k1 Yarns in Edinburgh

I went up to Edinburgh this past weekend to visit some of my friends - one of whom is a knitter. So, as she was showing me around the city, we took a look at one of their yarn shops, k1 yarns. K1 is great because it has some real Scottish yarns, perfect souvenirs for my trip.

It's a small shop but it has nice stuff. There are a good number of Artesano & Manos del Uruguay yarns as well as some Jamesons, in addition to the local yarns. I can get those back home though, so I picked up some Scottish wool and Orkney Angora.

I got two skeins of Scappa Aran, which is 100% Scottish Shetland Wool. I got one skein of purple and one of white, which I'm planning on knitting a toy out of. I also got some naturally-colored Orkney Angora 4ply, which is soft as a dream. And look at the halo on this stuff!

I think it will make a lovely lace scarf or small shawl. It's so, so soft and sweet.

~Joyuna

Spinning froghair on a Russian spindle

I just recently got a secondhand Russian spindle. Russians are support spindles, not drop spindles - instead of hanging suspended in the air, their pointed tip spins in a bowl, like a top. Support spindles are great for spinning ultra-short fibers or ultra-fine yarns, because they can spin very fast and there's nothing weighing the yarn down. As a drop spindle spins and accumulates a cop, the spindle becomes heavier. A supported spindle effectively weighs nothing, or very little, because it's not hanging in the air.

You don't have to be the world's best spinner to spin very fine lace yarn on a Russian spindle. The singles that I'm currently spinning measure over 80 wraps per inch, and my plied sample was 36 wpi. Here are some tips.

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Tour de Fleece 2011 Wrap-up

I had so much fun participating in the Tour de Fleece - and yes, I managed to spin every day! Even if it meant spinning on the train a few times. Here's a look at everything I spun up...

Some of those were already WIPs before the tour started, that I finished (like the red & yellow skeins of heavier yarn). Still, I am very pleased with my productivity.

Not only did I spin a lot of yarn, but I also managed to challenge myself by learning new techniques. During this Tour, I learned or practiced:
- Plying using a double-stranded plying ball, a fantastic technique especially for travelling
- The Andean method of plying using a low-whorl spindle, propelling it into the air by rolling it between your palms (gives a very fast spin similar to a thigh roll)
- Fitting an entire 100g of plied yarn onto a spindle
- Long draw on a drop spindle
- I got some proper hand cards and learned to use them
- Spinning on a Russian spindle (I already know how to spin on a tahkli, but the Russian is a little different)
- Spinning super-fine, which is actually pretty easy on the Russian
- A little bit of fleece prep (suri & huacaya alpaca fleeces - flicked locks and carded rolags, respectively)
- Dehairing raw fiber.

I also managed to spin 12 different breeds for my fiber sampler project, though of course I have a lot more samples to go! More on that later.

~Joyuna

Knit Nation 2011

Last Saturday I went up to Knit Nation in London with a friend from my knitting group. I had so much fun!

I am so sad that they're not planning a Knit Nation next year (due to the Olympics), because I had so much fun this time around. I met so many cool people, including several I've conversed with only online before! Some of the people I met (though not everyone, because I got to meet so many) were Asti from Juno Fibre Arts, Stephanie aka TinyOwlKnits, Ysolda (who was wearing some rocking pale blue nail polish), and Debbie from Skein Queen.

So what did I get?

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My easy, cheap, homemade "niddy noddy"

This isn't really a niddy noddy per se, but it is a skeiner. I use it to measure the yardage of my handspun yarns and prepare them for washing.

As you can see, it's just a length of cardboard that I measured and cut. It's easy to make, cheap because you probably already have some boxes around, and another nice thing about it is that you can take notes on it! I write down my yarns' WPIs and yardages on the skeiner so I remember for later.

I also cut a notch in the top, which is where I keep my starting end. After I've wrapped my skein around the cardboard, I tie the ends like I would usually. Once around the skein is exactly 1 yard, so if I forget to write down the yardage, all I have to do is count the loops. 1-yard is small compared to a normal skein, but it's a fine size for handspun hanks. My skeins of handspun tend to be pretty small.

Of course it's not a real niddy noddy, but it beats wrapping my skeins around a chair or a book. I know exactly how long it is, and I can take my notes on it to boot. Since it's thin, it takes up very little space. And if it ever gets bent or torn, I can easily make a new one.

~Joyuna

Fiber sampler order from Wingham Wool Works

I already got a lot of different types of fiber for my sampler project, but I also got several more from Wingham Wool Works. Wingham is nice because they offer samples of all their fibers, from 50p-£1 a pop. So it's an easy way to try a lot of different fibers, including some rare exotics. They also stock some fibers that are difficult to find elsewhere.

The big bags are 400g of carded Falkland fleece and 200g of natural-colored New Zealand wool from their Haunui flock (New Zealand Halfbred and Romney). I'll be using samples of those in my project, but they're also for larger spinning projects.

The little bag of cinnamon fluff is something very special - 10g of vicuna fiber! You may remember I saw a taxidermy vicuna on my trip to Paris. Vicuna fiber is very rare and very fine. Also, very expensive - so I only got 10g to try.

