I am a yarnie!!!

Have you heard of Ravelry?  Chances are if you are at my blog you probably have. Well I have finally gotten around to setting myself up as a yarnie so you can now stash your handspun and batts under my "yarns":

I am so excited for people to start stashing.  There is nothing better than seeing something I made out in the world!

World Wide Spin In Public Day - Sept 15

I just learned that a week from now it will be Spin In Public Day!  How much fun is that!  So I am organizing a last minute spin in!

I think Memorial Peace Park on 224th in downtown Maple Ridge would be a fabulous place for us to spin in public.  The Haney Farmer's Market will be there too so we will have all sorts of home made and home grown goodies and all sorts of shopping available to us.

The details:

Date: Saturday September 15, 2012
Time: 9:00am - 2:00pm
Where: Memorial Peace Park, 11925 Haney Place, Maple Ridge
We will meet on the patch of grass beside the bandstand and behind the popcorn maker.

Bring your wheel, drop spindle, your fibre, a chair, and a towel to protect your wheel from the grass.

Shannon from Muse Fibre Works (previously known as Unwind Yarn) will be at the market with some beautiful hand dyed rovings for sale!

Lets hope for good weather!  I will borrow one of those tent things in case it looks rainy.  Come on out and join us!  This will be so much fun!

Lending a hand...

Brenda from Natchwoolie is raising some money to bring water to her farm.  The drought has hit her hard and her well is all dried up!  You can donate on her blog here and read more about it.

There are a few other fundraising activities going on.  You can adopt one of Brenda's adorable animals.  You  donate money to cover your chosen animals food and care for one month (or more) and in return you get pictures and a roving from your chosen animal.  One of Brenda's little lambs is named Caliope, so it was a no-brainer for me on how to chose.

How could I resist that cute little sheepy!?!?!?

Right now there is another fundraiser going on.  Phat Fiber is doing an auction and all the proceeds will go to help get water to the farm.  You can check out the Auction here on Ravelry.  It closes at 2pm PST today.  So there are a few more hours to go bid on your favourite items and help out this excellent cause.

The Ravelympics... Ooops! Ravellenic Games

I have been a very negligent blogger.  As soon as the Tour de Fleece was over the Ravelympics, ahem... sorry, (name change due to Olympic Committee crap), the Ravellenic Games began.  The idea is to set some goals and finish them during the Olympic Games.  I set some pretty ambitious goals and knitted like a crazy woman, hence the no blogging.

I wanted to finish a really old project, started in 2009.  So I entered the WIPs Wrestling event and I finished!  May I present The Lyric Tree.  I may re-work the collar I am not entirely happy with it, and I may over dye the entire sweater, pale pink is not really my colour.  But for now, it is done!

Then since this year they added a weaving event and my poor loom is sadly neglected I thought I would do a weaving project.  In the rules you are allowed to warp your loom before the event as "training".  So I thought: I will totally do that, the actual weaving part isn't that hard.  I thought I would put the pattern in the warp to keep the weft simple.  Well I did not get my loom warped before the Games started.  However, I did get it warped AND woven during the games.  Another event completed!  Yay me!

My third event was Modular Relay.  It is where you make pieces of a whole.  Since I have been bee-keeping I thought I would also make one honeycomb each day of the games, 17 total.  Guess what?  I accomplished this event too! I used some awesome yarn I got from Quaere, who is my newest favourite indie dyer.  She uses several different dye techniques which keeps her yarn fun and interesting to use.

Since I was making such great progress on all my events I decided to enter a 4th project.  I did not complete it, but I have been working away at it since the games ended.  I will share it when it is done, which will be soon... I hope...

Tour de Fleece

The Tour de France started on June 30.  Me and a couple thousand other people have been spinning along with the cyclists on our wheels and spindles.  It is called the Tour de Fleece.  The goal is to spin every day the race is on, there are a couple of rest days and a challenge day.

I picked out a bunch of stashed fibres I wanted to spin.  And I spun all of it except one art batt kit.  I also spun a few other batts and roving I hadn't originally intended to spin.  I spun a lot of textured art yarns.  They were all either 2-ply or navajo plied.  A couple skeins even have beads worked in!  I spun every single day including the rest days.

Last year I participated in the Endless Art Batt Club offered by Lanitium ex Machina.  I managed to spin the all 7 batts and rovings.  They were so much fun to spin.  The colours were so different from anything I would have put together.  I really enjoyed being forced out of my colour comfort zones.  

My Grand Totals:

Weight: 4 pounds 13 ounces 

Finished Yarn: 2070 yards or 1.18 miles 

Singles & Plying: 7340 yards or 4.17 miles

Number of skeins: 18

Challenge: finding time and making beaded skeins

MIA: TdF

I have been spinning like crazy for the Tour de Fleece. But I have still managed to make a few hexiphats:

The semi solid purple is dyed by Moonlight and Laughter and so soft. The darker puffs are from Lanitium ex Machina's samples and probably one of my favorite colour ways!


Here is a group shot of some of the yarns I have spun over the last 10 days:

I have spun a couple more skeins since this picture was taken.  I think I must be getting close to 2 pounds of fibre spun!  I will post more details about the spinning soon!

Purple Hexiphats

I have made a few hexiphats this week.  All purple with a bit of green!  All three of these yarns were awesome to work with.  They have great stitch definition and make a perfect little puff.


The top hexiphat is from Rebel Yarn.  It has 1 ply of superwash merino and 2 plies of regular merino so the different plies take the dye differently and make for a tweedy looking yarn.  The colourway is Naiad's Dream, it is so pretty.  The base yarn feels a little scratchy though.


The middle Hexiphat is Vervaine.  It is a superwash merino and nylon blend from All For Love of Yarn.  It is gorgeous.  I love yarns like this where there is one colour that pops out and you get excited every time you get to that part of the yarn. I was like Oh! red stitches!  The red is just gorgeous in this yarn.


And on the bottom is Hulk Smash from Gnome Acres.  I absolutely love everything Gnome Acres make.  I like there cute gnomey logo and their bright run colours.  This superwash merino and nylon yarn was no exception!


I am going to be slowing down on the hexipuffing for most of July.  It is the Tour de Fleece!  So I will be spinning in every single spare minute I can find.  Stay tuned for some awesome handspun yarn!