Spindly goodness

I'm on a blog-posting roll this weekend! It must be something to do with watching a huge session of the Olympics today, which has left me feeling motivated to do lots of stuff! Didn't team GB do well?!

Anyway, here's some news about my latest completed project, not a Ravelympics one, this is something I've been planning for much longer. So without further ado, meet my newest spindles:

I'm so excited about these! They're handmade (by me), with resin whorls that I made specifically for them. The top one has rose petals embedded in the resin, the middle one has calendula petals, and the bottom one is extra special, those shells are fossils that I collected from Barton on Sea this spring.

The whorls are about 5cm wide, and the spindles weigh between 20g and 25g, so these are ideal for spinning laceweight to medium weight yarns. I've played most with the fossil one so far and, like the others, it spins beautifully, I can see myself using this a lot! The white spots next to the fossils are just air bubbles that have filled with polishing compound, I was so excited about taking photos that I haven't cleaned that out yet.

And the best part, I want to make a bunch of these for Wildcraft, so I'll get to go on more fossil hunts and to experiment with other interesting things to decorate them with. I'm even thinking of starting a spindle club, where members receive a seasonal ly decorated spindle and fibre with every installment. Exciting eh?!

Ravelympics - First Event Completed

I mentioned a while back that I'd entered the Ravelympics didn't I? For those who aren't in the know, the Ravelympics is an event hosted by Ravelry (my favourite site ever), where participants aim to complete one, or more, knitting or spinning projects during the Beijing Olympics. I've entered two projects into the 'Handspun Heptathlon', a Morning Surf Scarf, knitted from some handspun yarn I made during the Tour de Fleece, and I'm spinning some merino/silk laceweight yarn on my drop spindle.

Last night I finished the Morning Surf Scarf, finished blocking it this morning and here it is!

Isn't it being nicely modelled by the tree? Fortunately, this will be the one and only time the tree gets to wear it, as I'm keeping this for myself, for neck-warmy goodness in the autumn.

I can thoroughly recommend the pattern, it was really quick to knit and my 225 metres of precious handspun yarn went a long way, the scarf's 140cm long and 20cm wide.

Now my other project is not nearly as close to being finished. But I guess I have set myself quite a challenge. I want to turn this 100gram merino/silk roving, which I dyed in 'wild rose' colours...

...into a two-ply laceweight yarn, spun on a feather-weight lace spindle. I'm doing ok, I'm about halfway through it at the moment. This was the spindle shortly before I wound the singles off and started another lot.

I've got two weeks left to finish spinning and plying, so I've got plenty of time to get it finished before then. Unfortunately, I'm rapidly getting bored with spinning laceweight. It's fiddly and the colours of the roving are too pale to keep me interested. I'm sure it will make a lovely yarn, but I need to keep myself motivated to finish somehow. Perhaps the right knitting pattern would encourage me. I reckon I'll end up with 200-300 metres of the yarn, maybe a bit more, and I'd like to make a lacy scarf or shawlette with it. Does anyone have any suggestions?

They're coming...

I know it's a bit mean, posting sneaky previews like this, but I've been up to my elbows in dye and wool for the last couple of days and it's done something funny to my head. At least the results are pretty.

In amongst this carnival of colour are some delicious new luxury blends of fibre. There's some BFL/silk (gorgeous lustre), and some BFL/kid mohair that's so fuffy and soft I want to hug it lots. My family reckon I should add a tagline to all the Wildcraft fibres to say that 'every roving has been hugged'. While that's not entirely the case, I do love all of them, even the wayward fibres (that superwash can be quite an escape artist!), which is why it's so nice to see them move happily to new homes, particularly when they've been spun up.

The other fibres on the line there are superwash BFL (so soft!), BFL, shetland, oh and some Wensleydale. They'll be in the shop just as soon as they're dried, braided and photographed. Drying was taking ages, but it's just got really windy here, so that should speed things along a bit.

Much Spinning, or hurrah for the Tour de Fleece!

As promised, it's time for a post about my Tour de Fleece spinning. Actually, I've been spinning a lot since the Tour ended the week before last, so I have even more spinning FO's and WIPS to report about here.

