Monday Update and more Phat sneak peeks!

Monday again, the last Monday of March, so it's time for another PhatFiber sneak peek! My samples have been safely received at Phat Fiber Central, which is a relief. I never 100% trust the postal system!

So here's this week's Phat Fiber Sneak Peek!


This is a lot of seventeen mini-skeins of handspun Merino in white, light purple and teal blue. Every one is slightly different.

Busy busy weekend

I gave myself a day off from the day job on Friday to take advantage of the fact that an empty house meant uninterrupted crafting. I had a field day on the sewing machine and made four drawstring bags, three tissue pack holders and an eyeglass case! Over the course of the weekend I finally finished carding and spinning the massive pile of fleece from Ireland, which you may recall from last summer's blog posts:


IT'S DONE! Finally! Once the last lot dries I will measure it all and see if I've got enough to make myself a jumper, of the raglan variety that Mr Teddy is wearing in one of last month's photos.

Here's a sample shot of what the spun yarn looks like. Imagine about 8 or 10 skeins just like it. :D


Here are a couple of photos of two project bags that I made this weekend. They are now in my general Etsy shop and I hope to add more soon.




Check the blog in another few days for another sneak preview of the items for the April Phat Fiber box! They have safely arrived in the states and are waiting to go to their new homes. :)

Giveaway on the Phat Blog!

My Etsy Shop Buddy, Winemakerssister, is offering a giveaway through the Phat Fiber blog! Check out the blog and enter for a chance to win a most excellent handcarved Celtic heart stamp.

I've always been bad at math.

Yesterday while walking to work, I was daydreaming about spinning. Again. And I realised that I may have made a mistake in the way that I was measuring the yardage of my handspun. So when I got to work I took all the handspun off the shop, so I could double check it.

Last night I put all of it back up again with corrected figures. In some cases I had misjudged the yardage by half! So some skeins that I had originally listed as 36 yards or 55 yards are now 71 yards and 113 yards. I had been wondering why my skeins were always so short...this explains it!

So if you've had your eye on some of my handspun but thought "Hmm, not enough yardage there for my project" - check again! It may have magically "grown" overnight.

And remember...measure twice, list once!

Monday Update

This week I'll be sending in my samples for the April Phat Fiber Sampler Box! I'm very excited to be a part of this. Here is a sneak preview of a few of my items!


Seven mini-skeins of Romney fibre, dyed by me.


Five mini rovings of merino fibre, also dyed by me.

There will be additional shots of the April samples in future weeks, so stay tuned for more spoilers!

In other news - I have learned how to make custom ponytail ties! It has been great fun and I nearly gave myself blisters this weekend working on them. I am sporting a blue irish tweed ponytail tie today :D Some of the others are in my http://avanutria.etsy.com shop and others will join them soon!

Buy a Sweet Pea Fibers batt!

I just have to tell you about this seller.

Recently I traded some yarn for a set of two batts from Sweet Pea Fibers in the "Beach House" colourway. I started spinning the batts yesterday and they are exquisite. The description given on her shop is "Black merino blended with carbonized bamboo(silvery grey) and topped with more merino, cultivated and tussah silk, firestar and angelina for more sparkle. Silk and bamboo is mixed in with the black merino so that the fiber stands out. It's not homogenous. Then more color and texture are added on top."

What she fails to mention is that this batt is an absolute joy to spin, effortless and soft as clouds. Once I have spun it all I will ply it with pure black merino so as to get as much yardage as possible out of this wonderful fibre!

Here are some photos:

I'm in a treasury!

The top left corner is my Blueberry Smoothie Yarn!



My first knitting pattern is also up for sale now - the Chain Cable Scarf. Check it out on either of my shops. The testers on Ravelry really loved it!

Winemakerssister

Meet my new Etsy Shop Buddy, Winemakerssister!

Heather is a graphic artist from Michigan who specialises in stitch markers and great hand-carved rubber stamps. She's got some fantastic designs, including some knit and sheep themed stamps! This one has got to be my favourite:


We're both members of the Stone Soup Challenge and since our stuff goes so well together, we have decided to be Shop Buddies! I'm not really sure if such a term exists, but I guess it does now!

Check out Heather's shop - how can any knitter resist this stuff? In addition to the lovely handmade greeting cards, linen tea wallets and Harry-Potter themed charm bracelets, she's got an entire category called "Goods for Knitters"! More stitch markers than you can shake a knitting needle at, and several lovely project bags are there at the moment. Make sure you check her other sections too, as I have a suspicion that this linen bag in the Soft Goods category would make an excellent spindle case:


One of the great things about Heather's work is that she loves custom orders. If you've been hankering after something special and haven't seen it yet, why not drop Heather a line and suggest it?

Any pattern testers out there?

I'm writing my first knitting pattern! Once I'm finished it and have had it tested I will put it in my Etsy shops.

Linkbacks!

I decided to google Sheepshape Spinning to see if I was linked anywhere and didn't know about it. I found a lot of links! I have decided to do a "Kudos" post and link to everyone who has linked to me. If you visit some of these you will find some really nice sites!

First up is We make London, which I did know about because I did a craft fair with them in December. This is a really great organisation that gets London-area (and beyond!) crafters together in one place to show and sell to the public. Their first event was last summer and I hope they'll be doing another one soon! In the meantime, they have lots of Designer Spotlights on various UK artists.

Next is Shop Handmade UK, a great directory of handmade products and producers.

Next, The Sick Chick Crafts. I didn't know about her, but it looks like she is also based in London, and a fellow American on the East side of the pond to boot.

K'nerd is another I didn't know about, but I'll be reading up on this one! Looks very interesting, though it hasn't seen an update in a while.

This spinning resource site, Handspinner.co.uk, looks like a great reference, especially the Resources section which has some articles on spinning tools and fibre types.

Some good sites out there! If you've linked me, and I missed you, let me know!

Blueberry Smoothie yarn

I reskeined and measured the blue and gray alpaca yarn that I mentioned yesterday, but I'll probably end up retaking the photos in natural daylight at the weekend. It's up on Etsy but the colour isn't showing up as nicely in the photo as it does in person!


It's difficult to balance photo-taking with a full time day job sometimes!

Monday Update

I've knitted a sweater for my teddy bear!

This is the result of a two-Saturday class offered through I Knit in London and taught by Gwen Raftery. It was great fun, surprisingly straightforward, and now I hypothetically have the skills to make a person-sized raglan jumper. Once I finish spinning the red, white and blue Irish fleece (see post from 14 November) I may have enough to give it a try. So far I have three hanks finished and I still have a lot more fibre to card!

I'm still making up samples for the Phat Fiber Sampler box. I have enough for April now but I'd like to send in a batch for May at the same time, so I only have to pay the shipping to America once. I spun up some variegated green Merino that I dyed on Saturday and should be able to get a few samples out of that. I've also included unspun dyed fibre for a few of the samples.

My other spin-and-dye job this weekend was some alpaca that was dyed blue and grey in roving form by the person I had bought it from. I expected a lot of the dye to come out in washing, and I was right, so I overdyed the resulting grey yarn with different concentrations of blue acid dyes. It came out very nice! I've now got to re-skein it, measure it and get it up onto Etsy.