Lace at Experimental

I always love the challenges that each session of Experimental Spinning brings, this time lace was on the agenda, courtesy of an article in the latest edition of Ashford's magazine, 'The Wheel'. It described a method of add those odd bits of lace to your spinning in quite a wild way. Not being a lace girl, cutting up lace seemed like an appropriate thing to do!

We had plenty of lace with a donation from our craft outlet volunteer, and lots from all our stashes.

The first part involved cutting up lace, taking lengths of wool top and threading the top through the lace.

You end up with a pile of lace and tops, like this!

Spinning isn't difficult, or slow, though having my lovely poly wheel with  big hooks certainly helps and even with that, there is some lace that is stiffer than others and does get caught. As I was going to ply this with a fine single, I hoped I could smooth those pieces of lace that had moved or were scrunched up too much, as I plyed.

That proved the case and the plying was done quite nicely and I ended up with yarn that is really quite sweet!

The lessons learnt....

I think that because the pieces of lace were quite short, when I plied they tended to keep sticking out rather than get wrapped. I think that the longer pieces would have been more twisted from the spinning, making the plying easier.
 

For further experimentation:

Trying to get the pieces of lace closer together, for that full-on lace look!

Dyeing would be interesting! All those different fibres!

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this yarn, but it was fun! For such an over the top look, it's not difficult or particularly slow.

Cricket in Sydney

Yep, hubby, youngest son and I drove up to Sydney for the last test match of the current Ashes cricket tour. After a disappointing Melbourne test we hoped for, at least, a high spirited effort by the Australian team. We saw lots of runs made (by the Brits), lots of good bowling (by the Brits), an incredibly vocal Barmy army (supporting the Brits) and a win (by the Brits)!

The Barmy Army was amazing, not only confirming that we should be a republic by their very pointed rendition of God Save the Queen. (It can't come fast enough.) Not only this but they managed to steal Waltzing Matilda; though I couldn't make out the words, which was just as well as their Mitchell Johnson chant was very pointed!

Anyway, it was lovely to see the Sydey Cricket ground, with it's heritage Members stands and being a smaller ground, how close you felt to the play.

Of course, if you go to the cricket you have to take some knitting. Sitting in the sun on a couple of hot days did slow me down but I did get some done.

I chose to take this pattern from Vogue Knitting Holiday 2008 edition. It's working up beautifully with the yarn I purchased with my Sheep to Shawl win prize of Zara by Filatura di Crosa. It's a beautiful yarn, very soft but with good definition so you can see all the work in the pattern. I'm not sure I have enough, but if it becomes a sleeveless vest that's OK with me. That's what I'm likely not to be able to do.

For the spinners, this yarn is very interesting. It is a very high twist yarn with a beautiful softness. This has alot to do with the Italian extrafine Merino, but also that the twist is achieved by combining SIX two ply yarns together. Whilst there is alot of twist overall, each component is softly spun. This is much easier to achieve with machines as there's alot of spinning. I'm very happy with my choice!