Woolgathering

Re-posted link to extreme knitting, for SpinningGill: Two socks, One needle. I want to see you do this! Me, I’m not that crazy…

And, on the Ravelry front, here’s a group that might interest you: Sheep to Shawl or whatever Along

It’s been a bit tense and hectic around here, and it’s not improving. At least I can stroke my lovely Exuberance to bring down the blood pressure…

Yarn Yard Goodies

Did I post this yet?

These are the goodies that arrived from the Yarn Yard recently. From Left to Right:

• Bamboo yarn in Juniper colourway. Natalie suggests this is a little light for socks so I am on the lookout for a good project for 470 metres.
• Merino pencil roving in “Wrappings” - no plans, I just got seduced by the colours. Looks like potential sock yarn to me.
• Merino Laceweight in “Peace” - 1093 yards of shawl-y goodness. I currently favour this shawl pattern for this yarn (or this stole)
• Merino/Tussah Silk roving in “Ribbons”. I dived straight into this and it was almost gone by the time I could take a picture.

Yes - my colours are all over the place but… there is a genuine and distinct difference once the roving is spun and plied and the pics below aren’t all that far off, except for the first one

Exuberance

Ravelry Stash

This is what the Ribbons roving became: Exuberance - my deliberately lumpy bumpy slubby textural yarn. I LOVE it!

Spun in deliberately random fashion - I consciously tried not to keep the colour sequence and made no attempt to match the bobbins. I did a fair job of equalling the yardage on the two bobbins. That tiny skein on top was left on one bobbin, so I plied it onto itself - Navajo-style. The difference is very visible, both in colour and twist. I’m not adept at Navajo yet and so I gained much more twist as I slowly fumbled. (In fact, this is what I need to aim for; I am too fearful at present of over twisting the ply and I undershoot and get a biased skein.)

This was such fun to spin! and fast, too. It feels divine. I have no idea what to do with it. I have 300 yards, exactly, of the lumpy bumpy stuff. Do I do freeform for the wall? or do I do a nice hat, or something? Or just keep stroking it for a bit, while I decide?

One day soon I may get the colour reproduction right. And, if maybe not right, I might also try for some consistency!

How The Leaves Came Down

Ravelry project

More colour problems. The yarn is closest in colour to the close up pic, if it matters.

I knit the test piece, cast it off, watched it spring miraculously into a shawl-shaped object, and gloated. Then I soaked it. Then I discovered a total absence of pins… and had to attempt to roughly block it using cocktail sticks!

It’s lovely. I shall probably  reduce my needle size when I cast this on for real, as I feel the stocking stitch leaves need to be firmer and smoother, especially if they are to support beads.

I am really going to enjoy knitting this and cannot wait to get started. The only thing holding me back is the fact that I haven’t yet been out to see if I can blag some beads.

Wednesday Spinning

Traumatic. Don’t ask.

Future spinning

1. Learn to control the wheel and the spin
2. Learn to make a fatter yarn
3. Tweak my plying skills
4. Produce 1600 yards of Aran weight yarn that is fit to knit

Yes. I am going for it. I am going to spin sufficient fleece to make a sweater! Along the way I hope to improve my skills and become a more technical spinner. I can’t help it, I am a control freak. Even when I make lumpy bumpy stuff, I’d like to be able to make it in a  controlled way

I think I’ll try blending the various Shetland shades that J gave me a while back. There should be sufficient if I use it all and by using the carded fleece I can concentrate on manipulating the spin to the correct weight.

Briefly - busy, busy, busy. Merino/Tussah almost spun, but lots getting in the way. Banished from office for much of time so getting plenty of rest for my arm. That’s good. To be banished all day tomorrow again. Which means…

1) I can finish the roving and ply my two bobbins together.

2) I can get some time in my workroom and get on with some birthday cards that need doing

3) I can get a skate on with my new knitting project

New project?

