Can you see that hand waving out of the top of that yarn project mountain? Yep, that’s me. I’m knitting and spinning my way through what feels like a gazillion things this week. All with joy in my heart and fleece debris stuck to my trousers!
First up is all the sock yarn leftovers, which- I know, I know- I said I was turning into a Beekeeper Quilt. Well, the Beekeeper now has a grand total of 6 hexipuffs, but there’s a lot of sock yarn leftovers, so I started making a square blanket.
The blanket starts in the middle and goes round and round increasing every second row. I’m really enjoying the colour craziness and simplicity. I originally saw it as an afghan square pattern, but then thought…why be bothered sewing squares together when I can just go round and round FOREVER until I get to a bed sized throw? Then when I did a bit of simple maths I realised that I would end up with something like 2,500 stitches in a round! This led to me solving the mystery of the metal tubes in my interchangeable needle kit. They are there to magically connect cables together if you want to make crazy huge blankets in the round, apparently. I suspect in my heart of hearts that there is no way this is going to end up king sized, but at least I can keep going until I run out of yarn or patience (or cable connectors).
My “Sparkly Sleeves of Warmth” have come along to a knit cafe or two in the last few weeks. The yarn is gorgeous and so is the pattern! I started them off two at a time on magic loop, then realised that for me, it feels a lot slower to do it that way, so I put them on separate needles and they are much happier. I’m on to the decreases, about halfway down arm 1 now.
My Dahlia cardigan is coming on a treat- I’m enjoying the challenge of a different construction and new techniques. It’s definitely got some “trust the pattern” moments, but everything has worked out well so far.
Onto spinning, and I finished the rest of the cashmere/merino/silk blend, which became a soft 2ply fingering weight yarn. I’m thinking it’ll be perfect for a cosy scarfy thing come autumn.
In fleece news, the whitefaced woodland fleece is now completely carded! I almost can’t believe that there is no more to be done! It needed more processing than I expected in the end. I carded out the lock ends before carding it all together, as there was some bits of lanolin and short fibres I wanted to remove. The resulting carded batts were really easy to spin. The wool is both coarse and soft, was easy to spin but didn’t want so much twist- I could feel that it could end up like hairy wire otherwise! I’m pleased with the resulting yarn and wonder what it will feel like in a garment.
And one more spinning project…this is mixed British wool that I blended to create crazy colourful fluff! I don’t know whether all that natural white wool processing got to me, cos one day I just had the urge to blend together all the colours from a bag of random ends! I’d also just been to look at old paintings with a friend in Statens Museum for Kunst here in Copenhagen, and had got inspired by the vivid luminosity of the colours in the early 20th century French paintings. I love how this has turned out, and blending the brashly toned tops together reminded me of blending primary colours for painting to create a whole kaleidoscope of colours.
I hope your projects are treating you well this week and I’d love to hear what inspires your own fibre arts projects. Whatever it is, let me know in the comment thread.
Until next time, Happy Creating!
Rosie x
Well done you! I am under a mountain of new projects myself but haven’t had/made the time to blog about them so you are my new role model!!!
Haha :) Thanks very much! Sometimes my blogging mojo is pretty low, but I do find it helps me feel organised (at least internally!) when I write. Tea and cake also helps a lot :)