Heather Knits

On the first weekend in November I picked up Joanne and we trundled down to Devon for a very fun (if somewhat muddy) fibre-y weekend. This year’s weekend was run by Emma rather than Terri and was in a different location to last year, and didn’t include any outings.

On our way down we popped into John Arbon‘s shop in Lynton. John and Juliet were very kind and put up with us despite being in the middle of packing for a big show up in London. Juliet had also measured out some fibre for me before we arrived. I bought 1kg of their organic merino which I plan to dye and spin for a jumper or cardigan soon:

And I couldn’t resist 500g of 75% organic merino, 25% silk.

This is lovely soft stuff.I plan to dye it as well but I am not sure whether to do it in one go, or do several smaller things.

The main reason for going to the shop though was to pick up some more alpaca / merino fibre in Cappuccino to add to the stuff I bought last year, and hopefully give me enough for a cardigan. Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of this as I have started spinning it already

After the shopping we trundled up to the farm to meet everyone. It was lovely to see some familiar faces and meet some new people too.

As well as a healthy amount of spinning, knitting, chatting and cake eating over the weekend we also did some dyeing under the excellent tutelage of Bex, and some people did some felting too.

I dyed 100g of superwash Bluefaced Leicester fibre in a mixture of blues with a bit of purple:

I plan to spin this probably as a 3ply and then knit socks.

And some rather orange silk fibre:

I used red, orange, and yellow dye on this one and was expecting there to be a bit more red. It has come out very orange I’m not quite sure what I am going to do with it, but I’m sure I shall think of something I haven’t spun much 100% silk yet either, so I am looking forward to that.

Bex also brought along some of her shop stock so I treated myself to a couple of braids of fibre. They are both 150g, 70% superwash merino, 30% nylon:

and

I think these are both destined for socks. Goodness I do seem to be going through a sock phase. I think it could be now that we are into wintery weather, and that my sock drawer is getting a bit depleted. It would work better if I actually got round to knitting the socks though, not just buying yarn and fibre

All too soon Monday morning came around and we packed everything back into the car and said goodbye. One advantage of leaving on Monday rather than Sunday was that the drive home wasn’t too busy and was all in daylight.

Roll on next year! (I might even try to use up some of the stuff I have bought before then!)

Back in the middle of a rather wet July I spent a very enjoyable three days up at Imperial College in London for Knit Nation. I had booked a hectic schedule of classes which were all great fun.

On Friday I had an all day class with Anne Hanson on Sweater Fitness. This included taking a full set of body measurements and then looking at how to adapt existing patterns to our measurements. All useful stuff. I have been quite successful in designing garments from scratch using my own measurements, but less successful in adapting already existing patterns, so there were a lot of useful tips to be gleaned. The penny really dropped when we were looking closely at the schematics of our chosen patterns, and I realised that a lot of my problem was not just that I usually need a different size for my chest than for my tummy / hips (this is something I have been aware of for some time and so am used to compensating for), but that my shoulder measurement matches up with a completely different size. I am shaped rather like a pyramid So many garments hang from the shoulder line and if you don’t get that right the whole garment looks badly fitting. This was amply demonstrated by the T-shirt I was wearing to class. In order to get a size which was comfortable around my cake-storage areas the shoulders of the T-shirt extend past my own shoulders by a good couple of centimetres and droop in a not terribly flattering manner.

We covered lots of useful tips on how to transition from one size to another at strategic points in an existing pattern. I shall definitely be putting this information into action, and taking a very hard look at the schematics of the future patterns I knit. She also had some very interesting things to say about different ways to reduce the stitches from the bust line to the shoulders, whether you opt to decrease in the armhole area or do darts which go up to the centre of each shoulder. I look forward to doing some experimenting with this to see which works well for my shape.

On Saturday morning I went to a class on Vintage Fit and Finishing with Susan Crawford. It was very interesting to learn how fashions in ease and fit have changed over time. Very valuable information when knitting a vintage pattern. I am not sure I will ever go for the full vintage re-creation garments which seem to be popular, but I can certainly see me using some aspects of vintage patterns as inspiration.

