This is a brief post, as we have visitors from Michigan that arrived today. 26 years ago I was an au pair looking after their 3 children and this is their 1st visit to see me 😁. Beyond excited!
I don’t understand what has gone wrong, but my pairfect pair socks have different heel stitches?!?! No idea which is wrong. I am proceeding anyway, this yarn is too splitty to unravel.
Heel mistake! Merino and silk scarf
I made the above scarf with merino and silk, check out me using colours that aren’t purple or pink!! Yep that’s right its a gift for someone else.
At Loch Ness Knit Fest yesterday, I tried my hardest to not by more purple yarn…honestly I really did try! But look at these 2 beauties…impossible to resist. I also bought a yarn bowl, spindle, shawl pin, and some other skeins.
That’s it. It has been one of the most stressful weeks of my life I think and of course now I have some bug just in time for my guests. Hopefully things will improve now.
After a lovely week away at a holiday cottage on the West Coast of Scotland, this week has been so stressful and depressing. I need to keep up with my projects to keep me sane and keep me from slipping back into depression.
I have put up lots of unused craft supplies on Facebook Marketplace and already have sold some things. This was prompted by me having too many warning signs I was teetering on the edge of being a full blown hoarder. For anyone interested here’s a link to that post. I think its important as a community we show that life has ups and downs and that’s ok and normal. Electronic lives can seem like everyone is living perfect lives.
A quick update on my nuno felted scarf that I was unhappy with; I re did it adding more fibre around the edges and the roses. I am so much happier with it. It is so light to wear but warm!
Nuno felted scarf update
Last week I finished Allistar’s first sock and I am doing the heel of the 2nd at the moment. Already I spot they aren’t ‘Pairfect’…as per the yarn name. My long tail cast ons were different tail lengths and despite re-doing the cast on 3 times it wasn’t perfect, so this has had a knock on affect at the top of the foot! Typical as thats the bit people will see when he sits down. The yarn was really splitting though so a 4th attempt wasn’t possible.
Allistar’s first sock
I wanted to see what the sari silk looked like felted, so made a weird shaped scissors case! I love the silks and wish I had loaded more on!
Scissors case
I joined the Brit Spin marathon on Ravelry, in team ‘More enthusiasm than skill’. Our team each received 100g of Shetland fibre from our sponsors Curtis Fibres. It is now the morning of the 4th and final day of the challenge and I have only managed to spin a third of the Shetland so far, partly because I am trying to spin very fine so that I end up with a 3 ply fingering weight yarn, but mostly because I am frantically dashing from one priority to the next, not sleeping well and really feeling the physical signs of some stress I am under at the moment. My fitbit says my heart rate was in fat burn for 15 hours on Friday despite me not actually exercising! When I did some spinning at 6.30am, having been awake for hours, you can see my heart rate drop. It drops again when I did some spinning about 2.30pm…the final drop is when my husband tried it on! I wish I was better equipped to manage stress, but at least I know the spinning makes a physical positive difference.
Please follow the link to see the post about it and the finished photos.
Nuno Felted Scarf
Ermmm this needs more work, perhaps I will spin some silk thread to sew the seams and put other details and attach some whisps that haven’t joined the silk. When I made my sister a scarf I used too much fibre, this time not enough and its felted too quickly to itself rather than the silk (despite using cold water). Perhaps when its dry I can make some decisions.
Nuno felting scarf
My Husband’s socks
I bought an Addi Sockwonder 2.5mm 25cm circular needle and what a speed I was able to knit up to where I need to divide for the heel. Way faster than magic loop or double pointed needles, you just go round and round. The yarn is Schachenmayr Regia Pairfect…we shall see if it makes a perfect pair!!!
Allistar’s socks started
No update from me next week as I will be away this week and will just be working on the socks in the evenings.
A very different week for me this time. No long list of items, I have finished both arms of my Chimney Fire cardigan, so now it is just the body to finish. No photos this week as hopefully I’ll have a finished cardigan to show next week.
