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.

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.

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.

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 :)