The thing is, I've taken up spindling (secretly, I think it might be turning into an obsession). Don't misunderstand me, I love my wheel. Rose (a Majacraft Rose) is beautiful and spins practically any yarn I want her to. But she's not very portable, so spinning on my wheel is something I need to plan for. I can't easily carry her to the nearest seat, so I have to bring the chair and fibre supply to her. And then I usually want a cup of tea, or my ipod to listen to while I spin, so the whole thing becomes quite a palaver to organise. I'm a dashing around kind of person, not very comfortable at sitting down and doing one thing for a long time, so unless I deliberately organise time every day to spin at my wheel, I don't tend to spin at all.

That was until my mum made me my first proper top-whorl spindle, turned from cedar of lebanon timber on her lathe, which was a prototype for the ones we now have in the shop. She's now made me several and I love them all.

They're portable, lovely tactile tools and an unexpected bonus is the the feeling of connection with the past that I get when I'm spinning on a spindle. Spindling is one of the oldest human occupations, and when I'm using my spindle I often think on who in times past would have spindled, what kinds of spinning tools they might have used, and what they might have been making the yarn for. What's also surprised me is that my yarn production rate on a spindle is easily higher than on my wheel. This is probably because I pick the spindle up more often during the day, but I've also got the technique sussed now so that it's a very smooth operation and v.nearly as fast on a yard-by-yard basis as my wheel (except for very bulky yarn where I concede that a wheel is probably faster). During the Tour de Fleece I spun all my yarns on a spindle (with a small exception due to muppetry on my part, see the turquoise skein below). I was supposed to be doing some laceweight on my wheel, (as I blogged about here), but that never actually happened after I caught the spindling bug...

So this is the grand line-up of the yarns I spindled during the Tour de Fleece:

Lined up like that it doesn't look a huge amount, but it's certainly more than I've spun on my wheel in a long time!

So here are the details (from left to right):

85 metres of Wildcraft shetland in lavender colours, spun to aran weight, which started out as this:

The 85 metres was only part of the fibre, I've now finished spinning the whole braid and it's come to about 150 metres in total, certainly enough for a cosy winter hat.

Next is a 210 metre skein of turquoise three-ply yarn, which is about a dk weight. It started out as some corriedale top in three colours, which I'd blended with alpaca and tussah silk on my drum carder a long time ago. One of the singles was wheel-spun before the Tour, but the other two were spindled. Plying was only partly done on the spindle, as I got into a huge mess during plying from a centre-pull ball and transferred it onto the wheel to sort it out (note to self, never spin a three-ply yarn on a spindle again, or at least not before sorting out how to keep the plies properly tensioned!).

Then there's the Wildcraft Apple Blossom roving (superwash BFL), in cream/dark pink/green colours, which I turned into 225 metres of sock weight yarn. I think I like this one the most, and it's due to be knitted up into a Morning Surf Scarf for the Ravelympics.

And finally there's the little skein of 85 metres of BFL laceweight which I'd dyed in a colourway I called 'evening shades'. This I spun on my most recently acquired spindle, which was from Butterflygirl Designs.

And now that the Tour de Fleece is over, can I stop spindling?! Um, no...

Since the Tour I've spun another 100 metre skein of the evening shades BFL yarn, which finished that fibre, and I'm now spinning this tussah silk top from Fyberspates with the BGD spindle:

And this weekend I turned half of this beautiful BFL from the Natural Dye Studio...

Into this sock yarn...

I still have half of the Natural Dye Studio roving left, so I'll make a matching skein so I can have two matching socks.

And remember the merino/silk laceweight that I never got around to spinning on my wheel for the Tour de Fleece...? I've just added it as my entry for the Handspun Heptathlon in the Ravelympics, to be spun, yes you've guessed it, on a spindle :)

Foal Action Shots

I can't quite believe that Inara's been home for nearly a fortnight. It's been quite a whirlwind since she arrived home, she's grown already and she's learning to take all kinds of new things in her stride.

First off, this is the young lady we're talking about, she poses beautifully :)

And here she was early last week, looking a bit scrawny and bewildered by having such a big field and only her mum to share it with:

She soon started testing out her galloping legs, and I can confirm that she's very fast, often too fast to catch on camera!

But I did get some better shots...

