The Birds
I have been pretty vocal about my spinning slump. The good news is its OVER. I made the super coolest yarn ever. EVER. My dear client had sent me this skirt that has these Asian cranes all over it. Its t-shirt material. Her only mandate was to “use the cranes”. Hmmmm. At first I was going to have them just dangle kind of limply, then I thought I might stuff them and quilt them. I wasn’t sure but I wanted to give them more body than they had and liked the idea that they would dangle down from the yarn. My friend suggested that I sew them to vinyl backing. I have been really enjoying the intersection of knitting and spinning and love to experiment so I had a ton of fun making the birdies. First I cut out the birds and then sewed them to the vinyl.
then I sewed them to some thing black bamboo yarn I found at the craft thrift-store. Yes Portland has a craft thrift store. Here is a photo of the birds being attached to the yarn. I sandwiched the yarn with a little bit of left over vinyl so it would be stronger and my sewing machine wouldn’t have just the yarn to pierce. I tried that and the yarn was splitting like crazy- so I came up with the vinyl sandwich.
I used the bamboo yarn as the core and spun the roving around it. I am happy to report that none of the birds flew off in the spinning process and they all managed to make it through my crazy giant wheel.
I also wanted to ply the yarn. I recently picked up a bead spinner at Tuesday Morning and was keen to try it. You know what? When used correctly that sucker works. When used incorrectly it’s a major pain in the ass. Guess how I know that! Anyway I attached the seed beads to thread that I used to ply the bird yarn. Yikes!
I am SO proud of how this stuff came out. Its super cool. The beads bling it up just the right amount. I can’t wait to send it to Mary so she can knit with it!
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