I've moved!

My new blog's now online here: www.wildcraft.co.uk/blog

See you over there!

Ingenue

I've really got back into knitting large projects lately. I guess it's the cold weather that's making me feel the need for warm clothing, and lots of it! Latest off my needles is a sweater called 'Ingenue' (Rav Project Link here), knitted in Debbie Bliss Cotton Angora yarn.

The pattern's from Wendy Bernard's book Custom Knits. It's a fantabulous book, all the sweater/cardigan patterns are knitted in the round and most of them are made from the top down. I love knitting sweaters from the top, it means you can try them on as you're going, which makes it easy to see when and where you need to make any alterations.

My Ingenue included the alteration suggested by Wendy for making an off the shoulder neckline. It only involved changing the standard neck edging to a stretchy 2x2 rib, but the final effect is quite different from the standard pattern. The original Ingenue has a firm funnel-neck collar that stands away from the neckline, while mine has a neckline-hugging curvy thing going on, which I love. Since the ribbing is so stretchy, it means I can wear the collar differently according to the look I want. So I could have it all demure and tucked up under my chin like this:

Or slinky and off the shoulders like this:

I love a garment that's this adaptable! Currently on my needles in the same yarn (I bought loads of it in the John Lewis sale a couple of years ago), is the February Lady Sweater by Flintknits. It's actually not a sweater, but a cardigan, and, you guessed it, it's another knit-in-the round top-down garment. I'm consistent in my pattern choices at least! :)

In other news, Giles the Ryeland ram has finally achieved his life's goal. He's gone to meet the ladies! Here he is getting a final check-up, looking very dapper in his new tupping harness (which has a marker crayon under his chest so we can keep a tally of who he's been most friendly with).

And here he is is en route to the ewes' field. Sorry the photo's a bit blurry, he was in quite a hurry to get going and wouldn't stand still to have his photo taken!

Sadly, his first introduction to my three ewes was not all he might have hoped. They took one look at him, ran away and hid in a ditch! Not the best of first dates. However, Giles is very persistent, and they seem to be getting used to him now, they are at least grazing side-by-side. No sign of the marker crayon having had much use, but they're all first-timers, so they're going to need time to figure things out. Hopefully, in a few months's time all Giles' wooing will have paid off, and we'll get some lambs!

A whole lot more spindling

Another weekend, another post. Seems I only update my blog at the weekends at the moment, but that's ok because I've also been taking photos this weekend. Oh and I've also been sanding my fingers, which hurt and is making typing difficult, but it's all in a good cause as I've been making whorls for resin spindles!

So, this past week I have been mostly spinning, packing things and taking them to the post office, and then doing more spinning. You probably don't want to know the details of the packing part (it's boring, really), but the spinning bit's interesting.

Here's my most recent FO, some spindled yarn.

It's a navajo-plied blend of English wool top, which started out looking like this...

Originally I named to colourway 'Meh', as it was the result of me plonking down a bunch of leftover dyes on some leftover fibre and I wasn't sure it would turn out well. But I'm very pleased with the yarn. It ended up being 210 metres long, and about 12wpi (my yarn gauge said 14, but I think I squooshed up the yarn too tightly). It was lots of fun to spin, the wool drafted really easily and made for some great mindless tv spinning. The Navajo plying wasn't accompanied by tv though, as I went really slowly and carefully to avoid tangling the yarn. It's not the softest of yarns, but that doesn't matter as I'm planning to make a bag from it, so not-so-soft is good.

And here's another thing I made this week, a phone cosy:

I'd made a bunch of batts for the shop from leftover scraps of fibre. It seemed rude not to test one of them out, so I spun some yarn (on a spindle of course!)...

Then I improvised a pattern and knitted it up into the phone cosy above. It only took around 15 metres of yarn, so I still have around 10-15 metres left, enough to make another one as a gift. My phone is now happy and toasty-warm as the yarn's very soft. If only I could make clothes for myself so quickly!

I've also been spinning some lovely alpaca fibre from Spindlefrog, on a new Butterflygirl Designs spindle which arrived with me this week... or was it last week, I can't recall. Anyway, it's a lovely spindle, and the fibre is wonderful, the colours are just gorgeous.

