Spinning red!

This Saturday was Experimental Spinning day and after returning from a very short sojourn at the beach house at Phillip Island, put a load of washing on and headed off.

We were working with 'red'. So we carded all our leftover bits of red, tops, yarns, fabric bits, silk, cotton, whatever we felt like and whatever we had on hand.

I started with a mix of merino and flax and added more! The beauty of working with a colour is that it all matches, and, more importantly, you see the range of colour that we call 'red', in this case. It's always fun and we always end up with gorgeous yarns.

I kept some of the flax/merino mix (from First Editions, of course) and spun it finely, then plyed with the fun stuff. Love the yarn.

Mystery Sock Knit along

OK, so the last time I tried a Mystery Knitalong I wasn't very happy (Yarn Forward Magazine mystery blanket......errors in patterns, lag time here and too many squares to knit each month......still waiting to be finished....). Anyway, Dr Bones did a mystery sock knitalong last year and ended up with a pair of gorgeous socks. It's on again and I am persuaded that the TTL mystery sock knitalong will at least be manageable and I will end up with a pair of handknit socks.

I have purchased my yarn, on a surprise jaunt to the city, while husband was in Dymocks, I was in Morris's, a denim coloured yarn called Ranco from Araucania:

The first part of the pattern was released on Friday, I was at the beach, so I'd better get knitting. This is the cuff and the next part is released next Friday.

Thank heavens for the stash!

As is usual, all ideas and suggestions have been pushed aside, as well meaning and excellent as they were, for something I managed to find in the stash:

My main problem with all the ideas is the beginning, cream, and the end, black and how these would look. This mostly purple, multi-coloured cone has been used to make one of the lovely machine lace shawls, which have easily disappeared off this years stall. Only a small amount is left, though plenty for this purpose.

I like the final result:

Now, I'm off to wash it and start on the knitting. Have a look at knitspingirl's yarn, what is she going to do?

The search for the perfect partner!

Well having sorted, carded and spun my fibre sandwich, I now have to decide what to do about plying. I'm not the only one. Knitspingirl is having similar problems!

Anyway, here is my lovely bobbin full of colour.

There are a number of options for my plying dilemma that don't use another yarn. I could just use the yarn asis. If I wash it and hang it, the kinks will lose their bite, or I could use it, kinks and all. I could also navajo ply, which would create a three ply yarn by itself and the colours would remain distinct. But I'm looking at making a hat with this yarn and for reasons of frugality, I want a thicker yarn with length to ensure my hat has enough yarn. I can't have too much, but I can have too little.

So my options are to ply it with something. Here they are:

- the neverending purple, but this works better with a yarn with more indefinite colour

- the crazy multi colour yarn, that is too green

- the fine wool cream boucle, which will show up a bit too much

There are a number of other options, but they take time and I need to get on with making shawls for my summer markets. What to do??.........

Carding beautiful batts.

I would have posted this yesterday, but, the printer wouldn't transfer the picture, I have a cold and I was getting ready for today, which is my Rose St. Artists' Market day for September.

I've drum carded each colour separately. My drum carder is not fine toothed, so it performs pretty well with these sorts of batts. Sometimes it would be nice for it to be finer for a better product, but for this purpose I think, they've turned out rather well!

If my head stops thumping and my body aching, I might just start spinning. I wonder how knitspingirl is going...........

The Spin-in continues...

The spin-in continues, now I've found my camera! Not that knitspingirl hasn't been busy. She's already SPUN A SAMPLE and isn't it a gorgeous yarn. I was all ready to post my sorted samples when the NEXT POST went up. Those rolags do look good and it will be a very interesting yarn.

So, where am I? I did decide to sort my bag of stuff into colours and this is what turned up:

I'm going to card each of these colours, hoping that they'll retain the beautiful colours. I'm not quite sure, yet, what to do with the black, white and brown. Hopefully, during the carding process something will  inspire me.

Plying is still weighing on my mind as I usually ply with the 'neverending purple'. This time, however, I really don't think this will work. Again, hopefully, inspiration will strike me.

Isn't it fun?

Fibre Sandwich spin along

My fibre sandwich from this years' Harrietville has been sitting around just defying me to spin it up. Along with that has been a friends that I have finally sent off to her in far off climes.

We've decided to spin it up together and post along the way and see what comes up. It's always hard when a friend is far away, hopefully, we'll at least feel that we're in the same place as we spin this communal bunch of fibres.

This is my stash and this http://knitspingirl.blogspot.com/2010/09/long-distance-spin-in.html is hers!

Another friend, shall we call her 'Doris' does not like the very random, crazy effect, so this year she sorted her 100gms into colours and is spinning it up. I haven't seen it yet, but I thought I might just give it a go!

So off we go!