I spent a greater proportion of my days this week knitting and I think I over did it. I had a sore right hand but didn’t want to risk switching to continental knitting because my tension/gauge is much tighter then. My lower back and hips are sore and my shoulders full of knots. So this week I am not going to over do it.
My crochet hook with handle and cotton yarn suitable for making the Octopus for a Preemie arrived this week, so I am ready for when they are number 1 in my queue (currently #3).
As this is 1/4 of the way through the YOP I thought I’d snapshot where I am up to on my list. Not quite a quarter finished, but I feel happy with my progress so far.
Wet felting
A case for my craft scissors
A picture of my dog Ylva
A loose casual waistcoat or top
A project bag using the plastic loop handles in my stash
Not strictly on my list, but I made a new seat for the chair I picked up on Gumtree (like Craig’s List). I cut various layers of thin laminated wood we had in the garage and covered it with the old thin padding and fabric which I took from our old sofa, which I also used for doing up my granddad and grandpa’s old chairs. Next year I will likely strip the paint off it, but I want to use it for spinning for a while, to see if its a keeper! I had been using a dining room chair which is a wee bit too high and causing hip pain.
Spinning chair
I signed up to the World of Wool fibre club (like I don’t already have enough!?) and my first box arrived this week. It had a small amount of grey Herdwick wool, pineapple fibre tops and 150g custom blend of merino and sari silk which I decided to do a sample spin, chain ply and knit a small sample. I really like how it spins and knits up, when its done I probably will make a larger shawl from it, we shall see. My box also had a notepad and pen, which I’m going to use for tracking my felting projects, seeing as Ravelry doesn’t include felting. In Ravelry I have created a dummy handspun project, where I can assign fibre used for felting to it, so that my fibre stash leftovers are showing correct weights. (Hopefully that sentence makes sense to readers with Ravelry accounts.)
Himalayas (custom blend from World of Wool)
I mentioned last week I had made a scarf for my sister, I also made a wee purse too, but forgot to photograph it properly. Unfortunately it didn’t arrive in time for her birthday, which is very disappointing. None of the pictures are really showing the true colours. I started off with a silk hankie stretched as long as I could and then wool and silks were layered. It ended up thicker than planned and so I maybe used too much wool fibre or may have shrunk it too much trying to get the silk to stick, but this was my first go at nuno felting. I am still getting a lot of movement in the silks, so perhaps I need to leave them longer after wetting, before I start rolling.
Nuno felted scarf
On a previous post I had shown a wet felted bag with flap that I made, which has become home to my circular needles…so I decided to make a matching roll one for my double pointed needles. The top picture maybe looks weird as it was on my sofa seat but then rotated 90 degrees…it is a long rectangle.
DPN case (with circular needle case)
I have added to my YOP list ‘to knit (or crochet) all the left over bits of yarn. I had thought about making one of those sock yarn blankets made up of wee diamonds of sock yarn. After searching YouTube for videos to make diamond shapes I messaged the Crazy Sock Lady and asked her, and she explained they are made from mitred squares and so finally I found some ‘how to’ videos and had a go! And another go and another one!! They are addictive when you have a bunch of scrap wool next to your chair! I also knit a cover for my phone and a wee dog poop bag holder.
Look how well my poop bag holder goes with the trim on my dog treat bag!!! Hehe!
Heather DK yarn leftovers
And finally I started to knit one of the arms of my Chimney Fire cardigan (not that I have finished the body yet). To protect the body whilst I am knitting the sleeves with DPNs I used a circular tray, so its kind of like a Lazy Susan…every time I finish one DPN I spin the tray!
