of the roving looked so different. it's lovely and soft thought and i'm sure it will knit up beautifully...

in this spinning post i talked about how the spinning of some art yarn kind of went wrong for me and i mentioned that i might work with it a bit more. i've done that now and while the result is still far from perfect (rather overtwisted and unbalanced yarn) i'm certainly much happier with it:

i plied the "finished" yarn again with some wool that was left on one of my bobbins from the previous yarn (a 2-ply - somehow i never manage to spin two halves of fiber without ending up with lots of left-over single). i worked in all sorts of fun texture.

then i threaded lots and lots of glass beads on some strong black sewing thread. i chose white, clear, clear blue, clear yellow and clear orange. then i plied my triple-plied yarn again with said thread, feeding on the beads as i went. i also played a little with coils.

i already have something new on my wheel again. it's a merino/silk blend again and i'm going to navajo-ply it.

that was it with the handspun yarn for now. i hope you enjoyed it. i still don't know what to do with most of them. i'm going to knit a hat with one and i'm going to let my mum pick one to have something nice knitted with. maybe i'll sell the other ones... i really love spinning yarn but i've come to the conclusion that i can't knit something with every skein of yarn i spin. especially since most of them only have enough length to knit a hat with, or arm warmers or a cowl of some sorts. and i don't need that many of those...

 

lots of love! xxx

meet Flora:

do you remember Herb?

i made him back in october and he has been holding on to our shopping-list pen ever since.

now i've spent the last two or three days making a friend for Herb.

meet Flora:

Flora is a bit of a diva and she's an insect spirit. she loves my hydrangea bush as much as i do.

(i'm so proud of this plant - it was only about a third of its current size when i planted it last autumn. it was its first winter outside, and a rough one at that. it reaches up to my knee and has 17 flower umbels!)

i made Flora with a little skein of handspun merino that i had left over on one of the two bobbins i'd used to create a 2-ply. i plied the left over with a synthetic metallic thread - which didn't go all that well because that thread has a bit of a memory-effect and it didn't like being plied. it knitted up nicely though.

i love her hands and feet! (just like i love Herb's as well...)

Flora is not going to live on the fridge (as i didn't have any magnets). i don't know exactly where she's going to stay yet, but R keeps sneaking her off to play and cuddle with her so i assume she's going to live in the kids' room for a while.

i guess i should have placed the second pair of arms a tiny bit further below the upper pair to allow them to hang a little "drapier" but when i thought about that, it was too late to change it... it's perfectly fine though. flora's unique and really rather special to me.

 

lots of love and i hope you have a great time, whereever you are in the world! xxx

socks #10 and works in progress

pair #40 - i can't believe it's that many already! - is made from Atelier Zitron Trekking XXL 565. i love this yarn. i love the colours, the random stripes, the fact that it absolutely doesn't matter if there's a knot in the ball where the yarn has been tied (to a new cone or because it broke somewhere in the machine during the process of winding) and there is a stretch of colour missing and you would never notice if you didn't knit it yourself and knew exactly where it was. if i designed sock yarn - and i would love to design sock yarn - this is the kind of yarn i'd go for... sorry to all the OCD sock matchers out there. hihi!
(these are caterpillar socks again and you can find instructions here if you'd like to make some too.)

i'm currently working on a pair of Opal Sweet&Spicy3 Kiwi socklets for my husband. yes - he chose the yarn himself. it's awesome and i love my husband even more for liking funky socks just as much as i do.

i'll cast on the second one tonight.

i've also started to knit a sweater for my little girl... i went online shopping for clothes for her a while ago and was really frustrated because there seem to be so little nice kids' clothes available these days. everything looks either like doll stuff or like miniature adult fashion. i know there are great companies that make awesome clothes for kids - using organic and locally sourced materials and everything and i'm really all for that - but as long as i need new clothes for my kids basically every three months i just can't afford those... i'd love to but that will have to wait until they stop growing that quickly. until then i'll just have to make their sweaters myself if i can - and it turns out i can:

i have knitted two sweaters before. one that took me forever because the yarn i used required 3,5mm needles and another that didn't take quite so long but turned out horrible beause of everything: yarn that looked and felt great in the ball but not when knitted, shape, pattern, fuzzyness... everything. so i kind of gave up on the whole idea of knitting sweaters for a while. then i found this post and absolutely loved this sweater made from sock yarn leftovers. i know - even thinner 2,5mm needles, but i'm used to those by now.

