It's getting close to the Holiday Season of Craft Fairs for me and my knitted toy business Simply Playing so, personal knitting has slowed, if not stopped completely, while toy making goes into full swing. Thus today's post on my latest "Fresh Off the Wheel" yarn is not intended for a hat or mittens as is my usual, but instead is for chickens - knitted toy chickens. It is rather silly to spend all the time I do spinning yarn (I am a slow spinner) to knit a simple little toy, but I really love the results which oddly I came across by accident.
You see I purchased this black lama roving from Friends in Fiber thinking I would ply it as a single strand to ply with a rainbow ply to sell in my shop. Well, it kept breaking and getting away from me as I was trying to spin it being too slippery for my inexperienced hands I believe. To solve this problem I thought I'd card it with another wool fiber to give it a bit more "grab" so the fiber would stick together and let me draft with better ease. White merino was what I had on hand and using it with the lama fiber did make drafting easier, but I had no idea what to make with the yarn it until it occurred to me that it kind of looked like a black and white speckled chicken.
One of the venues in whose Holiday Fair I participate in is Dodge Nature Preschool. They have an interesting feature to their classrooms - live chickens. Yes, they have live chickens that the preschoolers get to help care for and play alongside with - it's a very wonderful school. Needless to say I sold out of my chickens at last year's fair. As I'm hoping to participate again this year I thought I'd make more varieties and quantities of knitted chickens. And now I have a speckled black and white variety to add to the mix. What colors do you associate with chickens?
Joining in with Linda for Creative Friday.
