End Of Year 2025 Spinning Projects
Hello friends,
In the spring of 2025 I managed to accomplish a couple of spinning projects using my drop spindle and spinning wheel, spinning up two braids of fibre I had in my stash.
First up was 100 grams of Fibre to Go "In The Shade Jewels" braid, made from 70% merino and 30% Silk, that my best friend Karyn picked up for me at Fibretron in Hamilton in the winter of 2025. Unfortunately after searching through all my photos I couldn't find any pictures of the braid, or of it being spun up on my drop spindle, but here is the finished yarn in all it's glory.
The rainbow jewel shades against the black are just so pretty, and I can't wait to use it in a weaving project in the near future. Unfortunately the yarn colours ran when I washed the skein of yarn after plying, but it did clear up in the rinses afterward. This yarn ended up being fingering weight width.
And secondly, I spun up a 100 gram braid from Handmaiden's July 2025 Fibre Club, containing 75% Corriedale, 15% Llama, and 10% Rayon, in shades of graduated pink, purple, blue and white.
With the rayon content being flecks of fibre that would come out easily all over the place while spinning, I decided to spin it with a high twist on my spinning wheel, in order to reduce the amount of mess all over me and my craft room floor. I split the braid vertically down middle to retain the colour changes in the braid, and then spun up the two singles in the same direction, followed by plying them together as a simple 2-ply yarn. The resulting yarn was my usual fingering weight yarn width.
The resulting yarn mostly kept the colours and colour graduation together, but there is always some sort of shifting that happens due to unbalanced dyeing on each side of the braid, as well as uneven splitting of the braid when pulled apart.
The yarn was then set in place using a gentle wool wash, and then dried, before being stored away in my large pile of hand spun yarn.
I'm very happy with the resulting yarn, and plan to use this yarn as a warp in an experiment to create a stained glass scarf for my online store Hearth and Oak. It is always very fulfilling to take a braid of fibre, and spin it, before weaving it into a finished project.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky, and now also Facebook.
Spinning Union Fibre's Dyed Haunui Purple Roving
Hello friends,
Recently my friend Karyn was at Capital Fibre Fest in Wellington, and she knows I'm always on the look out for new fibre to spin on my drop spindle and spinning wheel, and she came across Union Fibre's booth, where Bonnie had for sale a bunch of different colourways. Karyn chose two rovings for me, in colours she knew I would l love.
First for me to spin up was a 100 gram roving of purple Union Fibre colourway (colourway not labelled on the paper wrapping), dyed with of medium Haunui Fibre.
Haunui fibre comes from a breed of sheep known as Haunui, which is grown on a family farm based in the foothills of South Canterbury, New Zealand. Haunui are known for its lustrous fibers and strong crimp, and it strikes a beautiful balance between softness and durability.
As I began spinning up the Haunui fibre on my drop spindle, the fibre was indeed soft and easy to spin, much more than Romney and Corriedale. It was such a pleasure to spin over the coming hours and days.
Once the drop spindle became full, I transferred it onto bobbins on my Majacraft Suzie Pro. I prefer to ply on my spinning wheel, as this is much easier than faster than on a drop spindle.
Once the fibre was fully spun up on two bobbins, it was time to ply the yarn as a two ply. It didn't take very long at all to ply on my jumbo plying bobbin.
Once transferred to a niddy noddy, the purple and brown shades of the dyed yarn really showed how beautiful the yarn was all spun up.
After a quick wash in some wool wash, the yarn was left to dry in the dining room in front of the winter fires over the coming days.
The final 100 gram 2 ply dyed yarn is of fingering weight/4 ply width, and came out at a total of 285 metres all spun up.
I really love how deep and cozy the shades of purple and brown look in the yarn. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the spun yarn, sometimes it's just fun to spin for the hell of it. It'll eventually find a home in a knitting or weaving project in the future. For now it's just nice to have on display, and to squish it sometimes...
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
May Handmaiden Spinning Fibre Club
Hello friends,
Today I'd like to share with you my May Handmaiden Spinning Fibre Club subscription, and how it looks now all spun up.
May's Handmaiden Fibre club, in autumnal shades of white, brown, orange and red, arrived all prettily wrapped up in tissue paper, and contained 100 grams of 80% machine-washable wool/20% nylon, a small plastic sock stitch marker, and a pattern for making Tinker Bell slippers. I decided to spin it up fine so I could make socks, so I broke the fibre braid in half to make a 2-ply, and then pulled out my trusty rimu drop spindle and got to work.
I love spinning with my drop spindle, because it's the easiest way to spin up super fine yarn for making socks, and it also increases the spinning time, which I find very relaxing. It took me a couple of weeks to spin up the two fine singles, and I loved the slow changing autumnal colours on my drop spindle as I spun.
I transferred the singles of yarn off the drop spindle and onto two spinning wheel bobbins for plying. Once that was done it didn't take very long at all to ply up the resulting 2 ply yarn on my Majacraft Suzie Pro spinning wheel. I prefer plying on my spinning wheel, as my drop spindle can't handle large amounts of plied yarn.
The plied yarn was in general fingering weight, and the autumnal colours were very pretty. After the plied yarn rested for a couple of days, I set the yarn by washing it in luke-warm soapy water.
The yarn is now all dry, and waiting to be knitted up. The final yarn is 2 ply, and is 265.5 m long.
