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.

Eeeeeek!!! A Steek!

A number of weeks ago, I found an abandoned project bag in my cupboard which contained the body of a v-neck sweater, but no sleeves.  I honestly don't remember when I started this, but I thought it was time to finish it.  I had no clue which pattern I was following at the time, so a bit of research was needed.  Turns out it was the Simple Summer Tweed Top Down V-Neck by Heidi Kirrmaier.

I'd chosen three yarns that really went together quite well.  The first was a World of Wool Botany Lap Waste mix which I spun in March 2015, and if I'd had enough, I would just have used this, but there wasn't quite enough so I found another to complement it.

Botany Lap Waste Mix

The second was spun in January 2016.  This was made up of 1 ply pure Cashmere (from Hilltop Cloud in the UK), and 1 ply "Extasy" by Faerie Fibre here in France (Merino, Tussah Silk, Bamboo and Stellina).

Faerie Cashmere

Last but not least, I chose this boucle which was spun during the Tour de Fleece in July 2015.  This is my first (and so far only) attempt at boucle.  It's made up of mohair, alpaca and tussah silk.

TDF Boucle

It didn't take long to knit up the sleeves, but then I decided to put a rib on the bottom and round the neck.  You can maybe see the boucle in between the bands of colour, I just knit one row to separate them as I knew I didn't have much of it.

Finished Sweater

When I'd finished, and tried this on, I really wasn't happy with it.  It just didn't do me any favours at all - the colours were fine, it was maybe just the shape (or, more to the point, mine!!)

I plucked up all my courage, and did something I swore I'd never try (scaredy cat!) . . . a steek . . . eeeeek!!!!

On to the internet I went and looked up "how to do a steek".  There were a few different methods but I liked the crochet one best.  This is where you find the centre stitch and crochet the right side of it with the left side of the next stitch, all the way down the sweater. Then you start at the bottom and crochet together the left side of the centre stitch and the right side of the next stitch, all the way back up to the top.  You then have two lines of crochet which lean outwards away from each other.  There will be a "ladder" of yarn in between them, and this is where it has to be cut.

I have to confess that I didn't really have enough confidence in my crochet, mainly because of the boucle rows - I couldn't see exactly what I was doing when I picked up the loops from the two stitches and realised if I hadn't got it right, I was going to be in trouble. So I cheated!  I ran a sewing machined stitch down each outside edge of the crochet so that if the boucle failed, it would be held by the machine stitching.

Steek in Progress!

I didn't get a photo of the cutting part!  I was so nervous, I just wanted to get it done in one, and once it was cut, I just wanted to get the stitches picked up so I could finish the thing off!  Anyway, it actually worked pretty well and I had no disasters, thank goodness.

The finished cardigan (unblocked as yet - apparently we're getting a few days of rain, so I'll do it when that's passed over) adorned with 2nd use buttons from my late mother-in-law's button tin, which I inherited.  She was the type who, if she bought something she really liked, she'd buy some more in different colours.  I have to say, I'm glad she did, because I really like the mix of different colours and I think they go perfectly with the cardigan.

Handspun Llevant

The end of October saw the arrival of a large (1kg) bag of Botany Lap Waste from World of Wool.  I treat myself to one of these every so often and in October it was on special offer.  When I opened the package I have to admit I was rather disappointed in the colours I received.  There's no choice - you get what you get!  About 60% of this package was made up of various browns.  I don't do brown, it drains all the colour from my face and makes me look as though I'm ready to snuff it any minute.

Not to be beaten, I thought I might be able to alter the colour of the fibres if I blended them with other shades.  I mixed all the browns on my drum carder and then blended the lot with various white and cream fibres I already had.  I managed to tame it to a colour that I thought I might be able to wear, but just to be sure, I then took a third of it and blended again with more whites/creams.  I ended up with 2 shades of brown, one of which was more of a grey/beige.

I spun these separately and finished up with 2 skeins of the paler colour, and 2 skeins of lightish brown, 410g, 1134 yds, all 14 wpi (4 ply, or fingering weight).

I chose a pattern, Isabell Kraemer's Llevant, but chose to knit it in graded stripes, starting with the lighter colour which would be next to my face.

I really like this pattern - fairly simple, but with a nice bit of detail at the neck, and 2 little buttons at the back.

Detail at the front of the neck

Little button band at the back

This is a top-down sweater, and I made quite good progress until I got to about waist level and realised it was just too big (yes, I did swatch before I started, but with handspun there's always a bit of variation in the yarn, and also, the sweater is an A-line and I need to have something a bit more fitted at the waist).  The bust area was OK, so I ripped back to there and then added some waist shaping.  The only other alteration I made was the hems of the sleeves and body which were rolling up more than I liked.  I changed to 5 rows of seed stitch which solved the problem nicely.

