This weekend I decided to try a new-to-me spinning technique.
All the yarn I have spun so far has been plied. Even my very first attempt at spinning was plied, albeit with the skill one would expect from a complete beginner. After watching some online videos recently, I was inspired to try spinning singles that would remain as singles. I don't often knit with singles yarn, and I do like a nice tightly-twisted yarn so this would be a different direction for me, but I also wanted to have a go at some of the techniques I had seen in the videos.

I was given this fibre for Christmas and it's been sitting in my stash for over two months now because I had no idea at all what to do with it. I don't even know what it is - it came in gift packaging with no information about the fibre content. The only thing I knew was that it would felt - and that was only because I rubbed a small amount between my hands in hot soapy water to see if it would.

It's really not my colours - I prefer blues and teals, or blue-toned reds, and the overriding shade in this fibre is the fuchsia pink. It's not clear from this photo, but about half the fibre is that bright pink. I do like the pale green-blue but there wasn't a lot of that in there, and I really didn't like the combination of the dark purple with the frankly snot-green!
I decided if I was going to experiment with a new technique I may as well use fibre that I didn't mind if I messed up with. I could practice and experiment and if the whole lot ended up in the bin it would all be a learning experience and I wouldn't have wasted any favourite fibres.


I started out setting my wheel on its largest whorl, which is 6:1. I usually spin very lightweight yarn, but I knew that the low twist required for a singles yarn would be more stable in a thicker weight with more fibres drafted together so I decided to aim for something closer to a DK. Then it was what to do about the colours. After stripping the first section of the fibre to try to isolate each individual colour, I decided the pink was just too loud and in too large a proportion of the total amount of fibre for my taste. Then I tried combination-drafting two or three of the colours together in different combinations until eventually I ended up just drafting all five together at once to see what happened!

I decided I liked that effect better. Depending on where in the fibre I drafted from I was getting different optical blending effects in the spun yarn. Oranges, teals, purples and browns that weren't present in the dyed fibre were appearing in the yarn. It also made the spinning much faster!!

The entire 100g was spun in less than one afternoon. I just managed to squeeze it on to one bobbin!

Even with trying to manipulate the fibre colours with stripping and drafting, that fuchsia pink still dominated but I knew there were some fun colour mixtures underneath. 

Next step was to wind the newly spun yarn off the bobbin and into a skein, hoping it would hold together. I'd done lots of ply-back tests throughout the spin, trying to avoid overspinning it. Low twist really isn't my default spinning style but I was worried I'd overcompensated for my usual high-twist and had underspun it and the whole lot would fall apart! There are some areas of inconsistent thickness but to my pleasure and surprise the yarn held together at least for long enough to get it skeined up.
​

Next task was soaking and a little fulling. I'd never fulled my spun yarn before. I've felted garments, both on purpose and by accident (!), but always to proper felting. Past the point of no return, as it were! I also had the added challenge of my five-year-old deciding he had to help me, and that because water was involved he had to take his clothes off to do so!
I ran hot water in the sink, as hot as the tap would go so it was ok to dip fingers into for a second but I couldn't hold my hand in the water. I also had a basin of cold water, as cold as the tap would go. Between us, he and I dunked the yarn into hot soapy water and then into cold water, back and forth a total of three times.

After the third trip through the cold rinse, I could see the yarn was fulling - in fact I was worried I'd perhaps done one temperature shock on the yarn too many and perhaps ought to have stopped after the second cold rinse. It's a tricky balancing act when you don't really know what you're doing and you're trying to avoid splashing very hot water on to your naked child!

​Finally it was snapped to even out the distribution of any remaining twist, and hung to dry. (The yarn, that is, not my son!)

And here is my finished skein of yarn!

I've reskeined it, partly for ease of winding and also to make sure that the yarn has actually held together along its full length, and I'm so pleased with it! Still no idea what to do with it, but now instead of fibre I'm not fond of that I don't know what to do with, I have soft fluffy yarn full of interesting colour combinations in a DK weight I can use in a sensible quantity (about 250 yards).

It seems February vanished in the blink of an eye, and somehow here is March already, and another new pattern hits my Ravelry store.

Orchids for Eve is a DK weight cowl which was originally designed as a gift for my Dad's partner using my own handspun yarn.

It's worked up from the bottom edge, starting with a picot cast-on and finishing with a picot cast-off, both of which are explained in the pattern. The leaf lace pattern is both charted and written so you can work from your preferred style.

