The Ultimate Lanterne Rouge

The Tour de Fleece ended almost exactly 2 months ago. And Thursday night, I finally limped across the finish line, and finished my raw-fleece-to-yarn spinning. At the beginning of the week, I weighed the fleece I had left - I'd been washing it an ounce at a time, and trying to spin on it fairly steadily. Lo and behold,

almost done! So I washed up the last few ounces, and got carding. I found it to be much more effective to card a rolag, spin it straight away, and then card some more. On Wednesday night I finished spinning the Gotland.

I only had 70 yds of the black Hebridean yarn, so I sorted through my bags of colored top that I'd bought, just to try out, and decided that the Black Welsh Mountain was the closest color match to the Hebridean. That got spun up on Thursday.

Can you tell which is which? The Black Welsh Mountain is actually a dark brown, and when put next to the Hebridean, is noticeably lighter. The Hebridean is really, really black. I think that when I knit the sweater, I'll use the BWM for the hem and yoke colorwork, and the Hebridean for the cuffs. I think they'll be fine in isolation, but together the color difference will be noticeable.

The final pile. Yardage stats: 68 yds Hebridean, 115 yds Black Welsh Mountain (I have more of this top so if I run out, I can spin more),  1163 yds Gotland. Total yardage needed: 1125-1270 yds grey, 180-205 yds black, depending on whether I want positive ease or not. Hmmmm...I think I'm going to knit the body up to the armholes, provisionally cast on the sleeve stitches, work the yoke, and see how much yarn I have left and knit the sleeves down until I run out. Hopefully that will work!

In any event, it's a really good thing that I finished the spinning for this project on Thursday. Because you know what arrived on Friday?

My new toy (and 40th birthday present to myself). And since the Gotland/BWM spinning was done, I got to start playing straight away.

I have since finished this BFL, and am working on some Wensleydale that is going to be a present for one of my P3 hostesses in a couple of weeks. It's taking some getting used to, but it sure is fun!

Commuting knitting

I went back to work yesterday, and noticed a serious shortfall - I have no commuting knitting. There I was, on the train to Waterloo, with no mindless or small knitting project in my bag.

You'll be glad to know that this shortfall has since been remedied. I've had a couple of skeins of Malabrigo Lace marinating in the stash for about three years now, and it's time to convert them into a Whisper Cardigan.

This is one of the few instances when I've bought the yarn with a project in mind and actually ended up casting it on. True to form, I am modifying the every-living Bejeebus out of this pattern. After looking at the schematics, I decided that I wanted to have the option to make the body and the sleeves a bit longer. I've only got 2 skeins, so I've decided to start from the middle of the back and knit outward to the sleeves (instead of starting at one cuff and knitting across). I'll put the stitches for the sleeves on holders, and knit the rest of the body as long as suits me, then go back and finish the sleeves off.

That's the plan at least. But knitting laceweight on US 7/4.5 mm needles makes for quite the change from 3-ply handspun on 6s!

Incoming!!!!!!!!!!!

I have been spending far too much time tracking a particular parcel on it's way to me from some lovely folks in Washington state. After a few days of forgetting to check, I just noticed this.

So. Freaking. Excited. And preparing to spin ALL THE THINGS! (And believe me, these days, that's a lot of things. Like, somewhere around 20+ lbs worth of fiber hiding in my house.) (Of course, some of that I'm supposed to be selling, not hoarding for myself...)

Oy...my poor hands. Y'all should start buying stock in Nurofen/Advil, if I have anything to say about it.

Sampler packs, get your sampler packs right here!

I've just finished loading the update into the shop (after a couple hours of photo editing after the girls finally went to bed), and I'm really excited about the sampler packs. Each bag has half an ounce (approximately 14 g) of each color in my semisolid Vital Dyes series. There are three fibers available in the sampler packs: Dorset Horn, Humbug BFL (shown above) and Shetland. Grab one and let yourself play with some new colors!

Undyed fiber report

There's been so much application of dye to fiber around here of late, that it's something of a relief to have some naturally colored fiber to play with. I've been plugging away on the Gotland (halfway to the required yardage, with another full bobbin and starting another one tonight), but I decided I needed a break, and I'm spun up the Hebridean fleece for the colorwork.

This stuff started out looking like this:


There were some intact locks.

The staple length was about 3-4 inches, and the fiber had some really nice crimp!

I had 68 grams of raw fleece, and after washing I had about 60 gr left.

I carded that up, after tossing out the bits that were too matted or scurfy to be worth messing with. This box full of rolags,

Ended up as approximately 70 yds of lovely 2-ply yarn.

This was really nice to spin - it drafted pretty well (better then the Gotland for sure!) - and the resulting yarn has a nice bounce, although it's not the softest in the world. Sadly, 70 yds is only about half of the required yardage! I do have a couple of other lots of black/brown fiber (Black Welsh Moutain, some Jacob), so the plan is to use the Hebridean for the colorwork on the arms of the sweater, and spin up probably the Black Welsh for the hem and yoke. We'll see how it goes.