All the other little bags are my sample packs. I got a few more sheep breeds: Cotswold, Dorset Horn, Lincoln, Whitefaced Woodland, Manx Loughtan, and Shropshire, and some more exotic fibers: Yak and Mongolian Cashmere.

I'm thrilled to try all these fibers out! I'm really looking forward to getting a feel for the variety of different sheep breeds.

~Joyuna

Fiber sampler order from Sara's Texture Crafts

I got a big, soft package in the mail from Sara's Texture Crafts, a British supplier of all sorts of spinning, knitting, and felting supplies. These fibers are for my fiber sampler project, which I'm spinning for Tour de Fleece.

Included in my order are 50g each of the following breeds of sheep: Suffolk, Swaledale, Devon Longwool, Massam/Masham, Jacob, Wensleydale locks, Welsh Mountain, Merino, Superwash Merino, BFL, Cheviot, and Norwegian.
I also got two sample packs (the exotic fibers sampler and the silk sampler), containing 10g each of angora, mohair, alpaca, and yak, and tussah, bombyx, and mawata silk.

I've ordered from Sara's Texture Crafts before, and I definitely would again. The shipping is super quick, the customer service is fantastic, and there's always a fantastic selection. Another big draw for me, for this project specifically, is that many of the fibers are sold in 50g quantities - just enough to sample. Other sites sell in multiples of 100g or even 200g, which is far too much for what I'm doing.

~Joyuna

Fiber sampler spinning project

The main project I'm spinning for Tour de Fleece consists of fiber samples. I blogged about this briefly before, when I was just starting the project.

The idea is this: To understand the differences between different varieties of fiber, particularly different breeds of sheep, I'm collecting small samples (50g or less) of a wide variety of fibers. Most of them are animal fibers (though I have tried spinning some cotton), and I'm limiting it to natural fibers only - so no acrylic, or nylon, or any of the multitude of flavors of rayon (bamboo, seacell, tencel, milk, corn, et cetera ad nauseum). Other than that, no fiber is too rare or too common - from the ubiquitous merino and BFL, to some tiny precious samples of cashmere and vicuna.

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Tour de Fleece 2011

We're a week in to the Tour de Fleece, and I am having a grand old time! This is my first TdF, and it is just so much fun. I'm spinning up a lot of stuff, including...

93g of yellow Corriedale top from Fondantfibre, worsted-ish weight.


A superwash merino/tencel braid from CCSmile soft-spun singles, and 6oz of Cupcake Fiber Co batts in Peacock BFL/Silk.


...and a fiber sampler, which I'll write up in more detail later (I just got the majority of the samples in the mail, and they are luscious!).

~Joyuna

Knitter's Connection Marketplace 2011

I spent a weekend in Columbus to meet up with my old knitting buddies. It was so great to see them, and we were all gathered for Knitter's Connection. I didn't sign up for any classes, but I did come for the marketplace. It was small, but there was still tons of great stuff! I also got to meet Kimber from Fiber Optic and Liz from MacKintosh Yarns -- and her sweet service dog, Mac!

Of course, I couldn't leave without picking up some souvenirs.

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KNIT Sock Club shipment #2

Here's the second shipment of the KNIT Magazine (aka Yarn Forward) sock club, from The Yarn Yard.

It's a generous skein of Crannog, a light fingering weight sock yarn in a lovely purplish burgundy color (very hard to photograph!). We got a lace sock pattern with it to, but I'm thinking about using it for Yarnissima's recent sock pattern, 'Gush'.

Our extra goodie this time is very cool - a make your own stitch marker kit! Basically it's some rainbow beads, a wire, and a ring -- so you can design your own marker. Really cute. :)

~Joyuna

Rainbow Scales Cowl pattern - fan-shaped entrelac

I'm so excited to release my Rainbow Scales Cowl! It features a really exciting technique, which is a variant on entrelac. In normal entrelac, you knit square or rectangular units, and pick up stitches along the edges when beginning each new tier. In my cowl, you don't have to pick up any stitches at all. So you get all the fun of entrelac, which looks amazing in color changing yarns such as Noro, Jojoland, or handspun, without the bother of picked-up stitches.

The pattern was originally written for handspun yarn, so it's very flexible and forgiving. You can use anywhere from sport weight to worsted weight yarn, and thick and thin yarns are totally fine. I've knit two so far, and my first one was in handspun merino/tencel singles - so soft! Divine! And the entrelac patterning really highlights the colors of the yarn.
for US$5.00

Yarn: 140yds of sport to worsted weight yarn (Shown: Noro Silk Garden)
Needles: US 6 / 4mm 16" circular needle
Special Techniques: Knitting in the round, short rows/entrelac, re-arranging stitches



~Joyuna

Mega Pattern Giveaway winners!

Okay, my pattern giveaway has closed, and the winners are being selected from an Excel spreadsheet and Random.org.

Out of 48 entries - many people had two entries because they also told me their favorite knitwear designer - which was very interesting to read! - and a few people contacted me via Ravelry because of issues with comments - I choose 3 random numbers...

11. The first prize winner, of five of my patterns and one more, is Ikkinlala!

30. The second prize winner is Sally! She gets any two of my patterns!

15. The third prize winner is Indulgence! She gets her choice of any one of my patterns.

Congratulations all three of you! I will be contacting you with further instructions. Thank you all for participating!

~Joyuna