Lametta, Soap, and Snickerdoodle Cookies

I've so wanted to post a few Lametta photos, but I was in bed with a bad cold nearly all week. I don't have many pictures, but I'd like to show them to you anyway :-)

 

Did I mention we brought the spinning wheel with us? Here you can see Twisted in spinning action.

We didn't spin the whole time, but quite a lot, and there were always lots of children around, watching, and many adults, too. People were very interested in our yarns and asked many questions, and I for one was a little hoarse after two days. It was a wonderful experience, though! :-) We also brought some knitted and crocheted pieces made from art yarn, just to show people, not to sell. This was a really good idea since art yarns seem not to be that well known in Germany and many people couldn't imagine how things would look in the end, or what you can do with art yarn. Which reminds me: I've been working on a post about knitting with art yarn, which is getting rather large, and I hope I'll find the time to complete it soon.

 

Here is the stitch marker display which I already blogged about, along with some wonderful earrings Twisted made recently. They all contain art yarn or silk fibre, and some of them also feature beads.

This is one of the yarns I spun there, I've already taken photos and hope to list it soon. I'm a little behind with things due to my cold, but I think I might be able to list a few yarns some time next week. I also have a grey one with ribbons, pearls and labradorites, a pink and black one wiht skulls (these were the ones I spun live at the fair), and of course lots which I spun during the weeks before the fair. I am really looking forward to show them and to list them :-)

Here you can imagine rather than see some of the necklaces and neck rings Twisted made for the fair. It also shows the warm light and nice atmosphere of the fair, if just a little.

There are two more things I'd like to share with you: When I was in bed, miserable and sniffing, my day was brightened by the arrival of a parcel: My friend and trade partner Goodgirl sent me two soaps! :-) One was part of a trade from last year, and one she sent because she knew I liked it so much. I was so happy, I still am, as a matter of fact :-) The smell SO good!

The Ice Princess (on the right side) features a piece of yarn I spun for Goodgirl. I promised her two small skeins of scrap yarn and ended up with three because I couldn't decide with one of the themes - and this way I kind of made her invent a new soap, fitting the yarn. I love it :-)

And the last thing I wanted to share is this recipe for Snickerdoodle cookies, which I found on a blog and traced back to where they came from originally. My husband made them yesterday (I helped a little, but since I don't enjoy baking that much and he loves it, it was his project) and they are heavenly!

Lametta Craft Fair - We're SO Excited!

We've been very busy spinning and labelling yarns these last days, Twisted has been experimenting with art yarn jewelry, and we also put up our booth yesterday. Here are some impressions, but I am afraid my mobile isn't good enough to take good photos in bad light conditions, so there will be some room for imagination ;-)

 Nearly all our yarns - labelled, and sorted into price groups. We have 75 skeins - how amazing, we've really been busy these last few weeks!

 After setting up our booth we felt there was something missing. Since Twisted is a genius, we now have a hand painted copy of our logo :-) I am glad we brought that paper table cover!

 Isn't it amazing? Twisted only had a business card, no auxiliary lines, no preparatory drawing, nothing! I love how it turned out :-)

 

 We only brought our red yarns yesterday since we didn't want to leave all our yarns there over night. We put up some beautiful branches of Chinese Willow so the table won't look so naked - I think it really does the trick.

 

 And here's our still quite empty booth which will be filled with all our wonderful creations later today. The fair starts at 4 pm and we're so excited. Please wish us luck and success! :-)

Craft Fair Preparations

The Lametta Craft Fair in Karlsruhe (Germany) is rapidly approaching - and we're up to our ears in preparations! We will be offering our handspun creations, of course, but also hand painted spindles (the making of which we scheduled for Thursday) and hand made stitch markers. I've been working on a good way of displaying them recently, and I finally finished the whole thing yesterday:

It was extremely frustrating to get the hooks into the display case. Some of the hooks were fairly easy to get in, but some others took ages and my hands ached all over afterwards. I still haven't figured out whether the wood was harder in some places than others or if some of the hooks were better than others (or if I was just clumsy sometimes), but it's done and that is what counts :-) Some of the hooks are askew, but all in all I am quite pleased with the whole thing.

