I am so in love

I am so in love with these rovings I just dyed. I know I just posted about them and I am sorry to repeat myself again, but you didn't see ALL the photos, did you?? I wonder if I will always love looking at photos of colorful yarn and fibers. I can't even describe how they make me feel! I know I don't want my blog to become all about the etsy shop because I hate when I see that happen on people's blogs and for me it is just a way to continue being able to create these beautiful things. But its also my blog (blah blah blah!! LOL) and I can post about what I want to, right? I just don't want any of my readers here to think I have gone totally commercial and can't talk about anything else, or that I expect any of my new fiber friends to buy from me, because I simply don't! If I point you to look at the shop, it is just because I am so excited about what I have just created and I want to share my enthusiasm!

So hey, go take a look ok? And see some of the photos of the rovings I just put on there! OH WOW, such incredible fiber porn!!! It is HERE to make it easy for you.

Here are a few of my favorite new colorways. I sat down at Starbucks the other day and wrote out about 15 new color combinations I want to try in the next few dye sessions. A few of them I think are going to look incredible, I hope anyhow. If anyone has suggestions for color combos they like, I would love to hear them! I do use the color wheel and theory from painting classes, but I also use intuition a lot in picking out what colors might look best together. I am also over time going to analyze which color groups are the most popular. I can tell you already that YELLOW yarn is just not as popular as other colors. WHY? My guess is that it doesn't look good on a lot of people. But that is just a guess and what I hear from other dyers. Many have told me yellow does not sell.

Here's some of the latest colorways all which went into "the secret recipe book" to be repeated in the future. Some don't make the book!
Sherbert-----peach (custom blend dye), and pink--i love this one

Ocean Deep---lots of greens--lime,mint,forest and various shades of blue!

Cherries and Chocolates-I love this new Earth Color sent to me from Standard Dye Company..only I changed it a tiny bit....it is sort of a taupe color and I have lots of ideas for what it will look great with!

And Lipstick, a combo of bright reds, hot pink and magenta! I usually don't wear these colors of lipstick but there are occasions for it! LOL This one is going to look gorgeous spun and perhaps plied with something slightly different.

What is kind of cool is half of what I dyed is already spoken for!!!

Oh and this last one, I dyed seven of these to go into the spindle kits that are coming out soon....They have one ounce of white and one ounce of blue. It is amazing how much fiber that is for a beginner. Much more and someone would really get overwhelmed I think! I am not sure what to name this colorway? Any ideas?

Got to get some zzzzzzzzzzzz's. One more test and I am done with school! Then the focus is on more fiber, exercise and weight loss. These three things will become my life!

Good night.........

So many pretty rovings

I was just braiding these and I put them all together to take a photo. These aren't even all of them! COLOR COLOR COLOR!! And more to be dyed this weekend I hope!



And here is the latest yarn I spun. It is my favorite so far. It is merino and silk and let me tell you that silk is HEAVENLY to spin! I loved every second of this and it was my best handspun yet!!


Here is a close up so maybe you can see some of the pink glitz I put in it..


I kind of want to keep this one because I even have 300 yards from it! But I have more yarn then I even know what to do with, so I did put it at ETSY.com. I have so much more spinning that I am doing. I just love it. I only wish I could sit and do it longer but it really bothers my back so I can't get too much done. Still looking for a better chair.

ONE more exam and I am done with school!!

Lisa

Friday night

Hi,
I just felt like writing a bit. It has been kind of a rough week. I had PMS followed by an awful stomach flu-YUCK. I really haven't been knitting much at all lately I realize. I am going to try to focus a bit more on that this week. Part of that is because I am still trying hard to finish my wrap sweater. I just posted an update on that over at the Year of the Sweater KAL. I have another more lightweight sweater started and I'll post soon about that.

I have been really enjoying spinning! I only do an hour or so a night as it is a bit hard on my neck and back. I am still looking for just the right spinning chair. Here is a yarn I finished this week that I am just in love with. I started it in the color blending class last week or so. It has different colors of merino in it (mint and light blue) along with some dyed Falkland wool in spearmint and blue and some kelly green merino and white blue faced leicester (SO SOFT) with some touches of firestar sparkle throughout it. It is really pretty (I think anyhow). It looks better in person as you can't see the sparkle really in the photographs.


I am not sure if I am going to keep this yarn ( I am calling it Mint Julep) or if I will sell it, but I really like it so I might keep it. I am starting a scarf with the 350 yards or so of handspun I finished from Stephanie's Twilight batts.
Here is what is on the bobbin right now. It is a heavenly blend of merino and silk. I had never spun silk before and I just love it. I can't imagine doing anything but luxury fibers again being the snob I am!!


Good night.Back to the merino and silk!!

Lisa

Sleepy Eyes Knitting Spins some Fiber!!

