The shop is, as always at… Gnomespun Yarn and Fiber Arts

Lots of fun stuff!

We have a new fiber, Hampshire!

Colorways: Balloon Flower, Butterfly Bush, Deep Sea, Elphaba, Leprechaun’s Luck, The Princess’ Petticoats, Rust, Sapphire Depths, Trumpet Vine

And a new blend, “New England Blend”

Colorways: Balloon Flower, Every Rose Has Its Thorn, Heart of the Green, Kunzite, Midnight Magic, Northwest Passage, Skinnydipping, Soft Moose, The King in Yellow

And an old standby back in lovely roving, Tunis!

Colorways: Balloon Flower, Barn Door, Bryophyta, Happy Goth, Sunburst, Wolf

And then some old standbys, BFL, Cheviot, Shetland, and Rambouillet

Colorways: Autumn Gold, Deep Sea, Lobelia, Balloon Flower, Deep Lobelia, Deep Paprika, Heady Brew

Hampshire: A true downs wool breed, originally from the Hampshire downs of England. Lofty and difficult to felt. Hampshire sheds water and has excellent memory. A good fiber for socks, warm sweaters, and mittens that will wear well.

New England Blend: This is a blend of local wools handpicked by me to be ideal for socks and similar purposes. Dorset, Tunis, and Hampshire, for their downs wool loft and difficulty felting. Romney for a bit of luster and tensile strength. Jacob for a bit of heathering and a delicate halo. Carefully picked, this blend spins up into a suprisingly soft and lofty yarn.

I’m working on samples for the others, but I started with some 3-ply longdraw spun, high twist, sock yarn from the New England Blend.

I think it’s going to be an excellent fiber. I might even spin myself a pair of socks!

As you can see, the pups found this to be very boring. Poor things.

That’s all for now!

~The Gnome

I decided Ignatius was too naked. So I made him a scarf. It’s BFL, a plied version of the yarn that went into my woven BFL colorshift scarf before.

And in answer to Meg’s question… it’s a fae. I have a couple that I drew, they visit my blog sometimes. Creeping around the corners and keeping out the gremlins.

Gobo is happily done with his fixing, and has his stitches out. He’s happy.

That’s all for now, back to the dyepots!

~The Gnome

So, waaay back I acquired a lovely little Greensleeves Loki.

Then in the great spindle disaster weekend… disaster struck four of my spindles. Among those, my Damsel Monique and Bosworth Mini were repairable by me. The Turkish Delight still needs a new shaft…

But the Loki… somehow it ended up on the floor in it’s spindle bag and… got stepped on. I was horrified. The hook was totally bent over, the shaft snapped off right at the whorl. I was heartbroken!

So, recently, I finally saved up some money and emailed the fabulous Elizabeth, owner and crafter of Greensleeves Spindles.

After a few emails, I mailed the poor sad whorl off to Utah for rehabilitation. It came home the other day! With a *beautiful* new shaft, even prettier than the original!

Huzzah! My favorite high twist fine yarn spindle is back! PERFECT for silk.

And now some photos of stitch markers recently made for inclusion in large ($50+) orders. Center ones are jade.

Tiger’s eye and smokey quartz

Malachite and sodalite

And now your daily dose of gratuitous cuteness…

That’s all for now!
~The Gnome

I make stuff! Yay stuff.

First I spun up some nice shetland in the colorway “Moose.” Longdraw so it’s fluffier, two-ply, about worsted weight.

Then I looked at a bunch of different patterns, and decided that while they were nice… none of them were ideal. So instead I pulled out my crochet hook and started freehanding…

And made a shmoo body and then an extra piece to make the nose all moosey. At this point I’m fairly dubious about my own skills. But I forge my way forward and make some arms and legs.

Ok, now I’ve got all the bits… except… oh wait, it’s supposed to be a moose… where are the antlers!? Time to pull out fiber for more spinning. Undyed shetland, this time…

Spin it up, make a plying ball on a TP tube, and ply it up…

Aand crochet it up into antlers…

Ok, now we hope to all the petty pewter gods that putting the pieces together makes a moose… First, stuff the nose and antlers and sew them on…

And from the side…

Ok, I guess I can breathe. I was really unsure about the antlers and nose until I actually got them on. But now I think this might actually work!

Time to repeat the process with arms and legs, still crossing my fingers that shmoo-moose still looks cute with legs and arms. ::crosses fingers::

Yay! It actually worked! He’s even pretty cute! Hrm… but something’s still missing… what could it be? Oh wait, I know, magnetite! I know, you’re thinking, what? Magnetite? What the heck?

See? Magnetite! Little magnetite eyes! Meet the finally completed Ignatius J. Moose!

Isn’t he adorable? I say yes! Yay for projects working! I was pretty worried, I’ve never done anything like it before. Simple stitches, but all freehand, with stuffing, and then sewing things together… different process! Neat!

That’s all for now!
~The Gnome

As someone pointed out, I didn’t put in any photos of the counterbalance tie-up in the last post. Which is a little tough to figure out on your first round. I figured mine out by staring at some not terribly clear photos for what seemed like hours.

So here it is. My counterbalance loom tie-up. It looks similar to a pulley system, actually.

The harnesses are attached in pairs to small rollers then the small rollers are attached in a pair to a big roller.

Here’s a front on shot. You can see that wraps are all a single full wrap around the requisite dowel.

The important part is to get everything so it’s even with eachother (took some work to do alone) and so that the eyes of the heddles are fairly near the center of where you’ll put your reed. If the eyes are too high or low, you won’t be able to open your shed all they way. Here’s a shot, hard to get one that shows the placement effectively.

And in case you want a closer view of the wrap part, here’s the pulley wrap. You can see it’s literally just a single full wrap, nothing fancy at all. Again all done in texsolv so it doesn’t stretch.

Hope that helps!

And your gratuitous doggy cuteness… SQUIRREL!

Ok, off to pack orders!

That’s all for now!
~The Gnome