I've been listening to The Mavericks all week; laid back and friggin' awesome, just like my mood lately!

The past few days have been quite busy, I have been making some journals to restock the shop, hence the slightly cluttered workspace. I'm working on some different styles of covers, incorporating some photographs and artwork into the designs, I'm really loving the outcome so far and hopefully it will translate into customers loving them as well! 

I added two new journals this afternoon; Earth and Bijou.

The past few weeks have been a bit mad on both the life and 'craft' ends, and with all the craziness I haven't had the inspiration to blog about anything. I was happy to see that my handbound journals have made a good impression on the people at The Knitter...

The great review really lifted my spirits and I'm hoping that this little mention would boost my Etsy sales a little! I'm in the market for a new camera (this one's just about ready to die), so it would really help!

My weekend was quite chilled out, I went to my friend Alison's house and picked up my HOT PINK niddy noddy...

Small but oh-so-handy! It makes 1 yard skeins which is perfect for me since I will be using it to hold 'frogged' yarn and my handspun samples.

I spent the last few weeks of the summer experimenting with different fibre prep and spinning techniques, so I'm presenting my findings today...

I have a few fawn alpaca fleeces, and I dyed some a dusky blue and lilac.  Some parts were left undyed, so I got a nice bundle of semi-solid colours. I then blended the alpaca with some undyed soybean fibres and made some rolags:

Can you see the colour differences? I ended up with fibres going from a steely blue to dusty lilac to a golden brown after blending, plus the soybean gave everything a gorgeous sheen.

Following on from part one...

I really dislike spinning pure white fibre; I find it boring and neverending. So after having spent DAYS picking through my washed white alpaca, I had to make a decision: To Dye or Not to Dye.

To be honest, on my last day of 'picking', I wasn't in the mood to dye and wait for the fibres to dry, I wanted to get to the spinning part as soon as possible...I remembered that I had come across some handspun yarn on one of the Ravelry forums that was made of a white Dorset/dyed green mohair blend that I loved, so I went back and took a look at the yarn (Ravelry link) and it all became clear. I grabbed a handful of hand-dyed yak down (from MandaCrafts) and my hand carders and started blending... alpa'yak' yarn was born...

The experiment was a success in my opinion, I carded and spun approximately 80g of fibres, enough to knit a 'test piece' so I can see how the yarn knitted up and draped. I spun the fibres semi-worsted, and fell in love with the little bumps of colour I ended up with.