Arrggghhhh! On Saturday evening I realised I had missed some of the arm decreases and I’m a bit further on than the image below so don’t want to rip out rows, so I have made a note of what I did and a plan for remaining decreases to get me back on track, so as long as I do the same on the other arm I should be ok. At least there’ll be no struggles to get my chubby upper arms in the sleeves 😂
I haven’t posted on my blog recently so I thought I’d do a catch up post on what I have been up to.
Dyeing
I had a go at dyeing 200g of White Cheviot Super Chunky Weight wool. I started using Azalea and Tasman colours from the Landscape dyes and then added Pilbara and then put some Ashford Hot Pink mixed with Ice (blue). This wool was a real sponge soaking up the colours, so I just kept chucking more of the colours in! I love the finished hank, except the Tasman colour has made a few green bits. I don’t have much imagination for colourway naming, so this is logged in Ravelery as “Dusty Rose”.
Sewing
Today I made a knitting project bag and notions pouch.
Wet and needle felting
At my felting group I made my first picture, of a Highland Cow! He has a hunchback and some other issues, but for a first attempt at a proper picture I am quite happy.
Spinning
My neighbour’s parents have a Samoyed dog and kindly collected some dog hair brushings for me to spin. I have only done a test spin and chain ply with one handful and I’m excited to spin the 2 bags full that I have. My first attempt was unwashed when spun and I am going to try a small washed batch to see how that compares. The raw fur was lovely to spin with, very soft on my fingers, but my dog, Ylva, kept coming over for a sniff!
Knitting
My Chimney Fire cardigan is progressing, despite a number of struggles with the pattern. I have a baking tray with various sections of the pattern stuck on with magnets and have a list of row numbers so I don’t lose track of which body row number goes with which cable pattern. I did the same for the collar section too, where there were 3 different row numbers to keep track of on each knitted row!!
Tour de Fleece
Finally, I mentioned previously that I had taken part in this year’s Tour de Fleece, as part of The Corner of Knit and Tea team. I was randomly selected to receive a fiber gift and all the way from Kansas, USA came this lovely Corriedale wool in Poppy colourway. I am thinking I may use it to wet felt a poppy handbag or poppy picture, rather than spinning it. It also came with a couple of tea bags too. 😁i
Whilst reading MrsMcD918’s blog posts I came across the Year of Projects. I then went onto Ravelry to read a little bit more about it and joined one of the Ravelry groups. The ‘year’ technically started at the beginning of July but I am only a few weeks late.
So, what is on my list for the year?
Wet felting
A case for my craft scissors
A picture of my dog Ylva
A loose casual waistcoat or top
A project bag using the plastic loop handles in my stash
A coin purse
Make a fancy scarf or wrap using nuno felting
Needle felting
A 3D animal…probably my dog Ylva
Make up some more bug related fairies…to go with my ladybird one
Spinning
Spin all the commercial fibre currently in my stash on Ravelry @ date of posting!
Spin 200g of alpaca fibre currently in my stash
Master chain ply
Create a fractal spun yarn
Spin some tweed yarn
Create my own wool and silk blended spin
Create an official (not accidental) art yarn
Dyeing
Dye some of the natural fibre tops in my stash
Dye some my own spun yarn and the undyed bought skein I have
Knitting
Finish my Chimney Fire cardigan*
Make my husband a pair of socks
Make my dad something for Christmas
Make up a matching accessory set from my perpetual purple paradise homespun yarn
Make the shawl with my Rowan Lima yarn
Make a 2nd pair of socks for myself
Learn brioche stitch
Learn fair isle knitting and knit one of the small fair isle items in my queue
Oh my is that too many things?! But that barely makes a dint in my stash, so is it enough!?! We shall see as the year goes on.
*I drafted this earlier in the week…and after a few days of knitting my Chimney Fire cardigan I am only on row 9 of the upper body and I am already stuck and have reached out to a lady on Ravelry who created one that inspired me to buy the pattern, to see if she’d be willing to help me…if not I will have to contact the designer…at this rate I will be struggling to finish by Christmas, never mind the rest of my list!
