Craft Update: The Right to Wear a Conical Princess Hat With a Ribbon Must Be Earned, and I Have Earned it.

That's right bitches, this week you can find me putting in hours at my spinning wheel.

Before we get into this week’s blog, I googled it, a conical princess hat with a ribbon or veil is called a hennin and it was worn by noble European women in the late middle ages (1300-1500) and is now worn by james n watts in 2025 jk I don’t have one but it would suit me tbh.

I wanted to spin yarn pretty much as soon as I found out that spinning yarn was something people still did. IDK why my parents wouldn’t get me the spinning wheel I asked for in 2006, if they thought I wouldn’t use it, they were wrong. I ordered a spinning wheel online in 2017. It is a Woolmakers Bliss, and unfortunately it looks like it came from Ikea.

Woolmakers Bliss, $370

It has served me well and I actually highly recommend it to people thinking about getting a spinning wheel. It is simple enough to assemble and operate, has a good range of spinning ratios, and it is on the affordable side of the spinning wheel pricing spectrum. I don’t love the sleek minimalist white scandi-chic look it has, but most other wheels in this price range look like they were made in someone’s garage (derogatory), so I’ll take it. Most importantly, it has functioned well for 8 years now. While we’re talking about it, here is the spinning wheel that would best compliment the imaginary hennin on my bald head:

Kromski Polonaise $1,300

Kromski do you want to collab? Can someone reach out to Kromski for me?

Spinning yarn is a laborious task. I love spinning, but I don’t do it often. Knitting takes forever, so it’s a real commitment when you decide to spend 40 hours spinning yarn before spending 40 hours knitting a sweater, which is why in my 8 years of spinning, I have completed exactly one successful sweater spin:

Say hello to my magnum opus as a spinner, the completely handspun corriedale 3-ply woolen spun worsted weight heathered purple Lovable Sweater, a design by Softsweater on instagram.

I always want to be spinning, I just don’t find myself making time for it.. until now :-) I’ve been to two fiber festivals in the past month and I ended up buying fiber for spinning at both of them. Fancy new fiber got me excited to make yarn and put a little pressure on me to sit at the wheel. I decided to start by spinning this beautiful off-white natural Haunui wool top from New Zealand.

Fiber purchased from Twine Craft Goods

I am trying to spin singles for a 2-ply fingering weight yarn that could be used to knit a fine pair of socks. I am worried that I might be spinning a little too fine and could end up with more of a light fingering weight, somehow the world will keep turning. This skein will go to Jessie Mae, I love to gift my handspun to knitting friends.

The next fiber I’d like to spin came from the same Haunui wool specialist vendor. Where the first fiber was commercially prepared into “top” (the name for fiber that has been neatly combed into parallel fibers), my next Haunui spin will make use of a hand-carded “batt” (the name for fiber that has been brushed into a cloudlike bundle of misaligned fibers). Buying this batt went against the cheapskate moral compass that guides me. Generally, I am unwilling to buy wool fiber for spinning that is significantly more expensive than already processed wool yarn, why spend the money when I have to do the work of spinning it?! This is no shade towards the price of this product, it was $25 for around 50 grams of fiber. There are a few ways to card fiber for spinning, and none is more labor intensive than hand carding, and when done by a skillful carder, no machine-carded batt will ever be as soft, lofty, spinnable, and like the wistful sigh of a forest nymph than a hand carded one. I wish you could all touch this batt, it’s so soft that I recoiled when I first felt it, like it was too soft for human hands and should be sequestered in a glass case. The yarn I spin from my luxurious slow fashion farm fresh batt will be for me, and I’ll also try to get it to an appropriate weight for sock knitting.

Carded by Twine Craft Goods

OTHER HAPPENINGS IN CRAFT WORLD:

I finished knitting two new summer designs. The first is “Look at My Holes Boxy”, and it will come out later this month. The second is “Strippy Strip Tank Top”, coming in June.

I’ve got one and a half socks done in this fun hot pink “Dragon Fruit” colored yarn. It is a bit slow going but I still feel moderate gumption for maintaining a sock knitting practice. I have laid out my yarn for the next pair to tempt and excite me so that I hurry up and finish the pair I’m working on.

I am on sleeve number 1 of a basic sweater design coming in Fall. It’s a little bit of drudgery, but as I watched The Last of Us (Season 1 i am late to the party) I took a second to admire the saturated and textural Noro yarn slipping through my fingers and felt grateful that I get to use some of the most beautiful and inspiring materials in the world.

I touched on it last week, but I am firmly back into making beautiful art jewelry after a little hiatus. Here are the pieces that have come off my bench in the past few weeks:

I ordered a bunch of shipping materials and inch ever closer to having jewelry for sale out in the world. GET EXCITED!

I’ll leave it there for my craft updates this time, but for knowledge and accountability here are two lists:

PURSUITS THAT ARE GOING WELL BUT ARE NOT GETTING MENTIONED

• lots of going to the gym and I joined my neighborhood running club LMAO DORKYYYYY

• Piano every day, even a little violin and recorder SOME days

• Started playing Elden Ring again

FORSAKEN PASTTIMES

• have not done another drawing since my bday drawing last week

• not practicing Chinese

• Not knitting my cobweb shetland lace. OOPS I PROMISE I WILL.

• Barely reading but ok that changes TONIGHT.

As always thank you VERY MUCH for reading love you bye!