follow-through | Thespunmonkey's Blog

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I present to you Spinspiration #1, Pan’s Garden:

I think he likes it.

All rescue wools, mostly merino cross, except for the needle-felted strawberries and leaves. This project gave me great joy, especially with the long-draw method of spinning. I don’t know why I didn’t start spinning woolen sooner…what a relief for my hands, and I love the light and fuzzy result. The berries and leaves are spun securely into the yarn and there are over 200 yards of thick and thin…enough for an awesome stole knit up on a loose gauge. The top picture links to an Etsy listing.

In other news, C is coming in just a couple of days, will stay for about a week and a half and then bring us home with him! I am all atwitter, as is the Little Guy…goats and ducks and the woods and the river…and quiet. I can’t wait.

While we’ve been waiting for this magical time, we’ve been celebrating the carpet of buttery yellow maple leaves in the backyard by building crowns and boats to sail down the river on…

Monday is always “Painting Day” and yesterday we played with Autumn shapes and colors…

Today is starting slowly, with tea-sipping and daydreaming…trying not to lose myself counting away the minutes until Papa swoops down in his primered Volvo to whisk us off to our wooded wonderland. Instead, there will be acorn gathering…I began an experiment a few days ago with some raw silk and it came out beautifully…pictures tomorrow! Now, I have grander plans for acorn-dyeing some handspun wool to be used in our Seaman’s caps (Ravelry link)…of course, we can’t all have the same color head this winter, so I will be using both the acorns and the galls separately, the latter hopefully yielding a deep charcoal for C.

Happy Tuesday!

Remember these?

1 more to go!

And then there are the Bunny Parts:

Time to sew and stuff some life into this fella, who was meant for a Springtime long ago (*hangs head*), but will now accompany us through the next transition and snug in with us for the winter. Really, though, two years ago O would not have been interested in helping me finish this project, so perhaps it stalled out so we could share some quality stuffing time. Bunny is destined to become a sidekick to another sort of friend, but more on that later…

Spinspiration #1

I find this fellow charming. He sits in the garden at my in-laws house, luring strawberry faeries to the patch. I want to make him into yarn.

Oh, and btw, for any fellow gluten-free folks: Vegetarian Times has a really amazing gluten-free pizza crust in this month’s issue. Really, it’s the best one I’ve tried so far. Excellent flavor, zero reaction…yes, it’s a keeper. The dough is very, very sticky, but I’ve come to accept this as part of gluten-free baking. I really miss bread with a decent crumb.