I finally finished just before Christmas, on 22nd December, so it's taken me a really long time to photograph and blog about it.  Still, better late than never.  Here's the finished item :-

I don't think this is ever going to be my favourite sweater in the world, mainly because of the colour, but it's warm and I needed a new warm sweater for winter.  Just in time too - apparently we've got snow forecast for tomorrow, first time in 2 years!

Dyeing with Madder

More TdF prep going on here.  This time with madder root.  I've dyed with this many times before but the intensity of the colours I get always takes me by surprise.

The top right hand side is the first dip, using Falkland again, and on the left are some rolags I've already carded.  The bottom right is the second dip, so still a fair bit of usable colour, and the bottom left is the third dip.  I really like this pale, delicate pink.  After the third dip the dye bath was completely clear, even though the dye stuff was still in there - I think I can call this exhausted and throw the rest away!

I've been using Falkland for all my dyeing this year because eventually I hope to have enough to make a sweater with all the different natural dyes I can manage.  The beauty of natural dyes is that they all seem to go together, I've never had two colours clash.

So, only one day before the Tour de Fleece begins . . . I'd better get back to my carding!

Alpacarama

Bailey is six months old today!!  How did that happen?

His fleece is getting quite long now, and messy!  He's changed a bit since this photo was taken :-

Mum, as usual, looks on adoringly :-

. . . or was it the carrots she'd spied?

They're all going to get a bit of a shock next week though as Rob is moving both babies away from their mothers.  They're both still feeding from them, but they really don't need it any more so they're going into a separate field with Aunty Hope.  Both mothers are quite thin at the moment, so it'll give them chance to build themselves up again.  Can't imagine it'll be popular though!

The blog has been silent again for a while.  Mainly because I've had no progress to show you.  My tweed sweater is sitting untouched, and the spinning isn't finished.  That's because Tammy (who lives at the alpaca farm) received an order for 600g of fine alpaca handspun.  That's quite a lot for her to spin, so I offered to do half of it.  So far I've finished three 75g balls, and have just started the fourth.  They're working out at about 16 wpi which, I think, is classed as light fingering weight.

I need to spin some colour after this!

Tweed 3

The carding and spinning continues, well over half way now, and I've started knitting.  I trawled through patterns on Ravelry looking for a sweater or cardigan that would show off the handspun tweed, and finally came up with this one : 10 Days by Suvi Simola.  It's a top-down pattern, so that's something new for me, and has the advantage that I can just keep knitting until I've used up all the yarn.  If there's enough, it may end up as a sweater dress.  We'll see!

This is as far as I've got so far, almost to the point of separating out for the sleeves, and I've used about a quarter of the second ball of wool :-

I really like the way the tweed is turning out; I'll definitely do more in the future.  Here's a close up showing the different colours :-

The nice thing about spinning a tweed is that you can use up lots of bits of different coloured fibres that wouldn't be enough for a project otherwise.  I've got lots of those!

Tweed 2

Yesterday I managed to squeeze in a bit of time during the day to start carding the fibre for my next ply.  I've cut down on the number of passes through the drum carder to 4 rather than 6 so expect to get through this lot a bit faster.

The colours aren't quite true in this photo - the pink isn't pink at all, it's a dark mauve. Also, I decided to put some more white in with the fleck colours, just because!  I won't bore you with lots of drum carder photos this time; the mauve and white at the top went through twice, then the colours were added and they went through twice as well.  The result looked quite promising :-

Yesterday evening was spinning time!  I spun these three batts and decided I had enough to ply my first skein.

The colours in this photo are much truer than the ones above.  I really like how this is turning out.

For plying, I used my Ashford Traveller, mainly because that gives me bobbins of about 80-100g.  I wasn't sure how my ball winder would cope with larger amounts.  I'm amazed at the difference in size between the Aura bobbins and the Ashford ones.  I'd expected to be able to ply all of the smaller bobbin (above) with some of the first ply and get it onto one Ashford bobbin.  Nope!  It didn't fit.  This is what was left when I'd plyed one Ashford bobbin's-worth :-

You can hardly tell any yarn has gone from the left hand bobbin!

Anyway, the finished result (before washing) :-

I just wish I could get a better photo of the colours - this is far too pink.  It's also quite a bit thicker than I usually spin, but I must admit I didn't pay much attention to that - I wanted some texture as well as flecks so it's a bit slubby here and there.

Hope to try knitting a swatch of this as soon as it's dry, then I can decide which sweater pattern to knit with it.

Blogoversary the 4th!

Today is Dyeing to Spin's 4th birthday and I thought I'd show you something from the very beginning of my spinning days.

This cardigan is 25 years old.

I bought the raw sheep fleece the same afternoon that I bought my first spinning wheel and that was it - I was hooked!

