Certified chaos gremlin, storyteller at heart | She/Her | I do an ungodly amount of fiber arts | No really, just name it and I probably do it | 20+ | German
Hi everyone! I´m Fey (she/her, but I really don't care to be honest), and an absolute chaos gremlin. I do lots and lots of fiber arts including but not limited to spinning, crocheting and knitting. My avatar picture and background are made by my lovely friend @guardevoir .
Other than that, I have been playing and writing for Pen & Paper Roleplay in various systems since I was little (yes including D&D). Various writing shenanigans are usually going on at once.
I also have a cat, named Miss Lilly, who is just as much a gremlin as me. Floofy little cave cat will likely appear a lot, especially when she tries to sabotage my fiber crafts again (I have picture proof, if anyone wants to see).
1) do this even if you're under 40. seriously. I definitely should have been doing something like this for years and I only turned 40 a month and a half ago
2) if you're like me just now trying this going "oh god i've only done 15 and i think my hands are cramping" start lower than 30 and increase by 5 once whatever number you're doing no longer makes your hand cramp up. I can manage about 15 per exercise at the moment.
I'm almost done with the Eider as well! Destashing this year has been a great success and soon, I get to send of some neat little yarn filled care packages for my friends all over the world. Then, of course, I can aquire more fiber and do it all again.
Bonus today is Miss Lilly napping next to my work space. She woke up briefly when I wound the finished yarn on my yarn swift and gave her sniff of approval.
Oh and also I did a bunch of spindle spinning over the last weeks, but it's so thin that the fiber is not getting less. Will not finish that this week.
Did an Experiment today by spinning lots of natural colour variations of roughly the same fiber together and it turned out really well.
All in all 163g of yarn spun and (some of it) plyed and 200g washed. I'm really happy with that, especially since there is now only 150g of Eider left and I got to fill up all my prep boxes with colourful fibers.
I had pushed my rest day to Tuesday and I'm glad I did, cause I really needed rest. As such, you´re getting some stats now instead of yesterday!
All in all, I spun and plyed 640g of wool in the last week, and washed 536g. I lost interest in tracking all the details, since my math went wrong somewhere (shows how well I know basic addition), but I finished the last of the Manx today, so the secondary goal for Tour de Fleece is now all done!
Next up is more destashing by spinning more of the Eider and I have to make the next single for the wedding gift yarn, so that that can be finished in time. Do enjoy these photos I took but am not motivated enough to sort through!
Today should have been a rest day but I had plans to meet up with some friends to craft so tomorrow will be rest day instead. Only got a little done, but it was fun!
Did not expect to get anything done today but I actually didn't do too badly. One spool with finished yarn, one finished single, and a started single for another Eider wool chongus.
Extremely stressfull day today. Really only had time to sit down to craft for five minutes now and then. Imagine my surprise when I finally escape the party prepping committee to find three skeins ready to ply.
Also made some pin loom squares from handspun yarns today.
On another note, I have decided on another goal: I want to finish spinning the entire kilo of manx by the end of Tour de Fleece. 350g more to go. That's doable, right?
Might possibly have gotten distracted by building and warping my new rigid heddle loom, but I still managed to store all my new colourful floofs and spin an entire skein of manx loaghtain. All in all a successful day.
Finished another big chongus today of 100g Eider wool. Also found some gorgeous Alpaca mix testers hidden in my stash to prepare myself for finally starting on my big batch of alpaca soon.
Also, fun thing, the fiber I ordered yesterday might already arrive tomorrow? We shall see.
Tour de Fleece 2026 (context under the cut at the bottom)
Day 1:
The options to work with are a daelgan style spindle that spins decently, a medieval style drop spindle that doesn't (because I can't get the weight heavy enough), and three whorls that need a wooden dowel that is... Somewhere. I'm not sure where.
Daelgan should be the best option, as that thing has held up to a fair bit of abuse and...
Ah.
So.
That exploded.
After... Half an hour. And being dropped 3 times.
At least my spindles are PLA and the carnage can and will be recycled.
Which means we're switching to...
Yeah. This thing is fighting me more than the wooden one. I've put in an extra hour, and I'm not having a good time, so I'm gonna see if I can dig up the dowel ones.
If anyone wants to leave suggestions for very sturdy drop spindles that ship to Germany or Belgium, feel free to send them my way.
First time participating
Skill level: fair weather spinner
Goal: just spin every day, ideally for at least an hour, see if skill improves
Tools: the white roving I bought ages ago and whatever hand spindles I can fish out of moving boxes, because I do not have the ergonomics of my spinning wheels down. (And they're down in the basement and I don't want to re-tetris that place unless I have to)
I have 8 3D printed spindles and 1 wooden one. The wooden one came in a cheap kit off Etsy in 2009. It fought me then, and it didn't get kinder with getting easier wool, so I'm trying to avoid using it.
