h
sheepfilms
cherry valley forever
Interview Vampire Daily
pixel skylines
occasionally subtle
Not today Justin
No title available
No title available
One Nice Bug Per Day
Sweet Seals For You, Always
Product Placement
tannertan36
shark vs the universe
❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
d e v o n
Game of Thrones Daily
Doug Jones
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
taylor price
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Bangladesh
seen from United States
seen from Australia
seen from Russia
seen from United States
seen from Mexico
seen from Malaysia
seen from Mexico
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from Saudi Arabia
seen from United States
seen from Nepal
seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from Poland
seen from Malaysia
@krakenmonger
I swear I'm gonna do my TDF write up. But FIRST! Look at this big pile of floof that is a 2oz batt dizzed through a not-a-button that came from my childhood button collection. Isn't it *magnificent*??
The beginning of the pile with the batt for reference:
Hi! I saw your weaving (really gorgeous btw, especially those ducks!) and was inspired to pick up the hobby myself, but I was wondering how difficult it is? And also, would you say it's an expensive hobby to get into? I already sew and do cross stitch, so I've got some experience with fibre crafts.
Thank you! I’m so happy to hear my little ducks have inspired you to learn bandweaving! :)
I’d say pick-up bandweaving (also known as Norwegian pick-up, or Baltic pick-up) is a very approachable style of weaving. It’s basically a plain weave, except you pick up or push down certain warp threads each pass to keep them from being incorporated into the weave. This is what creates the floats that make up the design!
The hardest part, at least for me, is having the patience to count threads to make sure you’re picking up and dropping the right ones. It can be a slow process, but the technique itself is easy to learn! I highly recommend starting with a simple pattern on a narrow band so it's easier to keep track of your threads. If it's your first time weaving I'd also recommend working a few inches, or even a whole band, in just a plain weave without any pick-ups. That way you can get a feel for weaving and work on getting a consistent tension without the added difficulty of following a pattern.
While not the cheapest hobby out there, weaving can be affordable depending on which supplies you choose to use and how much yarn you already own. Though I have to say it has set me on the slippery slope of wanting to buy a loom (pricy) and lots and lots of yarn (always a risk with fiber hobbies). Here are the tools I use and about what I paid for them:
Heddles can get pretty expensive but there are cheaper alternatives out there. Aside from making your own rigid heddle out of wood (I've seen a lot of people laser cut them), you can create a heddle out of string! I haven’t tried this myself, but you can look into backstrap weaving if you’re curious how it’s done. Smaller heddles will also be less expensive.
After 10 months of dedication, I finally finished! I confess I was hesitant to post it, since I'm not a professional, but I feel I achieved a good result. by TheresaZoe
@cottonkhaleesi check this beaut out!!!
🤩🤩🤩
Btw if you're in North America, planting squash even if you don't like to eat it provides a vital food source for squash bees, which collect pollen exclusively from (you guessed it) squash flowers. And if you DO like to eat it, then you're getting food for yourself while also providing food for a very specialized native animal :)
Helen Whitaker, England
" Sycamore Seed "
Glass , copper and brass
Today‘s Batts: Cream-coloured merino with baby camel and angora bunny. Ran these through the drum carder twice, made them extra fluffy. I could possibly run them through once more to mix the angora in better (it likes to clump, as you can see in the white streaks), but I‘m kinda sick of looking at all this beige XD
These might become fingerless mitts..?
I've been unintentionally following a theme when I go to fiber festivals, first was lots of silk blends, then neps, this time was buying whole fleeces
The first two are both "rescued fleeces" from Angrysheepdogstudio, they're shearers who take fleeces that would have been trashed and sell them with a kickback to the farmer to encourage them to raise more diverse breeds. The dorset is probably going to be socks and the border leicester is, in theory, going to be spun to be woven
The alpaca is 100% because I touched it and just couldn't not tbh. Don't have plans, maybe some lace shaws?
I've got a test batch of the dorset soaking right now, it smells... Uhhh... Let's just say I don't mind it but if I ever want to have fleeces in the house again I better get it done quick cause my husband is not happy lol
Twenty-one tons of potatoes are up for grabs at Potato Palooza on Monday.
The nonprofit’s set to receive a donation of 21 tons of tubers this weekend from suppliers in the Midwest. Hoping to get the starchy vegetables to people in need, the nonprofit will host a “Potato Palooza” event on Monday in Park Hill. “Anyone is welcome to come. They can bring tote bags, wagons, you could back up your pickup truck if you wanted to,” Hissong said. The event is 9 a.m. to noon at the Park Hill Food Recovery Hub, 6090 East 39th Avenue, on July 27.
This is the dream
🥔 ⚠️ 🥔 ⚠️ 🥔 ⚠️ 🥔 ⚠️ 🥔 ⚠️ 🥔 ⚠️
People near Denver, Colorado.
Potato alert. Potato alert.
Free food. Unlimited free potatoes.
Potato alert.
🥔 ⚠️ 🥔 ⚠️ 🥔 ⚠️ 🥔 ⚠️ 🥔 ⚠️ 🥔 ⚠️
This concludes this broadcast of the emergency potato system.
End of TdF sale!
You did it! You finished that project spin, you got your stash down, you spun a little bit every day! It’s time to treat yourself to some new floofs!
