Spinning for a Project - Really??

 I very rarely spin especially with a project in mind.  Usually I spin for the pleasure of it and then put the yarn away until I find something to do with it.

Recently though, my sister bought a pattern for a knitted shawl plus the recommended yarn, enough to complete the project.  She was slightly disappointed when she'd finished in that the shawl was not as big as she'd envisaged.  The length was OK, but the depth made it quite a small shawl.  I have to admit that when I looked at the pattern and the yarn she'd used, I was a bit shocked that the yarn had cost £68!  Now, I know I'm probably a bit out of date with the price of yarns because I rarely buy any, I usually spin what I need, but this sounded quite a lot for a shawl.

She wants to knit another one but make it deeper so it covers her shoulders a bit better.  I said I'd search my stash and see if I had something she could use (I couldn't imagine her spending that amount on a shawl again, especially as she'd have had to buy an extra ball in order to make it bigger).  The problem with my stash is that it's mostly single balls of each colour, and she needed 2 balls for the main colour, 1 ball for the 2nd colour and a mini skein for the edge.  I couldn't find enough of one colour in 4-ply that she could use for the main colour.  So I offered to spin some for the project.

After spinning and knitting a couple of baby blankets using Falkland superwash, I had what I thought would be enough for this project, so I set to and started spinning.  I soon had 3 finished skeins, but when I measured them I realised that although there was probably enough yardage, there may not be!  I couldn't risk dyeing it, sending it to her and then she doesn't have enough.

I decided the best thing would be to choose one ball from my stash for the 2nd colour and then dye the Falkland to complement it.  

This is something I spun a while ago.  There's a bit of sparkle in there, but it doesn't show up in this photo.  I Facetimed my sister with various options, but she chose this green.  Then we had a dilemma - what colours do we dye the rest of the yarn?  I don't think either of us are very good with colours, but my big sis is definitely better than me!  We ummed and ahhed for a while and didn't really come up with anything, and then I had a "lightbulb moment" . . . I'd forgotten about the merino I spun during the Tour de Fleece in July. 

I had 4 balls of 4 ply, dyed with onion skins, just waiting for a project.  Two of them would be enough for the main colour.  We thought they complemented each other nicely.  So, I just had to dye a mini skein of the Falkland for the edging colour.  She decided on dark green for that.

When I rooted out my acid dyes, I only had a pale green, so I added in a bit of dark grey and hoped for the best.  I think it turned out OK.

So, after getting all excited about finally spinning something especially for a project, I ended up only using 35g of it!!

This is the final line-up for the shawl :

Hopefully she'll send a photo when it's finished and I'll put it on here.

Now, what am I going to do with 692 yards of 4-ply superwash Falkland?  I suppose it will go into the cupboard and wait for a project!

Tour de Fleece 2019

This post is a little overdue - I'm neglecting my blog again!!  Yes, I did take part in the Tour de Fleece again this year.  I think I'd find it hard not to.  I even managed to spin on my spindle when we were away in Switzerland for 5 days.

This was what I'd managed to prepare before the Tour started.  At the top is a bucketful of my home-grown cotton, the purple on the left is a blend of merino/Falkland and kid mohair dyed with logwood chips, the tub in the middle is leftover kid mohair (logwood dyed), the yellow on the right is merino dyed with apple leaves and twigs, and the other two are mohair dyed with madder.  The one on the left is dyed with the water from pre-rinsing the roots (I just couldn't bring myself to throw it away as there was lots of colour in there), and the one on the right is the first dip in the madder solution.

So, I started with the purple rolags, this was a nice blend and spun really well.  It was about 80g I think.

For the second ply I blended some of the kid mohair (madder and logwood) on my carders to make some two-coloured rolags.  I just love that pretty pink at the bottom!

The two bobbins ready to ply :

and the finished skein.  The toilet roll holder shows how much of the purple was left after plying . . . not much!

Next up, I started spinning the yellow rolags (merino dyed with apple leaves and twigs)

There actually wasn't a lot of this, maybe 50 to 60g, so I rooted around in my cupboard and found these rolags for a 2nd ply.  This is some merino I dyed a few years ago and haven't gotten around to spinning until now.

These were a bit "neppy" to spin, and I started off picking them out every time I came across one, then I thought, oh what the heck, it'll add a bit of texture!

Unusually for me, I prepped some more fibre to make a 3rd ply.  I normally just stick to 2-ply (unless I'm chain plying).  So, this is some Falkland dyed with dyer's chamomile :

At this point, I started to wonder if this yarn was going to work.  The one on the left (the merino dyed with lichen and dock seeds) was so very different.

