Month: March 2021

Gimp yarn

On By CarynIn Craft

I read about gimp yarn in Spin Off magazine, and thought it would be good to practice making different thicknesses of yarn. Gimp yarn uses a thin single and a thicker single plied to make a bumpy looking yarn.

Two yarns, thicker and thinner, rinsed, dried, and wound into a cake in preparation for plying

I transferred the singles from my spindle to a niddy noddy, rinsed them to set the twist, then let them dry before winding them into cakes. I did all this rather than plying from cops because I wanted a smooth center pull for plying. To ply, I tucked the yarn cakes into an arm bag that I made long ago for carrying crochet yarn. They fit perfectly! And it is easy to feed the two singles from the bag and ply. I have also discovered that it is easier to get my spindle spinning counterclockwise if I flick the bottom instead of the top.

Plying yarn from cakes tucked in to the arm bag

My singles don’t have an extreme difference in size, but it was enough to get the effect (which reminds me of my grandma’s rickrack trim).

Left over thin single, and two cops of plied gimp yarn

Spindle bumper

On By CarynIn Craft

Now that I’m getting more comfortable spinning and walking I tend to drop the spindle more. With any luck, even more practice will reduce my tendency to skitter the spindle down the road, but in the meantime I put a bumper on the bottom of the shaft. A pencil eraser works well to cover the end, and protects the wood from sudden impact!

Pencil eraser as a make shift spindle bumper

National Poultry Day

On By CarynIn chickens

Today is National Poultry Day! Strut your stuff, ladies.

Cloud the hen walkin’ the walk

In honor of this day I moved their salad garden to a new spot and let them turn over the old plot (ok, really more of a coincidence, but it worked out well). Happy chickens. Well, except for Magic who is still in isolation unable to walk, but she has been starting to put a little more weight on her left leg and using it to shuffle a little. I suspect a sprained or broken toe, rather than a disease since the leg is not paralyzed. She lets me clean the pine shavings off her beard, like the chickens let the alpha hen do. So there we go.

Salad bar frame moved to a new location (back) and the old patch opened up (front)

Spring flowers

On By CarynIn Garden

Winterpocolypse didn’t kill everything. We have some of the regular wildflowers coming up in the meadow. The clover is loving life and most of the green in the meadow is clover rather than the usual grasses. There are some cut-leaf daisies making a go. We think our Texas sage and cross vine didn’t make it through the week-long freeze, but the honeysuckles are showing signs of life. The iris and daylilies are also stretching their greenery. My husband is putting in an irrigation system in the front yard for the flower beds, but we are only considering low maintenance replacements for the plants that died.

One henbit stalk and a bunch of field madder enjoying the afternoon sunshine

Weaving on a wire jig

On By CarynIn Craft

I had a small amount of two-ply hand spun merino wool left. Not enough to weave on my frame loom, but if I could rig something up a little smaller it might work. So I tried weaving on one of my wire jigs.

Weaving set up on a wire jig

I used my smallest pins to hold the warp threads and a tapestry needle to pass the weft through to make a plain weave. As the weaving progressed, I had to hold down the pins as they tended to pop up out of the jig. On the whole, the idea worked, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience since the pins were only loosely set and it was difficult to do the final passes. Mark that up as a nope.

Watch of merino wool woven on a wire jig