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Tuesday 21 June 2016

Grasping the Nettle

Recently we had a little holiday in our camper van in Spain.  We travelled all around the San Sebastian area for 10 days.  Obviously, I took my new spinning wheel (Louet Victoria) as this was bought specially for camping.  I also took the last of the batts that I bought at Le Lot et la Laine festival which consisted of merino, alpaca, silk, soy, silk noil (I think), nettle and a bit of sparkle - 100g in all.  When I bought this it was the nettle content that attracted me, never having spun nettle before.  Well, the colours were really nice too!



I also took some black alpaca to mix with it, mainly to extend the amount of wool I'd have when finished, but also because I planned to ply it with a strand of black alpaca and I thought it would blend better.  The pale colours plied with a strand of black alpaca would have given a definite barber-pole effect that I wanted to avoid.



Ready for plying :-



The finished skein -


240g, 415yds/383m


This is how it looks knitted, but I'm considering using this for my first adventure with my weaving loom - probably a scarf for hubby!




A little post script : what do you think of this gorgeous little church we found in the mountains :-




There was a wall of glass pieces on each side




which didn't look particularly spectacular until you got close up to it




but was really spectacular from the inside :-




As the church was locked up I had to take a photo through the bars on a little window in the door.



It must be lovely to sit in that little church with the sun streaming through all those little pieces of glass.

2 comments:

  1. Do you get a feel for the different fibers at all in such a blended mix?

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    1. Not totally. I could probably split it into 3 : merino/alpaca, silk/soy, and silk noil/nettle, though the nettle was a bit coarser.

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