Book Review- The Spinner's Book of Yarn Designs

The Spinner's Book of Yarn Designs- Techniques for Creating 80 Yarns by Sarah Anderson took longer than expected to review because it's so good. If you spin yarn, or if you're a knitter or crocheter who is considering learning, you'll want this book.

You won't learn how to spin with this book, what you'll learn is ways to make amazing and unique yarns. The introduction does have a lot of tips for spinning, buying tops and fleece, and even how to pick a whole fleece if you're willing to clean and card it. She also talks about carding methods which is important for both the types of yarn you want to spin and for color work from colored fiber.

She shows ways to create colorways from the fiber batts that are just gorgeous. If color is your passion, you'll love seeing the wild batts she makes and the examples of things she makes from them. Then she gets into various ways to ply yarn to create wonderful textures and appearances.

What makes this book fantastic other than the amount of detail and the well photographed images is her instructions and tips. She writes it very well and engagingly, making it very easy just to read it for artistic inspiration. She also has experimented with various plys and spinning styles to test durability for socks and those experiments are interesting to read. She tested them fairly by knitting a pair of matching socks, one with a control yarn and one with the yarn she was testing then wore them to see which wore out first and how. Those are also very well photographed.

My favorite chapter is techniques that a little beyond my abilities right now. The final chapter combines color and texture to create beehives and other types of really gorgeous novelty yarns that make my fingers itch to want to try in a simple knit design.

You will learn how to make loops, slubs, spirals, and beaded accents on your hand spun yarns and enjoy the great examples of what can be done with the finished yarn. If spinning is something you want to learn, or that you already do, this book is eye candy, inspiration and instruction.

Published by Storey Publishing- Like them on Facebook for free recipes, craft projects and contests to win books.


I received a complimentary copy of this book to review, I received no other compensation, and my review is my honest opinion of the book. You can read more about my review policy here.

Snails, yarn and other things

This is my entry in the current Spoonflower contest, What is the new owl? What do you think the next animal to be as popular as owls is going to be? The page above can be enlarged and printed to use for paper crafting purposes. There are a lot of great entries if you want to go peek and vote here.

Other than that, Lion Brand is having a story contest, the instructions were to explain about the meaningful handmade gift you ever received or gave in 500 words or less. It was easy to choose mine.

Grandma's Coat Yarn

My family always made things. My grandmother knitted, painted, crocheted and beaded and a lot of my very favorite things are things she made.

The best handmade gift I ever got was from her.

My grandfather passed away in 1977. Before he died, he got Grandma yarn for a coat she wanted to make. He bought entirely too much yarn and after he passed, Grandma couldn’t stand to work with that yarn. It sat in her closet for years. A gift of love and memory.

She developed glaucoma and started losing her vision. Before it was too far gone, she decided to make my brother and I blankets with that yarn. She knit them gorgeously in a wave lace pattern. That blanket would be the best handmade gift except for what came next. 

When the blankets were done, there was a bit of yarn left. Then I found out I was pregnant with my son. 

The very last thing she knitted, before her vision was too bad to knit was a baby blanket, using the white yarn that was bought to use a trim on that coat that never got made. It’s incredibly precious, and it’s packed safely away now until I can give it to my grandchildren. The yarn from my grandfather, the blanket from my grandmother’s so talented hands. It’s a blanket full of love and family memories.

That contest is currently voting on Facebook here. You can vote daily and I would really appreciate your vote. The grand prize is 500 dollars to spend on the Lion Brand site, which would be used partly to make hats for the homeless this summer and partly just for fun by my daughter and I.

In other news, Michael has two job interviews and a job starting this week. Things are still pretty tight for us financially since he's been out of work for so long, but it's looking up!

My new chou loom

If you look up the word シュシュ in Google, you'll find out that it means "chou" and that a chou is a scrunchie.
I asked Abigail of Abigail's Craft How To how to pronounce it, she said "shu-shu". There is a loom that's available in Japan for making them. It's a very simple pegged knitting loom. (Japanese site) This weekend, my husband and daughter teamed up to make me one.

The pegs are a little long and there are a couple other modifications that we've talked about making. But the chou on the loom is one that I knitted out of thrifted vintage acrylic yarn. I don't have any fuzzy or furry yarn handy or I've have tried it out of that. The wide open knit has a lot of stretch, and there is elastic in it as well. It's super easy to make scrunchies on the loom. They will probably make a few to sell in my Etsy shop. First there are a couple things that I want to work out.

I'm not a fan of acrylic yarn usually, this is from The Amazing Turnip Girl's stash.

This weekend I also made a pair of ear cuffs, that I'll be posting instructions for on Beadwork at BellaOnline later today. After trying a few ways to photograph them, I finally just put them on the loom.

I also made myself a very large hair bobble using tabletop skulls from Halloween. I'll post instructions for hair bobbles later this week!