Woolgathering

This scarf that I am knotting is a thing of great beauty. I am not blowing my own trumpet here - it is more a matter of fact that I am greatly moved by the rightness of this piece of work. It really is a stunner - and it was much admired at Spinning Group today…

It is going to be shorter than calculated - I just went through an extended stretch of thicker yarn. It’s going to be so much on the short side that it may not merit the label “scarf”. What to do? I don’t think I want to rip it out and do a 36 stitch version. I think that makes too few ripples to really be able to appreciate the nature of the stitch pattern. I looked again at the examples in Spin Off and I do think it to be the case that the wider ones are far more attractive than those with only three or four bumps in their width.

SpinningGill was very naughty and seeded the idea of buying more roving… I have been to Copperpot’s Etsy shop but there was none of the DFV currently on offer. The thing is, if I were to buy more, I’d have to buy another roving too - to make sensible use of the postage costs… obviously.

I don’t know. I think that the best thing to do is to knit the yarn out and see just how far it does go, and how the piece looks at that length. But it takes so long for the roving to get here from the States. And that would leave a big gap… and I would be wanting this finished. But what if I order the roving and it turns out that the length I have now is actually OK and I didn’t need extra anyway?

Argh!

All I know is that I don’t want to abandon the scarf and frog it to reuse the yarn in something less yardage-intensive This scarf should come to fruition. It needs to be. It’s not just knitting - this is a Piece of Art!

Spinning Cake today was: flapjacks with seeds and raisins and honey, “Mars Bar” Crispies (actually Lidl imitation mars bars, but who’s checking?), and something akin to rock buns except they weren’t rocky and they had lemon rind and candied peel instead of mixed fruit. This odd mix was driven by the fact that I had only on egg in the house, and also that one of our group is gluten-intolerant. Totally fearsome quantities of butter were deployed.

What else? Oh yes, our locally made niddy noddies arrived! Modelled on SpinningGill’s beautifully simple one, and made from timber from old church pews from the island. they are simply stunning. We may have some for sale at the Sanday Spinners’ site shortly.

One of our group had a bobbin made by the same local craftsman. You should see it. It’s huge. And it’s oak. And it is very, very beautiful.

R brought home grown lettuce and young parsley plants to share.

Nell was very well behaved at spinning. And so were the cats, Teddy and Treacle. Teddy was remarkably sociable. He must be settling down to old age now - though he’s only 8 or 9 years old.

My enjoyment was marred by a headache. For the first time ever, I woke to day four of  a migraine. I am not happy about that. It got very bad this afternoon and I actually took to a darkened bedroom for the first time in several years. Not good. The headache is still here but now at a level whereat I can function. I hope that it is gone by tomorrow.

I think I will just go and email Copperpot to see if she will be offering any DFV any time soon…

An aside: many years ago, when I was wont to make my own clothes, I had more enthusiasm than skill. I had neglected needlecrafts at school in favour of cooking. When I acquired a sewing machine at age 18 I knew the basics, but little else. (I still don’t!) I was fortunate to be a stock size, so I didn’t need to learn to alter patterns. Finishing techniques were neglected entirely. I had a skill that suited me better. I knew how to marry pattern and fabric in such a way that maximum impact was achieved and nobody ever examined the seams… they just went “wow!”

Well, I suppose common sense and instinct should tell us that even the ugliest duckling yarn, shown the correct pattern, can grow into a beautiful swan of a project…

As threatened, I cast on the ugly yarn. I deployed my ancient skill of selecting the correct pattern to show off the material. Something wondrous happened. I loved what grew from it. In fact, something so wonderful happened that I think I shall keep it under wraps for a little while, for maximum effect.

That said - I certainly thought it was pretty wonderful for the first 8 inches. The last two to three inches have been heavy on the sickly banana theme and I am loving it less, though anticipating an improvement again shortly. I suppose that I shan’t know until the end, and there may be a frogging hiccup shortly - as I juggle width v length v yardage - only time will tell.

I do feel very heartened by this experiment and maybe in future I’ll keep that first colour instinct close to my heart and not get feeble about my yarn.