Once a couple of other knitting projects are completed, I will be knitting up this hand spun yarn into socks.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
A Road Trip, A Fibre Festival, and A Raffle
Hello friends,
It's been a couple of weeks since my last blog post, but I've been busy, with a friend coming down from Wellington to visit us for a week. We got up to a lot of crafty things while she was here, and we spent many relaxing afternoons sitting on the couch watching disaster movies and knitting and spinning.
One of the highlights of the week was a road trip from Dunedin to Gore for the 45˚Fibre Festival in Gore on Saturday the 4th of May. We got up early on Saturday morning and headed off on our road trip down south.
It was cool but dry morning, and two hours later we made it to Gore, and excitedly found our way to the Gore Town and Country Club for the Fiber Festival.
Outside the venue we were greeted with some great fiber based art installations.
Once inside the fibre festival we were overwhelmed with a large number of yarn and fibre traders waiting for our patronage. There were local farmers selling raw and processed fleeces, indie dyers and yarn traders from all over the country, and other traders selling all sorts of yarn and fibre accessories.
After wandering around and getting an idea of what was for sale, it was time to shop. I had saved up a lot of crafty pocket money for this event, and it was time to fulfill my wish list.
First up was purchasing some more Unicorn Power Scour from Unicorn Fibre Cleaners NZ. I'm currently in the middle of processing two raw fleece projects (blog posts to come), and I've found that Unicorn Power Scour is the most gentle, easy, and efficient fleece cleaner I've ever used. I'll never process fleeces any other way now.
Next on my shopping list, was a skein of 4 ply yarn for making a pair of socks. After wandering around for a while, I found the perfect colour at Dye Studio 54, who had 100 grams of Sparkle Sock in the colourway Belladonna. It was a perfect combination of purple and sparkles, and I can't wait to knit it up so I can have sparkly warm feet for winter.
As a spinner I always like to pick up some dyed fibre to spin, and I found two preparations at the Handmade Fibre Crafts stall. I picked up 100 grams of dyed merino combed top with silk and viscose in shades of orange, white and pinks. I also grabbed 50 grams of dyed Corriedale combed top with mulberry silk in shades of orange. I figured the two preparations would work well together in a future project (unknown project at this time).
Next up it was time to check out two of my favorite fibre processors. I also love to dye my own fibre, so I headed first to Tally-Ho who prepare the most amazing combed white Merino. It's always so fine and white and clean, which makes it the perfect fibre to dye with. I grabbed a total of 500 grams of fibre, and was very happy with my purchase.
And lastly I stopped in at Fine Fibre Farms, where they were selling 500 gram bags of white Polwarth Combed Top, which I could not resist. Polwarth is my favorite fibre and yarn of all time to work with, and it is relatively hard to get as undyed fibre in New Zealand. I am very much looking forward to dyeing and spinning this polwarth fibre.
And with that done, I had spent all my crafty pocket money, so I visited the sheep and alpaca animals on display outside the venue, and even got to pat them.
After all that, we were quite hungry, so we enjoyed some Thai chicken noodle soup and wontons for lunch from one of the food vendors, and it was so perfect and spicy and warm to eat outside on a cool autumn day.
After lunch it was back into the venue, and we wandered around the traders some more. At this point we visited Purple Sprouting, where they had a wonderful selection of sock yarn. I fell in love with another sock yarn colourway, but had no money left to buy it. My wonderful friend then stepped in, and bought me a skein of 4 ply Bluefaced Leicester sock yarn in the colourway Meadow Mornings (Almost) as a thank you for me hosting her for the week. I was so excited about this, and the yarn is already on my knitting needles to knit a pair of socks.
And just when I thought it was all over, we happened to walk past Spinning Wood Designs, who handcraft spinning drop spindles and fibre tools in South Canterbury. And it was there I found the wrist distaff I've been searching for in New Zealand for the past two years. And before you could blink an eyelid, I'd picked out a distaff and handed over my credit card, overjoyed that I'd finally found one. I knew hubby wouldn't mind that I overspent my crafty budget for this, as I have been talking about getting a wrist distaff for a long time.
And with that done it was nearly time to go home. All that remained was staying for the raffle drawing, as I had used the $1 I had left in my purse to buy one raffle ticket for the spinning prize. And after telling my friend that I never, ever won raffle prizes, I won!
I was so happy and excited and grateful to win the raffle, as it was filled with lots of goodies I knew I would love to use. Once we got home, I unpacked the raffle prize, and shared my spoils with hubby and my friend.
I gave hubby the giant Toblerone chocolate bar gifted from Unicorn Fibre Cleaners, and I gave my friend the Purple Sprouting sock yarn pack, and kept all the spinning goodies for myself (my friend isn't a spinner). My prizes included a 1 kg bump of naturally dyed romney from Tally Ho Carding, a 1 kg Carousel Collection of Merino also from Tally Ho Carding, a packet of Ashford Angelina silver sparkles to add to fibre projects, and an Ashford Turkish drop spindle.
I was especially excited about the Turkish drop spindle prize, as it had been on my wish list of fibre tools for a long time. I can't wait to learn how to use it, and thanks to all the fibre I bought and that I won in the raffle, I will have plenty of fibre to practice on.
And with the wonderful fibre festival day at an end, my friend and I headed back home to recover, and play with all our new yarn and fibre goodies...
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
Social Media
Archives