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.

What Have I Been Up To Lately?

Long time, no see - I know but I haven't been entirely unproductive as you can see!



This top was made for the Fleece Challenge for the Creative Fibre Festival 2008. This year the Challenge was using Corriedale fleece. Our local spinning group decided to take part making baby wear as Corriedale is a fairly fine wool.

Washing the fleece was quite a challenge in itself. Even using very hot water I was unable to get it totally clean - it still felt slightly waxy but went through the drum carder ok. Spinning was fun but rather interminable (I wanted to get onto MY spinning!). I spun the yarn fairly fine and navajo plied it. The final yarn was about a 4 ply with some variations.

White yarn looked rather drab so I put it in the dyepot. Out came a medium-pale pink, slightly darker than I had in mind but still pretty. Because the yarn had been simmered in the dyepot it had also lost that slightly sticky feel.

As I only had 82 grams I felt a sleeveless top would be an ideal item to knit. I had a Margaret Stove pattern (has a singlet pattern I have used in the past as well) which I felt would be suitable. I adjusted the number of stitches as her pattern required 2 or 3 ply yarn. All went well and I finally ended up with this sweet little top! Mind you, it did take a lot longer than I had anticipated.

Gotta go now - we're (read that as D - I'm not silly!) taking down some ugly wallboard in our lounge in readiness for the builder coming to help us put in a new log burner to replace our dud pellet fire. It is now time to clean up before getting tea ready. Anyone who has been through small remodeling jobs in their homes will know what sort of mess my lounge is in and what will be needed to make it habitable once more! So 'bye for now!

Busy Week!

I hope that you will forgive me for the long interval since my last posting but I have been rather busy. Last week was Dyeing in the Park day for our Spinners and Weavers group. This time, we had decided to dye a fleece using a method written about in our Creative Fibre newsletter (the newsletter received by all members of Creative Fibre New Zealand) - Dartmoor Dyeing. This involves 4 kilos of fleece in the grease, 4 dyepots and 4 colours of dye (red, yellow, blue and green) as well as several willing helpers. The end result is 48 colours of fibre and several happy, and tired, ladies.

To try and cut down on the time involved on the actual dyeing day I weighed out 3 piles of fibre and split each of these into 4 bags. This worked really well as each pile of fibre was the same size. I had also made up the dyes to the specification of the recipe so that there was the correct amount available and measuring on the day was kept to a minimum. If using this method with these dyes (Teri Sandolan Dyes) again I would perhaps make the concentration of the red dye (red B) at least half as strong again. Or even double. It exhausted rather well on the day meaning there was little left for the second dipping.

Perhaps I should explain this method a little more - the fleece was divided into three equal parts. These parts were further divided into four parts. The first set of four parts were put into the dyebaths - one part into each - and simmered for a while. They were then taken out of the dyebath and divided into four parts. One part from each dyebath was kept aside as a clear colour while the other parts were put into the other dyebaths. After more simmering these were taken out. The dyebaths were replenished with more dye, salt and vinegar and the process gone through again with the next of the first three parts. This happened again for a third and final time.

Confused? I think it is something you have to do to understand! Anyway, the upshot was 48 small piles of fibre in various shades hues and tints! Quite amazing, really, considering we started with a fairly large, greasy fleece! All of these piles were wrapped up in a sheet which I took home. I now have the "lovely" job of rinsing out all the piles and drying them. I am a quarter of the way through. Because of the grease in the fleece each pile is needing to be rinsed about three times trying not to subject it to too much agitation. I would hate to ruin all our hard work by felting it all.

Another thing keeping me busy for a while was a visit from the Grandgirls! We had them for the whole weekend (from Friday night until Sunday afternoon when we took them back). Kind of a challenge considering their age (almost 3 and 15 months) but enjoyable for the most part. a visit to the local park was a hit. They loved watching the wallabies (or "wobbalies" as the 3 year old said at first! Sad when she changed it to wallabies before the day was out) and playing on the playground equipment.

Another thrill was watching the 15 month old walking! She had been taking the occasional step up until the Monday of last week, then it was all go. She is almost running now! Funny how some kids don't do things until they can actually do them properly. I think she may get this from me!

This week we spent a rather large chunk of money getting an HRV (Heat Recovery Ventilation)system installed. Too soon yet to tell if it is going to be worth it but I do know there is a huge amount of heat in the roof space to be tapped. We live in an old (about 100 years old) wooden house with high ceilings and an iron roof. The living area heats up nicely with the log burner but it can be difficult to heat the bedroom areas. I don't know how much longer we will be able to have a log burner, either, as my husband's back makes it difficult to cut firewood as well as the relatively new regulations regarding log burners. Our old one will be illegal in a few years and the new ones do not stay in all night. Hopefully, this system will make an improvement to the temperatures throughout the house as well as keeping the house dry and the air clean.

Spinning - well I spent about half an hour yesterday on the merino/soy silk. Not much to show for it! Knitting - haven't been able to settle on it this week. Hopefully progress to show next week.