The last few days have been an absolute whirlwind. There's been the end of school:
Dev's first day and last days of primary school.
There's been dyeing and packing of this month's Spinning Box contribution,
Under the Big Top on Suffolk
And this month's Lab Goddess Fibre Club.
And there's been finishing up a whopping load of Tour de Fleece spinning.
Now we're off to the States for some good holiday with family. I hope everyone is having a lovely summer, and see you soon!
Last Saturday was the launch of the Tour de Fleece, as well as a little bike race in France. I went down to the wire on setting goals for myself for this year's event, but finally I put some down in writing last Thursday:
1) Spin up the May and June fibre club colourways.
2) Spin up at least 4 bundles of my Hello Yarn fibre stash into yarns for sale.
3) Spin up at least 2 bundles of HYFC into yarn for me.
Since then, I've added Goal #4: Spin up the 2016 Tour de Fleece colourways on the appropriate days. Since today is Stage 4, that means I've been spinning up Rosé d'Anjou. This is going to be a fractal 2-ply, and here's the first ~1.5 oz done.
As for the other goals? Well, I've finished 3 oz of Hello Yarn merino into singles that will need to be fulled and finished. I also finished off my Lab Goddess Fibre Club Cortus on Wensleydale, which I started spindling a looooong time ago, so I've crossed off 1 bundle from Goal #2 and one bundle from unlisted goals. Or something like that...
Here's the first three days in order:
Day 1: Damp Earth on Merino from the Hello Yarn Fiber Club
Day 2: Cortus Wensleydale from the Lab Goddess Fibre Club
Day 3: Started Critter Falkland from HYFC
Please feel free to come join Team Porpoise Fur on Ravelry - any and all spinning projects are welcome and will be heartily cheered on, but to be eligible for prizes, you've got to spin some Porpoise Fur.
This month's colourway was inspired by Augusta Ada Byron King, otherwise known as Ada, Countess of Lovelace, a mathematician and computer pioneer from the nineteenth century.
Enchantress of Number on 60/40 merino/flax
Ada Lovelace was the only legitimate child of Lord Byron, the man for whom the phrase "mad, bad and dangerous to know" was coined. She never really knew her father, as her parents separated when she was one month old. Her mother, in an attempt to prevent her child falling prey to the madness that haunted her father, pushed Ada toward mathematics and logic. The result was a woman who, at the age of 17, formed a life-long friendship with Charles Babbage, the father of computers. Her work with Babbage focused around his Analytical Engine, a general purpose mechanical calculator now considered to be the first computer. Countess Lovelace's notes on the Analytical Engine and its function are the first example of a computer program, making her arguably the world's first hacker.
I originally had planned to do this colourway in a variety of neutral, semi-metallic shades, to evoke COMPUTER, but instead ended up using a portrait of Ada Lovelace as the inspiration for the colour palette.
Ada, Countess of Lovelace, painted by Alfred Edward Chalon
I appropriated the purple and burgundy shades of her dress combined with black, brown and grey from the veil for this month's dyeing. The base is 60% merino/40% flax, and spins up into a very interesting and different yarn. The flax gives a crunchy feel to the top while the merino lends softness and some elasticity to what would otherwise be a quite stiff yarn. Finishing and knitting make the yarn even softer.
Quarter 2 LGFC colourways: Enchantress of Number on 60/40 merino/flax (June), Blue Lias on Merino d'Arles (May) and Cacophany on Shetland (April).
There are still slots left in the next quarter's Lab Goddess Fibre Club which will ship out in mid-July. For anyone outside of the UK or EU, the exchange rate is definitely in your favour, and I ship world-wide!
Last month marked our seven year anniversary of moving to the UK from Houston, TX. The past year has been something of a challenge for us, as we've struggled with deciding if we are staying more-or-less permanently, or jumping ship and going back to the States with no definite jobs or plans. Some of this was driven by Himself's dissatisfaction with his job, our worries about secondary school options for Devil, and questions about whether could find a job that would contribute significantly to the household income and give us a few more options. Because, let's be realistic: I am not getting rich selling fibre or knitting patterns or tech editing. Not many people are, and its been something my other half and I have been struggling with for quite a while now.
But over the past few months a lot of things have changed. Dev got into her top choice secondary school. Himself offered to take a package in a recent round of company layoffs and ended up with a promotion instead, one which is addressing many of his concerns and giving him new opportunities, so he's a lot happier with his job. And last week I was offered a job on a new career path, one that uses my scientific training and background but is new and very exciting And last, but by no means least, we're gaining British citizenship.
All of these events coincided with a fibre challenge with my June contribution to the Spinning Box, a sampler scheme just for hand spinners. Each month there's a specific theme, and June's theme was "Natural".
Now anyone who's spent any time around here knows that I don't really do "natural" colours in the undyed sense, so this theme put me in a bit of a quandry. Finally inspiration struck: I have a pile of lovely washed brown Corriedale fleece that I've been meaning to card, along with a bag full of washed BFL locks. And since I've been thinking about adding batts to the Porpoise Fur line up for a while, so I decided to do an initial venture into carding with some natural coloured batts.
Corriedale/BFL batt in progress
While happily carding away, I had a small epiphany: instead of thoroughly blending the two fibres together as I originally intended, I tried carding them in three layers: one layer of brown Corriedale sandwiched between white BFL. As I peeled the batts off of the carder, I had sudden visions of a wild variety of such batts - semisolid outer layers with brightly coloured and unexpected insides, dark layers around colours that would peek through in the finished yarn, varied combinations that would create unexpected finished yarns.
Having spent some time playing with the carder, and working with a couple of other colour options, I'm thrilled to announce the launch of a new product at Porpoise Fur: Victoria Sponge Batts. Named for the resolutely British cake, to celebrate my new status as an official Brit, these batts will be available in small batches from the next shop update. There won't be repeated colourways as such for these, unlike the dyed tops; I'm going to use this product as an opportunity to really step outside my usual recipe-driven process and just play with colour. Lots and lots of colour. I hope you'll join me on this new adventure - I think it's going to be amazing!
Shetland Victoria Sponge Batts - Sponge: natural brown/grey, Jam: three shades of blue
So we went away for the Bank Holiday weekend, and on the Friday I found myself in a bit of a quandry: I had finished my current portable WIP (the Coffee Date Shawl by C. C. Almon), had a test knit on the go that turns my hands blue (not suitable for travel knitting) and was facing the prospect of lots of time in the car coupled with a weekend away from the real world with No Knitting Project! Clearly the endtimes were near...so I boldly rallied forth and,
picked up a crochet hook.
This may seem a bit off piste, but I do crochet, and clearly my newly rediscovered fascination with crochet (as detailed in a recent Yarn in the City Podcast episode) has not gone away. I started making Bear's Rainbow Blanket for Dev not long after finishing a Sock Yarn Blanket for Boo, using the left over scraps of fingering weight yarn and some gorgeous alpaca Himself brought me from Peru many years ago. It was the perfect project to take up north with us - small pieces, easy to pick up and put down, and also very gratifying - one center takes me about half an hour, ditto for the edging.
Over the course of the weekend, I played Yarn Chicken both successfully and unsuccessfully,
Crocheted with yarn matching the Wee Ridiculous Dog,
And managed to finish a pile of squares, leaving only a few left before assembly can start. Eldest is suitably pleased!
And the frenzy has continued. There's a ripple baby blanket happening for one of Himself's work colleagues (pattern from Lucy at Attic24) and last night I swatched for the Kippen Cardigan by Kat Goldin.
And got gauge...will miracles never cease?
