Sunday Spinning

This weekend I have spun up half of a roving on my little Westbury wheel

It's the second in from the right 

I have enjoyed pottering outside in the sunshine, while Maggie enjoyed dozing in the sun and watching the world go by...

I also made up some stitch markers....

and read about Zentangles 

Holiday spinning and knitting

I have managed to squeeze in a small amount of spinning and knitting over the festive season.

Here is 'Copper penny in the soot'  2 ply merino in black and rust, with gold angelina, around 152 yards, 4 oz.  It is lovely and soft. 

Another 2 ply merino, this one is called  'At the edge of the Arctic ice' 130 yds, 3 oz. 

"The first fog of Winter"  I have spun this one from carded batt that I purchased at the most recent Winghams sampling day in Lavenham.   The blend is a mix of merino and silk. It is the Winter Wonderland blend

I knitted up some more fingerless gloves in handspun.  

In an attempt to try and get on better with the Louet S10 I am challenging myself to see how fine I can spin on it.  I don't think I am doing too badly so far, I have laced the flyer, taken the brake band off and made lofty rolags.  Maybe I have just fallen out of practice with her! 

Christmas 2013

Oh dear, I haven't done well with posting - it's been so long.
The Christmas break is nearly over and I will be back at work on Monday.  If has gone by so quickly, we had my mum staying for the first week and while she was here paid a visit to my brother in Norwich.  All the photos that I took while there are out of focus apart from a few of my nephews gang of toys!  (slightly strange)  I don't know if it is the gloomy light that has dominated recently or if I just can't work the camera  but the photos I have taken have been very disappointing.

Rob did a fantastic job icing the Christmas cake that I had made back at the end of October.  Most of the cake has now been eaten.

I managed to do some carding, I had planned to call this one 'Copper Penny' but on reflection there doesn't seem to be enough copper in the resulting yarn.  The batts were made from black and rust merino and gold angelina.  All from World of Wool.

here it is being spun.  I am just about to ply it.
I also created these batts that I intend to spin as singles using the Westbury wheel.  I seem to be returning to the Westbury.  For reasons unknown to me I seem to be overspinning and creating yarn with too much twist on the Louet.

I have just ordered a big batch of fibre to dye up from World of Wool, it might get here before the end of the weekend in which case I will have a dyeing session.

Tea dyed paper 

While I have been on holiday I have been watching craft videos on Youtube, it is surprising what you come across, normally I keep to soaping videos but recently when browsing came across a bizarre rendition of the 12 days of Christmas from a firm in the North of England who produce Epoxy Resin. 

I also came across a paper artist The PaperAddiction who has some lovely videos for paper crafts. 

Armed with old tea bags I set about distressing some paper this morning.  Here are the results. 

Initial selection of paper, the Christmas wrapping paper was too thin. 

Teabag bath 

Results 

I am quite pleased with how this came out, although I am not at all sure what I am going to do with any of it.

Happy New Year everyone!

TDF 2013

Maybe not as much spinning as I would have liked, but nearly every day.

TDF day 2

Fresh from the wheel

A few weeks ago I tried out kettle dying (the scraggy lengths in the pictures below).  The blue merino fiber has been turned into this 2 ply handspun.  I love the color of this yarn- like peacock feathers. I love how it goes with Sea Fret handspun. This was spun on the Westbury wheel and plied on the Louet.

I have also spun a huge (well to me it seemed huge) skein of a mix of pink and grey merino and silk, total yardage is 456! this is the most that I have ever spun of one yarn. Here are the batts waiting to be spun.

The finished yarn - with some very pretty violets from the garden.

Spun and plied on the Louet. 

Old Shale Scarf

Recently I decided to try out the Old Shale pattern.  I love the idea behind the pattern - I thought that the pattern represented the waves of the sea, but when I delved further into its origins it is actually representing the ripples on an old shell, Northern Lace says that the 'shale' is how Shetlander's pronounced shell.

My scarf started life as Falkland fiber that I hand painted and then spun into a singles yarn. I initially knitted this into a triangular shaped scarf/shawl, but it never seemed right, so I started again using this pattern.

 It isn't the softest yarn, but it is certainly warm!

Kettle dyeing

Last weekend I tried some kettle dyeing for the first time.  (All my previous dyeing exploits have been hand painting fibre and setting the colors using a steamer).
I was very pleased with the results, the colors were far stronger than those I have managed to achieve when I have hand painted fibre, and the process was surprisingly straight forward as well.   I will be trying it again.

Exhausting the dye bath

Skeins hanging to dry -they look a bit scraggy here and are much better dry!

Some carding was also needed at the weekend -  so out came the Minty Carder to create some batts based on the 'Sea Fret' yarn I spun up earlier this year.  

Last month I also finished spinning up some Polworth fiber that I had dyed up earlier in the year.  I spun this up on the Westbury wheel and plied it on the Louet S10.  The ratios on the Westbury allow me to spin so much finer than on the Louet, I like the Louet but it is very 'grabby'  (I think anyone who has used one will know what I mean by this).  My little Westbury is much more gentle in its take up, but this makes it far  slower. 

I loved the Polworth, it is so soft and was lovely to spin.  I got 330 yards of two ply, just over 3oz. 

I will be getting some more Polworth - maybe to combine with more kettle dyeing. 

Valentine's Cake

I am so lucky to have a husband who can cook and make delicious cakes - the cake he has made for (late) Valentine's day celebration is from Nigella Lawson's 'Feast' cookbook (the chocolate cake section), Chocolate Malteser cake -  it is a kind of malted chocolate cake.

I would say that this cake is a delicious, popular and reliable celebration cake and he has made it a number of times, not just for me but for friends as well.  Todays cake was certainly the tallest one he has made! 

I was pondering the cake and the fact that the recipe for the cake part doesn't have a lot of fat in it - so if you wanted a low fat celebration pudding it would work quite well using fresh fruit and reduced fat creme fraiche for the filling instead of the malted icing (which is where most of the fat content comes from!)  

This should be the last cake we make before Easter - but we will see..... 

I am trying to finish off spinning a two ply that I have been making with Polworth in very spring like Easter colours.  I have been doing this on the Westbury wheel, she is much slower than the Louet giving me time to think.  They are both very different wheels and I like them both. 

I am still struggling with the border of the Ashton shawlette, it takes forever to do a row and I have to concentrate so hard that I can only work on it at the weekend.  I am determined to finish it (with all its mistakes!)

Stonehenge Sunset

Over the Christmas break (seems an age ago now!) I was able to finish off a few yarns from the batch of dyeing I had done in November.

Here is 'Stonehenge Sunset' a two ply in blue faced Leicester wool.  Spun and plied entirely on the Louet S10; it is interesting to see that the resulting yarns spun on the S10 have a different feel to them from those spun on my Westbury wheel.  

I also spun up cream and yellow into 'Honeycomb twist'  On the day that I photographed this the light was terrible, but I kind of like the dark background.

On the knitting front I finished more fingerless gloves.  One pair using up the lovely Siren 4 ply called Sule Skerry from Solstice Yarns on Etsy.  

A second pair were knitted up from my own hand spun yarn 

I have reached the border on the Ashton Shawl, the actual body of the shawl does have some errors - but never mind.  I had hoped to have the shawl finished over Christmas - but it wasn't to be.  Each row takes some time to complete and needs concentration so I am not sure when it will be finished. 

I also discovered this online yarn shop in Suffolk-with some lovely yarns, I treated myself to a couple of skeins of the lovely soft Mirsol Tuhu and a ball of Schoppel Woole Zauberball for a crochet shawl (got to finish the Ashton first!)