"Those Autumn Leaves" ~ An Interpretation Through Woolen Fibers!

Pictured: Artificial Autumn leaves, woolen roving to match leaf colors,  (at left) plastic leaf stems and spines after silk leaves have been removed.

Autumn is a lovely time to be up north when the woods explode with color! And, the beauty of the changing seasons can always be counted on to inspire a crazy textile addict such as myself  into handspinning action!

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So, I found these artificial Autumn leaves and thought, "Why couldn't I just spin these seasonal beauties right into a novelty yarn and then make eaf flap hats that have real-artificial Autumn leaves protruding out of them!"  (This all happens just when we thought that I was over my ear-flap-hat preoccupation and my love of saying, "ear flap hats".)

Here are the fibers all freshly drummed up and carded. I whipped in 6 ounces of hand dyed wool along with some sparkly blending glitz. As you can see it twinkles with "Autumn-ness".

 Above you see the spinning wheel bobbin FULL of a leafy yarn single ready to be plied. Yes, I do wonder if raising silkworms and constantly feeding the little nippers has me preoccupied with leaves. And yes, I am afraid  that leaves are starting to look quite delicious to me. So while my appetite is stronger than ever I've sadly not been walk-trotting in awhile or completing any of my aerobic fitness goals but...

I did treadle two bobbins full (maybe not full but these are ginormous bobbins). Both singles are spun "z" then plied together in the opposite "s" direction (spinster lingo). I purposefully spun the right bobbin using a "thick and thin" draw. When I plied both of the colorful singles together I alternated tension and angle so that the yarns wrapped around each other rather than plying equally and thus creating lively curls of colorful texture:

And here's a second picture:

And there you have it! Well, what there is of it so far.  More to come and Happy Autumn to You!