And here she is today, on the day that she and her mum were (re)united with my other two horses, Millie and Sam. Poor Inara got left out while her mum said her hellos to the others, she couldn't quite make out what the fuss was all about. But look how she's grown in just a few days, compare this robust looking critter with the scrawny beast in the first pic taken just six days earlier. All that galloping's clearly paying off! :)

We've been making hay on the farm this week, 1500 small bales of it. We make 'barn dried' hay, which is taken off the field earlier than normal hay and drying is finished in the barn by a set of huge electric fans. It makes sweet tasty horse hay (yes I've tasted it and it is sweet!), but it takes a lot of extra work as every bale has to be loaded into the barn and stacked by hand on its edge within a few hours of being baled, otherwise it degrades and starts to grow mould. Which meant several 11pm stop-outs this week while I helped my father and brother to offload the trailers into the barn. We sell most of it, but I've bagsied some of the best bales for Inara and her mum's winter fodder. She'll need the very best hay to grow properly :)

All of which has meant that my spinning and knitting activities have had to take a back seat this week. But I've still been spinning whenever I could, and I've managed to keep up with my Tour de Fleece objective to spin every day. I've even finished a fair amount of yarn, helped along by some new spindle-shaped goodness. Plus I've discovered that spindling while on a hay trailer is risky (a long way down if you drop the spindle!), but very effective - provided you don't mind picking out hay seeds from the fibre. Next time, I promise news and photos of spinning, my swallowtail shawl, and other crafty goodness...

Tour update, Week 1

Week 1 of the Tour de Fleece has passed, and I've done a lot of spindle spinning. I think I've spindled more in this past week than in my entire spinning career to date!

My main project this week was a batch of Superwash BFL roving (100g in total), in 'Apple Blossom' colours, which is now looking like this:

It's become 225 metres of around dk weight yarn. It's turned out just as I hoped, tightly twisted and with a slight sheen to it. I'm still deciding how best to use the yarn. I'm down to a choice between the socks that I originally intended to make, or a Morning Surf scarf, like the ones in the Summer 2008 issue of Spin Off magazine.

As soon as that yarn was complete, I started on the 'Last of the Lavender' Shetland roving that I'd set aside for TdF. This fibre told me it wanted to be bulky (yes, I often talk with fibre), so I took its advice and have started spinning this:

2-plied it's a lovely and squooshy bulky weight yarn, I've done about 70 metres so far, and still have over 1/2 of the roving left. I think it will become a cosy hat for me, just right for pootling up the lane to visit the horses later this year when it's chilly and autumnal.

And while those two were on the go, I was also spinning this:

Which is a blend of merino, tussah silk and alpaca, which I originally drumcarded for spinning on my wheel. It's been loitering in my stash for ages as I find these plain colours boring to spin on the wheel, but it's spindling up beautifully, and not nearly as boring when done in little sessions. I have two other batts of the same fibre blend in slightly different shades of turquoise. One I've already spun up on the wheel, so as soon as I've finished the last batch I can three-ply them as I originally intended.

So here's roll call of all my spindling from the week. Pretty eh?

I've been pleasantly surprised by how quickly these spindled yarns are working up. I think it's because I can pick up the spindle for very brief sessions of spinning, whereas I only tend to sit at the wheel when I know I have at least 1/2 free to devote to it. Which is why I've only completed a tiny bit of the laceweight I'm planning to wheel-spin for the Tour, really must get on and get some more of that done... My only regret with the spindled yarns is that they do tend to end up as smaller skeins than the wheel-spun ones, because my spindles don't hold as much fibre in one go. Which means more joining when I knit the yarns up, one of my least favourite exercises in knitting.

Speaking of knitting, after some serious trauma (involving much frogging and tinking, and some yelling and stomping) I have at last made excellent progress on my Swallowtail shawl.

I've finally made it beyond the first 15 rows, hurrah! Many thanks to Queen of the Froggers for her tip on using stitch markers to mark the pattern repeats. It was after putting the markers in that the pattern finally started to make sense, I'm going to use them in every lace project from now on (yes, that means that I'm actually considering other lace projects, so it must be good!).

The eagle-eyed amongst you will have spotted an unintended hole in the knitting, on the left about halfway down. For the not so eagle-eyed, it's here:

I spotted it when I laid the shawl out to take the photo, at which point I rushed to find a safety pin and perform a rescue operation.

