Tagged: homemade
Circular needle case
Over break, the plastic case that my Knit Picks circular needles came in fell apart so I asked my mom, who’s an amazing sewer, to make me one. I spent some time on Etsy getting ideas for a design and we figured out a combination of features that would be best for the case. After that, we made a trip to JoAnn’s fabrics to pick out a quilted fabric for the body of the case and a pattern in a corresponding color for the lining. My mom wrote out her own pattern using paper bags and sewed it together. Im so impressed by the results! There are pockets for the needles and for four different sizes of cables. There’s also a little zipper pocket for miscellaneous things. The case folds up in thirds and is held together with a button.
I love how it turned out. Its very practical and helps keep all of my needles in one place. I love the colors in the fabric too! Maybe someday I’ll learn to sew too but for now, I’ll just stick to knitting (sewing looks really hard). Thanks again mom!
Adventures in Spinning
Hey everyone! Sorry I haven’t posted for so long. I’ve pretty much only been working on the sweater and I still have 3 inches left before I do something new on the back so I haven’t had anything exciting to post about. However, since I needed a break from that, I decided to try my hand at spinning. I bought a top whorl drop spindle and 8oz of New Zealand sheep roving from The Joyful Sheep on etsy. After a few YouTube videos, I decided to go for it.
The Roving
Of course, when I first started, I had troubles keeping the yarn an even diameter but I’ve gotten quite a bit better at that now (I’ve spun about 6oz so far). I’ve mostly been doing single ply yarn since I tried to double ply and the yarn ended up super thick and took up a ton of wool.
Yarn drying under tension
Like I said, I’ve spun, soaked, dried, and wound about 6oz so far- it’s nice because I can do other things at the same time which is harder with the complicated pattern for my sweater. My yarn isn’t the softest though and I think it’s a bit over twisted but practice makes perfect, right? I want to get some colored roving next to make things a little more interesting.
I’m using the yarn I’ve made in these fair isle mittens on the lionbrand website. I’m using up some dark blue wool ease thick and quick yarn that I have left over from the beard hat for the pattern.
Have you guys ever tried spinning? Do you have any hints that might help me out? Also, where do you buy your material for spinning- especially roving that’s been dyed/ do you dye your own?
Happy knitting!
A Knit's Tale 