I'm spinning a heavy laceweight yarn with it, with the intention that it'll eventually become a lacy knitted shawl or scarf.

And finally, here's my most recently started project. It's some more spindling, this time for the Quarterly Challenge organised by the Spindlers Group on Ravelry. I'm using one of my resin spindles to spin this superwash merino top (from Violetgreen Yarns)...

Into some fine singles that will eventually become navajo plied sock yarn...

Can you tell I'm a fan of navajo plying at the moment?! The challenge is to spin 200 or more yards of yarn by the end of November, I'm hoping that I have enough fibre to make 200 yards. I think I will, as I have over 100grams of it, just need to make sure I spin it thinly enough!

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?

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 :)

Tour de Fleece, Spindling and FO's

After considerable mulling over, I've decided to join the Tour de Fleece. I thought with the Krissie saga and work stuff I'd be too busy. But Krissie's apparently still some way off from producing her foal, and work pressures are evening out a bit, plus, I decided I'm always going to come up with some excuse or other not to focus - this could make me sit down and do some productive spinning for once :)

If you haven't heard of it, the Tour de Fleece is a spinning event that mirrors the Tour de France cycle race. The object is to spin for every day of the cycle competition, and to set yourself some kind of spinning challenge. For example some people aim to spin enough for a garment, or to use up x amount of their stashed fibre. Then you tell the world about your progress online! My challenge is quite basic, I want to focus on improving my spinning technique in a few specific areas. I'm going to make a list before the event begins on the 3rd July, but I've come up with a few ideas already. One thing I want to do is to try to spin some some fine laceweight yarn on my wheel, I've not managed anything finer than a heavy laceweight so far. It was a lovely yarn, but I'm sure I could spin finer weights.

Another thing I want to do is to improve my spindle spinning. I recently picked up a drop spindle again, which I haven't done since I first learned to spin well over a decade ago, I think I was still at school at the time (which now makes me feel old to think about it!). Anyway, there's been quite some demand for drop spindles in the Wildcraft shop, so I challenged my mum (who's a brilliant woodturner), so make some really good spindles. She came up trumps (of course) with this cedarwood beauty, which I'm testing out:

And I've been addicted to spindling again ever since! It's a top whorl, which is new to me, but makes all the difference. You can really make those things fly! I spin the shaft of the spindle against my thigh and it just keeps spinning and spinning.

I've been testing it out using some roving I bought from Lapoli a while back, and I've already made this spindle-spun yarn from it:

It's not quite dry in the photo, it'll look more puffy and even more knitable when it is dry, but I couldn't wait to take photos! I still have another 30-40grams of the roving to spin, and it's proving to be great stuff to practice on, very forgiving when I put in too little twist, which happens quite a bit.

Oh and I have a FO to report. My lichen socks are finally finished, yay! Readers who are also in my local SnB group will have seen me knitting these for many weeks. I don't know why they took me so long, they're a very basic toe-up design, although they are quite a fine gauge, 8st/inch I think. I used Stitch Stud's toe-up sock calculator pattern booklet, which I can thoroughly recommend.

The yarn was my first attempt at dyeing a hand painted yarn, I didn't expect it to stripe so nicely, but I'm very pleased it did. Next up in the sock knitting plans is some more hand dyed yarn - an alpaca sock weight, which I wound into 12 metre skeins on the fence posts in the horses' paddock before dyeing (Sam was very bemused by it all). I dyed the skein with long stripes of colour, so I'm hoping it'll make some wider stripes than the lichen socks. I called the colourway 'summer meadow', and it matches some of the rovings I've put in the shop.

More Tour de Fleece news soon, I can't wait for it to begin!

