Holiday Activites – Hazel Purls

A long time and spinning with my son

Well, it’s been over 2 months since I last posted an update here. The reason: I moved in August (as you know) and then moved again three months later. I’m just beginning to catch up with myself.

In the meantime I’ve continued with the spinning (everything’s currently work-in-progress) and started another knitting project Smile

Recently my son’s been showing more interest in spinning and knitting and so we’ve re-visited the summer fibre project and started spinning the Jacobs wool we dyed and carded. The other evening I plied it up on the spindle for him (Andean plying with a spindle makes more sense than with a wheel) and we started knitting it tonight.

Pictures are of my son spinning the single:

And of the plied yarn:

Day 2 of the school holidays

Today I thought there was quiet and occupied playing in the lounge. Only when I heard “boing!” … “oops” did I discover that I was now short of one retractable tape measure:

My son and I have carded about half of the wool we dyed yesterday. So far we have three different coloured batts. My son also did a small amount of spinning on the spindle. So far he’s finding “spin, park and draft” to be a successful way to proceed.

I thoroughly enjoyed making the batts from the different coloured fibres we randomly dyed yesterday – so I think I’ll be using this method for my own projects in the future.

Dyeing on the first day of the school holidays

It’s the first day of the school summer holiday. My son would like to do some spinning during the holidays. To get started we dyed – using artificial food dyes and vinegar – some fleece. When it’s dry we’ll card it up ready for spinning. (This is the first time I’ve dyed fleece using acid dyes so it was a great learning experience for me too).