What kind of invasion is THAT!?

:-)
That's the new yarn I'm about to spin, of course! Somewhere deep down in my fiber stash I found this hand dyed merino wool, all dyed in soft and chilly blues with a hint of green. I don't know any more what I wanted to do with it, so I thought I'd try something new. And bright and springy! I mixed it with soy silk in cream and the brightest orange merino wool you can imagine. It really rocks! :-D

And then it came to liiiiiiiive! ;-) I think this wooly things look like little fishes or mice or something. I'm sure the yarn will be great!

A Glimpse into the future ;-)

I finally got to start (and by now, finish) my long-planned project of the mythological object "Brisingamen", which is the necklace of the Goddess Freyja. The name might be translated to "flaming ornament", so I chose flaming colours for this project.
I wanted the art yarn to be sumptuous, so as to do justice to the object that inspired the project and to the Goddess who owns it, so I not only chose a lustrous wool/silk blend, but also real gemstones in different shapes: carnelian, citrine, moonstone, garnet and aventurine.


The fibres have been hand dyed by myself, using professional acid dyes.
The gemstones have been strung onto a very delicate golden lurex thread, which I took along all the way while spinning. It turned out I dyed enough fibres for quite a large skein, about twice as large as my skeins usually are. Since I now own a wonderful spinning wheel with huge bobbins, it all fit onto one - but I decided to sell this beauty in two seperate skeins, since it will be quite expensive due to all the luxurious materials and I want people to have the chance to buy a smaller part of it. However, I won't cut it in half until someone buys just one skein, so if someone buys the whole lot, it will be one unbroken, large skein.

I really love this yarn and it will be very
hard for me to part with it... But I guess I can't afford to keep everything I like ;-) Especially since I don't want to sell stuff I don't like myself; so after this beauty has been washed I will list it on Etsy.

Oh, my granny would be SO proud!

Yes, I bet she would, because she's a master knitter for sure and always wanted me to knit. And I hated it, I really did - I was so slow, and my knitting was uneven and clumsy.

I recently spun this gorgeous yarn, "Happy Alpaca, Yummy Lime", and it was such a pretty one, extremely soft and all, I had to convince myself to put it in our shop for sale. But I thought that I'm such a bad knitter, it would be a waste...
And what did I do? I spun another big fat skein of this gorgeous yarn for me to keep! :-D And I already started to knit it into a fluffy neck cuff!

Ah, granny would be so proud! Even though I'm processing very, very slowly and have my problems knitting...

Spinning on my Ashford Traditional

is pure joy! It's almost noiseless, it's so smooth and... Ah, I'm in love! :)

Here you can see me spinning the latest addition to the Weird&Twisted Shop, "Happy Alpaca, Yummy Lime". Snowberrylime was in Switzerland some weeks ago and brought some beautiful alpaca fleece. Yesterday I washed and cleaned it, and today I spun a bit of it with some green and yellow wool. The structure of the hand-washed fleece was so gorgeous I didn't want to ruin it by forcing it into a too even thread - so I tried some slubs. I think it looks really beautiful, and I loooove the soft touch!

You may ask: How did she take that photograph... she can't have a third hand, can she? Well, I could, I guess, but I don't. ;-) Even though I spent my last weekend playing the RPG "Call of Cthulhu", I'm not some creepy mythos creature with too many limbs! I just used the automatic release and seized the camera under my chin, that's the whole trick.
Not very comfortable, but I prefer that to being a mythos creature. ;-)

I love that wheel!

As Trashqueen has already noted, I positively begged her to sell me her Schippertje and she finally gave in and made me the happiest spinner on earth (at least I think so ;-)).
Today I spun my first yarns on that beautiful wheel, intending to fill our mythology collection. These two new yarns are called "Ljosalfar" and "Svartalfar" (Light-Elves and Black-/Dark-Elves), who are part of norse mythology. I especially like the Ljosalfar yarn and it is incredibly soft as well as beautiful :-)