I plied them together anyway, and was actually very surprised how well they did go together.

By now we were entering the 2nd week of the TdF and I started to spin my cotton.  I haven't spun any for quite a long time, and it took me a while to get going again.

I spent a few days on this, and then realized our Swiss trip was rolling up faster than I'd thought, and I didn't have anything prepared to take with me.  I'd already dyed some merino in the madder bath, so I combed that for spinning on my spindle.  Incidentally, I strained the madder roots out from the previous dye bath and put them in the blender with a bit of water to break them up a bit more.  That way I thought I'd get more colour from them.

We were visiting family in Switzerland because our nephew was having his 40th birthday, plus he got married in June so he decided to have one big party to celebrate both events. After the party we stayed with brother-in-law and his wife in their chalet half way up a mountain.

This is the view from their terrace - it's a bit hazy over the mountains so they weren't very visible.

I managed to spin all of the fibre by the morning we were due to leave, so I took our travelling day as one of my "rest days".

When we got home I combed up some Falkland.  This had been dyed in the madder bath after the merino came out.  So, including the "rinsing water dye", this was the fourth lot of fibre to be dyed with the madder roots.  This was to be a 2nd ply to go with the merino.

Ready to ply :

Oooops!  While I was plying, I couldn't understand where the strange scraping noise was coming from, or why the tension was all over the place, until I realized the end had fallen off the bobbin!  Luckily, the yarn didn't get too tangled and I was able to transfer it to another bobbin to finish plying.  Some of my Ashford bobbins are 30 years old this year, so it's not really surprising they're feeling their age!

Then, for the final sprint to the finish line, it was back to the cotton.

I plied what I'd managed to spin on the last day of the Tour.  I only had one bobbin of cotton, so I made it into a centre-pull ball and plied from each end.  Not so difficult a task if you keep your thumb through the centre of the ball so it doesn't knot up inside.

The cotton was finally dyed with woad from the garden (our Ravelry team is DIY and Dye, which means everything has to be prepared from raw fleece, with no commercially-prepared fibres being allowed, and then it has to be dyed.  Well, it can be dyed beforehand if you like, but at the end everything must have been dyed).

So, here's the finish line photo :

The final details are :-

The yellow is a 3-ply mix of merino/Falkland, one strand dyed with dyer's chamomile, one ply with lichen and red dock seeds, and the 3rd with apple leaves and twigs.
150g, 357 yards/329m, 14 wpi.
This was the only one that was 3-ply, the rest are all 2.

The pink/purple is merino/Falkland/kid mohair dyed with logwood chips and madder.
130g, 256 yards/236m, 14 wpi.

Pink was merino/Falkland dyed with madder.
60g, 159 yards/147m, 12 wpi.

And the blue was my home-grown cotton dyed with woad.
40g, 159 yards/146m, 18 wpi.

So, the end of my 7th (?) Tour.  Not sure about this, I may have joined in with another team the year before.

Sorry this is such a long post - next time I'll try and remember to post maybe at the end of each week.  If you've persevered down to here, go and make yourself a gin and tonic . . . you deserve it!

More Babies and Blankets

First of all, Happy New Year to all my readers, hope it's going to be a special one for you. Also, for all the spinners amongst you, Happy St. Distaff Day!!  This was the day that women, in general, went back to their labours after Christmas and New Year which included their spinning tasks.  Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I'm going to get any spinning time today, but I do have a few finished projects to show you.

This is the final photo of the blanket that I was knitting before Spinzilla.  Mara's blanket :-

This was delivered in October when we visited our new grand-daughter in Scotland.  She's a real cutie, but I can't show you photos - Mum and Dad are a bit sensitive about putting photos on the internet for which I can't really blame them.  Maybe when she's a bit older.

In the meantime, we had another grand-daughter arriving mid-December which called for . . . yes, you've guessed - another baby blanket!  Wingham's are doing a steady trade of super wash Falkland fibre to keep up with this lot!

I spun the yarn during Spinzilla because it was a good opportunity to get it done quickly. This time I chose Star Light Star Bright Baby Blanket by Anna Dillenberg Rachap.  It's a well designed, well laid out pattern which is easy to follow.  There are a heck of a lot of yarn-overs in there though, and I found it very easy to miss the odd one here and there and then waste a lot of time going backwards to put it right.  This is how it was looking after a few pattern repeats.  At this point it was actually going quite quickly, mainly because of the plain knitting in between the stars.