so i started searching for ways to make sweater knitting easier which meant: find a way around all the sewing of individual pieces. i did find patterns for sweaters made from sock yarn but didn't really like any of them. then i found a series for blog posts that teaches you to knit a top-down sweater (or cardigan) using any kind of yarn and needle size you may have in your stash (no more "i like the pattern but not the yarn", etc.) and you can add any kind of decorative elements (lace, cables, etc.) if you feel up to it. i read the entire instruction, made sure i understood all of it (it's really easy to understand and follow) and then i just used my calculator to do some basic math and figure out how many stitches i needed to make a sweater that will fit an almost two-and-a-half-year-old.
(another great thing about working top-down is that the bind-off is at the bottom hem and the wrists. should it get too short before it gets to tight i can just make it longer!)

i guess i just made that sound much more complicated that it actually is.

i guess i'll be done with the body really soon and can start the sleeves. i think i'll add a hood as well. i'm using my sock yarn leftovers and i just love how it's turning out. i almost wish i had made it bigger so i could keep it myself - hehe! - but i look forward to seeing my little one in it. T has already requested a sweater for himself when he saw me knitting on this and asked what it was. he was very cute and asked if it was for him when i told him i was knitting a sweater. when i said "no, it's for R." he asked why not for him and i explained that i had never made something like this before and wanted to start with the smallest size first to see how it goes. he's a very understanding boy and was satisfied to know that he will get one as well once this one is done. and the great thing is: i'm not scared of it any more! i'm actually looking forward to a whole load of handknitted sweaters in all shapes and sizes using all different kinds of yarns, with hoods or not, pouch pockets or not, ribbing or rolled edges, v-necks, round necks, boat necks... i'm turning into Mrs. Weasley...

this is on my spinning wheel at the moment - or rather was. i finished the single today and started navajo-plying right away. it's the finest single i've spun so far. the fiber is blue faced leicester which is lovely and easy to spin and has appropriately been named "rolling hills" by the dyer. 

i still have issues with the yarn being slightly overtwisted when plied but i'm working on it.

i can see lots of shawls knitted with handspun yarn in my future...

happy yarning everyone!

handspun #3

i just picked some brown and blue merino, hand-blended and started to spin. i hadn't spun in a while and felt like it and something brown and blue had been on my mind for a while...

i had trouble with this! for some reason i couldn't spin properly that day or i couldn't get the wheel to spin properly. i had problems with treadling speed, uptake, tension, drafting, etc... i guess most of the problems beginner spinners can have. i think the only problem i didn't really have was overtwisting the single. i rather think most of it turned out to be very much undertwisted...

i can't decide whether i like this yarn or hate it... it's pretty and there's lots of nice colourplay and i like the flowers - even though they gave me lots of trouble as well because of them being too bulky for the standard size orifice on my wheel. but i was so frustrated while i made it because nothing worked the way i wanted it.

i guess i could just call it Art Yarn and pretend that it was intended that way and that i actually can spin really good, even yarn - which i can... well, i don't know about good, but at least even...

i will look up some ways of troubleshooting: how do i correct uptake? how do i know if i have enough twist? how much tension is good/advisable when plying? things like that... when i have problems like that i kind of regret that i never took a spinning class and i wish i had a really good "theory of spinning" where i could read up on all the theoretical knowledge i don't have yet... i'm just too impatient to learn everything through trial and error... that would also get way too expensive...

the whole skein is just over 50m of yarn and i don't know what to do with it at all... i think i'll just keep it for a while and maybe i'll think of something... maybe i'll even continue spinning it...

even when i do manage to spin an even, (almost) balanced yarn i have to remind myself every now and then that i'm still very much a beginner making "unitentional" art yarn... i intended it to be art yarn but even art yarn has to be good yarn and not couldn't-set-the-wheel-right-lumpy-drafting-undertwisted-chaos-yarn...