Yep. I cast one one more time. I have identified what I want to do with my BFL handspun and I cast on a test piece tonight. There are no gauge details, so I am knitting up a repeat or two and will cast off and treat my small triangle as a swatch and see how it blocks out and if I need to change needles.

I am doing a Cascading Leaves Shawl (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/cascading-leaves-shawl) by Vicki Mikulak (http://simpleknits.blogspot.com/) - and I may bead it. I shall visit R and see if she has any suitable beads.

The shawl will most likely take priority on the knitting front. I am very keen to have something knitted from my own handspun.

Oh, it knits beautifully! The yarn is soft and silky and just slips through my fingers. It looks very nice since I washed the skeins.

Tomorrow will be a wonderful “me” day as I shan’t even be cooking lunch - Mr L has an all day teleconference training session. He’ll be getting sandwiches at half time.

One more thing - identified today a sweater pattern for myself. I shall be spinning the yarn requirements as my next spinning project. I’ll probably do it in Shetland as I have a mass of that in various shades, ready-carded. All I have to do now is to learn how to turn out a reasonably consistent yarn of approx Aran weight. I shall be asking for help with that on Wednesday!

How the Leaves Came Down

Washed those BFL skeins in Eucalan and was amazed at the amount of dirt that came out.

This delightfully Heath Robinson arrangement of chairs on the kitchen table is intended to dry the skeins in plenty of air and under slight tension. The skeins are hanging from a length of curtain pole and I have my clothes line prop threaded through the bottom of the skeins to add a little weight tension.

The cats enjoyed this arrangement…

The weather has remained very dark and dismal and no decent photos of yesterday’s parcel are available yet. However…

With the aid of the on-camera flash unit - some evidence that we are running some kind of a colour theme just now. This is the Aurora scarf alongside the merino/tussah silk roving.

Not dissimilar, I think.

Of course, having draped the fibre on the wheel, I appear to have more justification for the claim that I am now A Spinner, because, well, I just could not resist having a little go, could I?

And, of course, a little go soon escalated into a goodly portion of the afternoon, and before I knew it… a half bobbin full!

This roving is exactly what I needed to counteract all those long weeks of concentrating on spinning the  uniformly brown BFL in, er, uniform fashion. It’s colourful and joyous and I elected to make a wholly exuberant yarn this time. I just threw it at the wheel and didn’t care what came out, telling myself that lumpy bumpy was what I wanted…

Except for one or two little matters, like my innate parsimony coming to the fore - I kept slipping back to fine and even spinning (yardage, yardage, YARDAGE! my inner meanie kept on telling me) - and the fact that I was just not taking care, it all went in rather thrilling fashion.

Somewhere before the point at which I finished yesterday, I concluded that just chucking it at the wheel was not particularly constructive. I realised I could still gain a random lumpy bumpy yarn if I took control of the spinning. Slowly, I developed a technique of creating slubs and thin patches - and I continued with this today on the second  half of the bobbin, which is now filled.

I have no idea what I am doing, it must be said. I really don’t know if my technique would be an approved one, but I seem to have gained control by using a combination draw method. A relaxed backwards draw gives me an even single, rather fatter than I have been spinning in the last few months. I use a forwards draw to pull out a slub, and a kind of backwards-and-forwards draw teases out a fine single to either side of the slubs. That’s the theory anyway, and it is becoming increasingly consistent as I go.

It is giving me the horrors. This isn’t cheap roving - it’s 30% Tussah Silk with 70% Merino. And here I am distressing it, deliberately. It won’t be good for knitting anything very much when I have finished. It’s wasteful, but its fun - and it is a very good antidote to all that rigorous spinning on the BFL.

So I have decided that, if nothing else, it will make a (very expensive) nice textural wall piece. The colours are good, nothing like they look in these first images (due to flash) but this picture shows them up quite well - they mute once spun. Truly gorgeous.

Really, this spin is a joyous experience. There is a stormy skies blue in the roving that fills me with deep joy each time I come to it. It is a thrilling colour.

