Tour de Fleece Day 16

Day 16, I 'N' plied another bobbin for 442 mtrs of finished yarn:

I calculated what I have achieved since the start of Tour de Fleece 16 days ago:


I started with a 2.8 kg fleece.

979g of fibre hand combed
5460 mtrs singles spun
which gave me 1820 mtrs 'N' ply yarn
Yarn finished so far weighs 979g

I have another 192g combed fibre waiting to be spun
I just washed another 400g of fleece which will be combed once dry
I have 500g fleece left to wash/comb/spin

There's still 6 days of Le Tour to go, maybe I will get this fleece finished after all!

Tour de Fleece Days 12 & 13

Day 12 ~ ran out of combed fibre so had to comb some more.
Here's day 13:

Tour de Fleece Day 8 ~ Challenge Day

Day 8 was a challenge day, for me this meant taking a break from spinning the brown/grey half bred to continue working on spinning some very fine Polwarth singles:

I also washed 4 bags of fleece which is till drying, did a bit of combing and plied some of the brown half bred, which is also still drying. Today I hope to comb some more fibre and spin/ply more of the brown!

Tour de Fleece ~ Day 7

One week of Tour de Fleece is over already and I feel that I have achieved quite a bit.
The raw fleece volume seems to be steadily decreasing, it seems to take forever washing bag after bag yet there seems to be no decrease in the amount remaining. Today was the turning point for that.

I've also done a wee bit of dyeing ~ some silks and a bag of orphan fleece that I found while rummaging in the cupboards, I have no idea what it was but it was a mid brown colour ~ so into the dyepot it went along with some burgundy dye that I mixed up. I shall post pics once it rinsed and dried.

TdF day 7, here's my storm in a teacup:

At last I have 2 bobbins full so I may get to start plying that later today. Each bobbin has 260g of singles. In the meantime I'm washing and combing more of the fleece it as I'm about to run out of combed nests. It's a sunny, cold but blowy day here today, good for getting fleece dried.

Silk/merino lace weight, 100g cakes. The grey one is a gradient of violets to grey.

Tour de Fleece ~ Day 6

Here's yesterday's progress, I finally got some small skeins of finished yarn:

Such a dull, grey day so not very good light for taking photo's.

Tour de Fleece Days 1&2

Day 1 yesterday and most of the day was spent washing and combing fleece.
Day 2 today, I spent the morning and afternoon spinning, combing and dyeing a little more fleece. It's been a very unseasonably warm day ~ great for getting my fleece dried. Here's my progress of days 1 & 2 in pictures:

I started with a raw half bred brown/grey fleece, washing it in batches, hand combing then spinning. Alongside that I'm dyeing a white half bred fleece in different colours to comb and spin. Enjoying myself immensely, what a fibre-y few days it has been!

Finished Grettir Sweater and some Hand Dyed Sock Yarns.

I've been stuck at home for a while feeling sorry for myself, first an infection then the flu. But, I have kept myself busy, here's what I made:

Yes, it's the Grettir Sweater that I mentioned in my last post. I really enjoyed knitting this and the Naturelle yarn was lovely to work with. I hand dyed one of my skeins a deep orange as I decided to go for a retro look in the end rather than choosing the grey tones that I originally planned.
The only thing modification I made to the pattern was that the neck ~ if knit as stated in the pattern, sat very wide and low. So I decreased extra stitches in the shaping of the neck area and knit a few extra rows for the neckband to make it sit higher. I love how the short row shaping makes the back of the neck sit higher.

I must be on the mend because yesterday I got the urge to get the dye pot out, a few more sock yarns to add to my stash:

My personal favorite is the maple toned one at the bottom of the pic, just loving the Autumn colours at the moment, but of course there had to be a purple skein in there somewhere!

















Here's my finished Plain & Fancy Socks:

Plain Socks with Fancy Yarn..

I haven't had the time to blog about anything for the past couple of weeks as I have a very poorly dog. Bella had no specific symptoms other than she was off her food a bit and seemed a bit unhappy and didn't want to go for walkies. Off to the vets for x-rays, scans and blood tests to discover she had 3 extremely large tumours on her spleen. She had a splenectomy the day after and has been recovering at home, she got her stitches taken out yesterday. Her diagnosis is large cell lymphoma, not good. Now we are just waiting for further tests to come back so we can decide on any further treatment or not.

