Gothic soap and more yarn

Here comes my new batch of handmade natural soap called “Gothic Nirvana”. The scent is one of my favourites, it is a very beautiful and warm blend of patchouli, vanilla, cinnamon and some rose – very enchanting and soothing indeed, with an oriental touch. Perfect for both, women and men. I also included my fairy and nymph designs made with the same scent - they will come in a giftbox,  and the bars will be packed in natural cotton string bags. The soaps are displayed in my DaWanda store :

and I finally finished the first 2.2lbs of the grey and white custom yarn – the skeins are not washed and set yet,  they will become fluffier and more even after their first wash. ….only 6.5lbs of carded fibre left to spin now.. ;o)

There are also several bags of handpainted wensleydale curly fleece in blues/purples/pinks packed and displayed in my DaWanda store, and the very last batch of fleece locks in the same colourway is listed in my ebayUK store, until August/September when my new bulk of freshly clipped fleeces will arrive:

EVERYONE HAVE A VERY GOOD WEEKEND AND ENJOY YOUR CRAFT PROJECT!! )

The last of the Wensleydale

Just a quick update on my very last batches of handpainted wensleydale fleece locks. I have got 2 new lots in light blonde and rusty-copper brown, now displayed in my ebayUK store, and some smaller or larger than normal locks in my DaWanda store. A 3rd lot in light purple-mauve pink will be sorted and displayed within the next few days.

Those 3 batches are quite small and the last ones until I will receive a fresh bulk of clipped white wensleydale fleeces in August. Hopefully I will get a larger quantity of greasy fleeces so it will last for at least one year, the last bulk was 160kg heavy, well, obviously not large enough.

All about blues and teals

I had a very fine Easter weekend with my family, I thoroughly enjoyed it. We were very lucky with the weather, sunny with a few clouds, still, crispy cold, but that didn’t matter. Just put on your winter coat again and off you go hunting for Easter eggs! I baked a Linzer cake for Easter, it is one of my favourites because it is made with German plum jam, which comes with spices such as clove and cinnamon. It’s not a Christmas jam, you eat it all year around over here, either with bread and butter, or with bread and white cheese (quark)…..veeeeery yummy!! The cake recipe itself originally comes, I believe,  from Austria. 

Apart from the munchies I had all weekend long I  finished the custom order of 450g of handspun and handpainted Bluefaced Leicester yarn in teal, aquamarine and cornflower blue last night. The yarns have now gone to their new home here in Germany. I am very pleased with the colourways and the yarn quality:

And the custom order of 18 handpainted silk scarves is also properly dried and was packed this afternoon:

I believe that they will make wonderful gifts. )

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!

Oh I am so excited about Easter. Not only because I will finally get 4 days off in a row but because I will be celebrating Easter Sunday with my family, and this means a wonderful day with homemade cakes and cookies, lots of chitter-chatter, and of course hiding painted eggs and little chocolate Easter bunnies in the garden so the kids can go on an Easter hunt.  Of course the Easter bunny will have jumped over the fence and disappeared into the neighbour’s garden only moments before the children come around the corner, but hey, that’s just tough luck. Perhaps if they will be just a little bit faster next year they will be able to catch a glimpse of him, I am sure. The Easter bunny will be ever so busy trying to distribute all his eggs and chocolates on time, you know. )

Before the holidays I thought I should update my blog because 10 handpainted crinkle silk scarves have made it into my etsy store. ) I have been selling them for quite a while in my DaWanda store, and I thought I should also display some of them on Etsy. I am taking a short break from my spinning wheel to paint 18  crinkle silk scarves for a German lady, who owns a printing factory, and she would like the scarves for her employees as a gift at the end of April. There should be 9 scarves in ice blue and 9 scarves in aquamarine, they should match any of the top shades of her colour chart. I think I am coming quite close:

The crinkle silk scarves are perfect for nuno felting and of course for wearing as they are.

Everyone have a very HAPPY EASTER and enjoy the first warm days of spring. ;o)

Spring yarns, batts, and the moment of truth….

