Shopping Spree: Skulls, Skeins and a Spindle

Handmade polymer & gemstone earrings from Honey & Ollie

Look what arrived today – my lovely new earrings from Honey and Ollie! They arrived super quick, all the way from California. So quick that I wasn’t expecting them for about another week! As a recovering goth, I’m still irresistibly drawn to Things With Skulls, and these were so pretty that I couldn’t resist.

Handmade polymer & gemstone earrings from Honey & Ollie

The skulls and flowers are made from polymer clay, with sparkly little gemstones dangling at the top. The findings (all hand made) are copper, which complements the stones beautifully. The hooks are a really lovely shape too, and they stay in place very securely. Despite being quite big, they’re really light to wear, and I’m definitely going to be adding more Honey and Ollie pieces to my wish list.

Handspun and hand dyed yarn from The Outside, with hand carved drop spindle

This is my little haul from the Museum of English Rural Life‘s Traditional Craft Fair.

All from The Outside, on top is a hand-carved drop spindle. It’s made from yew, and it’s a bottom-whorl style. Excuse the red acrylic leader, I was so keen to try it out that I grabbed the first thing I could find! Once I’d figured out how to do a half-hitch to hold the yarn in place, I grabbed some fluff and started to spin straight away. It’s a lovely spindle, and I’m really happy to have one of my own instead of having to borrow from work. Now I can practice at home, and make as much wobbly, lumpy yarn as I like!

Handspun and hand dyed yarn from The Outside

Speaking of yarn… this is neither wobbly, nor lumpy. It’s handspun from blue faced leicester wool, and it’s lovely and soft. The vibrant colours are all from natural dyes, and this should be just enough to make a pair of rainbow-striped mittens.

The colours, from left to right, are:
1) Weld & madder
2) Weld
3) Weld & woad
4) Weld & woad dipped in madder
5) Woad & weld
6) Woad
7) Cochineal (orange oxidised to blue)

I had a lovely chat with Romilly about dyeing, including planting up a dye garden and not being afraid of mordants. There is definitely going to be some experimentation with colour and fluff in my future! For now though, I need to practice my spinning, and think about the perfect pattern for my new rainbow-coloured mittens.

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