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My handmade journal sewn with handspun linen thread ❤️

Itty-bitty sewing kits ❤️ I love a tiny scrap leather project, and a reason to showcase some handspun thread ☺️

These pocket sewing kits are 2"×2" and I made them small enough to fit in my wallet and the back pocket of my favorite bag!

This leaf doesn't belong to this tree. And I didn't tie this here. Here's what I think happened:

Last fall, while leaves were falling and the temperatures were likewise dropping, I hackled some antique flax fiber next to this tree to prepare for spinning into linen yarn. The wind picked up strands and pieces and held them in its branches. When this leaf fell from another tree, it must have tangled in the loose flax fibers.

All winter, this leaf stayed lashed to this branch by flax fibers nearly 100 years old. Through the snow, sleet, hail, and rain of the past 4ish months it's held fast.

Now I want to see how long it will stay attached!

I'm endlessly amazed by the strength of flax/linen fibers, and this is probably the coolest example I've ever seen.

Handspun sewing thread! This is the first time I've spun flax with the intention of using it for sewing thread. It's 100 yds, 15 g, and 2ply.

For those interested in even more detailed specs:

This thread is approximately 3,200 ypp, which makes it about a 20/2 weaving yarn. If I would weave with this thread, a plain weave fabric would be about a 20-24 epi sett 😁

Now I have to decide what's worth sewing with my new thread!

Sunday brought a spur-of-the-moment afternoon of weaving for me in a nearby park. I had the perfect shady spot with a picnic table to create my warp, and a broken branch perfect for tensioning my backstrap loom for weaving. And I just love that my weaving basket fit perfectly in my bike basket 🥰

The yarn is handspun muga silk, 2ply, that I made back in the spring with the intent to weave with it.

I'm back in Spin Off with an article about turning milkweed stalks into yarn. (Scroll back through my reels for a process video on that 😁)

You can get copies of the magazine at shop.longthreadmedia.com and/or support your local library by accessing Spin Off through their digital media services! (And if they don't subscribe to Spin Off, you can also try to request it!)

Enjoy!

I've been challenging myself to spin ultra-fine linen, and this is by far the thinnest thread I've spun yet.

The right preparation and the right tools go a long way in supporting this kind of spinning, but it's still difficult to spin a consistent thread this fine.

It's almost unbelievable that entire garments were woven in the past by handspun threads like these 🤯

Stick skein! I finished plying some yarn on my walk last night, and felt like winding it off my spindle.

I walked around for a bit until I found a fallen stick in the right shape. The skein tension ended up a bit wonky, and my stick broke right at the end, but I did end up with a usable skein for the time being 😅

The actual surprising bit was that the mosquitoes left me alone last evening, despite the heat and recent rain.

| Ice and Earth Mitts |

I was inspired by the natural colors in the raw cashmere that I purchased from a small farm in Colorado. The colors reminded me of glacier mountain regions: the bright white of ice, and the dusty grays and browns of the soil. I processed all the cashmere by hand for this project, wanting the slow, intentional hours of the process to be reminiscent of the glaciers themselves, and the farmers who labor in those mountains.

Mitts for the Cashmere on Ice contest and fiber from ❤️