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[fraises.livejournal.com]

Edit: Now with another ugly purse picture!!
Something ugly that I made while driving with my boyfriend to south carolina, after realizing that I'd forgotten my current knitting project at home.




So, yeah. I knit a bag. It's got a flat bottom, and I really love the yarn. I figured that I should post a photo of it before I take it apart. I don't know what was going through my head when I made it, other than complete boredom and the unwillingness to spend the 8 hour drive thinking about/dreading visiting my bf's parents house. "Gee, I'll knit a bag!" "Gosh, I should use handspun yarn!" "Hmmm...what does it need? A RUFFLE!"

Heh. Anyways, the green/pink yarn is bulky handspun two ply, and the ruffle is handspun three ply. I seriously love the yarn. It took forever to spin, because the thin ply in the green/pink yarn was blended with angelina fiber, and it was my first time working with it, so I had a bit of trouble. It's very glittery and shiny.


Anyways, here's something random and mildly cool to do with leftover bits of fiber. Almost always when I spin, I end up with a tiny tiny bit left over, either because I don't like the color, or the strip of roving has gotten too thin to spin with the style of yarn. So instead of keeping the bits around, I'm thinking of making these and including them with the yarn whenever someone buys it. They can be cut or whatever, too...pretty hearts and shiny stars! I love pinwheel looking things, though.








(They're still pretty wet in the photo, so colors are off a bit..and they lay perfectly flat)



Take a TINY strip of roving, about three feet long, and less than a pinkie finger in width. Looks best if the roving has lots of color variations. Use longer roving if you want, use super thin roving, whatever. As long as you can handle it a bit without it falling apart, it's a all good.



Wrap the roving up into a pinwheel shape. Sadly the lighting is bad in the photo, but it's a fairly loose pinwheel, with a bit of space in between each round.

No pictures for the next part, sorry, dolls. For some strange reason, my camera doesn't like it when I try to use it with wet, soapy hands! The nerve! :)

What I did was iron it slightly at the "wool" temp, mostly just to flatten the roving a bit and make it a bit less delicate when felting.

Then, felt away!!! I grabbed a bottle of shampoo, and just felted it with the palms of my hands. It took about two minutes to felt each one down to 1/3 of the original size.

Nothing too exciting, but I figured that I would include these little felt-wheels with the matching yarn, whenever I sell it....I think that they'd look sorta nifty on a scarf of on a hat.

The green one is about the size of the top of a beer can (heh)....the pinkish one is about an inche larger.



This photo shows the colors a bit better. It's not nearly as bright and garish looking as it is in the first photo, but sadly, the random ruffling isn't as visable, either. And that's the best part, my friends.