Oh, this project is currently named “Tangles” but may forthwith be known as The Seaweed Scarf.

Update: some measuring and weighing has been done, and some maths. The conclusion is that this scarf will emerge at 44″ - not exactly scarf-like. So I am going to rip it back and cast on with fewer stitches and have a third go. The first attempt was 66 stitches. I currently have 56. I am going to settle at 46… to be truthful, the thing is still wider than I like so going narrower is no problem, unless the colour blocks get out of hand. It seems to work well at 56 stitches. I hope it is as good at 46.

Oh, OK - I know none of this makes sense without visual information…

It’s a Morning Surf Scarf, and I have just frogged it.

Rippit rippit, rippit, rippit, rippit, rippit, rippit, rippit, rippit, rippit…

Most of my skeins were dry this morning so I twisted ‘em up and sat back to admire them. I do love the white/pink/purple singles, they look pretty much as I had envisaged them, only far skinnier than I had hoped - and far whiter. Snowy white. Fluffy snow white. A bit gorgeous, I think.  Overnight I think I came down on the side of knitting them up with some raw silk - but do I have sufficient? Linen would also be good… but I don’t have any of that.

The two merino/mohair skeins and the large Deep Fried Vegis skein are still a little damp. I’ve bravely (foolishly) dangled them on the washing line for a while. It’s not too breezy out there… yet. Must keep en eye on them.

I have 2/3 of a bobbin of the Inferno done and am much enamoured of it. I keep stopping spinning to admire it and enjoy the warm glow of affection for it that I seem to have. It excites me and I can’t wait to see how it turns out. A very different feeling to the one that I had about the DFV. I definitely want some copper thread now.

Day 3 of the headache is not, so far, too bad. I took the last remaining Maxalt at 7pm last night when the nausea took over. So I am now desperately waiting for that point in Day 3 when I suddenly realise that I feel great. But it’s OK. I am functioning. In fact, I am about to make “cake” for spinning day tomorrow. Actual cake is difficult, I only have 1 egg! (am still too off-balance to cycle or drive to the shop - I am a hazard) So today is for gloopy syrupy no-egg-required bars, I think. No slimmers permitted at spinning tomorrow! Normally I’d do the Queen Mum date and walnut when I have only one egg, but I don’t seem to have any dates either.

I may start to knit the DFV later. If I don’t leap straight into it, it will languish unloved and unknitted for years. Beat me to it, and it’s yours. Surely it must speak to somebody… if you love it, you may have it. Just ask. If it’s not yet cast on, I’ll pop it in the post asap. Airport strikes permitting…

There are eight skeins hanging up in the kitchen: two dark red/grey merino/mohair; two blue/green home-dyed; two of the Deep Fried Vegis; and two of the erratic singles. And in my craft room, pinned out  on the floor (rather poorly, it must be said), are: my grey lace scarf; two swatches for Mr L’s “Lanark Mills” sweater; and two beaded alpaca lace ATC bits.

The singles have washed up incredibly, startlingly, white. I am currently revising my ideas on what to make of them. They feel very light and insubstantial.

It took a while - I fielded a Sanday Spinners’ call in the middle of it all… but more of that another time.

I was supposed to be going out tonight to see a programme of Indian dance. Sadly, I have a terrible headache still (it’s only Day 2 and I have one more day to go yet) and worry that I might not enjoy myself - Mr L has seized on this fact, and the emergence of the sun, to claim that he has to mow the grass. That job takes several hours* so it looks like we aren’t going anywhere at all.

I’ll do some more spinning. Nothing too taxing. Can’t wait for bedtime, actually. I think I’ll have a cup of chamomile tea while I spin.

* It’s OK. It’s light until midnight… plenty of time to get finished in.

Remember this?

The Inferno roving from Copperpot.

This is what I am currently spinning. I am not entirely sure that I know what I am doing, but I have split the colours out as best I can and I am spinning the red and the orange alternately. The purple I have put aside. The red/orange will be spun thick/thin. Later on I will ply the purple to it. I hope to include a copper thread. I am not sure yet if that will be a separate third ply or if I will spin or ply it with the purple first. Assuming I can get something, anything, like I envisage that is.