Layla crochet cardi

As promised, here are some pics of my Layla crochet cardigan, all finished and wearable. This was my first ever crocheted garment, nearly my first crochet project ever (if you discount the little bag that I attempted and is still languishing in my work basket waiting to be finished). This cardigan wasn't the easiest project to begin with, even though the pattern said it was an easy one. There was a lot of shaping to do and I kept getting the stitch count wrong. I ripped it out nearly as many times as I crocheted it. But now that it's done I'm very happy with it. Excuse the slightly fuzzy and overexposed photos. I forgot to set my camera into program mode before I handed it to my mum to take the pics, I think she did a great job given the circumstances :)

So here's Layla:



The pattern was a Rowan one, from Magazine No.25, which is pretty old, published in the 90's I think. It's one of the earliest mags in my collection, but easily one of the best, there are many patterns in that issue that I want to make up.



The yarn I used was Patons 4-ply cotton. It took only 3.5 balls of the yarn, so really quite a bargain project. It substituted very well for the Rowan 4-ply cotton that the original pattern called for. Also, since the yardage on the Patons balls was so much more than on Rowan 4-ply, there were far fewer ends to weave in.



I've been wearing it all day today, it's really comfy. Oh yes and for the eagle-eyed amongst you, the front pieces are slightly uneven. I think my tension must have eased off a bit by the time I worked the second front piece, so one side is slightly longer than the other. It's visible if you're looking for mistakes, but not really noticable otherwise.

I'm now hoovering up any pretty crochet patterns that I find, which is a good thing as I have quite a bit of cotton in my stash. I hate knitting with cotton, but love crocheting with it, weird huh?

Finally open...

First off, here's the big news: the Wildcraft Shop is finally open! After a week of testing (thanks B!), I'm now reasonably confident that the Zencart software is playing nicely, so do go ahead and take a look. The shop can be found here: www.wildcraft.co.uk.

With the shop open, I took a bit of a break from programming and wool dyeing this weekend. On Saturday I went with a friend to Charmouth, for a day of fossil hunting. The weather forecast was for lots of rain, but as you'll see in the pic below, it didn't turn out too badly.



I also made my finest fossil find to date, a huge pyritised ammonite. I believe I squeaked a bit when I found it, but who wouldn't, isn't it a beauty? :)



It was just lying on the sand, on its end so it wasn't immediately obvious that it was an ammonite. Which is probably why the party of cliff-hackers a few yards away hadn't spotted it first :) The pencil in the pic below is for scale, but if that doesn't help, the fossil's about 4cm in diameter. It's currently soaking in plain water, to remove the salt from the sea. I fear I might have to retire from fossil hunting now, as I can't think how I can beat this find!

Returning to crafty matters, I also have a FO to report. My Layla crochet cardigan is finally finished, hurrah! This was my first major crochet project and it's been a real struggle. I had to rip and redo it so many times! But today, after re-crocheting the edging for the third time, I finally got it to look as I wanted it to. The best part is that the cardi fits me very well, and I really like how it looks. That's unusual, normally I can't stand items I've just completed, they need to go through a process of maturing (i.e. being hidden in a wardrobe) before I'll wear them. But I think Layla will get worn often, she's very comfy and quite flattering. I still have to sew in the yarn ends, but then I'll get some photos taken and post them here. In the meantime, here's a sneak preview:



I'm now keen to crochet more garments, since I've got the hang of how crochet works. I've already sussed out my next project, it's going to be 'Gudrun' by Annette Petavy, which is another cardigan. I'm planning to make it with some Debbie Bliss cotton angora from my stash. The pattern doesn't look too complicated, so hopefully I won't have to rip it out as many times as I did with Layla!

Mitts and bits

A few weeks ago, my good friend Mel gave me these beautiful handknitted mitts for my birthday. I believe the pattern she used was called 'Princess Mitts' (see the pattern here).



The yarn she used was Twilleys Freedom Spirit, which is a soft single ply wool, in a pretty blue/purple colourway. I love how the cable patterns on the top of the hand have come out so subtly in this yarn, they're lovely and soft to wear too. I use them to keep my hands warm when it's cold at my computer desk, my hands can get really chilly when I'm using the mouse a lot, these mitts keep my hands warm, but leave my fingers free to hit that all important 'buy it now button' :)

Since seeing how nicely the yarn knitted up, I bought some to knit my friend Clare's birthday present (it must be a very birthdayish yarn), who received a Chromosome cap from me last week (Clare's a research biologist).



