Habbitrot

A spinner of yarn in Scotland. If you are a transphobe or bigot of any other type, please leave.

[habbitrot]

What am I doing for the start of Pride month? Lesbians.

I've got 4 skeins to be spun and this is the first one, spun but not plyed.

[habbitrot]

I haven't been spinning for a few weeks because of reasons. I started up again today. Can anyone identify the theme for this wool that will become self-striping yarn?

[habbitrot]

I've finished the first 2 skeins out of 4. The theme, in case you're eagerly awaiting the answer, is Game Changer from @dropoutdottv

They are about 150g and 300m each. It's sock weight, but I don't like saying that, because this is not good yarn for actually making socks. It is chain-plied, so it's not going to be sturdy enough for that.

[habbitrot]

I haven't been spinning for a few weeks because of reasons. I started up again today. Can anyone identify the theme for this wool that will become self-striping yarn?

[habbitrot]

My general goal and plan for spinning this year is to 1) start actually selling my yarn, somehow, and 2) do a bunch of self-striping yarn, mostly pride themed.

I'm already going to veer off the track with this first batch. I've finished 2 skeins of trans pride yarn, and I've got 2 more still to spin. But I can't just sell these. Yes, I am nonbinary and disabled and I would be justified in selling them for myself, but I can't. Not with the deep shit the trans community is wading through at the moment.

Let me know your ideas for how I can best use this to benefit the trans community. In the end, it'll be 4 skeins of about 150g each.

[habbitrot]

I'm working on a knitting commission this week instead of spinning. You can probably work out what it is.

Also, I'm showing off my new little tool system. It's like a chatelaine, but made of cheap bits you can buy anywhere. I call it the chatelanyard. I got stitch markers and scissors and tapestry needles and measuring tape all on one lanyard.

[craftexchange]

Welcome back to Show and Tell Saturday! It's not really a craft, but I'm having fun messing around with my Internet of Things setup. What's new in your world this week?

[habbitrot]

It was too cold to spin this week (I don't like spinning in long sleeves) so I started knitting my last handspun batch into a scarf, mostly to get a feel for the length of the colour changes. I think I'm going to make the colour sections longer in the future, but for this project they're fine.

[craftexchange]

Welcome back to Show and Tell Saturday! I'm trying to be better about being late, so these will hopefully post on an approximate schedule for now. What's new in your world this week?

[habbitrot]

I've been working on my very first Musselburgh hat. (I actually live a quick bus ride from Musselburgh and I'm pretty sure Americans are probably pronouncing it wrong.) The yarn is handspun sparkly yellow merino plyed with "tropical" corriedale.

[habbitrot]

how much are you asking for the yarn? And is England ok? I'll ask all the wool people I know

The marked price from the now-cancelled craft market is £9 for skeins that are around 100g. I was going to lose some of that to the market costs, so we can keep it the same and it'll include shipping. I'm also willing to negotiate discounts for multiple skeins.

Here's what I'm going to do: I'll do one big shipment on Saturday (29 November 2025) to anyone in the UK who contacts me for some yarn before then. It'll be lucky dip as far as what you get, but let me know favourite colours and I'll do my best.

These prices are lower than I'd normally charge because this year was all stash-busting and the blends, though all pretty nice, are very random.

[habbitrot]

Okay, so the first round of yarn has been posted and those skeins are on their way to their new homes.

I've decided to keep it open for more sales for another week or until I'm out of yarn. So contact me here or my instagram (also username habbitrot) by Thursday the 4th of December if you're interested and I'll mail out the next batch next Friday.

[habbitrot]

how much are you asking for the yarn? And is England ok? I'll ask all the wool people I know

The marked price from the now-cancelled craft market is £9 for skeins that are around 100g. I was going to lose some of that to the market costs, so we can keep it the same and it'll include shipping. I'm also willing to negotiate discounts for multiple skeins.

Here's what I'm going to do: I'll do one big shipment on Saturday (29 November 2025) to anyone in the UK who contacts me for some yarn before then. It'll be lucky dip as far as what you get, but let me know favourite colours and I'll do my best.

These prices are lower than I'd normally charge because this year was all stash-busting and the blends, though all pretty nice, are very random.

