Dear Jan,
No long-winded accounts of fiber washing and combing today. Just eye candy this time, in the form of hand-painted rovings from DesignKnit (blog here and etsy store here). Erica sells both yarn and roving from her shop, all hand painted in her wonderfully experimental way.
Here we have February Cardinals, inspired by a photo from our blog. And surprise, she sent not only the spruces for the cardinal to roost in, but the birches from the other side of the house (thanks, Erica!). I’m thinking about doing some little cocoons in some of the bonus scarlet fiber to represent cardinals, or I might try to just intersperse a bit of scarlet occasionally into one of the plies. Or maybe I’ll spin the scarlet on its own and use it as an accent color in the final sweater - a single row of red at the wrist or on the neck or hem edge.
I had been resisting the cardinal fiber, but when I saw Stormy Skies on her blog, I kind of had to have this one. As I may have mentioned recently, I love grey?* And with teal accents? Well, there you go. And once I was ordering this, what could I do but bring the bird fiber along for the ride?
Love,
Ellen
*There is never enough grey, really.
Jan and Ellen are identical twins who have always had an innate fashion sense. Crafting is an integral part of their lives and they stay stitched together sharing their love of knitting, family and community.
June 7th, 2011 at 4:29 pm
Beautiful stuff!!! That Erica’s got some real talent…I’ll check out her etsy store, but for yarn, not rovings.
June 7th, 2011 at 10:09 pm
Ok, I still have trouble thinking of gray as a favored color choice but clearly there is gray and then there is GRAY! These are definitely the latter.
Yours with a slightly opened mind,
Gale
June 7th, 2011 at 10:39 pm
Oh that’s so cool. Such a photo to go with the photo that inspired it. Have fun playing with that wooly goodness!
June 10th, 2011 at 6:52 am
Glad you like it! I think it was a race to see which of us broke down first on the cardinal…I was sorely tempted to start spinning it myself. Can’t wait to see how you end up spinning it. =)
And no, there is never enough gray. I can’t wait to start spinning the natural gray fiber I bought on my Rare wool expedition. Don’t remember the name of the breed at the moment, but it is beautiful stuff.