Snape and the Pirate

Hi everyone, it's been quiet here on the blog for a while now. I've had so much to do I was hardly able to keep up with it all (well, *not* able to keep up with it all, as my absence here shows), but I've wanted to show you two finished pieces by one of our customers for so long now, and now I finally can:

Severus Snape

Heather combined our Snape art yarn with mohair and made this stunning hood. She let her daughter wear it for the photoshooting, and she told us 

"I can't wait for cold weather to see the silk fluttering in the wind!"

 What a wonderful thought! :-)

A Pirate's Life for Me

What a gorgeous piece, and how fitting for the pirate yarn! Here's what Heather says:

"I added a little bit of a gray and black yarn at the top that had long locks spun into it that matched your yarn perfectly! This is the link to the pattern I used: www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/hole-y-triangle-scarf
It's a great pattern to use for this type of yarn, I think it really shows the textures and the add ins!"

You can find Heather as ThePinkPirate on Etsy, or visit her blog. Heather, thank you so much again for the pictures!

About Inspiration, Lost Opportunities and Comic Books

A few days ago, I rediscovered a number of silver bells in one of my yarn add-ins drawers. I had wanted to spin another joker/jester art yarn for a while, so this came at the right moment. My first jester art yarn was among the first art yarns I ever spun, and I liked the idea of coming back to the general concept and creating something completely different this time. I chose red, green, and black fibres, carded them up into a gorgeous batt, and spun it into 220 m of wonderful art yarn, adding the bells and some eyelash yarn, as well as black glittery thread.

Midnight Joker

Shortly afterwards, I suddenly realized the bells would have been great for a Harley Quinn art yarn, as well. As I mentioned before, I love comic books (and graphic novels), and though I am fairly new to the "classic" comic universes (having started my adult comic book life with Hellboy and The Sandman), I have some general knowledge about a few of the characters (and Wikipedia always helps ;-)). I watched the (admittedly rather cheap and predictable) Birds of Prey TV show recently, so that's probably why Harley Quinn popped into my mind. Anyway - I have only six bells left now, and that's not enough for a yarn. But I already carded up some fibres and will search for more bells as soon as possible. I might even have a few more, though different-looking ones, and I will have to think about whether using different bells would be a good thing or not.

Speaking of comics and the "classic" universes, look what arrived today: The DC Comics Encyclopedia.

Just look at the size of this book! My foot (large-ish standard foot, I like to think ;-) German size 40/41) looks tiny beside it. I had no idea this was so huge when I ordered it, and I am so happy :-) Now I have a means to learn about all those characters, maybe choose the next comic book to read, and find some inspirations for new art yarns at the same time. The inspiration part was the main factor for ordering this book, actually. Ahhh, I already love it!

Orc Camp

Remember my plans for an Orc Camp art yarn? It was complicated and took me quite a while what with all the searching for the right fabric, and the making of wire spirals - but it's done :-)
It's very ragged, which I love, but which I find far more difficult to accomplish than smooth yarn - and it's also got a lot to do with the choice of materials. Locks and highly textured fibre are more suitable than the average fine merino wool.

The batt I carded for this yarn consisted of spanish merino wool of natural dark brown, naturally brown Icelandic wool with locks and lots of texture, some white bluefaced leicester wool, wensleydale locks, light brown alpaca, and merino wool of rusty red. I also added copper angelina, because this kind of glitter seemed fitting even for orcs ;-)
I spun in different kinds of bone beads: smooth whitish ones, dark disks, and white skulls. I also added hand made copper spirals, and strips of cotton fabric.

Pirates or Football?

