Right now, there isn’t a whole lot that could beat out a clean, quiet house and a long afternoon nap – I‘m bushed! And even though it’s only Tuesday, I’ve been busy enough that it might as well be Friday; plenty of cooking, cleaning and saving the wood floors from certain incineration by way of old fish tank heaters. Yet, as much as I’d love to climb under the covers and conk out for a bit, I’ve got knitting and spinning and design work I’ve been telling everyone and myself that I’d do, in addition to a promised yarn pr0n entry. Not to mention the sneaking suspicion that if I did doze off, those renegade fish tank heaters would make a determined come back with the couch in mind.
See that? Cables. Beautiful, wonderful, dual-color cables. You know what that’s for?
You guessed it! The long awaited strap for the Emerald City Messenger bag. Which means the lining is only a few days away; less if I knit instead of nap. The cabling is some of the prettiest I’ve done to date on this project – fluffy, even, squeezably wonderful. The edges will be tucked behind just a slight bit, but not so much as to lose the rib-border look. Then taffeta will be stitched in by hand to make up the back of the strap, and help keep the strap from stretching out of shape when worn. It’s not super shiny taffeta, mind you. A beautiful matte, pine green. Truly lovely. However, I’m still trying to decide if I like the overall look of the bag.
Love the color, but not sure about the cables around the flap. I still need to do the satin embroidery around the button hole, and of course, the lining. But progress has been made, and that’s all I’m aiming for at the moment!
And now here we are, the long awaited, much anticipated, yarn pr0n and spinning update. Buckle yourself in, here comes the yarn!
This is the Bubble Gum Pink silk yarn, in a ball. Next to it a bit of the Emerald Malabrigo I’ve been using for the Emerald City Messenger. I love the shine on the silk, don’t you?
Speaking of shine, here are two more silks – I’ve been on a silk kick lately – the lighter is Mulberry (Bombyx) silk, and the more golden one is SoySilk.
I love the SoySilk. Addictive stuff, wonderfully easy to spin, shiny, soft and you can’t really help but love the natural color of it all! (Yes, it really does arrive like that, unbleached and in top form. Is it any wonder why I love it?) The SoySilk holds a twist like nobody’s business, but I do still have to watch for overtwisting, as you can see. It’s starting to get easier to get an even single too, and being able to say that just about makes my day!
This last one is the most recently dyed merino single. A good size bulky, needle size 11- 13, too.
About the the color: I was originally aiming for an amethyst, but as you can see, the end result was a dark burgundy. Mishap or not, I do like the color quite a bit. I’ll be glad when I can start working with acid dyes, instead of the Kool-Aid; it takes an enormous amount of Kool-Aid to get the kind of intensity of color I like and it’s very unpredictable.
The unique thing about this yarn ( other than the color!) is that in the process of dying it, the entire hank was lightly felted. Not strand to strand – more of a coating of the entire length of yarn.
As a result this is a strong, firm single ply yarn that resists being accidentally split apart and getting fuzzy, as some bulky singles tend to do. I’m betting it would felt the rest of the way too, with minimal effort. Hello washing machine! Overall, I like this yarn. I wouldn’t felt a 100 count merino on purpose again, but I may test out the felt-coating on a more coarse wool.
That’s about it for me. I still have to hold off on that nap, in favor of getting some cleaning done and kids wrangled in to not running in the house, but you now have yarn porn, knitting updates and some light spinning news. Enjoy the rest of your Tuesday, and the rest of your week if we don’t run in to each other again!
Peace and knitty,
Oriri (:
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I love, love, LOVE yarn porn! Lol I love the dark burgandy color. It is beautiful! It matches my Renassiance Festival costume, actually. Lol How nice. The ECM bag is so beautiful too. I like the cables around the flap. -British-
oh man. abby, these are so beautiful. sasha
I remember soysilk as being squeaky, I liked the shine and everything else about it but it wasn’t one of my favorite things to spin. The thing I find really difficult is spinning a thick single, yours looks lovely.
I dyed a burgundy like that this week except I was aiming for green. Do you get little bottles of food colouring over there, they are meant for adding to icing sugar for cake decorating? We have Supercook and the red one of those makes a really deep red. Caroline M