Did you miss me?

Wow! I can't believe that this morning I turned over the page in my calendar to February. It has been four, long months since my last posting! What can I say? So I won't say anything apart from...I have been busy. I do spun up lots of skeins of yarn for you to see - nothing terribly pretty but I am in a spinitupandgetitoutofthestash mode. Mind you, once the fibre has been spun into yarn it may no longer be technically in the "fibre stash" but I guess it has moved over to the "yarn stash". Never mind, I'll think about that another day. Maybe at Tara. Moving on...

Sometime or other I promised someone (ok, Stella!) photos of my "award-winning" Serendipity (MS4) Stole. Yes, to catch up on my blog, I actually did finish knitting the MS4 stole, entered in our local A & P Show and won first place as well as the "best article" in the handcraft section! I suppose it is unnecessary to say that I was stoked. Yes, it is a small show but it was my first entry in the knitting section!

Here is the shawl blocking on towels in a spare bedroom This shawl represented a number of first for me - my first Mystery Stole knitalong, my first lace knitting (with laceweight yarn), my first bead knitting, my first time blocking, my first time kitchenering a large number fo stitches, my first entry (and win) in the knitting section, my first lace stole/shawl. I quite enjoyed the process as well as the outcome. I know that it isn't perfect, especially the grafting, but overall I am pleased with it. Will I wear it? I hope so. I knitted it with the intention to wear it to our son's wedding in June but that will depend largely on what I choose to wear on the day. So, in good motherly style, we'll see!

What else has been taking my time lately? In a word, spinning. I decided that I was tired of having so many fibres taking up space in my craft room. Being of good Scot's descent, I could not bring myself to simply throw perfectly good fibres away so I have been spinning up a storm.

The above is about 900gm of camouflage-coloured wool my husband brought home for me from a local auction. It isn't very pretty, but I guess would be a practical colour for every-day wear for a boy. I spun it up really quickly. Such a relief after the months I spent spinning the merino/soy blend (that's to come). It has spun up into a soft, bulky yarn which I may knit into a couple of little boys' jerseys to sell at the local market. Or maybe into a jersey for my husband. Who knows!

This lousy photo is of the 100g skein of laceweight (28 wpi) merino/soy blend I bought from Rotocard a few years back. I have no idea how many metres it is but it must be a fair few. It took hours to ply and then to wind off! I am quite pleased with the results and I may make a shawl from it. I haven't totally decided yet.

This large skein is, in reality, two skeins of yarn I spun from some fleece I dyed as an experiment in the crock pot. It came out quite dark and so sat around for some time before I decided to do something about it.

Above you can see the progress from dyed fleece (most of it was a lot darker than what is shown here), carded batts (I tried not to mix the colours too much so that the lighter, brighter colours would pop out of the darker background), and small sample skein. I liked what I saw in the sample so carried on to finish the rest the same. What will I do with it? Probably a hat but the pattern is, as yet, undecided. The finished yarn is soft and bulky at 8 wpi. Length unknown.

Time has flown and I need to give attention to other things right now. I will be back to finish the saga of what I have been spinning over the last few months (yes, there's more!!) another time.