Again, the cabling patterns have come out very subtly, with just enough definition to show, but not clashing with the striping of the yarn.

Up close, you can see a bit more detail of the chromosome patterns:



As I knitted with the Freedom Sprit yarn, I did my usual 'so how did they make this?' analysis. I found that it's a single ply, spun from a reasonably long stapled wool and with very little twist. I decided to have a go at replicating it with some painted roving I had in my stash.

The roving I used was some I bought from Lapoli on Etsy a few weeks ago. Originally I'd intended to use it for sock yarn, but I'd bought three braids in different colours and I already have many unknitted skeins of sock yarn, so the pretty blue and brown stuff went into my experiment.

I'd already split and predrafted the roving, so it was about pencil thickness. I set my wheel to its lowest ratio and treadled REALLY slowly, then I just passed the roving onto the bobbin with hardly any drafting at all. My feet kept getting twitchy and trying to treadle faster, so I got a few twisty parts, but overall it came out well. I washed and abused the resulting yarn (yes that's a technical term), i.e. I washed it roughly in hot, then cold water with soap, which helped felt it a little. And it came out like this:




It's a bit more bumpy than I wanted, and quite a lot bulkier, but unlike the Twilleys yarn, it's surprisingly resilient. I tried breaking off a piece earlier and had to resort to scissors, it was that well held together.

The skein's been sitting and goading me into using it all morning. Good thing I had the day off work! I decided to make another pair of mitts with it, an outdoor pair this time, as Mel's mitts are definitely indoor wear (Princesses don't mix well with the mud around here on the farm :) ). So, I spent the afternoon knitting my newly-spun yarn into some Maine Morning Mitts, as well as baking chocolate chip cookies. Haven't been this domesticated in ages! :)

Here's how they came out:







Actually, I've only finished one mitt. The other needs to be completed this evening as I'm going to the coast tomorrow and the weather forecast is windy, mitts will definitely be a requirement.

And finally, a shot to show just how impressed Hamlet the cat was with the yarn, i.e. not very, it's on HIS chair:

Wicked

I finally got around to taking some pics of my completed handspun Wicked sweater today ( Ravelry project details here). This is a project that's taken me over four years to complete - from my early notes about spinning the yarn, to finally casting off a few days ago. The yarn was spun from a blend I made on my old Barnett drum carder, using some caramel coloured CVM fleece (a gift from my friend Barbara), apricot angora bunny fibre and tussah silk. The drum carder’s cloth wasn’t really fine enough for the angora fibre, so it ended up being quite a neppy blend. The final yarn was a bit lumpy, but really soft and fuzzy, with a slight sheen from the silk.

It didn't actually take me four years to make - but I got so bored with blending and then spinning the same caramel coloured yarn that I kept abandoning it. Knitting took just a couple of months, mainly because the yarn was so delicious to knit with. It was incredibly light, and the more the yarn was handled, the more it fuzzed up. Knitting with it was like hugging bunny rabbits (I imagine, sadly I don't have any bunny rabbits to hand to compare it with).

Anyway, here are the pics, modelled by the very obliging Mavis (aka my dressmaker's dummy) who's the same size as me.

This is the front:



And here's the front again, this time showing the pocket. The pocket's very slightly wonky, so if it annoys me when I wear it,I may take out the top stitching at some time and reposition it.



And here's a closeup of the soft fuzziness of it:



Oh yes, and the pattern's 'Wicked' by Zephyr Style. It was knitted from the top down, which I'd not tried for a jumper before, but I enjoyed it so much that I now don't want to knit any other way. It's a great pattern, really easy to follow and adapt for custom fit. I altered the hemline so it was a bit longer than the pattern, and I finished the sleeves with moss stitch instead of cables as the cabling didn't show up too well with the fuzzy yarn. I also added a tiny bit of shaping to the hips, rather than knitting straight down from the waist.

I am now feeling bereft after working on this project for so long. I only have my Anna cardigan on the needles at the moment, it's weird not to have Wicked to cuddle up with and knit. But I'm sure that won't last for long - there are plenty of new project ideas jumping around in my head already!