I am hoping to complete the roving this weekend. If I can do that, I shall be well impressed with  myself. And, really, I can’t wait to see how this turns out! Perhaps the cost of 100 gms of roving is a small price to pay for two days’ entertainment value?

Today

Today did not see as much spinning done as I would have wished. It has been an odd kind of day. Bianca went to her new home, the garage door got fixed, and the heating oil arrived. I cooked some Pollock Florentine and washed the silk that I spun the other day, and did a lot of cleaning and tidying that included washing a whole heap of rubber stamps that had been waiting for attention for months. Poor Mr L had a fiasco of a day that included a conference phone meeting disrupted by dogs “greeting” the oil man (very loudly) and the ringing of hidden telephones. He’s mildly embarrassed, but overjoyed to have found a home for Bianca and to have more space in his garage - not to mention being able to drive cars in and out of it once more. We’ll skip over the news from the meeting, and the indications of “redeployment” and “retraining” - because I really do not want to think about being forced away from this idyllic island existence.

Perhaps the weekend will be calmer.

The BIG activity around here just now is the final push on a long standing web project that is eating up ALL our spare time: www.weatherfaqs.org.uk We are currently link checking and repairing and are on page 142 of two hundred and odd pages. There’s a long way to go, but we hope to finish essential works by the end of this weekend. (and I don’t want to think how much non-essential-but-desirable work remains to be done)

It had just better not get in the way of my beautiful roving!

Also by the end of the weekend, I hope to have identified and cast on a pattern for my BFL. I am not receiving any assistance with that, no matter how many pleas I make… so, if you know of a suitable shawl or stole for 1500 yards of light fingering - PLEASE leave a comment!

I was doing the happy dance this morning. I was also singing a little ditty that went something like “I love my life, ooooh, I *love* my life…”

The scent of my Italian Herb Bread rising assailed my nostrils, drowning out the Eucalan as I washed my BFL skeins. I was planning to dye some Cheviot later on and my Aurora lay on the sofa, almost finished. Not only that, but I was buoyed up by the knowledge that I don’t have to go and take minutes tonight. Best of all, postie brought my parcel from The Yarn Yard.

Oh, yes, I love my life. I’m a happy teddy.

The bread

Looks fab. I may have added too much garlic, though. A taste test later will reveal all.

Aurora

Off the needles! Yay!!!!

Aurora is finally off the needles, having taken far too long to knit. Recently I have only been able to knit for 15 to 20 minutes without pain in my arm or shoulder. It’s… a pain.

Apart from that, I really enjoyed this simple knit, which proved to be unexpectedly satisfying. I’ll probably do more, as bazaar sale items. It’s always good to have an easy knit on large needles at hand for those times when you want to switch your brain off for a while. I’ll be needing simple diversions…

The parcel

Two skeins, two rovings.

I was seduced firstly by the email news of the sale and the chance of a laceweight skein for £6. Who is going to turn that down? And it was sooooo pretty. But, let’s face it, if you are going to pay postage, you may as well make it worthwhile. But the decision to choose another item was made so difficult by Natalie’s wonderful winning way with colour. Her schemes are just so way ahead of almost anything else out there. Further seduced. Hence - two skeins and two rovings:

• Bamboo (75% wool 25% bamboo) - Juniper (shades of green)
• Lace (100% Organic Merino) - Peace (shades of lilac and the blue side of pink) circa 1,000 metres
• Merino/Silk roving - Ribbons (turquoise/pink)
• Merino pencil roving - Wrappings (Teal , lilac, purple and lime)

No photos, yet. It’s way too dismal a day for images and artificial light would do these goodies no justice at all.

Anyway, it was all I could do not to grab my wheel and get stuck in straightaway. But I applied some discipline and sat down with Aurora instead.

I was surprised at just how happy the parcel made  me. I could have sat and gazed and stroked all day. It’s all about the colour, you know? I am all about the colour these days, it’s really an important element of my life now. There are some in these parts who might scoff at my buying dyed yarns and rovings when I have all the infinite variety of natural fleece at my disposal, or in wanting to dye my white skeins. That’s OK. I like the natural shades too. But I do need to play with colour too. I just like that adventure innate in colour, that bit of spice in my life - and it seems to lift my spirits considerably when I dabble.

