A Finished Shawl

I finished my shawl at last. It's all blocked and dry so here are pictures, links and details:

Pattern: Lilac Lace Shawl

Yarn: Handspun merino from commercially combed & dyed top

Fibre from Wingham Wool Work

Colour: Yorkshire Rainbow

Wheel: Ashford Traveller

Spun very fine singles for a lace weight 2 ply yarn

750 mtrs 123g. (shawl used 747 mtrs)

Finished shawl (blocked) measures 200 cm wide x 110 cm deep at centre point.

Here's my wee Dora peeking round the corner

















I'm very happy with both the spinning and the shawl pattern. I would knit this pattern again, it's ideal for hand spun yarn. I didn't have quite enough yarn and knew I would run out ~ so on the pattern charts I worked row 203 then moved onto row 211 and did the maths to re-align the pattern repeats, this gave me a seamless transition into the final pattern band (for the points).

I've started making sample cards for all of my hand spun yarns, I never used to bother keeping records but I really think it's quite important to do so. It enables me to refer back to how I spun a particular fibre, the finished yarn weight, meterage etc. I use large luggage tags and attach a sample of the single I'm spinning and a mini skein of the plied yarn along with the details of the fibre I have spun:

I also finished off my crochet sock yarn scrap blanket:

It weighs 880g and measures 170cm square, a labour of love considering I'm no crocheter. I used a 2.5 mm hook and tried to stick to brights and bolds:

So now I find myself left with all the neutral toned sock yarn leftovers~ I'm thinking there may be another blanket in due course!

More Spinning

Well it's already the last day of the month, I haven't been doing much in the way of crafting really but I have been doing a little spinning:

Fibre: Ashford's 70% merino 30% Alpaca
Colour: Rosehip
2 ply yarn
4 ply weight finished yarn
skein: 92g/ 355mtrs

Fibre: Halfbred combed top
Colour: Light Fawn
3 ply ('N' Plied)
Sport weight finished yarn
Skein: 254g/565mtrs

More Hand Spun Socks!

So, do you remember this skein of sock blend yarn that I spun and dyed a while back?

I over dyed it to make it darker so I could knit it into socks for my Husband - he wouldn't wear a lighter colour:

I'm really happy how this dye job turned out, a nice semi solid deep blue.
The pattern is Simple Skyp Socks. It's a simple 2 row pattern that looks more complicated than it is.

I have seed potatoes to plant today, as much as I would love to sit here knitting socks, sadly I can't!

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.

Spinning Superwash Merino

I hand dyed a batch of superwash merino a few days ago. I love how it takes up the dye. If you were to dye some merino alongside some superwash with the same dyestock, same method, they would both come out rather differently, I know because I have done it.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a pic of the fibre before I started drafting and spinning, so here's a pic of the fibre all ready to spin:

I'm spinning this as a fractal yarn.
I split the fibre in half lengthways and spun one half of it onto one bobbin. I divided the second half into three lots lengthways and I'm now spinning those three lengths of fibre onto one bobbin, starting at the same colour every time. Then they will be plyed together for a 2 ply yarn!

The first bobbin.














On a sad note, my beautiful dog Ruby passed away yesterday.  Life already feels so strange without her presence. Ruby has been part of our family since she was 6 weeks old and she was 14 years and 9 months when she passed. A very good age for a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.
Ruby and my 2 Son's grew up together. We are all so saddened by her loss. It's a case of keeping myself busy (as always).
A dog is for life, but unfortunately only for their life, not ours. We have many happy memories of her. She would have been 15 on Christmas Day 2015.

Ruby at 12 weeks old.

Ruby, photo taken yesterday morning. She passed away in the afternoon. Rest in peace my little Princess.xx

More Fibre & Silk & Fleece etc....

While having a sort through when looking for the Suri Alpaca fibre I found these:

65% Alpaca

15% Merino

20% Silk

135g

Beautifully soft carded fibre.

Multiple batches of silk hankies (mawata) that I dyed a very long time ago.

What a nice feeling to find things I had forgotten about as they have been sitting hidden in a box in a cupboard for so long. I've always meant to get around to having a go spinning the silk hankies ~ maybe next week.

I spent a leisurely hour in the sunshine working on the Gotland fleece. I washed it a few days ago, it was extremely dirty ~  think it had 4 or 5 scours in total. Using really hot water and some wool scour, I divided the fleece up into multiple batches of 100g or so then put it in small mesh bags. The water was filthy in the first 3 scours. I also rinsed it in hot water then laid it out to dry on an airing rack.