On a lighter note, and as I've had plenty of knitting time while dog nursing,  I got some beautiful sock yarn a few weeks ago. It's one of those self striping/patterning yarns and has a silver thread running through it. The yarn is Opal Happy Mit Silbereffekt, the colourway is called Surprise. I've used Opal yarn many times for socks, it's so hard wearing and is machine washable with no adverse effects. So plain and simple socks for this as I want to show off the yarn to it's best advantage.

There are ways of making a very plain sock a little bit fancy with tiny details that will finish it off.

For example when picking up the slip stitches along the sides of the heel flap I always knit into the back of those stitches because they are quite large ~ in doing this you twist the stitch and tighten it up, so no more holes. I also tend to pick up an extra stitch at the very end of this row, at the junction with the start of the top of foot stitches, this avoids a hole and it's no bother to work an extra decrease round while shaping the gusset to get rid of the extra stitch:

The last row of green stitches that you can see in the pic are the picked up and twisted stitches, see how it closes the gap nicely whilst forming neat little x's all along the row?


















For the heel flap, a slip stitch heel is always my first choice.

Right side rows:   Sl1, K1, repeat across the row
Wrong side rows: Sl1, purl to the end of the row
















When grafting the toe, I make my kitchener stitches nice and loose ~ then go along the row to tighten them up carefully with a darning needle to match the tension of my knitting.

There you have it ~ a finished plain sock in fancy yarn. I'm hoping to motor through the second sock as there's something I'm really itching to knit:

The pattern is Grettir by Brooklyn Tweed.














This is what happens when I visit the wool shop when there's a sale on:

I'm going to use the Naturally Naturelle Aran weight in Bark for the body and Charcoal and cream for the yoke. I think I will have to dye one of the cream balls a light silver grey as a 3rd contrast colour. I fell in love with this yarn after knitting the bed socks with the DK version of it. It's very sheepy stuff, smells of lanolin and I love these natural colours.

I also bought more Earthwear possum sock yarn and some orange and grey 4 ply pure wool for a colour work hat and mitts set. Along with some Naturally Naturelle 4 ply in grey for a cardigan for myself.

Cupcake Success

Gingerbread cupcakes with lemon cream cheese frosting, for a birthday morning tea:

After the Bundt cake disaster the other day, well these little cupcakes came out just perfect. I piped the roses on top with a 2D flower nozzle and added a cube of crystallised ginger at the centre. The recipe is here.

I've been knitting bed socks to help out a friend who needs 40 pairs to gift to International Exchange Students. They are fairly quick to knit as they are made in DK weight wool and are all garter stitch, but the legs seem mighty long to me for bed socks, these will possibly be almost knee length. These are knit in Naturally 8 ply wool, I'm onto the second pair which are being knitted in grey Gotland wool. Nice T.V. knitting.

Quince Season & Overdyed Wool

It's quince season again, I'm not going to repeat last years post in which I described how I make quince jelly & membrillo paste, but I will tell you that I also tried something a little different this year, bottled quince poached in a honey and rose water syrup.

The 3 jars at the rear left of the photo are the bottled quince, the rest are the quince jelly. The membrillo is bubbling and spitting away as I'm typing, no doubt there will be a major clean up session later ha ha.













I'm considering using this tin to set the membrillo, however, do I brush the insides of the cups with glycerine to try to prevent it sticking, or do I line the cups with baking paper? The safest bet is probably the paper. The cups on this tin are deep and cylindrical, not like a muffin or cupcake tin, I think the finished membrillo will look like good if my plan works:

I overdyed some yarn last week. I bought it over 10 years ago and came across it while having a clear out/stash tidy. There was 600g, enough for a cardigan and it was a shame to throw it out as it's really good quality stuff. Debbie Bliss merino DK, I just really disliked the colour which was a very very pale baby blue. So I skeined it up, soaked it and overdyed it to a nice semi solid shade of deep hunter green:

I could have either gone green or purple with it owing to it's original colour, but I had a pattern already in mind and wanted to go with the green. I'm really pleased with how the dye job turned out. The cardigan is knit from the top down in one piece.