On Saturday afternoon it was The Many Faces of Cashmere with Clara Parkes. Fantastic stuff! She manages to be hilarious and extremely informative and interesting all at the same time, and three hours of cashmere can never be a bad thing We had lots of little samples of fibre and yarn to feel and knit with. It is constantly amazing how many different yarns you can make from the same fibre.

Here are all my little samples before washing (click to make huge):

Top row L to R:

• Schulana Cashmere Moda, 100% cashmere, caged construction (so fibre is blown through a type of thin Icord-type tube), 4mm needles.
• Knitwitches Seriously Gorgeous Swiss Mountain cashmere / silk lace, 65% cashmere, 35% silk, 3.25mm needles.
• Habu Cashmere Lace, 100% cashmere, 3.25mm needles.
• Colourmart 100% cashmere, Cable (or crepe) construction, 6mm needles.

Middle row L to R:

• Classic Elite Posh, 30% cashmere, 70% silk, S on S cable construction, 5mm needles
• Laines Du Nord Royal Cashmere, 100% cashmere, knitted tube construction, 4mm needles.
• The bottom of the sample is Filatura Di Crosa Superior, 65% cashmere, 35% silk, brushed, and I used 3.25mm needles. For the top of the sample I used the same needles and as well as the Superior I added Filatura Di Crosa Nirvana, 100% merino, so the two yarns were knitted together.
• KFI Textured Cashmere, 100% cashmere, 4mm needles.

Bottom Row L to R:

• Hemp for Knitting Cashmere Canapa, 10% hemp, 60% cotton, 30% cashmere, 3.75mm needles.
• Carded cashmere fibre.
• Combed Mongolian cashmere fibre.
• Falkland wool fibre.
• The yellow slightly above is silk fibre.
• The white below is fake cashmere fibre, I think this is nylon.

Here are the knitted samples after having a wash:

All of the samples fluffed up a bit on washing. Cashmere is often oiled to stop it hairing up the machines when it is processed so you don’t get the full effect until you have given your knitting a wash.

I loved the opportunity to sample all the different blends of cashmere, and different ways of spinning. There are some very inventive manufacturers out there. I am still a bit afraid of spinning cashmere because of the short staple, which is better suited to long draw, which I am not very good at. I am hoping to do some practising soon though so I can overcome that.

After Saturday’s classes I went to see the film about Bohus knitting, not a subject I knew much about before, although I love their patterns and have the kit for the Wild Apple around here somewhere.

Sunday morning was Photographing Your Fibre with Franklin Habit. Again lots of interesting and useful information. Some of it about how to set up your scene for your photography, and some on how to actuallly use the camera. I shall be spending some time with my camera manual soon! I only have a little point and shoot, but even that I don’t really use to its full potential.

As is often the way with these events there was a very tempting market place. I came home with two books:

Little Red in the City by Ysolda Teague, and Going Straight by Woolly Wormhead. I am looking forward to finding some time over Christmas to read both of these properly.

I also found a fabulous skein of yarn:

This is merino  / nylon / stellina, 100g,  400m, 4ply weight in colour Mermaid from Krafty Koala. It was green and purple and sparkly, so I could hardly be expected to resist.

I had a great time and it was a wonderful opportunity to catch up with lots of fun knitting people. I was a bit tired by the end and managed to get completely drenched on the way home – you could literally wring the water out of my trousers from the knee down where my umbrella didn’t cover them.

I think there isn’t going to be a Knit Nation next summer because of the Olympics, I am looking forward to one in 2013!

Just when I was nearly caught up things became busy again. They are calming down a bit now, so I shall plod on with the catching up, like the tortoise I shall get there in the end

At the beginning of June we had a lovely week’s holiday up in Orkney. It was the first time we had been, and it was lovely. Beautiful landscape, and interesting things to visit, and we were very lucky with the weather. The light up there is really beautiful, though it takes a bit of getting used to that in June it only gets dark for a couple of hours a night. We had to hang a blanket up over our window in order to sleep. I’m not sure I would fancy it in the winter though. I think it would get a bit depressing with only a few hours of light each day.

We stayed in a cottage about a mile outside Kirkwall, the capital, and this was the view from Scapa Bay just a short walk from the cottage:

The light seemed to make the seaweed glow.

