Crafty and Clean!

My house smells very very clean. Thanks to all the hand felting of soaps I've recently done! In order to felt the soaps down, you have to get em wet - and then set em out to dry - each of the soaps above is a different scent, and I did multiples of each of them over the course of several days...you can imagine how the house must have smelled what with all that lather being worked up to make the felt! :) Want one for your own or to give away for a gift? They're available in the shop!

If you make some on your own, I do not recommend trying to speed things up by doing em in the washing machine - or you might have visions of some super sudsy overflowing laundry machine nightmare gracing your wash room. These are all handfelted individually for a reason!

More Mixed Wool!

I've been in a spinning mood of late and have also taken to handblending at the wheel. I did a couple more gift skeins recently:


This one is called Autumn Waterfall...and it has muted greens, reds, blues and purples.


This one is Autumn Waterfall Too - it's basically Autumn Waterfall singles plied with Black to give it a slightly different characteristic - both in color and feel since this is a nicely balanced 2-ply it's nice and fat :D


Finally, I've also completed an art yarn - I'd forgotten how much fun it can be to spin them up - this one is called Harvest Berries and it's available in the shop.

Pine Forest!

Now that the weather is cooling down, I've been spinning again :)

I spun up a ginormous skein of browns, greens sand blues for Kiki's Birthday and decided I really liked that color combo, so I hauled out my wheel and cranked out two more skeins - these two are up at the Shop if you care to make them your own!

Kiri en Fuego

Well, Fuego was the yarn anyhow - it looks more like an Agua inspired Kiri what with the blues - or perhaps Cielo - the deep blue with light blue reminds me of the crisp intense blue desert skies with wispy clouds.

Anyhow, the details:

Pattern from Polly at All Tangled Up

Yarn: Skacel Fuego - 80% mohair, 20% wool - 3 balls with ~25g remaining.

Needles: US15 (wahoo!)

Comments: a super fast knit, mostly because I adjusted the needles upward to accommodate the relatively fatter yarn. The original yarn called for in the pattern is Kidsilk Haze...of which I have none (I do, however, have one precious ball of doucer et soie but I have no idea what it wants to be yet). Anyhow, this lace pattern was fairly easy for me to commit to memory, though I did forget a yarnover here or there on occasion, resulting in my having to tink back to get it - luckily I never did have to resort to putting the shawl in the freezer to find out if ripping *frozen* mohair is any easier than ripping mohair of the non-frozen variety.

This shawl measures almost six feet across now that it has been blocked, and it seems to be just the thing to take the nip out of the over zealous air conditioning. There was a minor moment of indecision when I tried to figure out if I had enough yarn do do one more pattern repeat row and then go into the edging - some quick math told me not, and I'm pleased to say I was right - I only have 25g of yarn remaining. The only thing I was not able to accomplish was the dramatic points/scalloping as in the pattern, I think it's because I bound off too tightly - the good news is I bound off with equal tension all the way round, so I have a nice clean edge.

Regarding the yarn, it was easy enough to work with, though I do note that my shawl sheds a little bit - so if I am foolish enough to wear on certain garments, someone may wind up asking me if I'd dyed my cat blue.