HAPPY FATHERS DAY

A while back I decided that I would like to make my dad a scarf for Fathers Day. I thought about the colours my dad wears and decided that blues and greys would be good colours for him, so that gave me the perfect excuse to scour Etsy for fibre. I chose superwash merino fibre, as I know my mum is unlikely to want to handwash anything (actually Im with her all the way here!). I found two lovely fibres, a blended grey. from theranch.etsy.com

and a space dyed mix of bluey colours from Freyalyn.etsy.com

I spun them on my millefiori drop spindle from butterfly girl designs (also on Etsy) and then Navajo plied them on my Ashford Joy spinning wheel to keep the colours separate.

I particularly enjoyed spinning the blue yarn as it was so lovely to handle and it spun into a beautifully soft yarn. The finished yarn was 12 wraps per inch. The Grey yarn was silkier than the blue and was lovely enough that it almost won me over even though it was grey.

To make the scarf I chose to use a modular knitting technique which shows the colour variations very well and is easy for a dodgy knitter to handle - I learned this technique at a guild meeting earlier this year - it was taught by Rosie Sykes who inspired me so much that I picked up my knitting needles for the first time in years for this project. It uses only knit stitches and no purl which I liked a lot. I knitted 19 squares in the first row using size 5 mm needles then picked up all along one edge and created a grey stripe down the middle, then knitted the next row of blue squares. I finished by adding a grey stripe at either end and then did a single row of crochet as a border.

I washed and pressed it and marvelled at how much softer it was after washing - and breathed a sigh of relief when it didn't shrink or felt and in fact stretched slightly back to the length I'd hoped it would be when I started knitting (scarves always seem to shrink as they're worked I find).

The finished scarf weighed 4.5 oz or 135g and it took 16 hours to spin, ply and wind the balls and 22 hours for me to knit - probably very slow compared to all you super knitters - but hey I did it and got it posted in time for Fathers Day!

GREEN & PINK PROJECT

Many apologies for having been away for a while - computer problems :-( now mostly sorted, although my photos are on one computer and I'm typing this on another - so please forgive any delays in adding photos to posts!

A couple of weeks ago I had an "uninspired by life" moment - I paced the house for a while contemplating various potentially exciting snacks and nibbles - I fiddled on the computer - which wasn't being very helpful - "cannot find server", "this page has expired" etc., and then I fell upon the idea of playing with some fibre - something different - a bit of fun - so I rummaged in the stash and found a heap of different coloured merino tops (see pics). I divided these into two piles - greens and bright pink in one and warm colours in the other.

I chose to do something with the first pile and weighed the Merino - 65g pink, 110g mixed greens. I then hummed and hahhed for a bit before deciding that I wanted a slightly chunkier yarn than I normally spin and that I wanted an overall greenness with splashes of pink. This led me to take pieces at random to pre-draft in pairs of colours. I took alternately two pieces of green merino then a piece of green and a piece of pink. I spun these into a singles yarn which I then Navajo plied - this was to keep the pink in it's separate "blobs" and also because Navajo plying produces a 3 ply yarn it's a little thicker.

I have produced three skeins and I have some of the pink merino tops left and one of the greens. I shall probably spin these up to one plain pink batch and a plain green one.

I am undecided as to what to do with it now - I'm very pleased with the yarn - it's quite girly - and some of my favourite colours - so perhaps something for myself? hmmmm - I'll think on it.


In the meantime what shall I do next? more colours? perhaps some cellulose fibre or maybe a bit of drop spindling............