Allison T

A metal bowl with a scrunched up cloth and shredded leaves. The cloth is a deep rich teal. My hand is on the side of the bowl, showing where my thumbnail turned the same color from cutting leaves off stems.

The same cotton cloth hanging dry on a bar. It is a pale aqua color, not very even but pretty in its imperfection.

A patch of flowering indigo plants in the foreground, with cosmos (if I recall correctly) nodding their orange blossoms behind them. The rest of the leaves are being fermented for a traditional dye vat.

I helped harvest fresh indigo yesterday evening with some friends. I tried the salt rub dyeing technique, and thought I'd really succeeded, before I remembered you're supposed to mordant fibers before applying natural dyes. Most of the color rinsed out. 🤦 Lesson learned, but still a fun project!

An orange and yellow parrot (a sun conure) with dark grey eyes and beak sits on my shoulder. My hand holds a segment of tangerine for her to bite, and the juice has stained my grey T-shirt.

My dog, an elderly Chihuahua mix in a green collar, stands sleepily in front of a houseplant. She looks very unimpressed.

A little morning Sunshine this summer Solstice! Baby is giving a very different attitude, lol. Sunshine is overjoyed to be juicing a tangerine on my shoulder. Baby is giving me the stink eye because I woke her at 11:30 AM. I love them.

The back of my head, showing my frizzy brown and blonde hair held up by a silver hair piece. The wire is shaped something like two overlapping infinity symbols, but with spirals at each end. Together it looks somewhat like a butterfly. Thinner wires attach glass and semiprecious beads in red, orange, yellow, green, and blue.

Another finished piece! This wire wrapped hair pin is ready to go to a friend who carded some wool batts for me in trade. It would also work as a shawl pin. I shaped it from aluminum wire and used beads of glass, citrine, pearl, and a few others. So happy with the results!

Lol, thanks for the answer!

But what was the joke? 👀

A knitted shawl in the shape of a wing drapes over a piano. The hand spun yarn is a gradient from orange to yellow to green. At the top is a wire wrapped shawl pin decorated with beads and feathers.

My hand holds a shawl pin. The thicker wires are heavy gauge aluminum, bent into three parallel arches and hammered for subtle texture. Fine gauge silver plated wire weaves them together and holds green, silver, and yellow beads in the curls at one side of the pin. A horizontal bar crosses through the main arch, and at the end of it are three colorful parrot feathers in green and yellow.

The Wingspan shawl and accompanying pin are complete. From spinning the yarn to adding the feathers, this took me months of work spread over a couple years, and I am so proud of the results. I used feathers saved from my late bird, Zephyr, who still holds my heart.

#knitting #handspun

A knitted shawl shaped like outstretched wings pinned to a foam mat on a bed. The shawl is a gradient from orange to yellow to green at the feather tips. It's probably five feet wide!

That escalated quickly! I knitted this shawl in a bit over a month, which is very fast for me. A tricky pattern but worth it. Now I need something like a black dress to wear under it for a photoshoot! Wingspan by Kyle Vey in handspun from @fossilfibers.bsky.social batts.

A knitted shawl in progress. A gradient from orange at the top to yellow to yellow-green at the bottom. (The remaining yarn, not pictured, transitions to green) The top edge of the shawl is a semicircle, and it spreads out into two half formed wings. The stitches are arranged to look like feathers, but it's still wrinkled and scrunched in texture. The bottom edge is still on a long knitting needle, with a couple dozen stitch markers separating every feather repeat. Some of the markers are shaped like birds, and there is a silver spinning wheel charm and a blue sheep as well.

Sorry I haven't been here! I'm mostly getting my social media fix from various Discord servers these days. But I'm also spending a lot of time knitting! This Wingspan shawl is really coming along! All handspun yarn. Fun knit, once you have a system to track the short rows and staggered increases.

Oh no! What a bummer for your birthday (fb told me so I came here to wish you well) I hope you can at least taste your birthday cake.

Six cakes of yarn sitting on a chair. Top row is a gradient from one orange cake, to a yellow orange, to a yellow green, to a green. Bottom left is sock yarn in purple with spots of highlighter yellow orange and pink. Bottom right is chunky yarn in neon rainbow colors with grey in between each repeat.

Here's what I'm knitting Saturday for the @knitforfood.bsky.social knitathon. Top row is a handspun gradient from @fossilfibers.bsky.social , a Wingspan shawl. Bottom left is Hedgehog Fibers sock yarn for socks. Bottom right is handspun for a hat.

Check my pinned post to donate to the charities!

Wow, look at that! It must be so smooshy to step on. What a fun project!

Ouch, those things are so sharp. Highly recommend little leather finger cots.

I'm fascinated! I'm going to ask the question that every yarn-maker dreads answering. What will you make with it? For me, I don't always have a project in mind, I just like making the yarn. But I've never tried such a novel technique!

A piece of weaving in stripes of light green, grey, and blue, still on the loom. The shed is open and a blue plastic shuttle is halfway through it, barely fitting between raised and lowered warp threads. 8/4 cotton for warp and weft, and a 2x2 twill for my pattern. The width of the cloth is a little under 8 inches, while the vintage loom has a weaving width of around 20 inches.

Another view of the weaving on the loom, this time advanced a couple inches with green, grey, and blue weft (horizontal) stripes. The warp (vertical) stripes are more visible from this angle. You can see the four levers below the cloth beam that control the raising of the warp threads.

A further drawn back view, showing the whole loom and the messy but cozy scene in my craft room. An electric drill has an attachment for winding bobbins of yarn for the shuttle. Shelves hold books, craft supplies, and (artificial) plants and candles. There is abstract art (painted by me with natural dyes) hanging from a string that is strung with a rainbow of felt balls.