I worked on it for a few hours every evening, hoping to get it done in good time to send to Dubai before the baby arrived.  Unfortunately, baby had other ideas and was born a month early.  Mum had pre-eclampsia and the baby had to be delivered in a hurry, for both their sakes.  They called her Holly, because she was supposed to arrive at Christmas time.

After I finished the main part of the blanket, I had to decide whether to add the border or not.  When I looked back at project pages for other people who have made this blanket, quite a number didn't knit the border, preferring to leave the edge as is.  Although theirs looked pretty good without, I really did like the lacy border so it really had to be done.  This was knit separately to the blanket and then stitched on afterwards.  Easy peasy, I thought, it's only 16 stitches per row, I'll have it done in no time!!  In the end, this part ended up taking me longer than the blanket itself!  I worked on it continuously, every spare moment, for probably a couple of weeks.  Then I ran out of wool!!  Luckily, Wingham still had some of this fibre so I sent for some more, then spent time spinning, plying etc. so I could finish the thing.

Although I probably won't be doing this blanket again, I did enjoy it, and I'm really glad I made the effort to add the border as I think it really makes the project work.

Here's the finished blanket :-

I actually finished this before Christmas, but have been hanging on to it for a while as I didn't want it to go missing in the Christmas post, especially as it needs to go to Dubai and I know from experience that their post can take quite a while to arrive.  It will be sent very soon and I'll have everything crossed hoping it gets there in one piece.

Baby Blues

Recently I knitted this cute little baby sweater for a friend who's having a baby soon.  I still had some Falkland super wash yarn left after finishing Mara's blanket, so put it to good use.  The pattern is Jeudi by Elisa Di Fiore and was a very easy knit.  I think the original pattern is "vendredi", but it's written in French and I still can't cope with that.

Apparently it's going to be a boy, so a visit to the woad patch seemed in order.  I now have woad growing in a few different parts of the garden so I was able to harvest quite a bit from "volunteer" plants first, meaning I still have lots to harvest here:-

Woad is considered a pernicious weed in some parts of the world, but if they're as useful as this one I don't mind if it colonises the whole garden.  The farmer who owns the land all around us might not be too pleased if it spread everywhere though!

I won't bore you with photos of the dye process - I've posted lots in the past, so if you're interested in knowing how it's done you can find out in older posts.  I'll never tire of the magical transformation from yellow, through green to this amazing blue though.  In fact, it actually turned out a bit patchy, but hubby said it made it look more like old faded denim, so I can live with that.

This is the back view, which is equally cute.

For the buttons, I searched through my late mother-in-law's button tin which I inherited.  I think they're pretty old.  They've never been used, and were still stitched to the original cardboard.  They had a sort of faded bit in the middle which matches the patchy sweater! Perfect.  And I have two spare in case they're needed.

As usual, there was still some colour in the dye pot after the sweater came out, so I found a random skein of sheep's wool to put in there.  It's not ultra soft, but I think will go well in socks.

Spinzilla 2018

Well, who would've thought a year could go so fast.  October 1st was the start of the Spinzilla marathon spinning event - a whole week of spinning as much yardage as possible.

There was a lot of controversy last year over the way this event was run and quite a lot of people vowed they wouldn't do it again.  Especially as they were paying $15 each for the privilege and there was no proof of where this money was going (it was supposed to be a charity event).  I ummed and aahed a fair bit about whether I should join in this year or not, but finally decided to sign up again.  The team I spun with (DM Fibers Old School Spinners) were putting a team together again and, to be quite honest, I didn't want to be left out!

My little Spinzilla mascot after he'd had his head in the yoghourt pot!

Last year I managed to spin just over 4 miles which was far more than I imagined I could spin in a week.  I'm not a fast spinner!  My goal this year was to at least reach that amount, but hopefully exceed it.  Then, a few weeks before the event, friends in the UK phoned to say they were going to be in France and could they visit for a few days - slap bang in the middle of Spinzilla!  Well, what can you do?  We enjoy having friends come to stay so I thought I could just work through it.  Unfortunately, when you factor in essential preparations for their visit, it didn't quite work out that way!

My first project was 500g of Falkland Super Wash from Wingham Wool Work in the UK. This is for yet another baby blanket - there's another grand-daughter arriving mid-December so I'd better get busy!

This took 4.5 days, I think, to complete, giving a total singles yardage of 4,395.

Next, I had some batts I'd made using the leftovers from a prize I made during the Tour de Fleece.

TdF prize

I didn't have all the colours to make more exactly like the ones above, but I added in a few different colours and it turned out fairly similar.  These were going to be spun as one ply and I needed to find something to complement it for the other ply.

