YarnyCrisis

Sideblog for all the textile things

[yarnycrisis]

Day 1 - spun for 10 minutes did a small puff of the purple.

Day 2- Did 40 minutes and got a good chunk of the purpley-fuschia done. This section of the yarn really reminds me of the Cheshire cat 😸. It is actually a much brighter color in person. Maybe it will show up better if I can get a shot in daylight.

I also managed to do some continuous spinning instead of the park and draft that I was doing the last time I used a drop spindle. I guess all the practice I've had with my wheel has translated back to the drop spindle? Muscle memory kicking in? 🤷‍♀️

[yarnycrisis]

Tour De Fleece 2026!!!

Time for Tour de Fleece again! And let's hope that this time I manage to avoid major injury, unlike last year. 🙏

I'm also in the process of moving, so my lovely Louet S10, Jeanne de Louet, will be resting this year. I'll be exclusively doing spindle spinning for this Tour de Fleece. I found my Jeanne so soon after I started spinning that I really haven't done a whole helluva lot of spindle spinning.

My main goal again this year is to spin for at least 5 minutes a day. I'm also going to do what I did last year and try to post every other day, but that may or may not happen with the moving.

I'm going to start off by working on the fiber that is currently on my drop spindle, a braid from FatCatKnits on Etsy called Ode to Joy. It is 18.5 micron Merino combed top and the colorway is a mirror, so I've split it in half to do a 2 ply. Or maybe chain ply each? 🤔 we shall see how I feel when I get to that point.

From what ive done on it so far it spins up super fine. Like, this might actually end up as my first laceweight yarn even after plying.

Other than working my way through that braid, I dont have any specific plans. I do have a few ounces of merino in various colorways from Mohairandmore that I might try if I finish the Ode braid before I move.

[yarnycrisis]

Wip Wednesday. I have 9 or 10 if you count the weaving, but I've mostly been being project monogamous on this one shawl. I did slip a tiny bit to my Lacy Business shawl, but I've been mostly leaving the others alone.

It's the Papillon shawl by MarinJaKnits using Noro Sonata in Obsidian and Willow Tree yarns Cocoon in Champagne Toast and Ripe Melon. I got the idea and the Noro when I was in Orlando in February from Olga at The Crafted Kind yarn store in Lake Mary. I already had the Cocoon yarns from my LYS Dixie Knits.

I'm on section 23 out of 30+the border. Its garter stitch with m1l and m1r as the increases, but the wrap and turns keep me focused. And if I'm super tired that day I can just do one of the little bubbles that day because they are mostly 8 or 10 sts per row.

[yarnycrisis]

Knitting Lacy Business by Ambah O'Brien using Darjeeling Tea by Badsheepyarn and Blue Bachelor Buttons by The Copper Corgi. The blue in both of these yarns practically glows in the sunlight! I love how vivid and saturated the yarns are.

I was using these yarns for a Stonechurch shawl but I just wasn't feeling it and frogged it. I really hadn't worked on it for most of a year and it just wasn't clicking.

The Lacy Business pattern works really well with these yarns because its such a simple pattern. Garter stitch lets the variegated darjeeling shine and the eyelets break up the solidity of the blue tonal. Its also so simple that I can just coast through the pattern while watching YouTube or listening to a podcast. My favorite type of pattern!

[yarnycrisis]

I've been plugging away on my Honeycomb Ten stitch blanket lately when I'm sitting in my car before work. And I finally made it through the 1st of the Caron Simply Soft Speckle Honeycomb skeins today. 🎉🧶🎉

I mainly want to use up the 2 skeins of the Bone colorway I have so I will probably have to use 3 of my Honeycomb skeins to match up. The speckled is about 100 yards less than the solid colorway.

[yarnycrisis]

Finished object Friday!!! I actually finished these Wednesday and am so pleased with them! I"ve been knitting theses Sunday Swing Socks by Kristel Nyberg since may of last year, but between tour de fleece 2025, my broken arm, and Christmas chaos time at work it sat in second sock hell for about 7 of those months.

This is where I stopped in late June and didn't pick up until early January.

And here they are completed! I used 148 yards of the speckled pink Bay Breeze by Bad Sheep yarn that I got at my LYS Dixie Knits, and 82 yards of the yellow tonal Yellow Day Lilies by the Copper Corgi Fiber Studio that I got at the Smoky Mountain Spinnery in Gatlinburg Tennessee.

They are loose on me even after blocking so I probably could have knit the small size instead of the medium, but the stitch definition is lovely and they are comfy. Perfect springtime house socks!

[louisarmpits]

Stardew valley socks. Knit by me, pattern by oakwoodknits

[yarnycrisis]

I bought this 6 oz braid of Cloverfield 100% Merino from DivineDyeWorks last year and I finished spinning it earlier this month.

I also had some 100% Merino from Mohairandmore in Conifer and Hazelnut. The dark green was spun on a drop spindle and was some of the first "good" yarn i ever made! The other 2 were spun on my Louet S10 wheel.

I decided to use my inkle loom and see if I could weave enough of it to make a decent sized strip of fabric and turn it into a skinny infinity scarf. I used a little 4 dent rigid heddle that I had to warp with instead of using heddle ties.

So far its going good. I've woven about 17 inches at 3 inches wide and so far the yarn is holding up really well for the warp. Im going to alternate 10 inches of Cloverfield with 5 inches of Conifer or Hazelnut alternating.

