Projects in Spinning, Knitting, Sewing and Skin Care
I had some bamboo and hemp that I wanted to marry together for fiber to spin into yarn so that I could knit a facial scrubbie. This is what the draft looked like.
This is what it looked like spun onto the drop spindle. I use a Turkish Drop Spindle, which is arguably the oldest method of spinning known.
This is a close up of the yarn. I loved the colorway...the ecru of the hemp with the beautiful shiny white of the bamboo.
This is that yarn wound into a ball. This is what I knit from most often. I wind all my skeins on a ball winder into center pull balls. They take up a lot less room in storage that way. Heh, I had to conceal and conserve space for my growing yarn stash somehow!
The strand is somewhat irregular, but that's expected when spinning with a drop spindle, but you can still see, as in the yarn above, the variations in color that made this combination of colorway so attractive to me. Bamboo is naturally antibacterial and hemp is very tough so the two together make the ideal facial washcloth. I'm looking forward to attaching this to a piece of salvaged terry cloth from an old towel and then trimming with canvas for strength. I may even add a strip of elastic across the back so I can slide it over my hand...not sure about that yet. Of course, this means that I will be setting up and trying out my sewing machine this next week.
Little by little, the goals are being achieved. This is my first piece that I have made literally from start to finish...from roving, spinning into yarn, then knitting, then sewing together with the terry cloth into the finished product. I probably should have waited until I did finish it, but that might be a few days.
I'm also trying to post more. I've decide that LJ will be my chosen vehicle for my life story. When I am gone, my daughter will have the password - or a printed version if LJ no longer exists so that she will know who I was even though she already thinks she knows who I am. It's a way of preserving memories for her later, a sort of digital autobiography. Most of what I will post will be locked or even private. Some, like this, will be public and shared.
I have a deep appreciation for artisans of all stripes. It has been my pleasure to become one on several fronts. I consistently surprise myself in how well some of the projects I attempt turn out. I'm a perfectionist one day and damn lazy the next, so consistency is not something I set as a goal..just improvement.
Pics of the finished product ...heh...when it's finished. This entry is to blackmail myself into not letting it fall by the wayside.
Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.