It looks as though one of my decrease stitches wasn't as secure as it should have been, and then I mistakenly lifted a stitch in the row above it so my stitch count didn't show the problem. Left without rescue, this could have sabotaged the whole project, as I think it could have ravelled a long way down. Thankfully, the safety pin held the problem in check until I could perform surgery. I've now managed to graft the hole together again and it barely shows. I'd show photos, but I'd put the camera away by that time so I could concentrate on the delicate repair operation (it was like a knitting version of ER).

I'm now forging ahead with knitting the border, surprisingly the 'nupps' (little bobbles, very cute looking) are working up really well. I'm using a tip I found on Ravelry to knit them sl3, p2tog, instead of the pattern's recommended p5tog which could have been very messy. Don't want to sound over-confident, but I'm hoping I'll have a finished shawl to show you soon!

I'm also hoping I'll have cute foal pics to show, as Krissie and Inara are coming home tomorrow, yay! In view of the stress I had when loading Krissie to travel to the stud, I've booked a horse transporter with a lorry to bring them home. He sounds fab, and the stud staff have said I don't even need to be there to help load the horses up. They seem confident that they can get even a sticky loader to box ok, and they've been so professional about everything else that I have no reason to doubt it. So all I have to do is wait for mare and foal to arrive home tomorrow lunch time. I can't wait!

Oh and before I finish, here's a sneak preview of the wools I've dyed for the Wildcraft shop this weekend.

This batch's colour themes were: heathlands, coasts and skies. I'll be putting them up in the shop during the next couple of days, along with the long-promised drop spindles.

Tour de Fleece, Part 1

So, the Tour de Fleece starts today (as does the Tour de France), so it's time I explain my spinning plan. Well I call it a plan, it's more a list of stuff to do, along with some pretty pictures of fibre from my spinning stash.

I've divided my projects into two types, the spinning-wheel project (there's only one wheel project but it's a biggy), and the rest are on my lovely new spindles.

On my wheel (a Majacraft Rose) I plan to spin this:

It's some merino-silk top that I dyed as a trial run for Wildcraft. From it I plan spin a whole skein of 2-ply laceweight yarn (proper laceweight, say 24-30 wpi) – sufficient for a small shawl (which might end up being a woven shawl, given that I'm still engaged in a battle of wits with my swallowtail lace one). The colourway of the fibre is called 'Wild Rose', and the colours match the two cakes of shetland top that Belaybunny bought from me recently - I think she's planning to spin laceweight from hers too, so it'll be interesting to see how the colours compare when spun up. I've never managed to spin a big skein of proper laceweight, the finest I've done so far is about a thick 4-ply weight, and I usually get bored after around 100 metres. For the Tour I hope to spin finer stuff, and to stick with the project until I've finished the whole of that 100gram plait of merino/silk.

While my wheel is taken up with the laceweight project, I'll also aim to spin as much yarn as I can on my drop spindles. (which are more portable than the wheel, so I'll have no excuse not to spin every day!). I'll be working on dk and sock weight yarns, and I'm going to focus on getting getting sufficient twist in the yarn, especially in the plying stage, which is often the bit that lets me down. I want to make some lovely twisty sock yarns and cosy tightly twisted dk's that will make a cute hat or gloves. To make the yarns I'll use more of my hand-dyed fibres, I've picked a few that didn't make the grade for the shop, or were trial runs - and here they are:

Apple Blossom superwash BFL (the green came out brighter and less natural looking than I intended when I dyed it, but it's a lovely soft fibre:

A small braid of Shetland in 'Last of the Lavender' colours. This was dyed with the dyes that were left over after I did my recent 'lavender' colourway for the shop:

And this BFL/silk blend, which is in 'Harlequin' colours. This was an early trial at dyeing coloured top.

I've made a start on spinning the Apple Blossom fibre already (actually, I started on Thursday's SnB meetup, but I'm counting that as a warm-up :) ). It's spinning up very quickly, and I'm loving the new spindle that I'm using (another prototype made by my mum, she's getting really good at these). At around 35grams, this spindle's lighter than the one I blogged about earlier and spins at just the right speed for the dk and 4-ply yarns I want to make.

In other, non-spinning news, Inara and Krissie are both doing very well. I visited them earlier in the week, to find that Inara's looking very bright and perky, and has developed an interest in sniffing fingers. Very cute...

They'll be coming home either next weekend, or very shortly after. I can't wait!