I would like to spin something interesting into this. I have copper coloured beads to hand, but I think that my orifice is too small for such an ambition…

There’s a long way to go. I have two lumps of this stuff.

Washing

The washing is almost done… and there was more of it than I had remembered. Since most of it leaked colour I have to wonder why I saved it all up for washing together. I have saved no water/detergent/effort as I had to keep refreshing the bowl in order to get rid of the dye. *sigh*

I have almost every spare pillowcase in the house deployed in readiness for spinning. Hopefully that will not just keep things tidy but will also stop the colour from going where it is not wanted.

The new yarn is sitting in a tub of hot fairy liquid suds. If there is time when this yarn has been cleaned, I’ll get the Eucalan out and get all my washing and blocking done. But it’s getting late now, so there may not be time.

I now have the Inferno roving sitting by my wheel and waiting for me to get on with it. I’m just not clear yet on how I want to spin it. I wish that I knew more about spinning and could make informed choices from a broader set of options! If I ever come into money, I’d like to go off on a course. I have definitely reached the stage now where I want to learn more. A nice residential week-long course would be lovely. *sigh*

You know what? I think that I fancy some glitter in this Inferno. I might see about getting some gold thread to ply it to. It should look rather nice. Actually, copper would be much nicer. I like copper. It’s less garish.

I completed spinning the carded fleece from Stromness this morning. I managed two complete bobbins from it. The second is not as good as the first.

There was a lot of coarse weak fibre in there - from the little that I know I’d have to guess that it was back hair - and also a great deal of second cut material. With hindsight, I would have to say that I should have done some fibre prep - but that was not what I wanted to do this time, I just wanted a quick and happy spin.

I carried on regardless, throwing some of the short stuff and the weakest of the brittle stuff into the felting bin (I must do something with that lot one day soon!) but allowing some to slub into my yarn. The result of incorporating this less good fibre into what was an intentionally under-spun yarn is that I have an inherently weak single here - a fact clearly in evidence when I skeined the first bobbin, and the single snapped on me.

Now, if I had intended a garment from this fleece, I would be a disappointed woman right now. As that was not my intent, I am perfectly happy with the characterful yarn that I have produced.

I had hoped to emulate my first spinning efforts and produce a lumpy string, but under my control. In fact string may be a misnomer, large sections look more like baler twine (where the weaker coarse fibre was incorporated). As for control? Forget it. I elected finally to let the fibre dictate the nature of the yarn and I just literally threw it at the orifice.

I enjoyed the spinning, though. It was relaxed and happy and confident. Instead of the panic I had when I made my first string and tried to stop all the lumps and bumps, this time my happy brain just said “great - another slub!“

While I was spinning, the yarn kept telling me that it was going to be a bag. Design ideas filled my head…

I am not going to be able to knit this single unsupported - as I said, it is weak - also there are sections which came out much thinner than I had hoped for. Plying it to itself won’t help, and will only reduce the useful length. So - what to do? I have some white generic island fleece that I can spin up as a second single. Or even a 2 ply. I can then knit the two strands together. Another option might be to use SpinningGill’s handspun Lleyn, which she gave me to practise dyeing on. I can envisage using that, dyed a grey blue stormy sky colour and knitting it up with my Serendipity* yarn…

So. A garter stitch bag. With a stitch pattern panel in it. Possibly felted. Possibly not. I’d hate to lose the pretty slubs and the effect of those will be diluted by carrying another thread along with them anyway.

Pretty? Yes, well I think so, at least. See what you think. This is skein one, unwashed. The camera seems to have struggled with it - it looks nicer in real life.

* Serendipity is what I shall call the yarns that I make in this haphazard fashion. I want to alternate them with more constrained spinning projects - just to keep remembering how fast and fun spinning can be, if I let it. This shall be Stromness Serendipity, maybe, or Sunset Serendipity, or Seashell Serendipity. Who knows. It all depends on how I “decide” to complete it. Not much deciding in it, really - I shall continue to let this yarn have its own way. Thus far, the strategy appears to be working. I like this, quite a lot.

