When I first came across art yarn, I’ll admit – I didn’t like it. I wasn’t quite sure why or how it would be used. A few days later, I found myself thinking maybe I hadn’t given it a proper chance and decided, I’d give it a try.
I set off to my local fiber store and picked up some pink and blue combed top mohair fiber. They had a few other colors but I was really feeling pink for this project. I thought the blue would create nice shades of lavender and complement the lighter pink well. One of the things that really excited me about art yarn was the understanding that blending fiber is similar to blending paint. Blue and red make purple, yellow and red make orange and so on. A bit of a brush up (see what I did there?) on the color wheel and color theory and I was feeling good about my color choice.
And then off to the next store! What makes art yarn so unique is the texture. Some spinners add texture by spinning in beehives or coiling the fiber around crochet thread. I thought — Go-big-or-go-home (maybe I’m watching too much MTV’s the Real World lately) and decided to pick out bits of ribbon and lace to add into my art yarn.
I found the items below at JoAnn and only needed them to cut half a yard of each. Felting and weaving seems to be trending right now because the store even had some curlywool fiber. I chose some lighter lavender, purple, and white elements to draw out the color I was hoping to get once the mohair fiber was blended. The fiber and ribbon and lace elements brought me up to about $50 for this project so far.
The next step was creating a blending board and a Navajo spindle – yep, I had to basically start from scratch for this project but I’m never one to think a challenge is too big to take on. More to come on how to make a Navajo spindle. Now, I was up to about $70 for the tools but I can use those over and over. Plus, making them myself saved a lot. And by myself, I really mean my husband.
Now, the fun part. I blended away on my carders to mix the mohair to various shades of lavender. I did try to use dog hair brushes (brand new of course!) but found it wasn’t as good as the real fiber carders. Size does matter here, folks.
The ribbon wasn’t going to work on the blending board, so I saved that for when I was using the Navajo spindle. Once the blending board is full, you are supposed to remove it with dowels to create rolags or a diz to create long bits of roving. Well, the only dizes I could find were brass and over $30, so I set out to find something a little bit more in my budget. A button! I actually got this one at Walmart for around $4 and let me tell you, it worked perfectly. The secret was finding one with a large enough hole.
Next, it was time to spin everything together. The first round involved spinning the fiber on the Navajo spindle and mixing in the pieces of ribbon as I spun. The Navajo spindle is a ton of fun to use. You sit cross legged on the floor and just spin away! It took about three rounds of filling the blending board to get an amount that seemed large enough to make a project with.
The next part was adding in the crochet thread and spinning the same direction. Normally, you’d want to spin the opposite direction, called plying. But with this technique, you do it the same direction and it’s known as the second spin. After that was completed, my new yarn was transferred to the homemade niddy-noddy and wah-laah! My first art yarn.
I’ve found a cool knitting pattern to make a purse and picked up some great fabric to make a liner. That will be art yarn post, part 2.
Hope everyone has a chance to make their own art yarn. I’m excited to hear other project inspirations you come up with.
Happy Crafting!
~Kori
