Havencroft Homestead Handspun Yarns

Just a few of the Havencroft Homestead Handspun Yarns off my spinning wheel. Many of these are listed in the Havencroft Farm etsy store.

I love to spin. I enjoy the feel of the fleece in my hand. Watching, petting and cuddling the animal friends who grow the fleece makes me happy. I love deciding what I want to ply the single yarn with and the unique beauty of each skein as it winds off the bobbin and on to the niddy-noddy, ready for washing.

Spinning is also what I do to relax. People often ask me how I keep up with the pace of my daily life. I have built in relaxation in my spinning, weaving, crochet, animal care, and sometimes, writing.

I spin lots of yarn, I love the challenge of sitting down to spin a whole fleece. But, it is all one - or maybe four or five - of a kind skeins of yarn. Many people like to follow patterns, and set guages, and predictable results. They want to know the item they are spending all these many hours making will turn out to be the item that they liked the picture of and wanted. I understand that, but my world is one of creative directions, happy accidents, design elements and excitement in seeing how the latest project turned out. Yep, I'm a double gemini in a house full of gemini's. Life is endlessly entertaining.

To that end, I needed to figure out how my one-of-a-kind skeins of yarn, grown by my wonderful Jacob Sheep, colored angora goats, goofy alpacas and guardian llama fit into the greater world of fibery fun so that I could connect them with people who would like to use them in their projects. That's where the concept for Havencroft Homestead Handspun Yarns came in. All of my yarns are from fibers grown on our homestead, with a few accents like dyed silk (don't raise silk worms), star fire or angelina, and metallic thread.

A skein of Luna's Jacob Sheep wool, all natural colors.

Havencroft Homestead Handspun Yarns are one-of-a-kind, individual skeins of yarn, grown by pampered critters, spun and dyed with love in the Ozarks.

These yarns are great as accents for scarves, shawls, hats and many other projects. Also, I'll be working on developing crochet patterns for small skein projects and have a few pattern testers lined up.

If you'd like to check out some of my yarns, they are listed in our Havencroft Farm etsy store; we are on the Off The Beaten Path Studio Tour, if you want to come meet the critters, too. We also do the Arkansas Craft Guild Christmas Showcase in Little Rock.

I have several goals for this year, one is to work only with our homegrown fleeces in my fiber arts. I worried about that one, because as much as I love the natural colors of fibers our critters grow, color is what sells. But then I spun the yarn below, all from wool, mohair and alpaca grown on Havencroft Farm and dyed by me. I'm not worried about having novelty yarn any more!

Havencroft Homestead Handspun Yarn, an art yarn skein of wool, mohair and alpaca.