but i like this picture very much...

now i'll be off to find out how to spin better...

this is what's on my wheel right now: plain coloured merino with colourful wensleydale locks spun in. i'll fill up the bobbin and then wind the whole lot into a center-pull ball for two-plying. i think it will be fun and colourful candy cane lockyness...

handspun #2

back in december i ordered a box of merino fibers from FILZFAKTOR!. they actually specialize in felting products, tools and accessories but they have lots of fibers in beautiful colours at a reasonable price (i think - i don't have that much experience with that yet). and what you can felt with you can usually also spin into yarn... these little fiber-butterflies were 20g each as i wanted lots of different colours.

i also ordered some dyed wensleydale and gotland locks for some texture... while i waited for my wheel to arrive back in autumn i found this video showing how to make "Rosebud Yarn" (at about 7:22) and i really wanted to give this a try so i got quite a selection of greens and browns and pinks in my box.

i want to thank Kate from Ashford's for the wonderful inspiration! (though i doubt this will reach her - it's the thought that counts and that will travel to wherever she is... i think...)

i sort of "hand blended" (i don't even know if this is a "thing" spinners do but it worked fine for me since i don't have any professional blending tools that would usually be used to prepare and blend fibers for spinning) my greens and browns, threw in a little teal and some grey gotland locks and spun a single. i took a ball of fuzzy grey kid mohair i had bought ages ago for a knittig project i didn't make and followed - or at least tried to follow - the instructions in the video. i also added some green locks to it...

it's rather overtwisted (not even a good soak could fix that) and if it was plain yarn i would be very upset about this, but the curlyness adds beautifully to the organic texture of it. it's also not particularly soft but it was my first try - so i guess it's good...

some of my rosebuds didn't turn out too great. some got too big and loose and don't feel as tight as i would have liked them to be. some have a rather funny shape and with some of them the "twig" holding them in place just ran out of my hands... i had troubles with treadling speed and uptake and twist with this yarn... but it was great fun to make all the same and if i make another skein of this - i'm sure i will - i'll do better...

when i was little we had a video tape of a live-action sleeping beauty movie that i liked very much. sleeping beauty in german is "dornröschen" - "dorn" = thorn and "röschen" = small rose/s - which is what i have called the yarn. you know, in this movie i liked as a kid, the twelfth fairy, the one who is late and then twists the curse from "instant death" to "sleeping for a hundred years", puts everyone in the castle to sleep as well and then casts a spell on the spinning wheel which then spins all the vines and thorns that overgrow the whole palace and the grounds...

and when i look at this yarn i imagine that this is actually what the enchanted spinning wheel spun - yards upon yards of curly, twisty, wooly vines that weaved their way all over and across the place growing felt buds and flowers, felting into an impenetrable carpet as rain and wind and sun hit it year after year, fending off all the unworthy who came to take the sleeping princess away before the time was right...

i think there is a reason for spinning wheels being such important props in fairy tales... (i mean apart from the fact that spnning wheels were basic household items back when most of our classic fairy tales were written/collected). there is just something magical about them... the plot point of "spinning straw into gold" became much more understandable to me: it's a metaphor for patience and skill. take something you have in abundance: straw (which for me stands for fiber) and turn it into something useful, valuable and beautiful: yarn.

next i "blended" myself a rainbow. actually i made two of those. i just pulled strands off my fiber and had them overlap each other so the colours would blend a little at the joints...

the outer layer on this bobbin looks kind of like a mess but it was with this yarn that i discovered i really like navajo plying...

these two skeins of rainbow yarn were the first of my handspun i knitted with. it was a little odd - i'm not really used to yarn that's thicker than sock yarn... but i made a linen-stitch scarf and i'm quite pleased with it...

next i used every colour of merino i had (some of each - leaving only a few very dark shades out) and made this huge ball of fluff ready to be spun:

i sometimes like to stop and take a look at my bobbin...

about 219m of colourful lovelyness - and fairly even. navajo plied again.

