This yarn was a dyeing disaster. I was aiming for Garden In Spring, one of my favourite colourways, and the colour just went all wrong on me. I pulled it out of the dyepot and… Oh no! The pinks were crazy-bright, the greens were just plain ugly, and the purples totally non-existent. I have a picture of it… I can’t even show it to you, it was that awful. It was embarrassing.
I set it aside and decided not to think about it for a few days.
When I finally went back to it and turned it over in my hands (cringing, cringing the whole time), I realised what I wanted to do with it. I thought I knew the shade that would salvage it. I mixed my colours and in went the yarn. And a little while later, this is what I lifted out…
I had hoped to salvage it — instead, it has been saved. It came out so much better than I could have hoped!
There’s one skein in Astrid DK and one in Celeste Fingering weight. And now I just have to decide if they go in the shop or… if I keep them for myself!!! I may have to think about this for a spell.
So, let’s say I was holding out a skein of yarn to you — beautiful, light, airy yarn, with a slight halo that made the softness just call out to you. And let’s say that, as I held it out to you, I said, almost in a whisper, “It’s laceweight, a two-ply of silk and merino…” As you reached out to touch it, what would be the first thoughts that came into your mind? Would you be thinking strength? Would you be thinking red-hot? How about razor sharp? No? Those words wouldn’t be what popped into your mind? Huh. Me neither.
I’ve been dyeing the new laceweight yarn that will be going in the shop this week. It’s called Luna and it’s everything that laceweight ought to be: delicate, soft, luxurious, stunningly beautiful. With 20% silk blended into 80% superfine merino, it feels divine against the skin — the kind of yarn you just can’t stop touching. Oh, and it takes colour like a dream.
So far, so good.
It was when I was reskeining the dyed yarn that everything changed. I was turning the skein winder with my right hand and gently guiding the yarn with my left… I had the skein winder going at a good clip because, at 1300 yards per skein, it makes for very tired arms if it goes too slowly. So, we’re going along at a good pace, this yarn and me, when I realised my left hand is starting to hurt… The space between my thumb and my index finger is really starting to burn. So I moved my hand and rolled the yarn up my finger a bit and… moments later, that spot is red-hot too. This yarn is just so thin and going at such a pace that it was actually cutting into my skin!
So I looked about for something to hold it with — an oven glove would be ideal — and spotted a plastic coat hanger which will do the trick nicely. Arranging the yarn so it was running through the hook, I could guide it onto the skein winder by moving the coat hanger back and forth. And it worked perfectly …for a time.
After a little while, I realised that there wass a little ball of fluff forming on the hook of the coat hanger. Thinking that there might be a rough spot taking some of the halo off the yarn, I stopped the skein winder and took a closer look. And that’s when I discovered this…
That’s right. You are seeing what you think you are seeing. In a matter of minutes, my lovely, light, airy, and stunningly beautiful laceweight yarn was actually slicing througha coat hanger. You could have knocked me over with a feather!
And I’m so pleased I’d not carried on guiding it with my bare hand…
So, there you have it. SpaceCadet Creations’s new Luna Laceweight yarn: delicate, soft, luxurious and saturated with colour. Just as you’d expect.
…And also, apparently, red-hot and razor sharp. Not as you’d expect at all.
SpaceCadet yarns have been featured in an Etsy Treasury several times now, and each time I have been absolutely delighted to get the news. There is nothing quite like having your work choosen by your fellow Etsians and highlighted right there on the screen to make you feel all warm, right down to you toes.
But the interesting thing is that, so far, every time my yarns have been included in a Treasury, it’s been the Freshly Cut Grass colourway that’s been picked — every single time! And that’s great, because it tells me that the green I created for that colourway is as eye-catching to others as it is to me. But at the same time, I couldn’t help wondering why none of my other colours were ever chosen — or if they ever would be.
So you can imagine my surprise when I clicked on the link in an email today and found that it was not Freshly Cut Grass but instead Cold Waters that had been chosen for the “I Feel Like a Blue…” Etsy Treasury. I believe I actually let out a whoooop, I was that excited!
Ladies and Gentlemen, I proudly present you Cold Waters, the newest Etsy Treasury star in the SpaceCadet lineup…
Sometimes when the undyed yarns arrive, they are already in skeins and sometimes they are on cones. When it’s the latter, they have to be “skeined off” before they can be dyed.
Each skein is wound off individually onto an antique skein winder, and weighed as it goes along. Then it’s twisted up into that familiar shape, dropped into the basket, and the next skein begins.
The skein winder goes incredibly fast for being such an old girl, and creates a nice breeze, but there’s no doubting that skeining off is hard work, and tiring if there is a lot of yarn to be wound. But it certainly is lovely to look at.
But then, when isn’t fiber-stuff lovely to look at?
This post is in honour of the fact that a huge delivery of undyed yarn arrived on my doorstep today, beautiful and smooshy and ripe with colour possibilities. Look for it to start appearing in the SpaceCadet Creations shop very soon!
I dyed some fiber in the Sailor’s Warning colourway, but I wasn’t happy with the way it came out. Don’t get me wrong — it was beautiful — but it just wasn’t quite Sailor’s Warning to me. It wasn’t different enough to be its own new colourway, but I wasn’t happy putting it in the shop when it didn’t look exactly as I’d intended.
…But how can I waste 4oz of beautiful, soft-as-clouds merino fiber?!? I can’t! And besides, I know that, even though it wasn’t exactly perfect as fiber, the colours will blend and soften when it’s spun and it will look gorgeous.
So I am spinning it up, and it will go in the shop as hand-spun. Keep your eyes open for it!
A customer recently wrote to ask me how much handspun yarn she could expect get from a braid of my hand-dyed fiber and, to be honest, I was at a bit of a loss. How much yarn you’ll get varies from spinning style to spinning style …and from spinner to spinner. The thicker the yarn, the less yardage; the thinner it’s spun, the more yardage. Beyond that, it’s a very hard question to answer.
Hand-dyed BFL Combed Top, in Garden in Spring
And especially for me, because I hardly ever calculate the yardage on my handspun. I have no idea why — I just never do!
So I turned to my friend Natalie who is a more experienced (and excellent) handspinner and posed my customer’s question to her. She replied, “It’s usually 20 – 30 % less yardage than you’d get from the same amount (grams/ounces) of commercially spun yarn of the same weight (worsted, dk, fingering etc) because handspun tends to be denser. From 4oz, I’d expect 300-400 yards fingering; probably 200-300 of a dk/worsted range.”A much more technical and useful answer than mine!
The yarn spun by my friend from the Garden In Spring BFL
And then she added, “Hard to judge though… It’s all very variable.” Which made me feel a bit better!
