Holiday stash enhancement

So, after all my agonizing over what knitting projects I was going to bring on vacation, and worrying about whether it was going to be enough, I probably just shouldn't have bothered.


I may have mentioned in the past that my parents' house is not very far away from Spunky Eclectic. On Tuesday afternoon, it was raining, so JoAnna and I went on a little mini-yarn crawl. First up was Amy's lair of wooly goodness, where I had a bit of a problem showing any restraint whatsoever.

Wool-flax in Lobster - I've been wanting to try this fiber blend for ages, and am really looking forward to it.

Some lovely, squooshy Targhee in "Bunny Kisses" and South African Fine in "Cowering Blueberry",


6 oz of some gorgeous Panda ("Winged Insects") that is destined to become a shawl,

and four cones of Cottolin for some weaving.

Then we headed up Route 1 to Romney Ridge Farm, a place I had never heard of before but which popped up on Knit Map. We had a fabulous time chatting with Kelly (the dyer/shepherdess) and I came home with some of her yarn in the colorway "Cranberry Bog".


In fact, it was so irresistible that I wound it up yesterday and cast on for an entrelac cowl.

Finally, we headed back home via Halcyon, where I picked up something that is going to keep me busy for a very, very long time:

I am sorely tempted to buy a couple kilos of Falkland and work my way through this book from beginning to end, trying all the variations she describes. I think it would make me a much better spinner, and be huge fun. But I've got to make a list of all the yarns first - I think it's going to be a huge number!

So that's it from the East Coast of the US. Hopefully next week I'll have a new cowl, and a few more posts before I head off into the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District. Summer vacation sure is fun!

Tour de Fleece 2013: The Final Reckoning

The stats:
1615 yds/30.6 oz total finished yarn spun.
783 yds of 3-ply, for 2349 yds of singles.
832 yds of 2-ply, for 1664 yds of singles.

Total singles length: 4013 yds, 3.7 km, 2.3 miles spun over 23 days.

The yarns: top left corner is 607 yds/14.4 oz of 3-ply bulky black Shetland, spun from drum carded batts, from a fleece that I bought at Wonderwool Wales this past April. This was my second fleece-to-hadnspun-sweaterlot I've done for Tour de Fleece - my first was last year, and it was a total failure. I credit this year's success to the fact that I was able to borrow a drum carder, which made the fiber prep so much easier! The finished yarn is soft and squishy, and is going to make a really cozy sweater. I'm hoping there's enough yardage for a full jumper, but we'll see! Top down sweater knitting is going to be my friend on this one.

Circling around to the right side is my project specific spin: Hello Yarn Finn in "Winter Storage"

I split the multi-colored top into 6 groups and spun a 2-ply sport/fingering weight to knit Brenda's Now in a Minute shawl. I think I might have to cast on this week. It's lovely soft stuff, 590 yds/7.8 oz - I'm about 10 yds short of the amount called for in the pattern, but I think it will be ok. We will see...

Next up: I had to take a break in the middle of the never-ending Shetland spin to do something with color, so I spun up a bag of ends of my own Euglena Suffolk.

One skein of 2-ply, 229 yds/3.3 oz, and one mini-skein of chain ply from the left over singles. It's about 14 wpi, so fingering weight, and is going to make some seriously awesome green socks.

The final yarn, singles started on Thursday, yarn plied and finished on Saturday:

Spunky Eclectic Bluefaced Leicester in "Autumn". I bought this top in a whirlwind stash enhancing trip to Amy's shop in August 2009, and it's been marinating in my stash ever since. I've got one more braid left from that trip, so I think I'll need to be stocking up again next month when we visit my parents.

I managed to make a collage for every day I spun during the Tour, and I've uploaded them all to a flickr set here if you're interested.

My only TdF letdown this year? I didn't manage to get as much spindling done as I wanted to.

I only managed to get through 10 gr (of 78 gr) of cashmere carding waste. But I've made a good start on it, so I'm going to keep trucking!

So how did your Tour de Fleece come out? Did you meet your goals? And are you going to keep spinning? My wrist is due for a bit of a rest, although spindling is ok, so I think I'm going to get back to that knitting thing and start using up some of this new stash. 

Baptismal hedgie

Last weekend, I went to the first christening I've been to in approximately 30 years. This being an English christening, I was, of course, a bit concerned about the proper etiquette of gifts. So off I toddled to the John Lewis page of christening gifts.

Blergh. What a load of unnecessary and unispired rubbish. Plus, £95 for a sterling silver box for a lock of hair? No. Just...no.

By this time it was Wednesday, and time was getting short to come up with a gift before Saturday. It will come as a surprise to no one that I ended up grabbing the knitting needles and a bunch of scrap yarn, and came up with this adorable little creature, hiding in the barn Himself built:

Who's that?

Why, I do believe it's one of Mrs. Tiggywinkle's relations...

Be brave little guy, come on out...

Pattern: Knit Hedgehogs from the Purl Bee blog.
Yarn: leftover Cascade 220 from my Christmas slippers and some Knitpicks WotA Sport in natural, both held doubled
Needles: US 10.5/6.5 mm and US 8/5 mm
Start/finish: 5 June 2013-7 June 2013 (it took that long because I had to spin/dye some bulky weight for the eyes and nose).
Comments/mods: I changed the yarn weight and the needle size to fit what I had in the stash, but knit it as written. Lovely, quick little gift option, even if Himself pointed out that it looks more like an armadillo...

