Five on Friday - Five Finished Yarns

I did manage to do a bit of spinning over the Summer break. I have my Ashford Traveller permanently at our beach house, so I can swap bobbins between my two Ashford Wheels.

I've finally washed the skeins and reskeined half of them, all I have to do now is photograph, measure and put them on Etsy, the least enjoyable part of the job. Anyway, here they are:

A fibre sandwich from the Harrietville weekend, plyed with purple. Have more to go!

Alpaca, with knots throughout. Not my best knots, but always give that little extra texture.

Dyed wool from Kathy's Fibres, purchased at Bendigo, navaho plied to keep those gorgeous colours alive!

Dyed yarn from Experimental Spinning, plied with fine Polwarth from Tarndwarncoot. The fine single was not scoured, so was scoured AFTER plying. The two different fibres reacted differently and I manage to get a slightly more textured two ply.....deliberately!

This is English Leicester and was spun for a non-spinning Leanne who won it at a Harrietville weekend. I think we'll be able to make a pouch for phone and keys when she goes on one of her photographic expeditions.

I've now started several more spinning projects....but I must finish the Samoyed!

Sample, sample, sample...

It took an aweful lot of sampling, but finally I got there! Here is the scarf that started with me all over the place, finally settling on moss stitch:

It is worth sampling till your bored with it!

If you know anyone that would love this scarf, it's already in my Etsy shop!

Finally......

Maybe Moss stitch is the stitch for the multi-coloured yarn from First Editions.....

Have been trying for ages! Now to sort out the shape of the scarf.....

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!

A tale of two skeins

Remember my CD drop spindling on my holidays, well this is the second half of the 100gms of First Editions tops.



I then plied both with some soft beautiful light blue reeled silk that I had in my stash. (Don't know how it got there, I'm not really a light blue person, but how can you doubt the wisdom of the stash and the choice of the perfect colour?)

These are the resulting skeins:







Now I don't know if you can tell but they're differents.

The one on the right is the holiday skein. It's beautiful with a slight wrapping to ensure the tops are highlighted. I love this skein.

The other is the home skein. It's finer - I was trying for the same, it's pulled apart in several places and whilst, on it's own is a lovely skein, I can't sell it.

I can't in all honesty sell a skein the knitter is going to have to manage. I'll knit it up and where it's week, I'll rejoin and generally work around. This is definitely NOT what people expect when they purchase handspun wool.


But what is the difference? Spinning on holiday, Spinning at home in front of the television. And maybe I've answered my own question - relax and concentrate!

Happy spinning!

Onion skins

Friday and today have been days to cook up onion skins and create some new yarns to work with.

The idea was to mordant with copper coins then dye with red onion skins.

Unfortunately I think I've learnt something I've suspected for some time: silk is selfish and steals all the mordant and dye. The change from the previous dyeing wasn't great, however, upon first putting the silk in the dyepot it turned yellow then proceeded to take up the brown.

They all did turn out lovely as I removed the silk early, put back the copper coins and left the wool in.

It's a lesson well learnt, but now I have some lovely yarns for next week.