So, how did all this come about?  Had I had a burning desire for years to learn to spin? No, my friend who went to the same pottery class, had been to a market the day before and there were spinners there.  She got talking to them and they invited her to go to their monthly meeting the next day in Ulverston, Cumbria.  We both went along the next morning and were shown how to spin and allowed to have a try.  I knew immediately it was something I'd do forever!

That afternoon we drove into the Lake District to a little spinning shop in Elterwater (don't know if it's still there - probably not) and I bought my first wheel, an Ashford Traditional.  I needed something to spin, so I bought some grey and some white fleece.  I have no idea which sheep breeds these were, I probably knew at the time but it's so long ago I've forgotten.

Anyway, back to the cardigan.  I carded and spun and carded and spun until I eventually had enough to make this.  The pattern is Slant Special from Nancy Vale's Knitwear book, although hers was a single colour.  The buttons I made myself at my pottery class - ceramic with a metallic glaze - and I'm amazed they've lasted this long.

The cardigan has a few moth holes now, it's a bit dated (specially the sleeves!) and it doesn't fit around my middle quite the same as it used to(!), but I think I'll probably keep it forever.  My very first spinning attempt :-

25 years on - both showing signs of wear!

Tour de Fleece 2013 - Day 1

Well, it's started!  This is what I've spun so far today :-

This is my Falkland wool which I've dyed rainbow colours using all natural dyes.  I'm spinning this fairly fine as I want to Navajo (or chain) ply it so I get 3 plies from one strand.  This keeps the colours separate.  So far I've spun the purple (logwood chips) and just started on the blue (woad).

I'm planning to knit this into a shawl when it's finished, probably a sideways one that shows all the colours grading into one another.

This afternoon we're going away in the camper van, but I'm taking my spinning wheel with me, hoping to spin a bit of Impala's fleece later on.  Should be back by tomorrow evening, if we don't stay another night.

Who Ate All the Flowers?

These are (or were) a clump of really nice narcissi called cheerfulness.  They flower just after the daffodils have finished, and smell superb.  Only, this year someone else took a liking to them before we got to enjoy them.  Every single flower has been eaten, every last one of them.

Birds?  Slugs?  They look like they've just been snipped off with scissors.  Maybe my cat's decided he prefers greens to mice.

My knitting project is going well and I'm up to armhole level.

We're off to the Med. tomorrow in the camper van, so I'll take this with me and see if I can get the sleeves done while we're away.  We decided to have a little holiday, only until Thursday, to go and buy some nice olive oil, maybe get some wine, and also we want to visit a company over there who sell solar panels for heating water.  We get a lot of sun here, and it seems a shame to waste all that energy when we could at least be heating our water for free.  Then, when we get back, Eric should be starting on MY NEW KITCHEN!!  Can't wait.

Knitting Like Crazy

I'm knitting like mad at the moment, trying to get this sweater finished and wearable before the weather gets too warm.  The past few days have been a bit on the cool side, but by next weekend we're expecting much higher temperatures.  Will it be finished in time?

Here's where I am at the moment, so not holding out much hope :-

This is a really nice pattern, Autumn's End, from an e-book called Botanical Knits by Alana Dakos of Never Not Knitting.  As I'm not sure how to put a link on here to the pattern page on Ravelry, you'll just have to look it up yourself!  The book is lovely, all the patterns are based on woodland, trees and leaves.  It's unusual to find a knitting pattern book where I like more than 2 or 3 patterns, if that, but I love all of these.  It's worth having a look.  The book hasn't been released in print yet, it's due in May I think, but if you pre-order the book you will receive the e-book free immediately so you can get on with it straight away.

This photo shows (not very well actually!) the side panel which is where all the shaping is carried out.  It carries on all the way up the raglan shaping from the sleeve tops to the neck.  I'll show you more as I progress.

The yarn is hand-spun (of course!), but I really don't know what it is.  It's more of the fibre I received in a World of Wool mixed bag of Botany Lap Waste (floor sweepings!).  There's definitely some merino in there, plus either bamboo or milk protein fibre or banana fibre, but really it's guesswork.  Who cares, it turned out really soft and wearable and that's all that matters.

I wouldn't normally have used a multicoloured yarn for this pattern because it does tend to blur the detail, but I couldn't wait to start one of the patterns from this book, and this yarn which I'd just finished spinning, was just the right thickness and quantity.

OK, back to the needles!

Cardigan

Finally finished my cardigan while we were away on holiday.  I particularly wanted to have it finished for when we were in Switzerland as I knew it would be pretty cold up there in the snow.