Yesterday was busy. The results posting on the Sanday web site took far more energy and time than I had expected. The stats show that the effort was worthwhile, though and our new website took a real spike in the page hit count: 2,033 page views yesterday and 597 so far today. Our previous best was 300 page views in a day.

The Sports day itself seemed to be very successful, though I saw little of it in the school staff room. I did note that several records were broken, one of which had stood since the mid-Eighties. Sanday took the Schools Cup, the Senior Challenge Cup, the Millennium Cup and the Senior Relay quaich trophy. Westray won the Tug ‘O War. The Girls’, Women’s and Men’s Champions are all from Sanday, while a Westray lad is the Boys’ Champion. The Best Senior also hails from Sanday. A successful day!

I woke with a double-sided migraine this morning and both my eyes are painful. Rather than do anything demanding, I elected to sit and spin the carded fleece that I got in Stromness on Monday. I just chucked it at the wheel (spinner’s technical term!) and tried to make a softly spun, erratic slubby yarn. The erratic part was easy - it’s erratically prepared fleece. Not sure if I managed a consistent soft spin, though. It certainly looks like my early days string efforts…

I have no idea what fleece it is - in parts it is very fine and nice, with a really fine crimp and a bit of lustre. It may be a Shetland X, perhaps. Overall, it’s very clean. There’s some coarser yellow fleece in with it and some slightly dirty lumps. The dyed parts seem to be of a different quality to the white. The white is very greasy and pretty easy to spin.

No matter, it’s just a bit of light relief after being careful with the hand-dyed tops.

I am hoping to make a knittable single. I haven’t knitted singles before and I just want to play with it.

As I spun this stuff up my mind got to wandering (yes, it’s that easy to spin up). One of the things that I was thinking about was that we should perhaps dye some fleece for the kids’ activity session that we are doing. Nine year olds might have more fun with red and purple yarn than with sheep-coloured yarn?

I was also thinking about how I want to try weaving and what this yarn might look like in a deeply textural piece of woven material. Cushion cover stuff, perhaps.

And I also got to pondering how much I enjoy spinning when I have no idea what the final yarn will look like until I have skeined and washed it. I like that magical element of surprise that comes from spinning in the grease. I have  a bobbin full after about half an hour’s spinning. It’s all I can do to stop myself from washing it immediately to see what I have. But I think I’ll spin it all up first, and leave the twist to set a little before skeining and washing. I might give this the rough treatment when I wash it, and aim for a slightly felted finish to hold the soft single together better.

Or I may spin a fine ivory silk single and ply the two together. Then make a scarf of it.

Or spin a blue single to ply it to and make a chunky yarn that reminds me of a sunset sky, with blue background, and white clouds streaked with pink and purple.

I don’t know. All I do know is that I won’t ply the yarn onto itself.

Nell likes the smell of this raw fleece. She says it is yummy.

We took Nell’s bucket off this morning, to see how she would get on without it. So far we haven’t caught her chewing, licking, or scratching anywhere that she should not be. In fact, she has been very well behaved and seems somewhat stunned by the unexpected lightness about her head and neck. All she really wanted to do was get hold of her rawhide chew and… chew, chew, chew!

The DFV is done. 354 yards total. All 3 ply.

What a relief.

I think I’ll knock up that stuff that we bought in Stromness last week for my next project. Something thick and bouncy and really slubby. I might leave it as a single and get a spool of something interesting to ply it to.

No claimers for this nasty stuff yet? Oh, what a surprise! :-}

No spinning today. I am off to be the results service for today’s North Isles Sports.

(I just tried to find an informative link about the Sports - I couldn’t find anything suitable, but was much cheered to find our new baby, sanday.co.uk, came up 7th on the Google ranking - based on our news item about changes to ferry services for today. I must be doing something right on the webmastering front!)

When Mr L is back at work next week I think I may have to have a wash day. I have several skeins to be done, plus a fair bit of blocking to do as well.

I plan to complete my sock today, in between results posts, and move on to knitting this DFV up after the skeins dry. Until then… I’ll work on completing a dormant project or two.