The inspiration for the pattern was the stitch pattern itself. I had seen a Ravelry design challenge to design a cowl using a leaf pattern, and I loved the picot edgings. The whole thing just kind of came together from there, and my handspun merino 3-ply behaved itself very well to make it.

You can find the pattern in my Ravelry store here or by clicking through the photo.

Or rather, gloves for kids. My five-year-old has been pestering me for “gloves with fingers” all winter. I have been putting him off, for various reasons. Firstly, he has perfectly good warm handknit mittens, which he can put on easily by himself. Secondly, I have other stuff I need/want to knit. There were Christmas presents and design samples and unfinished WIPs which all pushed gloves down the list. Thirdly, and probably the biggest reason, I have only ever knitted one pair of gloves before. Mittens, yes. Mitts, loads. Gloves with actual fingers, once, and oh boy were they fiddly! All those little tubes to make the fingers, the finished fingers getting in the way, the yet-to-be-worked stitches on holders getting in the way, and oh so many ends to weave in after finishing all those digits!
Finally I caved. Two afternoons, two gloves done!

The pattern is a free one from Ravelry, Gloves for Kids by Lise-Anne Michel. There’s just the one size, to fit a 4-7 year old, which was exactly what I needed. The yarn is two colourways of Wollmeise Pure hold together, Jewitta über Berlin and Admiral in der Wolke. They seem to be just what he was looking for, because he’s barely taken them off since they came off the needles!

Speaking of stuff on the needles, as well as a sample shawl using my handspun, I have another not-my-design pattern in progress at the moment too. I remembered this week I had promised my sister I would make sleeveless tops for each of my two nephews, and if I don’t make them soon they won’t need pullovers, they’ll need swimwear! This is a pattern called Kidding Around from Cygnet yarns which I found in a back issue of Simply Knitting magazine.

February's offering from my pattern store just went live! Leprechaun's Gemstones are top-down socks with a flap-and-gusset heel, sized from 7.25" up to 10.25" foot circumference. 
They were designed during a trip around Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and were actually the third incarnation of the original idea. The first draft biased so badly I couldn't wear them, and the second version looked great but the stitch pattern had so little stretch that even my 8 year old couldn't force an adult size sock over his heel. A trip back to the drawing board resulted in this lace sock with a pattern that appears to form a stack of cut gems down the sock. Invented in on the island of Ireland, and with so many rainbows (it rains a lot there!), it seemed logical that this sock treasure might be found along with the leprechauns' gold at the end of the rainbow.

Any plans I might have had for designing and knitting this week ended up being put on hold from Wednesday, when I came down with a doozy of a cold. I’d had a bit of a scratchy throat on Tuesday, a slightly stuffy nose on Wednesday morning but generally felt OK, but then by the time I woke up on Thursday I felt rubbish. I spent literally day all Thursday blowing my nose (honestly, you’d think there would be a limit to the productivity of one human nose but I must have exceeded all normal limits on Thursday and maybe considered seeking sponsorship from Kleenex or something!), and when I put the kids to bed at 8pm, I went too.
I actually took a day off sick from work on Friday, which is a real rarity for me, spent the morning sleeping, the afternoon vegetating on the sofa under a blanket, and when I went to collect the children from the after-school childminder she answered the door with “oh my goodness, you look awful!”. Thanks!
There have been some nasty cold viruses going around this winter and I can attest to the unpleasantness of this one. If I don’t even have the energy to knit, I must be feeling bad.
By Saturday afternoon I decided I could manage some work on my current shawl design, but then switched back to my garter stitch scrap blanket later after I’d taken some cough medicine which causes drowsiness. I’m susceptible to drowsy-making medicines at the best of times. Never mind “do not drive or operate machinery”, I was treating it as “may cause drowsiness; if affected, do not attempt knit design”!
It’s now Sunday and I’m feeling much better today. Still coughing and sneezing but infinitely better in myself and more than up to some stocking stitch. Coincidentally this yarn happens to change colour just at the eyelet row! Couldn’t have planned that if I’d tried!