[a-silly-poll-side-blog-yay]

You can only keep the last thing you ordered online if you can explain it to a medieval peasant. Keeping it?

yes

no

they call me a witch

results

Voting ended onNov 5, 2025

[yarnycrisis]

Sample floof #4- White Falkland wool.

Finished my wool sample spin that I started during Tour de fleece! I broke my arm and have been unable to do any spinning for months, but i finally got my casts off. Took an hour and 15 minutes to go from fluff to fully plied yarn for this Falkland wool. It ended up being roughly 735 inches or almost 20.5 yards of 2 ply yarn.

[yarnycrisis]

Sample floof # 3 is a Blue-faced Leicester wool in a natural colored blend of creamy white, light Grey, and a little brown from FiberFate on etsy.

It was very, very soft as a fiber and drafted smoothly. It was so blended that I didn't try to separate out the colors, so it ended up barber poling as I spun which is pretty cute!

Finished plying it 3 months later after my broken arm healed up. Ended up being roughly 1400 inches or 39 yards of 2 ply yarn

[goode-kingsman]

I finished these socks this morning. I'm quite happy with the result.

[yarrow-heather-and-hollyhock]

I wanted to post about this because I know many of my mutuals are avid crafters and I don't know how much attention this endeavour is getting outside of end-of-life spaces-

The Loose Ends Project matches crafters with a project that is unfinished because of death or disability. They offer help with a spectrum of textile mediums in over 80 countries. One project I find particularly lovely: “My mom was making this octopus for me. She was 67 years old when she passed away from COPD. She was hospitalized for pulmonary rehab several times and would always take it to work on while she was there and loved to talk about it with people."

(the red heart marks the last stitch made by this person's mom) Anyway, if something like this is something you'd like to be involved in, they are always looking for more crafters <3

[the-fibre-stuff]

My favourite recent finishing project that they posted about wasn't precisely something that the crafter left unfinished. The knitter in question had had dementia, and thought she was knitting scarves. So a finisher was found to piece all the little bits of knitting together into a blanket.

[pinehutch]

LOOSE ENDS

[yarnycrisis]

Day 21- 1 hour 30 minutes spinning my Blue-faced Leicester sample floof. I had 30 grams of the unspun fiber, and it was super soft! It actually spun into a barber pole with the white, gray, and brown bits.

Sigh 😓😭 guess who broke their frickin arm at work today? This bitch. No more spinning or knitting for a while 🤬

[yarnycrisis]

Day 19- 2 hours and 30 minutes and my diamond 💎 is done!!!

Day 20- 2hr 20 minutes today. sigh 😕 I tried for 20 minutes to ply my celestial with the embroidery floss the way i was planning. It did not turn out the way i liked, so I cut the single off. I ended up with 1008 inches or 28 yards. I will have to have a think about what to do with the rest of the celestial. Maybe buy some royal blue mulberry silk and spin it up to ply with? I want some shine in there, but the embroidery floss was not grippy enough to ply with the peruvian wool. I dont know, so the celestial will go into the cedar chest to rest.

The second spin for the day is these samples of different wool breeds that I've collected over the years that I am going to quickly spin up and see how I like them!

In clockwise order from the top left, I have grey Dorset/Polypay mix, grey corriedale, natural variegated blue-faced Leicester, and white Falkland.

I'll make separate posts about each of the samples as I spin them, just to get all my thoughts on each of them. It took me roughly an hour each on the dorset and the corriedale to go from fluff to plied yarn.

Got 336 inches or just over 9 yards of Dorset. It weighs about 6 ish grams all spun up.

Got 650 inches or slightly over 18 yards on the Corriedale. It weighs about 13 grams all spun up.

Ran out of time to do the bfl, and Falkland. Will do those tomorrow or Saturday.

[yarnycrisis]

#2 of my sample spins is this grey corriedale wool. I'm not sure where I got it from except that it came from one of my Etsy purchases.

It is much smoother than the dorset wool and no tweedy clumps. A much smoother staple and not as crispy as the Dorset. A nice silvery grey and very soft. Pretty close to merino soft, and i think it drafted much more easily. It had a very consistent draft, not as thick and thin like the dorset.

I andean plied this sample as well and it took just at an hour to go from fluff to plied. I ended up with roughly 650 inches or just barely 18 yards. It weighs about 13 grams all spun up.

It does have a bit of a fuzzy halo, but is quite soft. I wouldn't mind using this for next to skin.

[yarnycrisis]

As part of tour de fleece, I'm spinning some of the little sample floofs I've picked up through the years. I wanted to put down some of my thoughts about them separately from my tour postings.

#1 a natural grey Dorset/Polypay blend from fiberculture.

It's very fluffy and lofty as fiber and had some little tweedy clumps in it. It did end up a bit thick and thin, but it plied up into the thinnest yarn I've ever been able to get on my wheel. Drafted very smoothly with my preferred short, forward draw and didn't require a lot of the fiber to bind together.

A lovely variegated grey, with darker hairs mixed in with the almost white ones to form a medium grey tone. The fiber looked more brownish grey before being spun, and more silvery grey after. I used an andean ply to ply it back on itself. I managed to get roughly 336 inches or just barely 9 yards of 2 ply yarn.

Took me about an hour to go from fluff to yarn. Weighs about 6 ish grams of finished yarn, and has a little fuzzy halo. It is slightly rough, more outwear than next to skin.