SparkleShan

Help me expand my business by donating towards a drum carder & spinning wheel! Go fund me! Http://www.gofundme.com/cd7ts Any little bit helps me reach my goal of owning a drum carder and second wheel so I can have a larger out put of products for my shop. Help support hand made small businesses!

Today I unveiled some new products in my Etsy Shop . Hand made soap & Bath Salts!! I have been doing research of bath and body projects for years now and decided to finally give it ago. My first batch of soap has some air bubbles (I forgot to tap the mold) but other then that it came out great. I made two bars each of for different recipes: Lavender & Goats Milk; Goats Milk with dried apricots and mango's; Buttermilk, Goats Milk, Honey & Oatmeal and Buttermilk, Goats milk, Vanilla & Coffee. There are also Bath salts with essential oils. One bath salt is Lavender essential oil & dried lavender buds & the second is Pink Grapefruit. I have added a bow with my hand spun yarn to each bottle :) I also listed the first yarn I have spun since July!! It's a fun funky art yarn I spun with a batt from my friend Carrie of CraftyPuppyLover and I added some silk noil that was hand dyed by my friend Brittany of BohoKnitterChic Spins

I just finished updating my Etsy Shop with two new hand spun yarns, a knit hat, sock yarn mini skeins kits and some jewelry from my beading days at clearance prices. Here is a sneak peek at what I added. Also my 20% off sale is still going on, use coupon code 'KIDNEY'. Personalize a photo collage

From now until January 31st, I will be donating 50% of sales in my Etsy Shop, Princess Emma's , to Doctors without Borders . This includes all handspun yarn, jewelry, stitch markers and Magnets. Please help in anyway you can.

So since I am not good at keeping on a my blogs as I go along. I am about to post a few yearns that I have spun over the past few months. Hopefully once I move and get all settled in I can start posting more regularly!

I knit a few scarflettes out of the lovely hand spun yarn that I received from JQ Knits. I just need to add buttons to them and they will be complete!

I added several new handspun Yarns to my Etsy Shop and also some yarns to the sale section!

I participated in a Fall themed swap in one of my knitting groups on Ravelry. We had to send our swappe things that reminded us of fall. My package came from JQknits and it is awesome. She sent me a ton of her own fiber and hand spun yarn and I love it all. Thank you so much !!!

My latest art yarn was spun from a batt from Uniquely Yours (I just love her stuff so much!) called Seaside Escape. It contains Merino, Silk Noil, Firestar, Nepps and Angelina. I spun the batt into a thick and thing single and then I plied it with clear nylon thread to create the coil effect. I really wanted to use a clear thread for this effect so that I could preserve the wonderful colors in the batt. Here is a before and after picture. The finished yarn is 35 yards, 2.4 ounces and super bulky. This will be on sale at my Etsy Store within the next few days.

A friend of mine, Brittany, has a wonderful etsy store, Bohemian Knitter Chic . She designs patterns which she sells on the site and she is also venturing into Fiber art. She has started spinning yarn and dying fiber, and let me tell you here stuff is pretty awesome. She has a great eye for color and makes wonderful inspired art yarns. She also started making necklaces out of Supercoil art yarn and they are truly unique, you can win one, just go to her Blog and check out what you have to do to enter.

I spun up another wonderful batt from Jenna at Uniquely Yours. This batt was called White wedding and contained BFL,Faux Cashmere, Firestar and Tulle. It also Came with some extra add ins of white pearls and sequins. SO this came out to be bit of an art yarn. It's super bulky, 31 yards and soo soft. Now I just have to find a project to knit with it! And here is just some simpled soy silk that I spun up. Its about 43 yards.

I was introduced to another wonderful Etsy Fiber artist by a fellow Ravelry. Here name is Jenna and she has a store on Etsy called Uniquely Yours Designs where she sells Fiber Batts, Hand dyed Roving and Hand spun yarn. I feel in love with her Batts, they have such wonderful colors and sparkle. I got 3 batts of fiber in the mail from her the other day and I spun up the first one a few nights ago. Here are the 3 Batts that I received from Jenna. Here is the orange batt (contains merino, Angelina and firestar) spun up. First I spun up the batt into a thick and thin single and then I plied it with peach crochet cotton and coils in the yarn throughout. It came out to 43 yards super bulky.

The Spindlers group on Ravelry has a spin along every month and every month they have a different theme. You then Post pictures of your finished skein in that months thread and a random winner is drawn each month. February was the first month I participated in the Spin A long and the theme was Mardi Gras. So I decided to spin up a Batt from Butterfly Girl Designs that was red and purple bamboo, black merino and firestar and Angelina. I thought it fit the theme pretty well. I called the finished skein 'Ruby Tuesday' The March theme was Romance and of course I immediately though of pinks. This is inspired by pink roses and is the first 3 ply yarn I have ever spun. I spun thin singles of Soy silk, super wash merino and merino & Angelina. Then I plied the three together and came out with this wonderfully girl yarn and I have to add that it is super soft! I just wish that I had more of the soy silk so that I could make more length!

I joined the Novelty and Art Yarn Spinners group on Ravelry. It is filled with wonderfully talented spinners. I love spinning and this group has inspired me to try new things to create novelty and art yarns. Here is a picture of my first attempt at adding coils to yarn. First I spun a thick and thin single of pink merino top and then plied it with Navy Blue crochet cotton. I held the crochet cotton straight up and held the merino at a 45 degree angle and let it wrap in around the cotton. Then to get the coils in some areas, I stopped spinning the spindle and smooshed the merino down the crochet cotton to create the coils. Overall I like how it came out. I think next attempt I am going to over spin the thick and thin single for a tighter affect.

The past two two weeks I was spinning up smaller samples of yarn to send to Phat Fiber as a contribution for the March Box. The theme is Celtic so I tired to do a few green Irish inspired yarns. Here are a few samples that I plan to spin into larger skeins and offer in my Etsy store. The first I got some off white colored Correidale and spun it with some gold and green firestar. Then I plied it with white crochet cotton to make a bubbly yarn. This is Pot O' Gold it is also correidale with green and gold firestar, but I didn't ply it. This next yarn I call Jelly Belly, its spun from a Batt of White Punta Wool and Shredded Sari silk from Appalachian Voodoo Fibers . I love how if came out. >

I've been interested in "Novelty" yarns for about a year now since seeing them on Ravelry. I love the idea of combining different materials to make art yarns. I am still fairly new to spinning so I decided to concentrate on just spinning regular yarn for the first two months, but now I am ready to venture into making art yarns. I have seen this type of 2-ply bubbly looking yarn and I wanted that to be my first try at novelty yarn. I spun up a single of a multi colored fine merino top from Shunklies and plied it with a navy blue crochet cotton to get this bubbly yarn. It took me a while to figure out how to get the effect but I think I did pretty well for my first attempt. I love spinning! A close up of the yarn. Here is a picture of the wonderful Fine Merino Top Roving from Shunklies before I spun it up.