I was excited to see this blog post at Sleepy Eyes Knitting. Please take a look.

She shows the yarn that she spun up using some of the fiber that I dyed and sold in the Yarn Botanika shop. It is very exciting for me to see it all spun up and she wrote a very flattering post, which truly made my morning!!

I asked Yoga Garden Girl (her name...lol) to send me some of the photos so I can put them right here on this blog and also I am starting a gallery for another web page (you'll see it this summer maybe.....)...... so once she sends me some photos I'll post them.

Her blog is GORGEOUS. Honestly this woman has awesome taste so poke around. For being a new spinner, she has found all the best places to buy delicious looking fiber!

Hey..yoga girl........more dyed rovings come soon and you inspired me to buy a bunch more today online. I have have have to have more Blue Faced and some merino and also some Falkland wool........... I actually love to dye roving as much as I love to spin it!

Happy Day!
Lisa

OH and PS Yoga garden girl...funny you should mention calendar or coffee table book because that is a dream for me....and a goal! I have a great book idea and need to figure out how to go about it....

Creativity-Colors Inspired by Nature

I actually have a beautiful rose garden and I have been neglecting it! The flowers still are beautiful though! This week, I think I need to get to a greenhouse to get some mulch and rose food and some new flowers. I was so excited when I finally had the room for a rose garden because I always loved this variety called the Peace Rose (photo below). It can vary slightly but it is usually pale pink with cream and a touch of yellow. TOO pretty. Have you ever been to the Portland Rose Garden? What an amazing place. This colorway I named Peace Rose is gorgeous I think. The other day, Kirsten said it looks like sherbet! Then I saw a fellow spinner/dyer on ETSY with a similar colorway named sherbet! Kind of funny...Happy Weekend.......

Peace Rose 1:

Followed by Peace Rose 2 (just to show a slightly different view):

Followed by the Yarn Colorway Peace Rose in super super soft Superwash Fingering weight merino. I really want to make a lacy scarf of this but I have too many projects in the works now and I can remake it some day!




PS I am going to enter this post and skein of yarn into the Whip Up Whiplash competition...

It isn't as easy as it looks to try to dye fiber to capture the essence of nature. I love my rose garden and I love this yarn! This weeks Whiplash theme was "creativity." Click on the link to read about Whip Up (a wonderful crafts site) and the Whip Lash competition... Not sure I can enter every week but I love to look at the other entries!

Too Much Fun - Color Mania!

It is amazing how excited I get over color and yarns. Really it is.

Can you see why I named this colorway "Bluebells?" See the flower followed by the yarn. Its not exact but finding names for various colorways is not always easy. If I create the colorway from the inspiration of a plant it is easier of course but if you are doing a bunch of dyeing it is hard to do that. Also, I need to very soon figure out how to use yahoo flickr to post photos so I can do them differently, like next to each other . I have seen others do that!




This one is called Rainforest. I really go for the greens myself and a few more are coming.. Lots more re-skeining to do but I can only do it in small time frames!


Just had to share my color mania! The possibilities are endless. I think I am going to do some interesting earth tone mixtures next time I dye. They aren't as colorful, but they go with so much and they are so pretty. I just need some new dyes. I am going to try a new dye company, Standard Dye. If you like dyeing, I highly recommend the Dyehappy list on yahoo. It is a nice group. There is another dye list, but it is too huge for me.

Happy Day

MONDAY!!!!!!!!

I had a really wonderful weekend. I truly enjoyed the Color Blending class I went to at the Tempe Yarn and Fiber. I learned a lot and when I came home that night, I couldn't stop spinning! I have a few amazing skeins of yarn (I hope they are amazing) in the works.

Here is one I made in the class, or I made the singles part which was handspun merino painted roving. Then when I got home, I looked through my stash to find something to ply it with and I found some beautiful alpaca and silk yarn. SO, that worked out wonderfully to a beautifully balanced yarn!

Yeah yeah yeah, I like to photograph yarn on some rocks? Why is that? I need to find a few new photographing ideas! Here is a close up of the yarn.


Wow! I just got DSL today and I am shocked how fast these photos load now. What did I wait so long for??????

I am so into this spinning. I have a million color and fiber and texture ideas in my head when I go to sleep and occasionally I have to get up and spin a bit in the middle of the evening! I don't want this to take away from my knitting but it is a bit. My sweater is getting close to completion though and I started another one. Photos of that soon............

Time to spin :)
Lisa

My First Real Handspun!