I'm successfully weaving! This vintage loom is functional but still finicky. I have ideas of how to improve it but will need to finish this 3 yd warp first. This cotton twill will either be a scarf or cut into face cloths, depending on how it wet finishes. #weaving #loom #slowcraft

"The fifth annual KNIT FOR FOOD KNIT-A-THON 04-05-25 PROCEEDS WILL NE EQUALLY DIVIDED BETWEEN THESE FOUR ORGANIZATIONS FEEDING AMERICA World Central Kitchen TEAM NO KID HUNGRY Meals on Wheels America"

I must be crazy, because I just signed up for a knitathon for charity. I will knit, spin, and weave for 12 hours (with breaks). I plan to post updates to socials and also do a video chat for donors on Discord. I only have a couple weeks to fundraise, so please share!

givebutter.com/knitforfood2...

Wow! Now that's a warp!

My next diy is probably a raddle. I'm warping front to back this time, but if I want to use a more fragile handspun, I want to avoid having that go through my wire heddles twice, so back to front is preferred, right?

Also lease sticks. I made cardboard slats this time and they were not well done. 😅

A bookshelf with various books, a few DVDs, and some knickknacks. Carpentry clamps affix six sturdy dowels to the shelves. Four along one shelf, and two at either end of the shelf below. A layer of fine cotton yarn in muted shades of green blue and grey is wound around the pegs in a Z pattern, crossing over and under the upper middle pegs.

A top down view of a vintage four shaft table loom, half dressed with a new warp. Strands of grey green and blue cotton yarn are threaded individually through the teeth of the reed, with a weaving width of around eight inches. Only eight of the eighty four strands have been threaded through the wire heddles behind the reed.

Oh wow, that worked. I found this idea on Pinterest, and wasn't sure it would be sturdy enough, but with strong clamps and not too much tension on the warp, it's a worthwhile hack. Admittedly I'm not sure how much the clamps I found in Dad's garage originally cost, so ymmv. #weaving

Yes, there are levers below the front beam. This loom was built by Jules Clement in Canada, probably in the seventies. It is so heavy! My neighbor kept it on an enclosed patio so a lot of bits rusted. That was not fun to clean! Just hoping I get decent function.

I'm just hoping, after all this work, that I can get a clean shed. Fully depressed, the levers raise the harnesses pretty high, but when you release pressure they lock at a lower orientation, so there's not a huge difference in the up and down positions. But at least they're locking now!

A vintage four shaft table loom about two feet wide, with a blue plastic shuttle and a heddle hook resting on the front beam. On the table in front is a power drill with an attachment with a shuttle bobbin on it, so I can wind the bobbins quickly.

For the past few weeks, I've been refurbishing this vintage loom I got from a neighbor. Stripping rust, adjusting mechanisms, and replacing the reed (which only barely fits, note the gap on the top beater bar) Next I will make new aprons for it, with canvas from Joann (RIP) #weaving

We want to keep the spin in our yarn, not the weather!

Stay safe! I'm in Montgomery. Not spinning at the moment, but it'll keep me sane tomorrow if power goes out. Now if I can just get this poor dog to settle...

Rectangular fiber art of a hand-woven background fabric in green, red-violet, and yellow-orange variegated wool yarn with hooked and embroidered motif of two linden tree seed pods in off white colors. The border is chain-stitched in the same yarn as the weaving. The dried seed pods are laying beside the fiber art.

Whimsical linden tree seed pods depicted in multimedia fiber art — pin loom weaving, hooking, embroidery.

#fiberart #pinloomweaving #rughooking #art

Spinning and dyeing the yarn yourself is a lot of fun! I even have a couple knitted accessories that started as unwashed fiber. And once I helped shear an alpaca! The washing and prepping is less fun than spinning but very rewarding.

My hand holds a chunky twisted skein of very fine yarn. The individual strands are about what knitters call light fingering weight, in a three ply. The colors are deep green, blue, burgundy, and pink, all twisted together for a marled/barber pole effect. It is so very soft and squishy.

This yarn took over two months to spin, and it was worth it! There is a second tiny skein of yarn from the remnants of the second and third bobbins, with more solid stripes because it's partially chain ply. No, idk what I'm making with it, lol.

@fossilfibers.bsky.social dyed this Polwarth wool.

Thanks! And absolutely, it is a time sink. The singles took about two months, although I am admittedly slow, and splitting my time with other projects. Still. Love the feeling of spinning super fine and the results are just what I hoped for.

A wooden lazy Kate holds three plastic bobbins with single ply yarn in shades of green, pink, and red. A tag next to it says: "Home, 4oz. Materials: Fine Polwarth. Thank you and enjoy! For more find us at www.fossilfibers.com" In the background are three of my mother's oil paintings: two of her dogs, and one of the benches and trees in Central Park.

A strand of yarn runs across my fingertip. It is three-ply, marled or "barber pole," with dark red, light green, and white plies. I'd estimate that it looks like a lace weight yarn under tension, but expect it will poof up to fingering weight when wet finished.

A blue bobbin with a layer of three ply yarn wound on it. At one end the yarn is all red, but more pink and then green fades into it as the plied singles change color

I finished my third bobbin last night, so it's time to ply the singles into one fine yarn. I expect this Polwarth wool to poof up during wet finishing, so what looks like a lace weight yarn will probably be fingering weight. Very pleased with my consistency so far! Dyed by @fossilfibers.bsky.social

An Ashford blending board loaded with wool in shades of purple. A rolag curled into a spiral rests on top.

The Ashford blending board is fine, but you need clamps for it to really work well. That's the only one I have experience with.

Maybe a shawl?