Here comes my spring update on handpainted yarn beauties and fibres. I am still working my way through custom orders, the handspun yarns are coming out veeeeery nicely, but tonight I will have to take a break starting at 20.15h – RTL is currently showing “Game of Thrones”, and I am a great fan of Sean Bean, plus it’s a fantasy film, and I quite liked the first 3 episodes that came on TV last night. Except that I was watching the film with just one eye on the TV screen, the other eye was glued to the PC sorting out fibre prices….yes, here comes the sad moment of truth. I managed to keep my fibre and yarn prices stable all year for 2011, even though wholesale prices went through the roof first thing in January 2011, rising a whopping 40%, and then another 30% last September. Man, that makes you sweat, I can tell you. For 2012 I can no longer maintain my old prices, as I keep buying in new stock. On average my fibres went up £0.10-£0.30 per 0.9-1.1oz lot in my ebayUK store, but I have not increased the prices  for my carded batts at all. The handpainted rovings went up about £0.80-1.00 per 3.5oz lot. Fingers crossed that the global market will be more settled this year.

Let’s change the subject. Spring is so in the air, and today was a wonderfully warm and sunny day. 3 new batches of handpainted yarns have come off the drying board, 2x ultra fine merino deluxe superwash and 1x 70/15/15 virgin wool/silk/bamboo, all in very vibrant colours. I am very pleased with the results:

Each lot consists of 4 x 3.5oz skeins, they have been distributed between my etsy store and my DaWanda store. I can certainly combine purchases from both stores, with the price converted into the currency of your country.

Also 1×4 and 4×2 pairs of my standard colourway merino-silk batts have made it my etsy store and ebayUK store, plus this lot:

a pure pitch black super fine merino wool blended with mulberry silk in lavender purple, turquoise and lapis lazuli blue, oooooooh.

I have listed a 150g large bag of ultra fine royal baby alpaca fleece in natural dark rose-grey, a real beauty with just 17 micron (THAT’S SOFT!), requiring some sorting because it still contains little vegetable matter here and there. I just can’t find the time to sort it myself, so I have listed it on DaWanda at a lower price than I usually charge for a sorted lot:

Still, I so need to sort out my porch, it looks bare and lonely, no spring delight at all. Sam may still think that we are not staying for good after all…

…”Heike…..we are staying….right?…..RIGHT????…… Bless you mate, YES, we will be staying here. )

Fresh from the dyepot!

As announced last week, here are my new batches of handpainted merino wool (20 micron), extra fine and yummy, and merino&silk (18 micron), super fine and super yummy! )  I also managed to restock my handspun and handpainted slub yarn in light teal. More of the lavender and natural white slub yarn to follow shortly towards the weekend:

You can find these little beauties in my Etsy store and in my ebayUK store.

Spring has finally made it to the Odenwald mountain chain, where I live on one of the peaks. It’s a wonderful sunny day today, birds chirping, blue sky, so good for the soul…..and my windows need some SERIOUS cleaning!!!! That’s the down part of the first sunny days of the year, you can now clearly see all the muck and dirt on the glass that has been accumulating during the autumn and winter storms. And because my sisters and their kids will be visiting on Sunday for a lovely pre-Easter get-together and a homemade pizza-munch, I will absolutely have to get out bucket and towels and get cleaning….I am not too crazy about spring cleaning. I would rather do what Sam does very well at the moment – snoring away on his blanket…SIGH…

This is the spring view from my porch, into the valley:

and I will need to do something with the porch to make it a bit more welcoming and cosy – I should plant some flowers…actually I prefer herbs much more. Well, we will see. First, the windows!!

 

Give me a T-E-A-L….give me a M-A-G-E-N-T-A….!