my wonderful husband gave me two beautiful braids of merino/mulberry-silk blend for christmas. he bought them here and i'm definitely going back there...

and since i had not spun anything since october due to lack of fiber i felt like i needed the two batches of rainbow yarn and the colourful one to get back into it because i really didn't want to mess up with these wonderful braids. i wanted to get as much even yarn out of them as my skill level allowed for. while i spun the other ones they waited patiently, enjoying to be admired. because i did... i took them up, stroked and squished them, took in the wonderful colourplay because i knew once spun into yarn they would be something else entirely. still wonderful, still colourful, still soft (hopefully) but very different...

i think the colours muted quite a bit and spinning a blend was totally new and different to me since i had only spun commercially processed merino before. this blend is hand dyed and some bits of the fiber were slightly felted which made it harder to draft. i learned a lot about adjusting treadling speed and how i have to draft between the easy, silky bits and some of the not so easy bits... i love the yarn very much. it's incredibly soft. i got about 152m out of the 100g braid which upset me a little because i had come across this pattern for a triangular shawl that had been designed for handspun yarn and that i really like the look of but it requires at least 220m of yarn to get a good wearable size.

so i thought i'd like to practice spinning very fine yarn some more before i start with the second braid, and i prepared some pink-brown-purple merino and started spinning...

still only about 166m... but it's very fluffy (a little overtwisted) and i'm rather curious to see how it knits up even though i don't think it will be me who ends up knitting with it...

now - i love this one! over 236m of gorgeously soft, softly coloured merino silk yarn - the silk makes it all shimmery like mother-of-pearl - and i am going to knit my shawl out of it. when i'm ready to part with the skein as it is now... just as with the transformation from a braid of roving to spun yarn, the change from yarn to a knitted piece sometimes has to await the right moment... the braid has been called "wonderland" by the dyer and both braid and yarn are very suited to the name...

i'm back

i haven't posted in a long time. time has kind of gotten away from me and whenever i thought i could (or should) write a post i didn't feel like writing something long and picture heavy - so i didn't... you see: long and picture heavy posts are the kind of posts i enjoy when i read other peple's blogs, so i thought i myself should blog the way i would enjoy reading it. now i notice: this doesn't suit me. and i guess that's fine. there are other ways to write blog posts. 

writing long posts and uploading lots of pictures annoyed me and i don't really have time to do it during the day (maybe sometimes I would have time, but whenever i sit down to write something on the computer the kids come running and want something) so it usually took up most of my evenings and i didn't want that. i have a facebook page that goes with my blog and i've been posting a lot there recently which got me thinking: why don't i just write blog posts the way i write facebook posts? a quick line and a picture or two and it's done and it only took five minutes (and that's only because i honstly think the typepad photo uploading service is very inefficient).

i'm going to try this - i don't know why i didn't think of this before actually. i really want to write about and record my daily life more but somehow i had this fixed idea in my head that blog posts have to be wordy and full of photos... don't know why...

there have been lots of things going on since i last posted:

i have knitted 20 pairs of socks since september! i can't believe this... i will not post pictures of them all now because it would take forever but i'm thinking of setting up a gallery sort of thing where i can add all the finished pairs to over time.

i finally finished my mixed stitch blanket (which i started back in spring 2014 and have been working on on and off whenever the mood struck me). it's living on the sofa and being used already.

you can find a very detailed pattern with lots of photos and easy to follow explanations here if you're interested in making one for yourself.

i also spun some yarn but i'll write a seperate post on that because that one will be picture heavy... here's a little sneak peek:

i stumbled across Lalylala Dolls while browsing through google images seaching for something and was instantly smitten with them. i bought some of the patterns (here) and have made the house fly and a fox already. there will be more to come... many more to come...

we are going to move next winter. our new place is being built and supposed to be finished next winter around the end of november. we'll have unlimited lease, affordable rent, no draft from the windows and underfloor heating - all of which we've never had in any of the places where we've lived before. i'm very much looking forward to it and already have lots of ideas for decorating. we need to plan our kitchen - also something we've not done before - and despite the ongoing issue of how-do-we-pay-for-that i'm looking forward to that too because in all the kitchens i've been in so far (at home or as a guest) there have been features i liked and features i hated so we came up with a list/concept of the things we would like to have in our kitchen and we'll just see what's possible...

