Spin City: New Year, New Art Yarn, New Finished Projects

Happy new year everyone. I'm really excited about the year ahead. I hope you have lots of exciting plans to look forward to and crafty dreams for the months ahead.

I took some time off over Christmas to do some spinning and to finish some projects, and here are the pictures to prove it. Be prepared for lots of pictures! I've also added some pictures of custom spun yarn which I was particularly pleased with. :-D

Blue Art yarn with locks

This yarn was made with lots of lovely blue/violet wensleydaale locks, in a thick and thin style, then thread plied to create texture. It is very squishy as I spun it with minimum twist.

700g of skinny singles handspun

This yarn was actually spun just before Christmas for a custom order- but I thought i'd slip it in here anyway. I spun 700g+ in a skinny singles type yarn so my customer could make a mermaid blanket for her daughter. I made it from merino, plant fibres like tencel and bamboo, and candy striped it as I spun with a fine cotton yarn and a turquoise lurex for strength.

Auto wrapped art yarn

This one was a yummy spin! I carded up a batt with lots of farm collected fleece, some sparkle (of course!) and the set about corespinning using a fine cotton yarn to auto wrap as I went along. I found that if I placed my thread to the right hand side of me and my wheel, the thread wrapped on snugly, but still organically in movement, whereas if I placed it on the left, it would create larger, looser coils.

Embellished art yarn

Sequins and locks hand spun yarn

This was my favourite spin of the season. I spent several days making this yarn over Christmas, happily spinning with the TV on. This is another core spun yarn, made with some of my blended fibres for the base of the yarn, included soya silk, merino, corridale, polwarth and firestar. I then added embellishments throughout the yarn such as sequins spun into little jewels, long white Leicester long wool locks, silk throwsters and pink tinsel yarn. This was really fun to create and I love the look of all the different textures.

Rusted art yarn

This was another custom order. I was given the brief to spin some yarn inspired by Hebridean cows. If you have never seen one before, here is a picture courtesy of google.

My customer wanted rusty reds, shaggy textures, but with some copper sparkle. I was really pleased with how it turned out! I used quite a bit of natural flax to get the texture right, and mixed it with those lovely browny reds and added some natural wensleydale locks in a gorgeous grey and sun bleached brown. I auto wrapped parts of the yarn in copper metallic thread. So fun! I love my job.

Hebridean cow art yarn

Finally, I thought I would show you how my handspun, handwoven cushions looked, which I blogged about in a previous post (http://spincityuk.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/so-not-over-over-shot.html)
I love them hugely! I made them by making a very simple "envelope" style by folding the edges over to overlap, then sewing up the sides. Easy! :-) I really love how the thick and thin singles yarn looks in this overshot design, It is so textured and yummy. I want to make more! I'll add it to my list.