Why is it...?

Why is it that I always have to decide on last minute birthday presents? Knitted last minute birthday presents? I mentioned that I was thinking about knitting a silver fox/cashmere purse, but I actually decided to do it Thursday night and I knew I had to finish it the day after. I did - but I didn't manage to get the parcel to the post office in time, so I'll have to do that on Monday and hope they will be super fast. But even if it will arrive late, it was so worth it - I love the purse so much! I have to make myself give it away.

Here it is - silver fox hair blended with cashmere, handspun by me more than a year ago, adorned with genuine silver spacers and beads:

(More photos on my flickr page.)

And now I'm off to bed - I have to get up early tomorrow since my husband and I will start an archery class. Really looking forward to it :-)

Waiting PATIENTLY

VERY patiently! *drums fingers on table*
;-)

The reason? I've ordered a beautiful niddy noddy from The Spinner's Emporium, which has been shipped and should be here soon, and we (Twisted and I) have ordered some gorgeous spindels from IST crafts. Ian told us some of them were not in stock, so he's making them to order - that's so exciting! :-) We're really looking forward to receiving them, they are so beautiful.

Two Yarns and a Kraken

...is what I brought with me from our spinning event last Saturday. The yarns were spun by me, the kraken was given to me by Mademoiselle Chaos. She made one for everyone of us, and they are so cute! Thanks again :-)

We had a wonderful time, it was great to meet some of the Spinnkult people, and the Unperfekthaus (our location) was fantastic. I'd really like to go there again (to be honest, I'd love to have a spinning studio there) and hopefully next time I won't have to leave as early as this time. Both Twisted and I were invited to a birthday on the same day and since the two locations were more than 4 hours (by car) apart, we had to leave in the early afternoon. Good thing we started early :-)

A Noble Spring Wedding - Pictures of a Prize Yarn Knit Up

It's not been long since our lottery/giveaway - and we already received the first photos of what Kat made from the "Spring Wedding" yarn!



Thank you so much for the pictures, Kat, and for your permission to show them here - this is a beautiful piece, I love the pattern you chose!
More information can be found on Ravelry (since you've posted your Ravelry name in the comments of the giveaway posting, I think it's okay to post the link - if it's not, please tell me and I will remove it at once!)

More than a year ago...

... I had THE idea for a birthday present. I even hinted at it, but then never got around to telling you properly about it.
I had stumbled upon this blog post mentioning silver fox hair and really wanted to get my hands on that stuff, since my mother is a great fox lover. It took me a while to track the source down, and even more to find someone who could tell me whether the foxes were harmed in the process, something which I wouldn't want. It turned out they were semi-domesticated and the hair was obtained by combing them. That sounded fine to me, so I purchased some of the fibre (the most expensive fibre I have ordered yet) and tried spinning it. It was a small desaster, to tell you the truth. Spinning these short hairs was very time-consuming and veeeery nerve-wracking, so I tried blending them with cashmere, which is also short in staple length but kind of gluey. That worked a lot better, but it still took me some time until I had about 700m of silver fox/cashmere yarn. I knew what I wanted to make from it - a simple garter stitch triangle shawl, such as this one. Oh - did I mention I was on a tight schedule? I am not too fast a knitter, and I had less than two months for spinning and knitting (and blocking and shipping) the whole thing. Maybe some of you will laugh now and think that's plenty of time, but not for me ;-)

Anyway, I did manage it in time for April 27th, but there was no time left to take photos of the shawl. I had to wait for that until my wedding in September, and now I've taken until now to show you ;-)

So - here is my mother, on my wedding day, wearing her silver fox shawl:

Knit on 3mm needles in about 3 weeks, if I remember correctly. It's wonderfully soft and delicate, and I like the colour and texture, but it sheds quite a lot. Mum doesn't seem to mind, though. I still have some yarn left (I'm not sure, but it has to be nearly half the amount I spun) and maybe I will knit a small bag or purse to go with the shawl. I still have nearly two weeks left until shipping day for Mum's next birthday ;-)
Oh, the pattern can be found here, by the way. Very easy and fun to knit :-)

Aquatic Obsession

Last weekend, I've been busy carding and spinning. Turns out I seem to be a little obsessed with the ocean, and with light blues and teals. I didn't know before I actually finished ;-)

Tropical Fish

Summer and the Sea

Creatures of the Ocean

I really needed to spin some more bulky yarns again, I've recently been concentrating on lace or light fingering a little too much for my taste. Thicker yarns are a great opportunity to play with texture and that's what I really love about these yarns: they're irregular, they're somewhat bulky and less delicate than the lace yarns I've spun and they vary in texture. And I like the add-ins, most of all the sea shells in the second yarn :-)

Soon to be listed, I hope.

Spinning Event in Essen/Germany

Next Saturday (17th of April), Twisted and I will be spinning, knitting and hopefully putting up knit graffities in Essen/Germany, along with Mademoiselle Chaos, Granny Weatherwax, Aud and Frau Wo aus Po. Everyone is welcome to visit, watch, participate and/or learn! We'll be at the Unperfekthaus, Room Nr. 304, and we'll be bringing spindles for beginners, too and it will be a wonderful day!


Am kommenden Samstag findet eine subversive Faserveranstaltung im Unperfekthaus in Essen statt. Wir spinnen, stricken, kardieren, bringen Garngraffities an und verbreiten gern Spinnviren an alle, die es lernen wollen ;-) . Mit dabei sind Mademoiselle Chaos, Granny Weatherwax, Aud, Frau Wo aus Po, FrauFledermaus und wir (Weird&Twisted ;-)), geplant haben wir alles im Spinnkult. Ein paar Handspindeln zum Ausprobieren werden vorhanden sein, Fasern ebenfalls. Wer Lust hat, zu spinnen, zu stricken, zu häkeln oder einfach nur zu gucken, ist herzlich eingeladen!

Just a quick peek

After finally managing to shoot some better photos of "Welcome to Divination", the yarn is now listed. I'm also done spinning "Trelawney", focusing on Harry's impression of her as "a large, glittering insect". It's always the same, though: I am not able to capture all of the glitter in a picture. I've used quite a lot of angelina and many, many facetted glass beads of various colours. I've also spun in some lace fabric and some sparkly black thread. The yarn is mostly black, but with hints of teal/dark aqua and dark violet.

A Second Chance

Just a very short notice: since the winner of the Spring Wedding yarn has not left a means to contact her and has not contacted us within the given time frame, we had to draw anew. The lucky winner is Kat - congratulations!

Congratulations!

Yesterday, I prepared our lottery first thing in the morning and was very excited, but I didn't want to keep all the fun for myself, so I had to wait for Twisted to come home from work. The lucky hour finally arrived, and we proudly present our winners:

The Toadstool yarn will be sent to stilettopeel
Since this was a customer special offer, we have your address - so you don't have to do anything, the yarn will be sent to you next week.

micruli is the lucky winner of the Wedding yarn.
micruli, leider hast du keine eMail-Adresse angegeben, unter der wir dich erreichen können und dein Google-Profil ist nicht öffentlich freigegeben. Bitte melde dich bei uns bis Ostermontag (einfach deine Adresse an weird231@12534weirdandtwisted.com -ohne alle Zahlen- schicken), ansonsten müssen wir leider am Dienstag nochmal losen.

Thanks to everyone for participating, it was great fun and we're looking forward to more giveaways in the future :-)