Rainbow handspun yarn and rainbow birds

Drop spindle with rainbow coloured yarn

What is it about summertime that I’ve become interested again in spinning yarn? I first gave it a whirl last summer and I’ve played with it randomly through the year but last week I truly got the urge to make use of a big bunch of fibre my mum had given me. 

The merino fibre colours are rather muted and random so I decided to try my hand at blending them on my handcarders. I didn’t care for which combinations I made as the only aim was to avoid turning them in to brown muddiness and, with that intention, I succeeded.

A ball of handspun yarn

Having been a while since I last used my DIY drop spindle, my yarn was far from consistent thickness and I put in too much twist. When it came time to knit with it, I had to pause every metre to hold up the ball and let the yarn untwist to get the kinks out of it. This works well with a small project but I’ll need to get better at judging twist when spinning for a larger knit.

Releasing twist out of handspun yarn

Sara Elizabeth Kellner’s free pattern for Bluebird of Happiness has been popping up in every knitting podcast I’ve been watching so it seemed a cute project to try my handspun on. Despite my lumpy yarn, the various pops of colour add to their birdiness and they will look nice when I sneak them on to my mum’s tree.

Rainbow birds of happiness

The pattern is a great quick knit as an ornament, to give to someone, or to attach to a special present.

And I may have bought myself a real drop spindle so there’ll be more spinning coming soon :)