i made a canvas last weekend as a thank-you present for a friend of my mum's who has given us lots of kids' clothes her son had outgrown. my mum had commissioned me to knit her a pair of socks as a birthday present as well so i matched them up:

i'm glad that spring is on its way. we have liverleaf and snowdrops to marvel at on the way to kindergarten and once we're into march it can't be long until it finally gets a little warmer (on a more regular basis - we've had an odd mild day or two)... i'm looking forward to sitting outside again while the kids play without freezing my butt off or having to put on so many layers i can't move any more. and i'm sure the kids will enjoy not having to wear so much too.

i'm sure i'll be back soon with something short and small about something that i'm working on or that's happening... until then.

handspun #1

this is my very first handspun - i've talked about it here already.

these are the fibers i ordered along with the spinning wheel and i started with the multi coloured one.

i pulled it into long thin strands which revealed the colours much better.

that's it all spun into a rather chunky and uneven (and of course over- and undertwisted) single.

while i was waiting for my wheel to be delivered i watched A LOT of videos on spinning basics and techniques. and i looked at lots and lots of beautiful images of funky art yarns that had all kinds of things like beads and charms and laces etc. spun into them. of course i wanted to try some of that. i started with beads and coils - although i should admitt that the fist coil kind of just happened and i really liked it so i just went with it. i guess i could have waited with that until i had some more experience with plying in general but why should i? as long as i don't hurt my wheel (or myself or anyone else for that matter) there can be no harm in experimenting with something new... this is the result of said experiments - and i love it:

i plied the single with some very strong crochet cotton thread - in one or two of the videos the spinning ladies mentioned that a ply-thread has to be sturdy enough not to break on you while you are plying so i gave it a good pull and actually hurt my fingers... i figured that meant the thread was sturdy enough. it took ages to thread a lot of tiny seed beads onto the thread. the beads were not the best choice because they didn't slide freely on the thread which made it hard to feed them into the yarn while plying. but now i know better and for my first try i guess i could have done worse. same with the coils - most of them are way too loose and wobble and slide up and down a little. i only plied as much yarn that way as i had beads threaded on the ply-thread and there was no way i was going to thread any more... it turned out to be about 46m of yarn...

i plied the rest of the colourful single with more cotton and some shiny golden and teal sewing thread. i ended up with roughly 87m.

it's fun mini art yarn. i've called it "harlequin" and will probably knit a loop-scarf with it - on some big needles to bring out the coils...

next i started the pink and green roving.

with this i wanted to try another thing i had seen during my spinning-video binge. i wanted to spin in fabric flowers. i parted the fibers equally and spun a plain single with one half. then i prepared the flowers and spun them into the other half of the roving.

i plied the plain single and the flowery single and i'm very proud of the result.

it's very soft and feels luxurious and special in a way... over 105m of lovelyness...

this one was sold as an "art batt" - it's also just merino but it has some very sparkly angelina-fibers in it, which is a synthetic product but all it does is add sparkle. you don't feel it because there is so little of it.

it was a little difficult to spin though because the angelina was just kind of sitting on top of the merino and was not really integrated which caused it to bunch up while i spun it... maybe i did something wrong and there was something that i should have known or be cautious about while spinning it. i was also a litle disappointed because the entire base (underside) of the batt was in this dark forest green that can be seen a little of in the pic above. it didn't say so in the description - i thought i was getting something springy/summery with that lovely pinkish red, orangeish yellow and light green (a bit of dark green i don't mind) but when i unrolled it and turned it over it was like a carpet of moss... it still turned out nicely when i spun it and it actually grew on me since...

it went from summery to christmasy...

when i spun this i tried to really pay attention to getting as even as possible and to get as much mileage out of it as possible - as much as my "skill level" allowed for anyway... it's quite chunky but not as uneven as the other ones - still uneven enough though...