I was pretty excited about how this handspun turned out. This is only my second full skein of completed yarn! It turned out to be a WPI of 11-12 as it is a bit thick and thin in places, so that is a worsted weight. This is from the batt I purchased from Stephanie of Spritely Goods. I just ordered two more batts from her so I can have a few hundred yards to make a drop stitch scarf or shawl. For any spinners out there, the yarn is a bit overtwisted I think although after washing it seems pretty balanced now. But it still twists a tiny bit to the right or counterclockwise (which is the way I plied). So does that mean I overspun the singles or overplied during plying? I thought I had overplied the singles possibly just being new at working with merino but I really am not sure.......I know the test to see if your yarn is balanced but I don't know if there is one to tell if your singles are overspun or underspun. If you know, let me know!
Tomorrow I have a blending color class at Tempe Yarn and Fiber. I am looking forward to it.........Lisa

PS. Although there is a touch of lavender in the yarn, the little bits of purple you see are just the yarn I used to tie the skeins!

Lots of Colorful Photos!

Good morning, I received some great photos in my email this morning. Linda, in Ohio, who bought some of the YarnBotanika yarn just received it yesterday and she felt she had to cast on and knit right away, she liked it so much. I was so thrilled by this. For me this is really a creative outlet and the skeins of yarn are like my artistic babies. Only fellow fibernuts will understand this! I have learned that others don't! Anyhow, she bought my favorite colorway of yarn called Spring which has spearmint and lime green and blue in it and here are the photos. Isn't her kitty cute?? And I am so excited to see the yarn knit up!



I did dyeing on Monday and I have made a decision that I can only really physically handle maybe one dye day a month, maybe two. I just did way too much and the next two days I could hardly walk or move my arms. My neck and spine really have been much worse. I hate to talk about it too much on here because I don't want to sound like a whiner, honest. It is just such a part of my daily reality, living in severe pain, and I have trouble coping with it. The fiber art is my therapy and my goal is to not talk about the pain. It is just INSIDE my head and my heart, I am bursting and wanting to do more, and I just can only do a tiny bit. Accepting the reality of that is very hard for me. If I push myself too much, I pay for it by spending a week in bed. So...I am going to have to limit myself which is ok. The rest of the time, I can knit (which can be done laying down) or spin which is relaxing in short amounts.......I really want to refine my spinning skills and do more handspun creations anyhow.......... Plus Kathy will be making stuff for the etsy shop too....

Enough blabber...here are more photos of all the dyeing I did.

First, here is one of my most favorite sites!! Dyed rovings and yarn fresh out of the dyepot, all kinds of colors, soaking in the sink.......Nothing is more thrilling to me than opening the packages after they cool to see how the colors turned out!!


Here are two shots of skeins of yarn, still wet and drying. So many colors. I really had fun experimenting with different dilutions of color. I love how all of these turned out and can't wait to see them dry and reskeined. In these skeins, I left bits of the natural yarn on purpose. White is a color too!! I think these are gorgeous! You will see when they are all reskeined!


Oooooh, here is what my bathroom counter looks like. What you have here is dyed Alpaca, dyed tussah silk, cashmere and dyed blue faced leicester (SO SO SOFT) wool. All of these fibers are going to be blended into batts for my own spinning fun.... Some of the dyed roving will go on etsy and some will go in the spindle kits, coming soon too.

The photos don't show all the dyeing I did, but give you an idea. This amount of dyeing is nothing for a full time dyer, believe me. I met a few at the recent knitting and fiber show in Scottsdale. I don't know how anyone does this full time to be honest. But then again, it is hard for me to judge because of my situation.........Also if one worked in a fiber studio, you could probably get much more done easily just because of organization of all the supplies and equipment.

Have to go work on an exam and paper. One more month of school. One more month. One more month!!
Lisa

ETSY Store-Kind of Exciting

Hello on Sunday

I just finally got our Etsy store up. Take a lookie at http://yarnbotanika.etsy.com.
I am so excited because we had our first sale already this morning!! Made my morning! I just hope she really loves the yarn. I do this fiber art because I love it. I love the colors, the textures, the blending of all this. Stuff is only being sold because what could I possibly do with all of it. And to pay for more supplies and my addiction. I have a hard time parting with the skeins to be honest!

Oh....I bought some beautiful fiber at the Scottsdale Knitting show. I have cashmere and silk and alpaca and merino wool to play with and create batts of. I have a great Fricke/Stauch finest drumcarder here on loan!!

I have a lot of reskeining to do and I can only do a tiny bit a day right now, but maybe it will be better when my new yarn swift arrives this week. It just hurts my neck a lot. I get very tired of hurting so much every day and I don't know how to cope with it, I really don't.

One more month of school, one more month of school, one more month!!!

OH..and I finished this beautiful shawl. I can't even tell you how gorgeous this yarn is up close. It is called Dune by Trendsetter and they have a bunch at the Fiber Factory. I don't know if other local stores carry it and the photos on the internet really don't show its true beauty. It has mohair and coils of this metallic like thread in there. It comes in beautiful colors........ That is my niece holding the shawl up so I could take a photo......