A view from the back :-

I think this is going to become my favourite cardigan as I've hardly had it off since I finished it.  The blue is merino and the coloured wool is 50% merino/50% mohair which I dyed with acid dyes, all hand-spun.  I was a bit concerned about the main colour as it's turned out to have quite a lot of orange in there, which is not really the best colour for me. Putting in the stripes of blue has toned it down quite a lot and I'm much happier with it.

Once I'd finished the knitting, I realised I needed some buttons, so off we went into Basel city to look for some.  Anna had looked on the internet and found a shop which specialised in buttons - definitely the place to visit.  Anyway, I chose some blue oval shaped ones which I quite liked, and picked out eight of them.  Then I asked how much they were and nearly fainted.  They were going to cost 32 Swiss francs (about 28 euros or 25 GB pounds) - I was absolutely flabbergasted!  That was far more than the cardigan had cost to make.  I apologised, and put them back into the display drawer and beat a hasty retreat.  I don't think the shop assistant was too pleased though; she couldn't understand the problem!  We then went to a department store and I bought the buttons for 5 Swiss francs (that was for 8) - much better!

What's On the Needles?

It's been a while since I showed you any knitting, even though I have been getting on with something.  This is going to be a cardigan, at last!

Eighteen months ago it was going to be a sweater dress, and I managed to get about halfway up the body, didn't like the way it was going, and left it.  Previously, it had been started as a cardigan and I didn't like that either!

So, this time it's going to get finished.  And I am happy with the way it's going now, so let's hope that continues because I don't want to have to rip it back again.

I'm using handspun for this - the multicoloured yarn is 50% merino, 50% mohair, and the blue is just merino.  I'm not a pretty sight whilst knitting this - because the mohair sheds and makes me cough, I have to wear a face mask, which is also hot and itchy.  I'll be glad when it's finished!

Tammy's New Sweater

Remember this?

This was Tammy's very first ball of wool, spun on my spare Ashford spinning wheel.  She was (quite rightly) very pleased with herself.  She's kept on spinning over the summer months, and even bought her own spinning wheel last month.

She's even more pleased with herself now, as she's turned the wool into this :-

her very first hand-spun sweater!

You'd better start on your floor sweepings next Tammy!

Catching Up

Posts have been a bit sparse on here of late, not because I've not been doing anything worth writing about, more because there's just been too much going on.  So, here's what's been happening lately to keep us so busy.

There were gigs to be played :-

Sud Rock Festival

Look at the size of that stage!

Jeff, the bass player was to the right, Steve in the centre, Eric left, and Geoff the drummer is just visible in the background!  It's got to be the largest stage Eric's ever played on.  They had sound engineers too:-

and their own air-conditioned porta-cabin kitted out with settees, cool drinks etc.


The next day we went to visit Sarah and Paul of La Maison des Chameaux, to (finally!!!!) deliver her sweater.  I was a bit worried whether it would still fit her, as she's lost weight since we last saw her.  Luckily, she likes them "sloppy"!

We had a fabulous lunch with them outside in the shade (ankles got bitten to death though!), and ogled their kittens,

Basket of Fun!

My favourite

Their mother was killed on the road last week, so Hershey the dog has adopted them and regularly gives them a good clean and keeps them in order.

She's very protective of them, and sees off any other inquisitive cats.

As usual, it's impossible to visit Sarah and not come away with something.  Like half a ton of camel, llama, alpaca and sheep's wool!

I don't have enough lifetime left to spin all of this!


The cotton bolls are growing like mad - can't be too long now before they start to open.

They're still flowering too

These are such pretty plants, even if you're not interested in spinning the cotton.


This was a little dyeing project I did a while ago.  I found lots of these red dock seeds in and around the garden, and thought there must be some potential for colour.  So I collected them, just put the seeds in a pan of water, and soaked them for a day or two.

The dye was quite a deep colour and I was hopeful it may give a reddish orange.  I mordanted some fleece with alum and cream of tartar and heated it up slowly in the dye bath.  The results weren't quite what I'd expected, but it's still a nice colour.  That's it on the right below, next to a second-dip in the madder dye bath.

2nd dip madder on left, red dock seed on right

My current knitting project, the Buds of May shawl, has reached a standstill - I'm stuck! I'm about 60% through, and the pattern has become quite ambiguous and confusing.  So it's sitting in a bag, abandoned, until I manage to find some time to sit and work it out. This pattern would definitely not suit a beginner.  No photo, because I'm pretty disgusted with it at the moment.


Finally, the garden is producing lots at the moment.  I harvested this lot yesterday.

Yes, there are 26 cucumbers there!  Some of these will be pickled in jars, hopefully today, and I think some chilled cucumber soup is in order.

A few days ago I bottled 15 jars of tomatoes, and the next lot are ready for processing. Then yesterday I was given a large bucket of yellow plums, so they need bottling today too.  Maybe it would be a good idea to get out of bed and get on with it!!