i split the fiber in half again to fill two bobbins so i could ply them together. i had some leftover on one of the bobbins when the single on the other one had run out so made a tiny little mini skein with the rest, plying it with the cotton thread with some gold beads on it.

what i want to do next is practise practise practise until i can spin really fine yarn that is evenly plied - sockyarn is the thickness i have in mind here. what could be more fabulous that knitting socks from handspun yarn...?

spinning wheel

long time no post... i got my spinning wheel four weeks ago tomorrow! that long already! i absolutely love it...

it took me over twenty minutes to remove all the tape that held the cardboard together - apparently the company i ordered it from couldn't find a box that was big enough for the other boxes... it arrived all whole and save and sound.

hard to believe the entire spinning wheel fit in there. it took me about two hours to assemble it - but i guess it would not have taken that long had the kids not wanted to help so much, as it was not difficult at all and the instructions were very clear and straightforward. but R kept running off with the hammer, to hammer everything within reach, and T was excited to help screwing in screws and taping in wooden dowels. once he noticed there was going to be some building he ran off to fetch his toy hard-hat and put it on. (it doesn't fit very well and kept falling off his head so he kicked it away after a while...)

isn't it lovely? it's an ashford kiwi 2 and it cost 315€... (see the abandoned hard-hat in the back corner...?)

T was (and still is) very interested in it. he likes treadling and it has already been a helicopter, a ship's steering wheel, a high speed train and some other fast and powerful vehicles... sometimes i have to remind him not to be too rough with it and not to treadle too furiously though. i suppose it is quite sturdy and can take it - but i don't want to find out how sturdy it is and how much it can take quite yet...

i ordered these fibers along with the wheel so i could start right away. i could not believe how soft these were. i had never touched anything like that before... i would have loved to start on one of them right away but the first thing i did was to just sit and treadle for a while (reminding the kids not to touch the wheel while it was turning or any other of the moving parts for that matter...), getting a feel for it and practicing starting and stopping without the use of my hands and without the wheel rocking back and forth... then i took a little scrap ball of yarn and let it run onto a bobbin while playing with the tension knob to get a feel for the uptake and the twist.

the very first thing i spun was a little 25g fluff of rainbow felting wool i had picked up at the craft section at the hardware store (it was on sale). i pre-drafted it quite a bit to test the staple length.

i realised later that i had way too little tension on the break band and of course the yarn i spun is far from perfect with lots of overtwist in some places and big chunks of fluff in others, but all in all for my first attempt it went much better than i had expected.

(i don't really count the time we (my sisters and i) tested the old spinning wheel we found in the attic that had some missing parts and was in desperate need of oil. also we "spun" raw sheep's wool that had maybe been washed - if even that - and that was it... it was fun to do but the results were for the garbage and the excitement ebbed off rather quickly... i think i was maybe ten or eleven...)

i also held the fiber much to tight. i needed some time to relax and let go... a couple of weeks ago we were at a medieval fair and i saw a woman spinning on a wheel. i watched for a while and we chatted a little and i told her i wanted to get a wheel for myself and she said to me: "spinning is all about letting go - just as raising children and life in general is." i have thought about that a lot and after having spun for a while can totally relate to that. when i hold on too tight - be it the fiber, the do-s and don't-s or whatever may vex and annoy me - it will all go wrong... odd that it took a spinning wheel to point that out to me... but that's another story...

anyway - the two little fluffs of 12,5g wool (i split the long 25g strand) spun themselves quite quickly so i plied them right away to see how that worked... it worked great! (a little overplied but i didn't expect anything else...) i like plying - it's the first time you get to see what the finished yarn will look like and when spinning and plying gradient yarn it makes that nice candy cane effect and you never know what colours are coming up next...

there we go! one tiny little skein of handspun yarn! i'm so ridiculously proud of it... and i love the colours. it's not particularly soft because the fiber was intended for kids' crafting but it was nice for the first try because it was so little. and i won't be knitting anything from it anyway. no - i will keep it forever to remind myself of my very first handspun yarn... and how beautiful it turned out...

next time i'll show you what else i have spun so far...