I also spun lots of new yarns lately, and I still have quite a number to finish. The shop was going so well last month (THANK YOU, our wonderful customers! We love you! :-)) that we really have to restock. Here are my latest creations:

The photo is quite bad, but since I am in a hurry and there is not enough light outside for better photos, this will have to do for now. I am still in love with flower yarns and the ones with shells, as you can see :-)

Our shop will be closed on Friday and Saturday, by the way, since we're taking all our yarns with us to the fair. We don't know which ones will make it back into the shop, so if you happen to have your eyes on a particular yarn, now might be a good time to get it ;-)

Christmas and Winter Art Yarns

I finally surrendered to the thought that the time for spinning Halloween yarns is nearly over and that it's necessary to plan ahead and put some serious thought into Christmas and winter yarns. It's not been that hard these last few days, since the weather was really ugly and the winter mood started to kick in ;-) I realized this meant I could get out all my nice wite fibres, of which I have many different kinds, so I can take playing with texture to a whole new level. I also had some ideas for some darker yarns, so there will be a nice variety. Oh - and I also have some Halloween batts I MUST spin up, so there will also be a few more of those ;-)

Lametta

This one I made for a special occasion. As I said the other day, we'll be selling our yarns at a local craft fair called Lametta (=tinsel), shortly before Christmas. I thought it would be great to spin a small skein of Lametta yarn, knit it up and put a yarn graffiti up somewhere close to the fair, maybe even in or outside the building. This skein is already dry, so I can knit it up whenever I have some spare time.

Ice Flowers

I discovered an online sequins shop the other day, where I found my beloved snowflakes (see two photos below and some sold yarns from the shop), which I had nearly ran out of. I was so happy! They also had these blue, shimmering flower sequins and I decided to compose a yarn around them. I love all the different kinds of beads I spun into this one. The texture is heavenly, too - I've been playing around with coils and plied-looking parts with my latest creations, and I so love the look and haptics!

Holly Wood

 

Another art yarn composed around some of the lovely charms I bought from nicoledebruin on Etsy. I wanted a darker one this time, ended up with dark green, thought about the name (I just had to use someting with holly in it), grinned and added some brown and light green ;-) Also, lots of texture here.

Fresh Snow

My husband said I should name this one "Neuschnee" (the german word for fresh-fallen snow), but I haven't decided yet. This is another art yarn spun from a variegated fibre blend, and with lots of texture, too. These are the snowflake sequins I wrote about earlier. What I love about them (apart from their "obvious" beauty ;-p) is that they are thicker than normal sequins, so they are more impassable (hope this is the right word...).

I also spun a Ravenclaw/Harry Potter yarn, and some Strawberry Jam, but I haven't edited photos of these, yet. They will be listed soon, though :-)

Good Things Come in Small Packages

Have you ever sewed paper? I hadn't - until today. The possibility had never even crossed my mind before, but yesterday I found a tutorial on how to make colourful little paper gift pouches and I was hooked instantly. Wild imaginations of all the things I could do with this and all the kinds of forms and paper I could use nearly kept me from sleeping. The tutorial (which is in German and English, by the way) suggest printed scrapbooking paper, so I started looking for free downloadable paper as soon as possible. But I think newspaper (maybe Chinese or Arabian) would also look great, as would sheet music or simple brown packaging paper. For a start, I printed a few colourful papers and had a go - I love the results!

I am currently thinking of making enough of the open pouches to put the sets of stitch markers in I made for the "Lametta" market in December, so whenever I sell a set I'll have a pretty envelope handy. I also thought about giving away one free stitch marker per sold skein of yarn on the same market, and that's where the closed pouches (the ones from the tutorial) come in: simply make a few with a little note attached saying "thank you", put them in a basket and throw one in with every sold yarn; it makes the whole thing even more fun and who doesn't love a nice surprise? Now excuse me, I'm off to make more ;-)

You're lucky!

"Sticheleien", the craft fair we went to, is over!

It was an experience, for sure! We met loads of nice people there, but I guess our tasty Art Yarns are at the moment just a tiny bit too freaky for good ol' Germany. ;)

Take the yarn above, for example! I love it, I really do! I spun it some weeks ago and put lots of handfelted zombie heads into it, along with cool linen and sparkling Angelina fiber. Well, many people looked at it and said some approving things - but it's still here with me!

Well, the better for you, as we'll put all our great handspun Art Yarns into our shop the next weeks. :)

Off to the Craft Fair!

It's time! Finally! Well, you don't know yet... Because we didn't tell you - until now! This weekend we'll be showing our Art Yarns at a market called Sticheleien in Michelstadt in the Odenwald in Germany. The past weeks we've been spinning like hell - that's the reason we didn't write about it here. We were way too busy!

Well, now both Weird and me have more than 30 (THIRTY, right! Each of us! Oh yeah!) new Art Yarns in stock, just longing to be sold on the market in Michelstadt. And just in case we don't sell each and every yarn there, you can look forward to literally TONS of new, exclusive yarns on etsy! ;-)