I still haven't finished the cowl, but only have about another 10 cm to knit so almost there with it.










Here's my Mother's Day Terrarium ~ I'm over the moon with this. I normally get flowers but it's so nice to receive something that will last much longer than a bouquet.

Cinnamon Rolls with Cream Cheese Glaze

I seem to be on a bit of a bread making drive at the moment. Last week Pitta breads, this weekend I made fruited buns and today cinnamon rolls. Here's the recipe, it's quite a long one, but most of the time you aren't actually doing anything:


For the rolls:
2/3 cup milk
1 package active dry yeast (or 2 1/4 tsp)
6 Tbsp unsalted butter, room temperature and cut into small pieces
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 tsp salt
1 large egg
3 cups plus 2 Tbsp high grade flour

For the Filling:
50g butter, melted
2 Tbsp cinnamon
1/2 cup soft brown sugar

For the Frosting:
100g cream cheese
50g soft butter
1 cup icing sugar, sifted
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Warm the milk and sprinkle the yeast over it, let it sit until it begins to get foamy. About 5 minutes

In the bowl of a stand mixer, stir together the butter, sugar, salt, and egg.

Fit the mixing bowl onto the mixer with the dough hook. With the mixer on the lowest setting, pour in the milk/yeast mixture and the flour. Increase speed to medium and let the dough knead for about 5 minutes until it forms a soft sticky dough. The mixture will seem quite wet at first, but will form a smooth soft dough once kneaded. If the mixture is too wet after kneading, add more flour a little at a time until a soft but sticky dough forms.

Let the dough rest, covered with a damp tea towel for 10 minutes.

Roll it out into a rectangle approx 15 x 10".

Brush with the melted butter and sprinkle over the brown sugar and cinnamon. You can add a cup of dried fruit at this stage if you like.

Roll the dough tightly into a large tube starting at the wide side. Pinch the dough shut to seal. Cut into individual rolls (approx 12) and place on a baking sheet or in a greased rectangular tin. I use dental floss for this, slide it under the dough and then pull both ends together and across each other ~ it will slice straight through it without compressing the dough or dragging out half of the filling.

Cover with plastic film and allow the rolls to rise for about 1 hour, until doubled in size. If you are making the dough a day ahead, cover the rolls in plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator. Remove from the refrigerator about 30 minutes prior to baking the next day. Preheat oven to 190ºC

Bake the rolls for 20 - 30 minutes, or until golden brown.

For the frosting/glaze ~ mix all the ingredients together and beat well. 

Spread the frosting over the rolls while they are still slightly warm.

Before rising

After 50 minutes rising

After baking

Ready to eat!













I've made some progress on my Callicarpa cowl,  I decided to add beads on only alternate mesh panels:

 ~ I can never seem to find a crochet hook with a small enough head when adding beads. So instead I use dental floss to add them quickly and easily. You can see from the above photo where this is going - slide the stitch off the needle then slide the bead down over the stitch and put the stitch back on the needle using the floss.

Finished Hand Spun Socks...

I got a wiggle on with the socks last night and got them finished off.  I soaked them for 15 minutes and gently blocked them overnight. I'm really happy with them and enjoyed the whole process:

The socks took 75g of the merino yarn. There are more of these socks in my future, I can feel it!

Handspun Socks.... Same but Different!

Carrying on from my previous post, I decided to knit socks with my hand dyed superwash merino that I fractal spun:

I'm surprised at how they have turned out, how the colours shift and that the two socks are so different yet they go together nicely as a pair.

I'm almost at the finish line with these, the yarn has been beautiful to knit with and it gives me great satisfaction knowing that a week or so ago this was a bag of undyed combed merino top and is now almost a pair of warm and smooshy socks.

I decided on plain socks as I wanted to show off the colour play rather than go for a fancy pattern. Sometimes with handspun it's best to let the fibre/yarn do all the talking ~ less is more.