Afterwards I read up about Gotland fleece and found out that it felts easily and not to use hot water lol! Mine survived the washing process, but I don't agitate the fibre when washing ~ just letting it sit in the hot water for 5 minutes is enough, then lift out the bags, repeating the soaking process until the water is clean. It's now all clean, dry and ready for combing:

A few locks that I've combed to sample the fibre. Looking forward to seeing how it spins.

Emptying the Bobbins & Tarndie Polwarth

I spent a few hours today plying and emptying some of my bobbins, I love the feeling when I have empty bobbins. Then I finally finished the batch of Halfbred that I started such a long time ago, and plyed up the last bit of the Shetland that was left over:

Halfbred, 446grams, 1425 mtrs, hopefully a sweaters worth of yarn.

Shetland, 984 mtrs, 350 grams














My next spin (starting in about 5 minutes) is going to be this beautiful fibre that I received recently from Australia, it's Tarndie Polwarth. 100g white, 50g grey and 50g dark chocolate. I'm looking forward to spinning this and I like to spin Polwarth by putting a lot of twist into both the singles and the plying as it can poof up considerably when soaked/washed.

Spinning....again

Time goes by so quickly, it's quite a while since I posted here - my life has been very busy to say to the least. More home renovations, taking on more hours at the day job, family visiting from overseas, family emigrating from overseas, it's all been happening and it's been difficult to find any time to enjoy any crafting - only in the past couple of weeks have I had any 'me' time. So what did I do? I got the spinning wheel out of course.

I bought 100g of sock blend combed top, undyed, here's what I did with it:

I spun a very fine single then 'N' plyed it for a springy, soft and bouncy strong sock yarn.










After a visit to the dyepot:

350 mtrs of sock yarn, I enjoyed spinning it more than I thought I would. The fibre is 80% soft corriedale & 20% nylon.











Then I worked on spinning a small amount of merino that's for a challenge, I had 21g of it and spun it the same as the sock blend:

135 mtrs of lovely soft merino. Just got to decide what to make with it now, there's also a small skein of romney that I spun to go with it~

45g, 280 mtrs. 'N' plyed.








Now I'm working on finishing up some spinning that's been on the wheel for a very long time, I'm about halfway through spinning very fine singles as a gradient yarn. Once the singles are done they will be 'N' plyed to keep the colour changes nice and clean. photo's will follow of my progress.

Winter Warmers....Steamed Jam Roly-Poly, Spinning Shetland, and a Finished Sweater!

Anzac day weekend, we had 3 days of great weather for this time of year but yesterday was very cold and my word did it rain - all night and all day.

When it's cold and grey and it's a Sunday I had to make a nice traditional English pudding. Steamed Jam Roly-Poly, always loved it but I haven't made one for many many years. It's the pudding of my childhood.

It's simple and straight forward to make, however, you will need to get your hands on some suet which is easier said than done here in NZ. English grocers stock it, although it's the vegetarian version but I prefer that anyway.

Since you have the oven on to make one, you may as well make 2 as they freeze very well.

I prefer steaming but some recipes instruct it to be baked. Steaming gives you a nice soft, light sponge rather than the hard and crispy one that you would get from baking. I'm saying steamed but it's not cooked over a pan of boiling water, it's cooked in the oven wrapped in foil over a tray of hot water. For me the jam has always got to be homemade seedless raspberry, nothing else cuts the mustard!



Here's my recipe, makes 1 roll enough for 6-8 servings.

Steamed Jam Roly-Poly

250g self raising flour
50g butter, cold and cubed plus extra for greasing
50g suet
1 tablespoon of sugar
150ml milk plus possibly a little extra
150g jam

Put a roasting tin onto the bottom shelf of the oven and put another shelf directly above it. Fill the tin 2/3 full with boiling water from the kettle and preheat the oven to 180 deg/160 fan/ gas 4.

Tear off a large sheet of both aluminium foil and baking parchment. Lay the parchment on top of the foil and grease it thoroughly with butter.

Put the flour into a bowl and rub in the butter until it disappears, then stir in the suet and 1 tablespoon of sugar.

Add the milk and mix in with a knife, you want a very soft dough, you may have to add a little more milk depending on your flour.

Tip the dough out onto a floured surface and bring it together until smooth. Roll it out into a square about 25x25cm.