I still have some other yarns I need to list in our shop, but my time is quite limited right now, owing to the fact that started working at an archaeological excavation last Wednesday. I have to work 8 hours a day, drive a little more than 2 hours (altogether) and it's really exhausting at the moment (but also fun!).
I took a picture of myself on Friday and I really don't look too happy - but that's not entirely true; I just need to get used to that much work ;-)
Hopefully, I'll be able to take a better/happier one next week - maybe I should do it in the morning, not after tiring myself all day *g*

The big spinning wheel swap: Hello Ashford Traditional, good bye Nameless One

This is the... uh, let me count first... the... fifth spinning wheel in about three months. The fifth! And it arrived three days ago, looking just as grey, dusty and sad as on the picture on the left. Isn't this just a shame!? How can anyone treat a beautiful Ashford Traditional that way!?
Well, I did what I always do when a new spinning wheel arrives here: I went to the hardware store to buy me some new glaze, new sandpaper (240s, it's always the first to be used up) and a brass aglet.
And then I spent yesterday with restoring it. I cleaned, sandpapered, sandpapered again, painted, glazed... Man, that was a tough piece of work!

But it was worth it! Look how beautiful it turned out! And as the glaze dried quite fast, I was able to spin some yarn on my as good as new Ashford Traditional - and I completely fell in love with it.
Meanwhile Weird spun a bit on my huge dark Nameless One and was that overwhelmed that she almost begged me to buy it!

And how could I refuse that request?
:-)
So we both, Weird & Twisted (well, TrashQueen here, eh) have new spinning wheels! Yay!

The Pacific

Did I mention I did a bit of dyeing yesterday? I think I forgot to - well, here's the first result: The Pacific!

I have to get used to my new spinning wheel as I did the last bit of restoration today (one of the three bobbins had to be mended). I dyed with food coloring, an easy but permanent way of coloring animal fiber. For the batt I used here I used light grey extrasoft merino wool and colors in the shades of blue, magenta and green, wildly mixed together. It's a two-ply, quite unusual for me, but I thought the wavy structure would look nice with the colors.

Aurora Borelis

I loved the yarn I spun for pluckyfluff's beenie challenge. The dark wool, contrasted by light blue and light green mohair locks just rocked! And it still did as a beenie.
So I made this beautiful skein on my newly arrived spinning wheel - btw, I think I'll call it "the Nameless one", it doesn't "speak" to me, well... ;-). This yarn has a bit more color to it, just a touch of blue and green, and I think it'll look really gorgeous knit! I call it "Aurora Borealis", the "northern lights" because of the light green and blue mohair locks.

Soon in our shop! :-)

More yarns to come!

Finally! Yesterday, just after the first of my examinations, my new spinning wheel arrived! Well, I must say, it was not as beautiful and highly polished as it had seemed. So I went to the hardware store and bought some nice glaze, spent some hours with my wheel, some paint brushes and stuff in the bathroom (don't ask - it's the only room with direct sunlight in our flat!), et voilà!

Therefore I spent this morning spinning like mad. Truely mad. Finally I came to spin some neat yarns from my hand-dyed batts I dyed about a month ago. And I love 'em! They'll be in our shop soon. :-)

New things to come

I was quite busy during the last week - I spun five different yarns, dyed some wool/silk blend in two different colours and... I bought a second (huge!) dyeing pot today. I hope this will help me save some time ;-)

The new yarns will be added to our shop soon (depending on how good the pictures I've taken today are), one after the other, of course.

And now it's time to do something else, for a change. Like finishing the paper for university, which will take some time. I'd rather spin some more, though ;-)

Farewell, my Sleeping Beauty!

Ah, the third spinning wheel in a short time left me today. The third beautiful spinning wheel, and I loved all of them. But this time, parting was hardest. Although I know there'll arrive two new ones here in a short while, I have none left right now. The flat feels empty and a bit cold (so I'm sitting with my back against the heater).
I restored all three spinning wheels, as I bought them via ebay. I became so fond of all o them, scrubbing them, painting them, glazing them and finally spinning some nice yarn on them.

And I'd have kept the "Sleeping Beauty", if the orifice wasn't too small for my beads and pearls and stuff I like to spin into my art yarns. I gave her shelter for only one and a half months. Now I wish I had a bigger flat, more space so I could keep her...

I know, I'm whining. I should look forward to the new wheels, which will hopefully arrive soon. But right now, I can't.