Of course, the texture is pretty damn good too.

The BFL

I was surprised, as this was spun from tops, just how much dirt came out after a 30 minute soak in Eucalan. The skeins are in the spinner now, in pillow cases. I can’t wait to see how much they have bloomed, or not.

The Cheviot

Will not be dyed today. I find myself short on supplies. This is a shame, as the silk that I spun yesterday was to have been dyed at the same time.

I need a copy of The Rattle Bag. So I’ll get this as well…  that should put me safely into the free delivery zone.

Mr L, you’re buying

*smooch*

EDIT: Thank you, dear

**double smooch**

I’m thinking that the BFL might want to be a shawl.  I’m thinking that it might want to be a beaded shawl. Some nice iridescent beads might just play up the gloss in the fibre quite nicely and also add interest, as the variation in the yarn is somewhat subtle.

Anybody seen a nice light fingering beaded stole/shawl recipe of 1,500 yard or less?

I seem to have become a spinner. Gill said that I am a spinner, so it must be true…

I had plans to return to the pink merino roving today but I elected to finish the silk hankie that I was spinning last week, and then Gill said I could have the rest of the cap, and I just kind of got stuck into it.

It was such fun to spin! I really enjoyed the process - so much so that I completed spinning the silk this afternoon.

I aimed quite deliberately for something richly textured (aka “lumpy bumpy”) and seem to have opted for a fairly loose spin/relatively tight ply, plying 2 singles together in a deliberately erratic manner. I half plan to dye the silk before using it in mixed media work. Yes, for the first time in many a long year, I intend to thread the eye of a needle. I wonder how many stitches I can recall.

My hope is that the silk will take up the dye in a patchy manner, according to the variation in lumps and bumps and tightness of the twist.

It’s just an adventure in “wait and see” techniques

Anyway, it was noticeable that I sat down and just tackled a new fibre with no trepidation and just got on with it… quickly. I feel that means that I am finally “a spinner.”

Cake today was sandwich cake and gingerbread. Lovely.

In Other News: Ravelry membership has paid off and my RYC stash available for swap is winging its way to America, in a swap with something rather wonderful (I think). How exciting. Many thanks to Ravelry user jonesn4yarn.

I spent some of yesterday helping Mr L with a web project that we began just a year ago and have been feeling rather guilty about. As a consequence, my arm was very sore today and so I took time out in the sitting room. I decided to put the second skein of Hipknits silk laceweight on Gill’s swift.

I tied one end in and the whole job went very well, with no tangles, and just a few loops to deal with. I really must get myself one of these babies one day. It frees up a lot of husband time. I quite fancy this one (not a husband alternative, really)

Of course, there was help available…

… and if he gets his claws into that lot… well, I shall not be answerable.

I don’t know what this colourway is called as I got it from a reseller via eBay. I think it looks like a rather commercial version of a Peach Melba ice cream sundae. So where better to keep my ball tidy than a glass sundae dish?

I have it all taped down now and hope that it won’t spring apart when I take my beady eye off it.

Also today, I knitted a little more of my Aurora project. That’s about 90% done now.

The power went off this morning, when my bread was half done. It came back in time for me to rescue my bread and to get my soup made in time for lunch. At the very least, it helped to keep me off the computer -  for a while.

Tonight is Craft Club night and more tatting. I might take Aurora with me to complete as well.

An amazing coincidence today found me blundering in to the website of Grizzly Mountain Arts - the self same people whose wonderful basket and nostepinne set I was wishing for only yesterday!

Imagine my horror/delight to find what fabulous tatting shuttles they make! and, O.M.G. … niddy noddies!

I need a lottery win, and now!

Items for sale at Grizzly Mountain Arts and at Etsy and also at eBay (where there is a beautiful blue celluloid shuttle just now)

See more of the baskets in the gallery, too