Spread the jam over the surface leaving a gap of about 2 cm all around the edges.

Roll it up nice and firmly but don't squeeze it or put too much pressure on as you will force the jam out! Pinch the the edges together to seal and carefully lift it onto the greased paper join side down.

Loosely bring up the paper and foil and scrunch it together to seal all along the edges. It will rise quite a bit during cooking so don't wrap it tightly. Place the foil parcel on the shelf directly above the tin of water and cook for 60-80 minutes.

Remove from the oven and let the pudding sit for 10 minutes before unwrapping it. Slice thickly and serve warm with custard. If you want to freeze it just let it go cold, wrap it in fresh baking paper and foil and freeze.

Now the sweater which is a birthday gift for my Brother. I used some Shetland that I spun about 4 or 5 years ago when I first started spinning. I had forgotten about that yarn and I had more than a sweaters worth, that's what happens when you start looking through your stash, you find things long forgotten about! The pattern is Riddari, it was a very enjoyable knit:

This will keep him warm during the Otago winter. I've already got requests from hubby and both my son's for one of these.














So, after knitting the Riddari sweater I felt inspired to spin my remaining Shetland combed top. This is a fingering/4 ply weight yarn and the colour is a light fawn. 2 skeins done already, I'm aiming for a sweaters worth and thinking of over-dyeing some for a colour work sweater:

Here's Pandora keeping her eye on things, she's wondering if she can steal some fibre without me noticing.

A Half Bred Fleece....

I needed a break from all the alpaca, so yesterday evening I was sorting out my stash cupboard when I came across a half bred fleece I had purchased last year, intending to wash and prep the fibre ready for spinning of course ~ until I got side tracked by all the alpaca.

Half Bred Sheep:
A registered breed that was originally developed in the 19th century by crossing one of the English long wools such as Romney or English Leicester with the merino. They were developed for both wool and meat and are suited to hill and high country.

The staples are well defined and chunky with crimp right up to the tip. It is classed as a fine wool with medium bulk. There can be wide variation amongst fleeces.

Fibre is usually between 21 - 33 microns.
staple length is 75-110 mm
An excellent fibre when soft durability is required.

It's a waxy type fleece so needs a good wash in very hot water.

I had already prepped a small portion of it and spun it up, but the majority was sat looking at me, so I bagged some up and put it in a bucket of hot water and dish washing liquid, soaked for 20 minutes then changed the water and soaked for a further 15 minutes then 2 rinses in hot water. I set it out on a mesh rack to dry overnight:

Obviously the locks on the left are unwashed, the ones on the right washed. They come up nice and clean apart from a tiny bit on the very tip which I snip off with scissors. The combed fibre is at the back, yet more beautiful squishy nests that I will look forward to spinning. I would say the fibre is next to skin soft for me, it's lofty and light and would knit into a nice comfortable, yet hard wearing sweater.












I enjoyed spinning some of it into a fingering weight 2 ply yarn:

I have 2.6kg of this to get through and have noticed there's very little waste when combing it. I shall continue to work on this when needing a break from the alpaca.

Carded Alpaca Fibre......

I got my alpaca fibre back from the carders just before Christmas but I haven't had time to look at it it until recently. I'm really happy with it. This is the rest of little Saturn's fleece, I had it blended with 30% fine merino fibre:

It's wonderfully soft and fluffy, just like clouds. There's 1.6 kg.













This is the rest of Chantalini's fleece, I kept this one as 100% alpaca. It was a deep fawn with white patches so the white fibre was blended in together with the darker and it's come out as a mid fawn, much different to the fibre (from the same alpaca) that I hand prepped and blogged about here. It weighs 3kg and is also lovely and clean and soft:

The shearer came last week so now there's 4 more fleeces to contend with but they shouldn't take me as long to clean as the last 4, they are much cleaner to start with. I learned my lesson, I now rake out their shelter every 2 weeks which cuts down on fleece contamination with the dreaded V.M. I'm still working on cleaning Radar's chocolate brown fleece from last year, and am about halfway through it, 4 bags of it washed and dried today as we have superb weather and I have a rare day off work.



I'm going to clean up Caesar and Jupiter's fleece and get them sent off to the carders, but I would like to do Saturn's and Radar's myself again. I just wish it wasn't so time consuming. But, I enjoy it and love spinning hand combed fibre, for me there's just nothing that compares to it.