[habbitrot]

I was supposed to sell my yarn in a local Christmas market, but I backed out because the organisers were being really awful and uncommunicative and I just couldn't deal.

There's over 30 skeins. Most are 100g and a few are closer to 150g. I don't know how I'm going to get rid of them, but if anyone in Scotland wants to buy them and re-sell them on ebay or something, I'll consider a very discounted wholesale sale of the whole lot.

Making things and selling things are two completely different hobbies, and I am just not really interested in selling things. But I also want them out of my house.

If I don't figure something out by next weekend, I'll probably just donate all of it to Oxfam again.

[habbitrot]

Decided to do some ill-advised spinning today. I had one bag of bamboo fibre that hadn't gotten blended in with everything else when I was de-stashing. I thought, "I'll just spin that by itself."

No the fuck I will not. Bamboo fibre is just green-washed rayon. Plastic. Just like the bio-nylon I fucking hated a few years ago.

When it got to the 7th or 8th time that the yarn broke while I was spinning it, I did what I should have done in the first place and threw it all in the trash.

Part of the purpose of my big destash over the last year was to purge all the plastic. This re-confirmed my commitment to never buy any more synthetics. I have a few sparkles and blend-in kind of synthetics that I'll use up in blends, and then I'm just doing real wool and silk. Plastic is absolute garbage.

[habbitrot]

I'm ordering tags for my yarn for the sale in November, and I got so close to ordering a stack of 250 tags with a mis-print. I saw the big, "You are responsible for any and all typographical errors" warning at the bottom of the order page and was like, "Okay fine I'll check," and wouldn't you know.

[habbitrot]

I started spinning wool seriously 3 or 4 years ago I think. At the beginning I just bought whatever wool was on sale and kind of spun a little of everything while I was learning what kind of spinning I really like to do.

Last year I settled in and decided what I really like most is merino wool, sometimes blended with sari silk or other fun bits. I like doing self-striping yarn. That's what I want to concentrate on.

The first step was clearing out all the accumulated random bits and pieces of wool. I spent last December blending the whole stash into big batches. Then I've spent this year spinning all of it. I've now finished all of the batches I blended. I've still got a couple little odds and ends to spin, but after that I'm out of wool.

I've got about 30 finished skeins now. My town has a little community shop that has a holiday market in December, so I will sell some of my yarn there. Whatever doesn't sell, I'll probably just give to a local charity shop.

So that leaves me with a clean slate. I'll buy some more wool when World of Wool has their black friday sale. Problem is, I have no idea what kind of colour design I want to do. How do I decide what to buy? What colours? How many? How much of each colour? It's turning out to be a very daunting prospect.

[craftexchange]

It's Show and Tell Saturday a full day early! I'm traveling for C2E2 (and in the spirit of the account, have a few trades with me :D), so this week's show and tell will go for a full two days instead of one. What's new in your world this week?

[habbitrot]

Knitting an object that might be either a narrow shawl or a wide scarf. A rectangle in any case. The yarn is stuff I spun a few weeks ago and I made up the pattern.

[craftexchange]

Hello and welcome back to another Show and Tell Saturday! Show off a finished craft, a work in progress, or a completed trade - what's new in your world this week?

[habbitrot]

I've got 400g of this blend that I'm working through. It's going really slow. I can usually do 100g in 6 episodes of whatever I'm watching. This stuff is 8 episodes per 100g. I think the main culprit for why it is so slow is that the black in this blend is acrylic, which doesn't draft as well and makes my fingers sweaty.

[habbitrot]

I've started another big 400g batch of spinning. This one is kind of an accidental asexual pride blend. The black is acrylic and it's blended with grey and dark purple Shetland, light purple that I think is merino, and I think the white is punta arenas wool or something like that. By the time I blended this bunch I had run out of fucks and just labelled it "mixed wool with acrylic."

This is what it looked like back in December when I was getting ready to blend it.

[craftexchange]

It's another round of Show and Tell Saturday! Show off something you've been working on, something you've finished, a trade you've received - what's new in your world this week?

[habbitrot]

I'm working on this big batch of spinning. It's 400g, and the light yellow and dark brown are merino, the orange is cheviot and the bits of white are shetland. I'm not quite halfway done. I've spun 2 bobbins of singles, and I have 2 more to go, plus chain plying all of it.