Helygen Celli

Trees or truncks

Visiting the national park “Biesbosch” a few weeks ago I did see a lot of beautiful tree trunks.

Lot’s of willow, my favorite tree – Helygen Celli – holy place among the willows. 

Could walk there for hours. Looking at the trees, love the structure, all the moss, the smell of the moist enviroment, a bit a a spooky atmosphere ….

Did it take me a lot of time to figure out my “R” … items for the “S” popped right up! 
Stash & socks! Is that all? What about: spinning, samhain, spiders, SAD (Seasonal affective disorder), soul, salads, spinage, sandelwood, sage, sheep, saturated colors, sensitivity … 

This time the S is for …. sampler skeins!
I have a lot of different fibers in my stash. A few weeks I decided it would be nice to spin bits of them all into sampler skeins. To feel the fiber, find out best ways of spinning them, to see how thin I could spin the fibers – a bit of a reference for myself. Most of it … it is fun to do, look and feel al those samplers.

I have spun 8 different fiber samples untill now.

From top to bottom: 

• Corriedale (4 gram, 7,5 meter), 
• Merino (2 gram, 13 meter), 
• Camel down (5 gram, 22 meter), 
• Kid mohair (2,5 gram, 11 meter), 
• Tussah Silk (abt. 1 gram, 13 meter), 
• Soy silk (less then 1 gram, 8 meter), 
• Tencel (abt. 1 gram, 10 meter) and 
• Ramie (3 gram, 24 meter). 

I didn’t think about how to spin it yet, I just let the fiber lead me. Besides the Camel down all fibers were bought as top/roving. The Camel fibers were collected by a friend in a local Zoo. It was a very dirty with lots of hay and other matter. I got about 12 gram of this stuff. After a thorough clean and removing all the coars tophair, a tiny bit of super soft down was left. I carded the down with my cat’s brushes. A lot of work for a little skein, worth every effort!

I had lack of inspiration for the ABC-along.
Posted my “Q” on september 12, it took me until this morning to figure out my “R“. It was so obvious!
My “R” has to be the roving I bought last week at the Handwerkbeurs in the Van Nelle in Rotterdam. 

It is Blue Faced Leicester roving dyed by Storm in the Attic.
My favorite kind of wool for rovings, dyed in my favorite colors; shades of lilac and purper…

… what a temptation …..

Three nice bobbins filled with fresh handspun Jacob Sheep yarn.
I still want to learn more about the technical use of my camera. Most of the time I use the P-option of my camera. This morning I thought it would be fun playing with the Depth of Field again. 

The first three images are compressed jpg from my camera, the last one is I RAW-image I have adjusted.
The lighting of all photo’s are awfull, all overexposed.  I have to look at my aperture, your shutter speed and iso to prevent this…. Of course this can be corrected with photoshop, that’s not what I want :-)))

2.5s f/22.0 iso200
Small aperture, long shutter brings out detail, the image is more clear. 

0.6s f/11.0 iso200
Medium aperture and shutter … 

1/5s f/5.6 iso 200
A large aperture and slow shutter, makes for a more artistic shot.
With the the background details blurred, the eye is bought forward to the foreground 

The same shot as above. This time I adjusted the RAW image with Photoshop to correct the overexposure. Most of the time I work with RAW-images. This gives me the control to adjust things I don’t know how to do with my camera.

Looking for a pattern for the Noro sockyarn,
I found most available patterns to complicated to work with this yarn.

Just stockinette didn’t appeal to me either,
so I knitted a simple stripe, using the strand from the inside and outside of the ball..

Now I have a second sock problem.
This first sock, above on the right has nice and bright stripes in several greens and purples.
I knitted the second sock the same way, the stripes are muddy and dull.

Frogging or continuing, don’t know yet what to do…..

Yarn: Noro Kureyon Sock, colorway S188
Needles: KnitPicks Harmony Wood, dpn 2,5 mm