One more custom order for handspun yarn has made it onto my order list, and that’s about all I can handle until mid April, I’m afraid. 1lb (450g) of handpainted and handspun fine Bluefaced Leicester yarn in teal, aquamarine, blueish purple and some opal has been requested by a very lovely lady here in Germany, who would like to knit a light cardigan with it.  As of now I still accept custom orders for handpainted rovings but my spinning wheel is fully booked for the next 4-5 weeks, sorry guys. I pedal as fast as I can, wheel smoking and all…. This is the colourway of the Bluefaced Leicester fibre:

Once the yarns are finished I will certainly display them on my blog. )

Apart from spinning yarn I also painted some extra fine 70/30 merino-silk rovings this weekend, one lot in vibrant magenta-aubergine purple shades and another lot in vibrant light and dark teal, aquamarine and opal – GORGEOUS!!!

Both lots are now displayed in my DaWanda store. I will be painting and carding more fibres for my etsy store later on next week. Also another batch of very beautiful handspun and handpainted rainbow slub yarn has been listed in my ebayUK store:

That’s all for now, folks. EVERYONE, HAVE A VERY LOVELY SPRING SEASON….it’s almost here!!! And enjoy your fibre projects! )

Space wool back in the house!

After almost 1 year I have finally got my 2 favourite colourways of space dyed wool roving/sliver back in stock, so here is a quick update to let you all know that they are available again through my ebayUK store . The wool is most suitable for dreadmaking, handspinning and felting projects. )

 

The coldest day and a bulk of fluffy wool

Man, it’s been mighty cold outside for the past 10 days or so, I have been finding it really hard to walk Sam at minus 15 degrees Celsius, other parts of Germany are currently measuring down to minus 23 degrees.  Sam has been wearing his winter coat, I have been wearing several layers of undergarments, double thermo pants and two pairs of thick socks,  plus all wrapped into a thermo coat …. and yet I am freezing up out there within minutes. I know, I know,  Norse people and Canadians will have a good laugh reading this right now. You guys are so used to these temperatures, bless you, you don’t have any trouble driving in 6 feet of snow either, I do admire that, really!  I will have to drive down the mountain quite often within the next week, and I am dreading just the tought of it… according to the weather forecast we will be getting a healthy amount of snow around Wednesday….not sure I like it, not sure at all. I am seriously thinking about getting a 4-wheel-drive, the mountain roads are just too steep for my van, things can get really slippery up here.

Well, let’s change the subject. I have dyed a new batch of rovings for my online stores, my tea tree & rosemary soap has finished curing, and I finished another wholesale order last weekend, which has  gone to a feltmaker in Northern Germany. Some customers don’t mind if I take a photo of the wholesale rovings and yarns for my blog, others request that they will not be displayed, so please don’t be wondering if I don’t display any further information other than when I started and finished the order.  Okay, here are my own rovings (merino, merino-silk, polwarth), which you can find in my ebayUK store, my etsy store and also in my DaWanda store :

And here are the new soap designs with tea tree & rosemary essential oil,  specially suitable for problematic skin:

Today I received a large parcel from a customer, filled with the most gorgeous bulk of blended German down wool and German angora wool, a dream to run your fingers through!  It’s a whopping 8 lbs of fibre that I will be custom spinning into worsted weight yarn, which will take me….forever…give or take a few days…. Luckily the lady, who is the proud owner of these fluffy beauties,  is not in a rush of receiving the yarns back, otherwise I don’t think that I could have accepted this order. But I will most certainly enjoy spinning this blend, and I can also take some photos of the yarns to add them to my blog later.  :o)

Last but not least, a new handspun yarn design (they have become a bit rare lately, I know) has also made it into my etsy store, it’s a worsted weight, wpi 11, 100% merino superwash wool, very colourful and veeeeery soft. That’s all for now. Everyone have a very good weekend and KEEP WARM.

OF ELFS, PAGANS AND NYMPHS …in soap

Here comes my new pagan and fairy batch of handmade soap with  a gorgeous scent of wild jasmine, sandalwood and ambergris, now displayed in my DaWanda store: )

My second batch of soap with tea tree & rosemary essential oil is not quite ready yet,  it needs to cure for another 2 weeks.  Fresh yarns handpainted rovings and carded batts to come soon, I am way behind with everything…SORRY!