stuff and things
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love LOVE LOVE it. It is the grey shetland, plied with a blue (merino) and white (corriedale) single, so it will knit up a little bit stripey. Its awesomely soft, and given my relative inexperience with spinning, i am very happy with how fine and even it is…..53g and 370m. I have been squshing it and rubbing it on my cheek and hugging it LOTS. |
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I recently won an ebay auction for a package of various fibres from the alpaca spinner, consisting of Grey shetland, corriedale, swaledale, oatmeal and brown BFL, and coloured merino rovings, and a big bag of baby alpaca fleece. They are all soooo soft and i love them all. So I decided to try and spin a laceweight yarn…you can see the first single here, in the grey shetland, with a strand of normal DK weight yarn hung over the bobbin for scale purposes. There’s a few fluffy bits on the yarn, and the odd bit that is too thick, but in general i’m pretty happy with it….I’m not sure what i am going to ply with it though, i’m thinking maybe a white/blue strand of merino, to ensure it’s just as soft, and so it knits up stripey.
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woohoo, i finished it, and it only took me 8 days. it was blocked overnight last night, and I just took it into the garden to photograph. Sadly early morning sun on a breezy day doesnt lead to the best silk lace photographs, but i don’t care cos it still looks pretty.
| Yesterday i found this book for £3 in a shop in cambridge, i’ve been wanting to make felt for a while, so it was too good a deal to pass up. After reading it, and one failed attempt (well, not exactly failed…i now have a hat with a hole in), I managed to make this bag, from merino with balwen trim. It looks a lot nicer in real life than in pics…photographing white things is so difficult, i shall attempt to do it properly with my real camera and studio lighting at some point, but for now, the dodgy point and shoot pic at least gives you an idea. Once it’s dry i shall line it, and then decide what to do about a fastening and a handle. |  |
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I’ve been knitting away at my new lace scarf, only allowing myself to knit 10 rows at a time, and fastidiously using markers and counting out loud, so i’ve only had to unpick 20 stitches so far…and the hard bit is done for this end, now it’s on to the relatively easy straight part. The pic is rather dodgy due to silk being very shiny, and the light in here being terrible…and of course it’ll look much nicer when blocked, but i am happy with progress so far. |
I decided i should blog more about what i’ve been up to…so here goes. This of course is all knitting/spinning related so i can include lovely pictures of pretty things. The first picture is some wool i’ve spun lately. The orange and pink/purple are spun from corriedale tops, the green is from the big pile of Norfolk horn fleeces in my garage which i am slowly managing to wash and card.
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I’ve also spun a lot of beautiful merino, and also a merino/alpaca/silk mix. Unfortunately I knitted them into hats which i gave away without photographing, so a pic of the pile of lovely fibres will have to do for now. |
Knitting-wise i’ve been very busy making hats, jumpers, and all sorts of other things, but don’t have photos yet, so here are pics of what i’m working on at the moment…an almost finished sock from a lovely hand dyed yarn from http://www.araucaniayarns.com/ and the very start of a lace scarf based on the knitty pattern Juno Regina in a silk yarn from http://www.fyberspates.co.uk/. Its the first time i’ve knitted proper lace (anything with more than a 4 row repeat) so i am a little scared i’ll make a mistake..so i’m forcing myself to take plenty of breaks and won’t let myself work on it when i’m tired.
In the pic above you can see the pretty stitch markers i made last week out of silver wire and some beads from my stash…much prettier than using loops of waste yarn as i normally do.
 I think i shall try and update this blog regularly with details of what i’m working on…if anything else it will stop me boring my friends with constant knitting talk!