Really???

I am going to felt these strange looking shoe-boats today. I am using Melynda of French Press Knits, pattern for these slippers.

I put my little crocheted slippers from Cintia beside them to show how huge they are now.

If they turn out well, I am going to make some more with my natural handspun churro. These are done with pale peachy-pink natural dyed churro double stranded for the tops. I decided to vary from the pattern and use another color for the bottoms: triple stranded with 2 strands of handspun dark grey churro and one stranded of random grey worsted. I think it will be better for not showing dirt.

This is what we are hoping for. Cross your fingers.

Basics Make the Spotlight

In the hand spun fiber venue, grey churro qualifies as a staple. My little skein of this yarn made it into an Etsy Treasury today. This yarn make great rugs, felts beautifully if you can stand to felt handspun, or it is super for totes and for use as embellishment.

I don't spin much chunky yarn these days but I loved spinning this churro on my stately Rachel Brown Rio Grande wheel.

Addicted

Yes, Hello, my name is K and I'm a mitt-aholic, at least this winter. These hunky numbers are super fast to knit. They were done before the new Star Trek movie was over on my DVR. I used my chunky single-ply churro hand spun. This was a skein I was saving as it was a lamb fleece I acquired from Connie Taylor at Cerro Mojino Wools back in the '90's. Churro is not always something that I recommend for

wearing close to the skin, but this is super soft. I think these will be great for wearing on chilly walks with Trinket.

Wool weather finally!

Wool is still my favorite fiber. Yes, bamboo is soft and drapy. Yes, Seacell makes merino extra soft as seen in the sapphire , but wool is the base of these blends. I am having fun listing more dyed wool churro, more funky natural handspuns, and then my whole cache of gorgeous millspun medium grey Lincoln yarn. This yarn takes dye beautifully to give a heathery effect. Oh, and the little potpourris, like this Fall sampler here are a way to try churro in projects like needle felting.

I dedicating the next few days to filling my shop with more dyed churros to have on hand for the Team Etsy Texas First Monday sale, October 5th.

Check out Fiber Fridays here to catch up with more Wool Lovers!

Cintia's Fun little Etsy shop

Cintia has been a long-time customer of Cordova Studios, at least as long as the five months we have been open. She started buying my destash churro yarn for her "hippie slippers" then. Ordinarily she was handspinning much of the fiber. I decided to check out her shop. Besides slippers there are fingerless gloves, felted items and handspun yarns. Recently we did a trade and I ordered some slippers. As it turns out most of her slippers are custom for a perfect fit. You can choose colors, embellishments and styles. Here are mine! I love them! Can't wait for chilly weather to wear them. Oh, and I couldn't resist sharing the precious felted baby booties.

Shawls: latest of my obsessions

Actually, it's these crazy, colorful shawls full of whatever I pull out of my yarn stash

handspuns, novelties, you name it, that obsess me. I love knitting them. I go down to the studio and start pulling yarns that go with the colorway and throw them in a basket. Then I just start knitting. I have to make myself do other projects in between shawls.

A friend shared the simple pattern with me and I was off! I think I have knit about eight. Sold a few, gave away a couple and have one or so for sale just to keep me thinking I actually have a purpose when I knit them other than I delight in the colors, textures, and choices. And, I'm wild for the ruffles. Friends ask what I will do with them when I finished. I tell them, I have no idea, I just make them.

I feel like Madame La Farge in Dickens Tale of Two Cities. She just kept on knitting through the French Revolution. Ok, that's a stretch, but you get the idea. The bright red and purple one is the latest off the needles.

I wear the pink often right now with summer clothes. The Santa Fe one went to a dear friend I spend summer days with in Harbor Springs, Michigan.

Please check out Knits for Needs at http://www.alpacafarmgirl.com . They are doing good work.

Potpourri samplers

Sometimes it's fun to be able to sample fibers before jumping into quantities, so I have been plating up little potpourris of churro, and churro and little hanks of handspun. I loved the subtle churro colors in my tapestries and rugs when I was weaving full-time and now love to knit them and then felt them up into fab totes and bags. I am a quintessential bag lady for sure. I think I have bags for my bags.

the crazy colored handspuns from my Fiesta collection are both single and double ply and would be a fun science experiment knit into parts of a scarf perhaps.

Check them all out at my Etsy shop.

Also, will be posted upcoming handspuns at my flickr page

I am participating in Fiber Fridays. check out who else is at Alpaca Farmgirl Farm.

Busy little dye person here

 Well, I got my dye pots set up last week, started grabbing rovings, handspuns, and loose locks from down in the studio and started experimenting. 

(Cleo and Trinket were chillin'.) The rovings will go up on Etsy as the Botanical Collection and the yarns as the Tuscany Group.  No inspirations on names for locks yet. 

The rovings are all Blue-faced Leiscester. 

Handspuns are a range of churro,lincoln, and corriedale wool. Each took dyes in a bit different way.  I would take them and use them all in a shawl 

much like the Toasty Browns Shawl at http://cordovastudios.etsy.com.  The textures would be delicious!