I suspect there will be more of these in my future, since Boo found it awfully hard to let this one go!

Fiber Friday: Welsh Clouds

A few months back, I picked up some of Katie's handcarded, dizzed gradient roving at Unravel, and I'd been looking for the perfect project for it ever since.

When Brenda's new shawl pattern popped up in the most recent issue of Knitty, I was pretty sure I'd found that project. So I sat down and treated myself to spinning up this fabulous fiber.

Fiber: Hilltop Cloud Gradient Roving in "Peacock", 30% Shetland/50% merino/20% Tussah silk (she's got more available - go now!).
Spun/plied: 15:1 on ST Lendrum
Stats: 233 yds/100 gr, or approximately 1065 ypp. Also known as DK-to-light-worsted weight.

This fiber was an absolute dream to spin. The Shetland and the silk more then make up for the merino (not the most interesting fiber to spin IMHO). There were four braids with the same color progression, so I spun the singles with two braids held together, occasionally concentrating on one or the other to get the colors finished at the same time. I then plied the two singles together and ended up with only a few yards difference at the end. Result!

Not the most even, consistent spin I've ever done, but boy was it enjoyable. The final yarn is soft, bouncy and elastic, with just a bit of shine. I think it's going to make an incredibly drapey fabric, which is perfect.

But (and you knew there was a but coming, didn't you? My plans never work out that well...), the shawl pattern in question calls for 600 yds of fingering weight yarn, not 200 yds of DK weight, so this lovely skein will have to become something else. What exactly remains to be seen, although Amy had been tweeting lots of pictures of some crocheted shawl gorgeousness that might work for this skein.

I'm still determined to do Now in a Minute in handspun...I think maybe I will have to bust up my 5 bags of Hello Yarn Winter Storage Finn and end up with a pink and green version...how very Preppy Handbook of me!

Unravelled

After (more-or-less) three weeks of being home with one or more of my children (first with sick child, then sick child plus irritated child on half-term holiday, then sick-but-now-well child on half-term holiday), I was feeling just a little bit familied-out. As in, my fondest dream was to crawl under the covers on the bed and never come out again.

Instead, on Sunday morning, I got up early-ish and went off to the lovely village of Farnham for Unravel (Alli made me do it...I think she just wanted a ride down there...).

We arrived in Farnham just before ten and wandered over to Farnham Maltings, a fabulous group of repurposed tannery-turned-brewery-turned-community-space that contains the event. We knew we were in the right place when the yarn bombing began to appear...






I have to admit that once we got inside I had total camnesia and neglected to take pictures of any of the stalls. Mostly because I was too busy making grabby hands at more or less everything. You know how it is...

In our whirlwind tour, we stopped at John Arbon, Fyberspates, Pom Pom Quarterly, rock+purl, Hilltop Cloud, Bigwigs Angoras, Skein Queen, The Natural Dye Studio, Blacker Yarns, The Threshing Barn, Aragon Yarns and vast numbers of other fabulous stands that were just spectacular. Thankfully, I did not come home with goodies from all of these people, but a number of them are going to be at Wonderwool, so I'll have another chance to get in trouble.

I told Alli in the car on the way down that I had a specific shopping list in mind.

1. A new bottle of Soak woolwash, since mine is almost gone.
2. A skein of water-inspired laceweight for an ongoing shawl design.
3. 1800 yds of natural colored bulky wool for a coat design.
4. Some superwash something or other for a ripple blanket for the Wee Nephew.

Exhibit 1:

Look at that, the first two items on my list taken care of at one stall. Result! To be fair, that colorway is more sand-inspired then water-inspired, but I did actually mean something rock colored vs. water colored. I blame low blood caffeine...

Exhibit 2:

Appears absolutely nowhere on my shopping list, but I went by Katie's stand and spent about twenty minutes trying to pick something out. That is 100 gr of gradient-dyed, handcarded, dizzed roving that is 30% Shetland, 50% merino and 20% Tussah silk. You can understand why I had a hard time walking away. I'm even willing to overlook the merino content, just because of the colors. Too beautiful.

Exhibit 3:

Also not on the list, you will note, but bunny fluff!!!!! SO FLOOFY AND SOFT!!!! The fact that I don't like wearing angora yarn is of no importance here because its SO GORGEOUS!!!!! The pictures of adorable and beautiful rabbits didn't hurt either. 

Smoke...sigh...it is such a fabulous shade of grey. I have no idea what I'm going to do with this beyond spinning the most fabulous hat/mitten lining yarn ever. 

So...I'm still on the hunt for the yarn, but am coming to the conclusion that I might be better off spinning the bulky yarn, and I'll break down on the superwash sometime soon, I have no doubt.

In conclusion, I highly recommend Unravel for a day trip or so. There's a lot to see packed into not very much space. I heard from most folks that it was unbelievably busy on Saturday and I can imagine that it might be a bit hard to move about with too many people, but it was fab. And if you're willing to get out of the venue for a bit, there is a really good French cafe on the high street. I can't remember the name, but they had good food and fabulous almond croissants. Yum!