This is (clearly!) the beginning of a shawl. What is less obvious is that it has taken two full evenings and an afternoon of knitting to get this far. I’m not that slow! This is the third incarnation of this shawl, however. In my head I had an idea for a shallow crescent shawl, but when I started it, I didn’t like it. That transformed into a modified triangular shawl, but then that didn’t turn out how I had envisioned it either.
Turns out this shawl wants to be a semi-circular one! Who knew?! I think this is the right choice though. The yarn cake is forming a heart in the centre as I knit it!

It’s rare that I knit two samples for a pattern. In fact, it may even be unprecedented but on this occasion it is necessary. Next month’s pattern is to be socks, but unfortunately the sample pair I have knitted have proved to be completely impossible to photograph! The yarn is a gorgeous variegated green, and it’s the variegation that is causing the issue. In real life, the stitch pattern shows beautifully, the variegation and the design work together in delightful harmony, and the name suits the design. Rendered on film (or rather in pixels) the stitch pattern totally vanishes among the colour variegation. I’ve tried indoor lighting, outdoor lighting, cloudy overcast sky, bright sunshine, it makes no difference, the stitch pattern is completely indiscernible.
And so here I am, casting on another pair in a different yarn, hoping the socks and the camera will play nicely this time!

My first pattern release of 2018 went live on Ravelry today. Earth Space Love is a stranded colourwork beret, worked top-down from the crown down to the ribbed band.

The pattern came about from a design challenge on the theme of Mandala. A mandala is a Hindu or Buddhist circular symbol which represents the universe. I wanted to take that universal theme one step further than just designing a circular pattern. The hat is worked top-down, a first for me. The central green shape represents Planet Earth. The blue area around it represents the seas, with waves. Outside of that is a wide stripe representing space and the wider universe, with motifs of stars, moons and planets. Beyond space, a round of hearts represents the universal force of love, and then the design comes full circle through its colours. The two-colour ribbed band is worked using the green and blue that began the hat and the pattern is complete.

OK, that’s definitely an overstatement, but it is true that the holidays are over and thoughts must return to work once more. When “Work” involves this gorgeous rich blue laceweight yarn, pretty beads, and a pattern that has been just challenging enough to design with, it doesn’t feel like work though.

It does feel like this project has been on the needles for ages, but I haven’t been working on it exclusively. Far from it! This poor, patient shawl has waited, uncomplaining, while I have put it aside time and again to make no less than nine other knitting projects plus spinning projects and now finally I can give it my full attention. With over 400 stitches per row now I’m going to need to!

Once that is done, I have a pattern to release (scheduled for next week), another that will start testing around the same time, and then I can move on to the shawlette which is clamouring to get out of my imagination and on to my needles.

According to The Field Guide to Fleece, the breed was developed in the 1950s in New Zealand as both a fleece and meat sheep. Reading other sources online, I found out that the wool has a medium staple length of around 6” but that the crimpy bouncy fibre spins up into a lofty yarn, full of air, regardless of how much of a worsted draft you use. This bothered me, as I prefer the smooth, sleek look of worsted spun fibres to the fluffiness of woollen spun yarn. Also, my friend challenged me to spin a laceweight yarn from it.

That last point was what captured my imagination though. For all that I loved the blue tones of the fibre, I had no idea what to turn it into. Could a fibre that tended towards a haloed soft-textured yarn make a laceweight yarn that woeful give me the clean lace stitches I like? If I could spin it thin enough, it might.

The braid has various shades of blue, from sky blue through to navy, but not dyed as a gradient. For yarn for knitting lace, I want a 2-ply construction, and that gave me an idea. I decided to open up the braid and split it all the way down the middle lengthways to give two identical lengths of fibre.

Each of these bumps of fibre will form one singles of the final 2-ply, but if I spin both in the same way I’ll just be recreating the original braid and I wanted something that would really accentuate all those beautiful blues. Instead I’m spinning one half from the top end down to the bottom, and the second half in the other direction so the two resulting bobbins will start from opposite ends of the fibre when I come to ply them. I am hoping that that reversing of the colour sequence will result in some areas where the colours of the two plies match and others where they don’t, blending to form new shades.

I have already started spinning, at my wheel’s highest ratio (19:1), aiming for a very thin singles. The fibre drafts beautifully and a very fine yarn is not proving hard to produce so far. And just look at those blues!

A quick ply-back test already shows the slight fuzziness inherent in the yarn produced by this Perendale fibre though. I’m very pleased with it so far, small quantity though it is, and it is taking all my self-control to finish my knitting project instead of throwing it aside and spending hours spinning this gorgeous fibre!