Rewarding Rewards

I've written a few times about my growing kickstarter addiction and I know I mentioned that I was supporting Sara of Smudge Yarn's project to fund the development of her Irish yarn business. For my reward I chose unspun fibres, the colour blend is Illuminate (inspired by colours in illuminated manuscripts) and I chose to have it blended with metallic fibres. It arrived in the post shortly before I went on holiday and I couldn't have been more delighted.

I don't know what I imagined illuminated manuscript colours might be but, as soon as I saw the blend, I understood completely. The mix is fantastic and the fabulous coppery fibres perfectly highlight the other colours. I don't think I've ever been so excited to start spinning something and I even managed to start before I went on holiday.

I tend to spin quite finely. My spinning teacher described me as one of nature's laceweight spinners but even my best attempts ave been fairly inconsistent up until now. But something about this blend suited me perfectly. I mean, absolutely perfectly. I think I only broke my thread three times during the whole lot, which is utterly unprecedented. There are a few burrs (texture!) but, for the most part, the yarn is smooth, consistent and exactly what I was aiming for.

Most of my spinning has been Navajo plied but, because I was hoping for the maximum length from this, I decided to just go for two ply. The result is somewhere between laceweight and 4ply weight but I'm hoping it should still be suitable for the project I had in mind. Unfortunately, the 270 metres on this skein probably isn't enough so I'm hoping that I might be able to buy another 100g of the same blend.

I'm not sure what I'm looking forward to more: knitting this skein or hopefully spinning another!

New Day, New Tension

When I said that my Maluka scarf was my first project with my own handspun, it was technically true. Earlier in the year I began a scarf with my Rainbow Handspun, I did a little test knit and carefully picked the right needles so that it'd be narrow but not too thin. The skein started at red and moved rapidly through orange and yellow to green, all in a lovely consistent near-chunky weight.

Then I reached a point in the skein where I'd clearly gone to bed and woken up in a much more laceweight mood.

I've carried on regardless because, well,  what else can you do with yarn that switches from chunky to laceweight in a single row. Unfortunately, that means that the scarf changed from narrow to extremely skinny and from long to loooooooooooooooooooooong.

I'm trying to stretch the red-green section with some aggressive blocking to even out the width. And, when a scarf is this long, another half-foot can't hurt. 

Support A Local Yarn Producer!

Well, Irish is almost local.

And the fleeces are local to her.

Stop nit-picking the title and look at the lovely yarn!

All These Things That I've Spun

Apologies for the popropriation, suitable only for fans of The Killers and spinning.

Back in December, I went to The Big Knit Show in Exeter. It was a great day out and I was completely overwhelmed by the wide range of lovely things I wanted to buy. My carefully crafted plan was to walk round the hall twice and plan what to buy before returning with cash. In theory I would then stick to my budget and buy only things that I definitely wanted.

What happened in practice was that I got halfway round the hall and fell in love with a merino/silk blend roving from Sara's Texture Craft. I didn't get a good photo of it but there's a good picture on the site.

I've only been spinning since last summer. In the first few months after learning, I spun pretty much anything I could get my hands on but I haven't actually made anything with what I've spun yet. I have a big bag of multi-coloured (and extremely multi-textured) yarn and only the vaguest idea what to do with them.

I spun the merino/silk blend before Christmas and navajo plied it. Since then it has sat in my knitting bag, begging to be made into something lovely.

It's difficult to be sure exactly how long a hand spun skein is (okay, it's difficult for me to be sure) but I figured it was around 330m, which isn't a lot, so it's been particularly hard to find the right pattern for this. But just before I went to London, I found Maluka on Ravelry, a fabulous free pattern that's extremely economical on yarn (and, fortunately, it has a chart that is clearly legible on a smart phone).

I didn't entirely follow the pattern, I added  a few repeats of the border to be sure I used as much of the yarn as possible. I also finished off with an eyelet row which I'd seen on a number of Ravelry projects.

I stayed up a little too late last night to finish knitting so I could get it blocking as soon as possible. I'm not sure I've ever been more impatient to block something. Because my spinning is so inconsistent there are a lot of areas that are far too tightly spun that have come out a bit hard and they've definitely been improved with the blocking.

The photos aren't great but hopefully it gives an idea of the final result. I'd recommend the pattern to anyone and everyone, I'm sure it looks even better in yarn that hasn't been spun by an incompetent beginner!

I knew there was a reason I bought fifty blocking pins