Catching Up

The art yarn workshop this past weekend was fun. I didn't take any pictures, but you can see one here on Jacey's blog. I love many things about Jacey, but here are a few: all of her wooly fiber comes from animal sanctuaries and no-kill farms, all of her spinning is geared towards sturdy yarn that you can actually use but is still magical and artsy, and she supports her whole family with her spinning business. My hero! If you missed out on her workshops, she's going to have a spinning DVD showing all her amazing techniques for sale in a few weeks.

Here are the yarns I spun at the workshop (click to see a bigger, more detailed picture):





I was a smidge worried that I'd already know a lot of the stuff at the workshop, since I have been spinning art yarns for a few years, but even the stuff I did already know was new to me because Jacey had her own way of doing it. Here are all the techniques we went through: thick and thin (balanced and workable), twists/loops, knots/stacks, coils, racing stripe, autowrap, tornado, Foreign Objects 1 (strung), Foreign Objects 2 (trapped), supercoils, cocoons, halos, corespinning, tiny circles, Foreign objects 3 (integrated), Foreign objects 4 (wrapped). That's a lot to take in over two days! I'm most excited about the cocoons and halos. And the tiny circles and the trapped foreign objects were pretty awesome too.

After the workshop was over on saturday, Molly and I went to Spinster Yarns & Fibers, which was right down the road. It's a sweet little yarn shop that specializes in local and environmentally friendly yarns, so right away I was in love. I managed to restrain myself and only bought a few ounces each of local, organic, predator-friendly wool and hemp. They're working on setting up a carding station where you can use their drum carder and selection of fibers and pay by the ounce! How awesome is that?!

In shop news, I just finished up a big custom order for 6 skeins (that's a whole pound and a half, 977 yds) of patchwork yarn:



And once I wrap up my vegan yarn club yarns, I'll be back to listing new stuff in the shop! Finally!!