I know, I know. I may very well be the lamest blogger ever, but I figure so long as I don't outright quit I'm still making progress, right? I've been spinning and knitting fairly regularly, I just can't seem to make my self post about my progress. I'm working on it, I swear.
I did finally finish my mini skeins from my planetary batt collection from Hampton Artistic Yarns. They turned out great:
This is a shot of all 9 skeins in planetary order^
Here they are all stretched out^
This is Mercury, which I spun as a super fat corespun over cotton crochet thread.^
This is Venus, which I spun thick n thin, then 2 plied.^
Earth was spun as a lace weight single, then chain plied to retain the "stripey-ness".^ (It's my blog, and I'll make up words if I choose to.) I love the way this one turned out.
I added red, orange and yellow goose feathers to Mars, then plied the single with metallic copper thread to "lock" the feathers in place.^ It was a royal PITA and I don't think I'll be doing another feathered yarn anytime soon, but it does look really neat.
Jupiter is a lofty lace weight single, and it has a nice halo from the little bit of mohair that was in this batt.^
Saturn was spun as a super fluffy coreless corespun.^ It turned out looking like cotton candy:)
Uranus became a tight, loopy single with a heavy bias.^
Neptune was spun without any preconceived idea of how to proceed, which resulted in another irregular single that looks like a kiddie birthday party cake.^ I dig it.
Poor Pluto, the very big rock/very small planet, was spun as a really fine single and auto-wrapped with silver metallic thread, threaded with blue metallic seed beads.^ This one turned out great and I'll definitely use this combination of techniques again.
So there you have skeins 11 thru 19, which I'm counting separately based on the fact that they each took almost as long as a regular skein, with some taking way longer. (Spinning feathers into yarn is a much bigger production than you might imagine!)
Skein #20 started out it's life as a fiber club selection in Kimber's Around the Whorl club. I can't remember what it was originally called, but I renamed it Hellfire.^
Skein #21 is my first ever Polworth yarn. I liked it a lot. It was smooth and slick, but not shiny at all. The final yarn has an earthy feel to it and I think after a few washes it will be squishy soft.
Also, I finished my first real lace:
It's the ginko shoulderette shawl pattern knit in kauni wool effektgarn. I loved this pattern ad will probably knit it again in a larger size with handspun yarn. I hated the kauni wool. It is really weak, and broke repeatedly with no provocation. There were several breaks/ties in the skein and most of them were harsh color changes. I will not buy this again, nor would I recommend it.