I thought these colours would go quite well, and roughly blended them on my combs, before starting to spin.

Unfortunately, the main colour was quite a strange texture - it was a World of Wool Woolly Wednesday special offer and I have no clue what it was, except it was cheap!!

The staple length was so short that when I was spinning it I could only draft about half an inch at a time.  This was obviously no use during a speed spinning competition, so I had to abandon it and choose something else.  I had managed 29 yards though, so that counts in the final calculations.

To be honest, this felt like spinning combing waste - the short fibres that are left stuck in the tines after removing the good fibres and I do wonder if that's what it is.  Floor sweepings for sure!

So, I picked out some black and red fibres to go with the other bobbin.  I would have preferred the grey, but this actually went quite well anyway.

The finished skein was not too bad at all - `I like the pops of colour here and there.  I showed this to Eric and asked him what he thought I should call it.  "Black pudding" he immediately replied.  "But it's not black" I answered.  Final retort : "Neither is black pudding".  I couldn't argue with that, so Black Pudding it is!

By now we'd reached day 7 and I needed a quick spin to finish off the week.  About a week before Spinzilla started I cleaned out my larder - this is a small room rather than a cupboard and it had become rather "disorganised" to say the least.  When I got to one of the top shelves, there was an unidentified box sitting there, in full view, which I just hadn't noticed before.

This is what I found when I opened it.  I bought this in February 2015, so goodness knows how long it's been sitting on that shelf.  It's a Build a Batt Box from Barber Black Sheep in Wales and I'd completely forgotten I'd ordered it.  Please don't ask what it was doing on a shelf in my larder for 3 years, because I have no clue!  The embarrassing thing is, I obviously haven't spring cleaned my shelves for quite a long time!!

I picked out a 100g bag of merino dyed in a gradient, started at one end, blended the colours a bit in between, and finished with the deep pink on the left.

This was a real pleasure to spin, I enjoyed every moment.  Most of this was spun in the afternoon, then the visitors arrived back from a few days away and took us out for a meal in the evening.  We had a really nice evening with lots of nice food and wine, getting home at about 10:30 p.m.  Back to spinning!  I quickly finished the spinning and then started to ply.  All my yarns so far have been 2 ply (apart from the Floor Sweepings which were left as a single), but to keep the colour gradient, I n-plied this one (making a 3-ply).  I think this is my favourite spin of the week - the colours are yummy, and it's squishably soft.

So, here are the final skeins :-

And the final calculations?  This lot amounted to 6,208.752yards . . . 3.53 miles!  I didn't reach last year's total, but it's actually not bad considering the interruptions I had this week.

Oh, and before I go - don't forget that BritSpin starts on the 11th October.  This is a brand new 4 day event which I would dearly have loved to join in with, but unfortunately (well, fortunately for us) we're going to be away I the camper van from tomorrow on a little trip to the west (Atlantic) coast here in southern France.  

Mara's Blanket

Early August (2nd) brought the arrival of my new step-grand daughter, Mara Valentina. She was a bit impatient to get here as she was supposed to be born two weeks later. Nevertheless, I was still way behind with this project for her.

When the two step-grandsons were born I made them both a blanket, the first one had blue elephants, and the second one had a celtic knot design, so I promised I'd make one for this wee one too.

I used super wash Falkland fibre (from Wingham Wool Work) for this so it can be washed more easily without felting, and spun it into a 2-ply.  One of the skeins was divided into three, and two of them were dyed in green and lilac.

Then came the job of devising a pattern.  The good thing with being so behind with this project is that by the time I started drawing something out, she had a name - Mara Valentina.  I decided to keep it simple and chose green for the "Mara" and lilac for the inside of the heart, which is going to be edged with bobbles.  I may add a little colour at the edge when I've finished, but not sure yet.  I avoided pink as I know that Mum doesn't like it, but she does like green so hopefully this will be OK.

I'm wondering whether to add a little accent of something in the top right hand corner.  I thought about a spider on a thread, but I don't want to give the poor girl a phobia! Thinking cap is still on for this one!

I've pinned the edge of this down to take the photograph because it's curling up otherwise. I'm hoping that if I crochet an edge all round it may lie flat.  Also, not sure whether to define the edges of the letters afterwards with a running stitch in green.  Hubby thinks I should edge it in the lilac, but I think that may be a bit too much.

We're going over to Scotland next month, October, for our first visit, so I need to get my skates on with this.  I was going to post it, but think I'd prefer to hand deliver.  I'll keep you posted on the progress.