Last week, my husband and I spent a few days in Hamburg. I used to live there, and my family still does, so we visited with my mother and went out to lunch with her, my dad and my gran, whom I hadn't seen in two years. She is too old to come to Heidelberg, and last year we didn't manage to go to Hamburg, so that was quite a long time. It was nice to catch up, and we had a good time and good food. My gran is always interested in my spinning and the shop, and I like talking about yarn any time ;-)

On Saturday, my husband and I went into the city, did some shopping, met a colleague of his, spent some time at the Alster, and then went to the Gateway of the World - the port of Hamburg. I brought a graffiti which I had made a long time ago and saved for a special place. This was it! After all, this was a pirate graffiti and the famous pirate Klaus Störtebeker was beheaded in the port of Hamburg, it just seemed to fit.

 

The thing is, Hamburg's football club FC St. Pauli has a skull and crossbones in their logo, and some people just can't tell the difference between football and pirates :-P When I installed the graffiti, there was a group of people coming past, and I heard them say something like "oh, a St. Pauli fan". I just ignored them, and thought of proper pirates, rum, and lots of treasure ;-)

Poison Ivy

Are there any knitting comic book fans out there? ;-)
Here's my latest creation, modelled after the well known super villain Poison Ivy from the DC universe:

I used hand carded blend of black and green fibres (the green is hand dyed wool/silk blend of intense colour, my last bit!), added red mohair clouds, some kind of probably textile ivy leaves, glass leaves and glass beads - and bright green glow in the dark thread. Sadly, it's not as bright as the variety I had before, but it will still emit a faint glow after having been charged with light.

Speaking of comic books - what are your favourites? Mine are The Sandman, Hellboy, The Unwritten, The Unknown, House of Mystery, and Courtney Crumrin. I also loved Batwoman Elegy. I'm always looking for new (at least new for me) excellent comic books, so if you have any recommendations, they would certainly be welcome! :-)

... been hunting

A few days ago, I had an idea. Actually, it might have started even earlier, after spinning the latest skull yarn. I thought it would be great to spin an orc camp art yarn, with skulls, bone beads, maybe some rusty stuff, copper wire things, some kind of rags...
I have the skulls, I still have some gorgeous bone beads, I have no idea where to get rusty stuff right now, but I will certainly be able to play around with copper wire and make some strange things to spin into the yarn. 
The rags kept me thinking, though. I'd still want the yarn to be soft enough for usage, so really rough materials are out of the question, I thought maybe linen or cotton would be fine - but where to get it? We are not exactly blessed with places that sell fabric, and there's not much variety there. I remembered to have bought some cotton scarves a few years ago, and I also remembered there was a wide variety of colours then. I also knew the shop I bought these scarves from no longer existed. So, I went hunting. I combed through the whole city (well, nearly), and I am very happy to say I was very lucky - I found a shop that still sells these cotton scarves for a reasonable price, and they had a brown one, too. The orc camp yarn will soon come into existence ;-) 

The good thing about having to search nearly the entire city were some other nice things I found and was able to buy ;-) There's a book about mermaids, which is a children's book, but I like the style and I wanted it for yarn inspirations. After all, I've always liked spinning ocean themed art yarns and I am bound to be running out of names and themes, so this book will hopefully prove to be very useful :-)
I also bought some more of the leaves ribbon I have used in several yarns, but I tried to go for some different colours this time. I want to spin thin, light summer art yarns, and I think white, yellow and light blue/turquoise will be perfect for that kind of project :-)

I've been very busy with my other job these past two weeks, but I did manage to get some spinning done, and I was finally able to take photos of my latest creations yesterday. So, there will be some new yarns in the shop quite soon, I hope :-)

Skulls in the Desert

The other day, I ordered new bone skull beads on ebay, and they arrived fairly quickly.
 

 

They are a little more abstract than the ones I used previously (like in this yarn, or this bookmark), but they are also smaller and therefore suitable to use in thinner yarns. Like the one I spun a few days ago:

It also contains small, sparkly seed beads of brown and honey, and I fixed the skulls with coils. I love the colours, I should experiment more with nature/earth tones :-)

Spinning in the skulls was so much fun, I have to stop myself from spinning a lot more skull yarns right away - it would be a little boring if every listing contained the same beads, after all. So, I'll spin some different yarns first, and then return to my beloved skulls ;-)