Brodey's Baby Surprise Jacket

Yesterday was the big baby shower for Tiffany, she and my nephew Jamie are expecting a baby boy toward the end of summer. They're planning to name him Brodey, a very cute name though I have resisted embroidering it on the garment. I learned my lesson on personalizing baby gifts years ago when I was in high school. I put together a nice baby quilt for a family who's children I babysat. The mom and I were good friends and like to talk about gardening and art and she had lived in France, it was so fun to hear her stories. Back to the quilt, she'd told me the baby name she and her husband had decided on, which I embroidered along the top edge of the quilt in a nice script. After they came home from the hospital, when I went over to visit and to bring the gift I'd made...the baby had a completely different name! He went from a Jonathan to a Logan!


Here's Brodey's Baby Surprise jacket, all blocked with the buttons sewn on.


To make Brodey's jacket I used fiber from my favorite alpaca friend Sassafras. The light and medium fawn shades are so gorgeous. I spun some leaning toward the darker and some toward the lighter shades to give a nice variation within the sweater rather than blending them into one homogeneous color.


The predominant fiber for this project was naturally colored, but for a little punch I added some of my hand dyed fiber too, just an occasional row here and there. Pictured above is a dye blend I call Vintage Velvet Flowers, though it reads as a lot of purple and pink along with the blue while it is in loose fiber form, spun into yarn it reads predominantly as soft shades of blue. The other hand dyed I used was one I call Lake Michigan Summer, which is perfect for Jamie and Tiffany since they have a boat and spend a lot of time on the water at the cottage during the summer. For some more assertive accents I used naturally dark fiber from Sequoia, blended it makes a nice soft brown, and spinning the dark bits alone made a rich chocolate color. All very nice for a baby boy. I hope they enjoy the little jacket, which should fit him nicely by the time cool weather rolls around.

Have a great weekend! Blessings Friends!
Melissa

Dragonfly Silk

You might remember the silk fiber pictured above on the right, which I dyed in dragonfly colors. I took some time yesterday afternoon, it was lovely out, to sit outside and do some spinning. I thought it would be nice to revisit this all spun up, plus my current knitting is all gift related I can't post any pictures of that here for the time being.



How about a nice close-up of all the fiber strands and color variations?



One picture leans more towards the turquoise, the other more toward the greens, just like the skein, it kind of changes depending on the light. I'll be interested to see how it behaves when it knits up. This was my first experience dyeing and spinning silk 100% silk spinning fiber. I love the strength and the shine, it was really enjoyable to spin.

Have a wonderful weekend! Blessings Friends!
Melissa

The Fiber Skinny

I've been busy knitting away on a couple of projects for an upcoming swap, that's where the majority of my fiber activity has been focused lately. I did get in a little spinning time over the weekend and managed to fill three bobbins with the artsy singles from my Seven Shades of Pink project. Now I'll need to card the rest of the batch for the super skinny plying singles...I'm getting there. I've been enjoying this project, it's taking longer than usual to complete due to time constraints. It's like a good book, I can hardly wait to see how it turns out, but I don't really want it to see the end of it either.



I've also spun and plied the remaining angora. I'm planning on using it for the edging on my Seven Shades project.



I recently picked up some Sari Silk fiber and did a little test spin. I wanted to see if I could get a skinny singles yarn without having it fall apart. I'm happy to say it held up just fine. At 15 wpi it varies between cobweb and light fingering. I'm looking forward to playing with this fiber, in addition to spinning it on it's own it will be great to blend it with some of my other favorite fibers!



I dyed up a little test dye batch of silk sliver. The small skein is the original color I dyed the fiber, nice, but I wanted something a little richer. I found that with spinning it lace weight, for my eye, it needed a little more saturated color, or the color really disappeared on the skinny yarn. I'm excited to spin the newly over dyed batch...soon!!!

There you have it, the fiber skinny!
Have a wonderful weekend! Blessings Friends!
Melissa

Big doings and a New Do

Since I am working on a secret project for a swap, I won't be able to show any pictures for the moment. Instead I'll share a bit of excitement we've had around here. During Monday's storm, there was a humongous crack of lightning which struck a tree across the street. It's so sad, as the day progressed, the bark slowly peeled away from the trunk in long thick ribbons.



It seems inevitable that they will have to take it down, I can't imagine how it will survive without the bark.



On a sillier note, Mum was tickled to play a little joke on me. She bustled out of the bathroom, proud to show me her new hairdo! You can tell she's quite pleased with herself for making a funny joke!



It gives me a good chuckle me up every time I think about it! She was so delighted with herself! I made her keep it styled like this until I could get a picture.

I hope you have a fabulous weekend, as for me, I'll be knitting and spinning away!
Blessings Friends!
Melissa