You can get 20% off everything for a little over a week (ends Aug 5) here
Propaganda:
Periscope up
Green heron (Butorides virescens)
birds have secret bones we're not allowed to know about
Day 13
Today's fiber blend is Hipstring's Tahitian Pearl, consisting of 50% merino wool, 25% llama, 12.5% tussah silk and 12.5% mulberry silk. This was so very soft and slick while spinning. It's just the slightest tan or grey tinge to the white.
It goes very well with Day 3's Vanilla Slice. Again, I was surprised how soft a blend with llama is. I think of llama being used for ropes in Peru, but probably that's the difference between the hair and under wool. I have two more ounces of Vanilla Slice in the stash thanks to the silk spinning retreat last year, so I'm considering a knitting project with these yarns, maybe dyeing the unspun fiber first. I reread the listing on World of Wool for Vanilla Slice and solved that mystery - It looks like previous versions included llama, but due to sourcing they've changed it to alpaca.
Tour de Fleece prep: finally picking through and re-washing the medium brown ouessant fleece (as of posting this, all of it has been picked through and half of what is usable has been washed. About a third is getting yote bc it was all a single sheet felted solid)
I'm so excited to spin some of this, the colour is gorgeous and the much needed re-wash should make it behave much better than the white ouessant I have spun before! This fleece came to Rev years ago with eight others as a gift and was washed hastily to be storable at all, hence the need for another spa day
Next up for picking and fluffing and eventual re-washing I will probably target the dark brown and black fleeces bc a lot of those is also in shit condition (felted. So felted. These are from pet sheep and they lived in a forest) so I figure I can get through them faster than the overall pretty decent white fleeces. And then someday we can have one less giant jute bag in the living room awaiting processing!
plied that spin for a friend (: It's so super pretty! I love the way it turned out and I really hope they like the gift.
This ended up being 274 and 257 yards before washing. Each skein is exactly on target for 11 WPI, just like I was aiming for. I'm feeling really pleased with myself for that.
As for how I plied it- I took each braid and split in 3. I kept 1/3 as is, mirrored the other 1/3, and swapped the last 1/3 with the other braid. I think that blended up the colors and homogenized the braids very nicely. (They are the same color, the lighting is just different).
Fiber: Never Gonna Give You Up in polwarth/silk from Hipstrings
see the braids here
Hi. So whats the general vibe nowadays with social media choices? For less intrusive ads, for better privacy, for ideally zero AI. Everything wants access to who I am and my contacts list and my Google profile (which I hate even having that and never connect it to things).
Where are my art and dog friends at? Bluesky, Mastodon, Pixelfed?
I find myself wanting to post some things again but hating the platforms and the culture. Tumblr seems like the only place I can trust to have the feeling I want but posting on mobile often causes it to eat my post if it's too long or has too many pictures.
Another catch up day, as I didn't spin much on Saturday or Sunday. Partially due to my cold, partially due to going out for the Solstice hike.
Day 14 (December 21)
This fiber is another from Hipstrings, Labradorite consisting of 50% merino, 12.5% alpaca, 12.5% bamboo (rayon/viscose), 12.5% tussah silk and 12.5% mulberry silk. So many white slubs, I think from the bamboo. For the number of blues in the top, I'm surprised how much of a grey blue the yarn is.
Day 15 (December 22)
And today's fiber is the final one from World of Wool. Cover Girl consists of 37.5% merino, 37.5% bamboo (rayon/viscose), 12.5% red eri silk and 12.5% wool with viscose nepps. I found the blended nepps drafted well most of the time, but I did have to pull some of them and the bamboo clumps out when they didn't. I love the color, it really lets the eri shine. Colorwise, eri is my favorite silk, even though I'm not a big yellow fan.
Tour de Fleece 2026 Final report
No new projects started, I only finished all the started wheel work, which was more than enough work. I absolutely spent the whole weekend on the wheel. Only left the house yesterday for a necessary grocery run. But I wanted to finish what I've begun.
Which meant for yesterday plying all the Blue and spinning some of the blue to green gradient
and for today spinning the whole last batt of the blue to green gradient plus plying 2 full bobbins of that gradient.
The results:
From top to bottom:
The hand dyed batts from a sheep living in lower saxony, Germany. 6 batts turned into 3 skeins
Middle left: The Blue, next to it the Polarfuchs from one of the jars
below: Another local sheep of unknown breed
Then some Rambouillet from Regenbogenwolle, I only spun part of the skein during the Tour and only counted what I've spun into the metrics
Then some unknown fibre which was a test fibre for my new spindle
And lastly, unplied: One storage roll of kid mohair from the new spindle and 3 tussah silk and a bit on the spindle which I am mentally not ready to ply anymore.
Which adds up to:
~5,7km of singles turned into ~2,5km of finished yarns (pre wash) which weigh ~680g
Which means I made more yarn than last year. YAYY (May I have the energy to work with these yarns before the next tour!!)
My above goal was to find a place for all my fibres in glass jars... There is one batt still in a plastic bag... But I'm honest, that was a very high goal to begin with and I'm not too mad about missing it (just sad for the fibre). Maybe it just needs a bit more rearrangement to make it happen? Or I need to participate in TdF Femme? But I wanna take a short vacation which has to fall in tat time bc I have to work again at the 13th and I want to spend a few days home again when I get back... But those are questions I'll figure out later.
