This is what 35 pounds of yarn looks like

Unfortunately, my camera broke a couple weeks ago while I was in Toronto so I've had a dearth of material to put up here, but one exciting thing did happen before I left, which is that this arrived on my doorstep:


Up until now I've only been working with cotton and wool from my own personal stash, but in the coming weeks I'm going to be getting a few different shipments much like this, of all different colors...I had no idea yarn cones came this big!!

I'm actually not doing much yarn-making this week, as I'm up in Seattle straight through until next Sunday, getting ready for for my big show this weekend, the Urban Craft Uprising (which anyone living in or near Seattle should definitely come check out)! That, coupled with the fact that my camera is still being fixed, means there probably won't be any more Yarnia news until after this weekend is over...but more to come soon!

Toronto

Okay, so you remember that cone of yarn I made for my Toronto trip?

I spent my copious amount of traveling time turning it into this:


I wish I had a better picture of it but unfortunately my camera broke while I was in Toronto, and the only picture I managed to take of it before that happened happened to be at a highly competitive chili cook-off.

However, in other Toronto news, my friend Dory took me to an overwhelming yarn store called Romni, the basement of which is precisely what I envision Yarnia to look like...

Cotton/acrylics!

Colored mohair!

Metallics!

Too much yarn to fit on shelves...a true cornucopia.

Who else besides me is buying all this single-ply coned yarn??

The First REAL Cone

Okay okay, so putting filaments of 16/2 cotton into the creel and having a beautiful cone of mixed green and blue swirls was the coolest thing ever, but in reality I was actually missing some crucial pieces here, namely two of the pigtail screws that the freight company unapologetically broke off in transport.

But today I got the replacement parts from Dave:

and got to make my first deliberately planned cone of yarn. I'm going to Toronto this weekend to visit some of my favorite people in the world and am already dreaming up what knitting projects I'm going to need to tide me over on the plane. In specific, I'm fantasizing about a brightly-colored shrug-sweater with bulky, cozy edging. And now with all six screws in place I can actually create exactly the yarn I'm picturing!

First I had to turn the big cone of pink mohair that I got a Granny's Attic on Vashon Island last year into two...

Same with the orange wool I had, now plied into three cones. Here are the before shot(s):

And after!

(pictures of the actual sweater to come post-Toronto...)

A long weekend

After the much appreciated help of Dan, friends Jason and Liz, and Anne's pickup truck, I had the machine safely lodged in our garage, amongst the rubble of the crate it had been shipped in. But this was on a Friday afternoon and it wasn't until the following Monday that I had my phone date with my awesomely helpful machinist Dave, who walked me through two hours of the setting up and preparation for the machine's first run.

I really did not expect this to work on the first try, but nevertheless I set it up...

turned it on...

And ended up with this...

Which later turned into this!

The Machine Arrives

So after months of researching, consulting, and waiting, on a beautiful fall afternoon in October, the custom-made, constructed-from-scratch, awe-inspiring machine that will be the centerpiece around which Yarnia will be built...arrived.







This is a beast of a machine.












Now I just have to figure out how to use it...