Friday, May 29, 2009

In which I threaten to ruin my sewing machine with an excess of locks

It’s all Pluckyfluff’s fault.
I made a yarn about a year ago, inspired by a photo of the Fox Fur nebula.

Carded up some little batts on hand-carders, and spun the whole thing as a singles. Lots of locks in it – one of my first really lock-full yarns. It was way fun to spin.
When I finished, I particularly liked the twisty, convoluted energy of it, and wanted to maintain that. I knew it shouldn’t be knit.

Then recently, I saw that brilliant sewing idea of Lexi’s, and it lodged in my head.
Does this look like a good idea? I think if the sewing machine could talk, it would say NO.

But it started to look cool, after a bit of wrangling. I like to see the progression of the yarn as it was spun, with each inch of each strand equally visible.
Here’s the set-up. A swift is off to the left, controlling the skein. Wrapping around the book makes the width (roughly) uniform.
At this point, I am VERY happy with it.


Technically, it could be improved. There are weaknesses in the sewing. And I have to make it up to my machine, somehow. Before I start another one, heh.

3 comments:

Joanna said...

Fabulous, now I have this book called Crazy Wool by Jeanette Knake, (was going to post a link but it was too long)she uses water soluble stabiliser sprayed lightly with adhesive to sandwich yarn before she sews it on a machine, in the book she uses the technique to make sweaters wraps and bags...may be helpful if you wanted to take this idea further!

Tracy Hudson said...

Yep, I thought I had some of that, and ransacked my home looking for it, but couldn't find it and couldn't wait!

miukat said...

This came out really cool! You could also try sandwiching just using reg. paper strips, tissue paper or wax paper under the foot and then ripping it off when you're done.