I'm also trying to avoid using the 3 Turkish spindles because they don't come apart easily once you've loaded them up, and I've broken at least two shafts so far. Our printer is having issues, so I'm really really really trying to not break any spindles.
Also, if there's singles already on the spindle, I'm just gonna keep going. This is a skill building exercise, not a project. I do not have the skill for a project.
All those wooden spindles are good and sturdy, I've never had any issues! And between those shops, you can find almost every style of spindle imaginable. :)
Agreeing with those spindle shop recommendations here. I have some from Wollschaf and Peter Locke and they're all sturdy and absolutely gorgeous. I do want to note that from my experience, the Wollschaf ones tend to be more suited to making thicker yarns, since they're generally heavier in weight. The ones from Peter Locke tend to pretty much all fall into the lace weight category.
There is also Spindeleien, who have some top whirl drop spindles, if you're into that.
Not a lot of spinning today, but I did get a little in on break and in the evening. Also I am all out of colourful floofs, so I ordered some more fiber.... And possibly a loom.
Please do enjoy the lunchbox of handspun yarns my friend gave me to weave little squares with for their pin loom shawl.
It's a rest day! This, of course, means it's time to wash all the yarn in the finish box and take stock of what has been done so far. Please note, I like big numbers, so I am counting everything I have worked on, even if it's just plying and/or washing. This includes the single I got from a friend and just plyed and washed. Also the mystery yarn stat will be a guess since most of that is currently drying and I likely have some more information on those once I sort out the labels when they're dry.
First of all, what all have I spun, plyed, and/or washed?
All in all I currently have a total of 1110g of yarn. In this we have:
300g of Manx Loaghtain
200g of Falkland
200g of German mountain sheep
150g of Eider wool
100g of Polar Fox wool
75g of Mystery wools
50g of Shetland
32g of Merino bamboo mix
2g of Cotton
1g of Yak
Next up, we have colour distribution. There are three categories: natural browns, natural whites, and colourful dyed yarns.
In the lead is white with 45.2% and 502g.
Next is colour with 27.7% and 307g.
And then finally, we have brown with 27.1% and 301g.
Of course, we do also need a breakdown of what work I have actually done over the last 9 days:
Singles spun:
826g, 74.4% of the full amount so far
Yarn plyed:
857g, 77.2% of the full amount so far
Yarn washed:
1027g, 92.5% of the full amount so far
I hope you have enjoyed these stats! I will be back tomorrow with more spinning shenanigans.
A few weeks ago at a craft fair I got the idea to try doing some yarn dyeing using plants was born. The plan was to use Lupine flowers. A plant that is invasive where I live so it would be a win-win. Last weekend that plan got put into action.
Fourtunately I had the perfect yarn for this little experiment: some handspunn eider wool yarn that had been gifted to me by the lovely and talented @definitelynotanarchfey .
Friday I procured a nice big pot for dyeing thing in from the second hand store.
Saturday
Saturday was mordening day. The yarn got taken out of their ball form and tied (not very expertly) into hanks. For mordant I used potassium alum.
After some initial trouble i managed to get the mordant bath to temperature. Turns out our little induction plate don't do pots this big, so fire it was. And with the yarn prepared and drying that was the end of the first day.
Sunday
The actual dyeing day. I started by going out to gather some invasive plants, while thunder sounded in the distance. I returned home with a shopping bag full of the things. I might have gotten a bit carried away
A this point I decided to make an experiment. You see, I had both the dark purple flowers and I had also collected quite a bit of the pink ones. And i wondered, what will the diffrence in colour be? And since i had 2 prepared hanks of yarn I decided to test it out.
So for bath one I used the pink flowers as well as some of the stalks. Resulting in a nice tea coloured dye bath
Forbidden noodles in broth
For dye bath two I decided to use only the purple flowers. In total there was about 400g of flower in the bath.
this resulted in a very diffrently coloured bath,this one a dark, dull, purple.
More... soup?
In both cases the yarn was simmered for about an hour after comming up to temperature, and then left to rest in the dye baths for another couple of hours. Before being rinsed and washed.
The result:
The pink flowers gave me a lovely yellowish spring green colour while the purple flowers resulted in a darker more blue toned green. I am very pleased with both of these colours. Tho it remains to see how stable they are over time.
This was a fun experiment and i am already planning to do some more dyeing in the future. I still have one more untreated hank of the eider wool yarn. For this one I will probably try onion peel next.
However I am aware of some other plants near me that will also be collected and dried for future use. Just as I am doing with the excess lupine flowers :)
And today in "Fey goes entirely mad and spins a ridiculous amount of floof" we have...... 220g of yarn. .... You read that right. I don't know what happened either.
Also tried out another new fiber. Figured it would go as normal. Nope! I apparently found the american version of Shetland. It would not stop going thinner and thinner, making a valient silk expression while probably silently laughing at my mad cackling. I present to you, only eight gramm of targhee but a ridiculous amount of meters.
Gonna give this to a friend to use as handsewing thread cause what the heck?
