Woolly Wednesday - yellow, green, blue, red

it's Woolly Wednesday again and a great opportunity to once again show off my finished bathroom curtains project.

Woven from merino wool / silk, spindle spun. I drum carded the dyed merino with white, well blended but there's still some variance in the colour which is nice. Warp is commercial cottolin, woven on a 4-shaft 32" loom. Pattern is a herringbone twill, more photos including the draft on Flickr

Finishing the curtains means that I've been able to officially start this sock project. I've now finished spinning this really lovely fibre from Yummy Yarns, it's BFL / Bamboo dyed in 'Water Sprite' colours (I especially love the bluey green). This time I've spun really fine, again by hand spindle, and navajo (chain) plied to concentrate the colours. I have two skeins of reasonably fine 4-ply (which *should* be identical, I split the fibre down the middle) and I'm looking forward to seeing how the colours stripe when knitted.

Another dormant WIP  may see some action soon is my Tatiana pullover. I'm not spinning this one but using Ashford's Tekapo 100% wool in dark red (looks brighter in the photo than it really is). I'm dipping my toe in the crochet pool, I'm relatively new to it. This jumper has a lovely 'shell' pattern made from puff stitches, which I'm enjoying.

Bathroom curtains finished

I've posted about this project so many times while it's been in progress, but at last I can say that it's finished!

Woven from merino wool / silk, spindle spun. Warp is commercial cottolin, woven on a 4-shaft 32" loom. Pattern is a herringbone twill, the draft is among the photos on Flickr.

More photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/shieladixon/sets/72157631870368704/

Pretty and environmentally-friendly!

Tried a new colour on my hair yesterday. Now that it's shorter I only use half the bottle. What else to do with half a bottle of left-over chemical hair dye but squirt it over a 100g of white merino?

I can feel another shawl coming on!

Needle felted characters round-up

Baby hedgehogs are so cute, and this little fella is so realistic! After seeing him a week or so ago I remembered some of the other lovely needle-felted items I've seen and decided to make a little round-up.

Instructions for the hedgehog are at http://master-klass.livejournal.com/486345.html It's in russian, but should be easy to get an online translation or just follow the photos.

I featured this cute fella in April's Hand Spinning News, no information other than "shetland + suri alpaca made by my daughter". Found on spinalatte's Flickr stream here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/43713413@N03/7035702203/in/photostream/

Created by Jen Scheer and found on Etsy, this Hubble Telescope is complete with little astronauts. Unfortunately now gone from Etsy and only the odd photo remains online

Another cat, this one is by Robin Andreae, needle felting artist. She uses her art to make a difference; she sells her work on eBay and donates 20% to animal charities. Her own blog is at http://needlefeltedart.blogspot.com/ and is well worth a good browse; she's made so many beautiful creatures. (from January 2012 HSN)

One I've spotted just this week, this Halloween witch is Carey Brett and is available on Folksy now http://folksy.com/items/3703510-Halloween-Witch-and-her-Magic-Cauldron

These cute and friendly pandas are part of a range of felted wool toys made by woolroommate. She is inspired by nature - birds, animals, flowers and by fairytales. Found on Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/woolroommate/4715471872/in/set-72157624186848199

radmegan felt inspired to make one of her childhood heroes (and mine) Kermit. She takes us on a litte needle-felting tutorial: http://radmegan.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/lovers-dreamers-and-muppets.html

This cute ET and other characters made by Ray Cannon were on show at an exhibition a couple of years ago with little word since.

And finally an item from the most recent Hand Spinning News, this lovely bag is part of a round-up of felted bags - all wonderful.

Woolly Wednesday

Thank you to Lydia for letting me know about Woolly Wednesday. On the first Weds of each month, bloggers can join together to share their creative adventures.

As well as the sharing aspect, I thought it might be useful to have a regular look at my current projects. So here goes.

I've two 'active' spinning projects right now, both spinning by drop spindle. My friends will be sick of me posting pictures of this loom which I warped back in April. It's still in progress - partly because of getting distracted by other projects, and partly because... it's just taking a long time. The warp is long,  long enough for two curtains, hems and tabs, but I can see the end of the warp on the back roller now!

Warp is commercial cottolin, weft is merino / silk mix handspun with a spindle and woven as singles.


This next one is a secret, so don't tell anyone. It's the first picture I've posted of the project because I've not officially started it yet. I'm trying to resist picking this up but the fibre (from YummyYarnsUK) is so beautiful, I sometimes do a little as a break from the other project.

Merino with bamboo, 'water sprite' colours. Spinning very fine, to navajo ply for socks. (Another one that'll take ages!)

Ginkgo socks, chart for reduced number of stitches

This was another really quick project, spurred on by wanting to see how the gorgeous fibre looked when knitted ('woodland', merino / nylon from Yummy Yarns UK) and by the advancing autumn and the desire for a new pair of handknit socks.

I had some 'firsts':

• For the first time I tried splitting the fibre down the middle and spinning each half separately. That should have made sure that the socks matched. I'm not sure why they don't but they look great together regardless. I suspect it's because the second half was a few yards longer than the first
• For the first time I tried plying from a centre-pull ball. This worked beautifully. It's a great way to 2-ply one bobbin-full with itself

I went for 2-ply for yardage reasons, also that the singles weren't as thin as I'd hoped. Even so, it was quite thick (almost DK I think) and so I went for bigger needles and reduced the number of stitches in the pattern. This made it a very quick knit - I did each sock in two sittings.

The reduction took a little bit of jiggery-pokery because of the lace pattern. The pattern is Cotton and Cloud's Ginkgo Socks, my favourite sock pattern (this is my fourth pair from that pattern) and the designer Kyoko Nakayoshi has said that she's happy for me to post the reduced chart here. So here it is.

I knit the toe ending up with 40 stitches altogether and then used Cotton and Cloud's pattern in conjunction with this shortened chart

More photos here on Flickr

Opulent raglan - fleece to finished!

I was lucky enough to meet sheep from the same zwartbles flock that this fleece came from.

I enjoyed using my Haldane Lewis for this one.

I combed the fleece rather than carding it, and spun worsted. The preparation should have taken out the shorter fibres, just leaving the best and longest fibres, all arranged parallel.

I didn't take out the sun-bleached tips, so the overall result is more of a dark chocolate rather than black.

I'm very happy with the jumper. The only thing I am a little unsure about is that it's very heavy. I think this is partly due to a tight gauge. My swatch was significantly smaller than it should have been, and rather than go with bigger needles, I simply went up a pattern size. This means I've packed in many more stitches than there should have been.

This makes it very warm!

Pattern is Interweave's Opulent Raglan. The photos in the montage above are all on Flickr.