We visited a lot of the typical tourist things. All the neolithic remains are very impressive, and well worth visiting if you are in the area. Also the advantage of going before the school holidays was that most things weren’t too crowded.

The air up there is very clean, and the most amazing lichens grow. These were on a grave stone at the Brough of Birsay:

The landscape was not as barren as I had been expecting. I think I had been picturing something more windswept and moor-like, but actually most of the mainland is gently rolling, and very green. Also there are trees, they are just not very tall. This is the Ring of Brodgar, one of the stone circles:

We spent most of the time on the Mainland, but on one day we had a trip out to Rousay, one of the closer islands. We had a moment of excitement on the way there, when we realised that we would have to reverse the hire car on to the ferry. The ferry is quite little and only takes about 9 cars, though it had fewer when we went over because a lorry carrying what looked like road surfacing stuff was taking the space of about 6 cars. Luckily the hire car was quite titchy, and the ferry staff were very friendly and experienced. Since there is only one hire car service at the airport, and the vast majority of their cars are the same, the ferry staff were well practised at the exact instructions they needed to give in order to get the desired outcome. I also got the impression that if one had had a total melt-down about it, they would have driven the car on for you. At least we had been driving the car around for 4 days at that point so were also quite familiar with it. The Antipodean lady we were talking to in the queue had literally just arrived by plane and picked up a car and driven straight to the ferry.

There were several cairns on Rousay, and a very impressive broch and tomb at Mid Howe. This is the broch, to give you an idea of the scale, the two little blobs at the bottom left are people:

And here is the tomb, protected by a building which has been built round it:

Unfortunately it is hard to tell the scale, but it is really massive. The walls are seriously thick, at least a couple of metres, and the whole tomb is enormous. Very impressive, especially considering how long ago it was built.

After visiting Mid Howe we drove round the rest of the island, and were delighted to find a bay where we could watch seals swimming around, really close to the shore. They are very graceful in the water, and surprisingly ungraceful out of it.

Here are some flopping around and sunning themselves on a shelf of rock near the shore:

And here are a couple playing in the water:

It was wonderful to watch them.

On our last full day we went into Kirkwall and had a look around the Orkney Museum. They had quite a bit of knitting, and a couple of spinning wheels on display, including these lovely stockings:

I found a couple of nice fibre-y things on our travels to bring back and remind me of a lovely holiday. We didn’t manage to get up to North Ronaldsay this holiday, but hopefully might make it up there to see the sheep another time. I got these both from The Woolshed, who I don’t seem to be able to link to at the moment.

First 100g of hand dyed North Ronaldsay fibre:

I haven’t decided on the best way to spin this yet, but I love all the colours.

And also some DK weight North Ronaldsay yarn in natural white, and natural dark brown:

I am thinking about making a two-coloured hat with these though I haven’t totally made up my mind yet.

Today is my niece Jenny’s first birthday! Happy birthday Jenny! How time flies.

I allowed myself a week and a half off from knitting on my current City and Guilds project (a large circular lace shawl) to whip her up a birthday cardi and two matching hats.

The cardi is the Seamless Infant Kimono by Carina Spencer, and I used Knit Picks Swish Worsted (100% superwash merino wool) in Sunshine, with Bok Choy edging. I used 5mm needles for the main body and 4mm for the edgings. I made the 12 – 18 month size, with the tapered sleeve option, and am hoping it will fit her at some point when the weather is suitable for it!

I had some yarn left over after the cardi and so decided to knit a pair of hats to go with the cardi, one in each of the colours.

I used the Elfin pattern by Woolly Wormhead for both hats. It is a lovely elastic pattern so hopefully should fit for a while. I used 5mm needles and made the large size for both hats.

I experimented with different invisible cast ons for both hats. The one on the green hat came out a bit frilly, it is almost like a picot edge. It is quite pretty, but I think for most things I prefer the version on the yellow hat.

I posted them last week but they haven’t arrived yet, hopefully they will turn up soon.

It has been very nice to do a bit of knitting which actually grows as you watch it (it grows even faster if you are actually knitting while you are watching – ha ha). The City and Guilds project is in lace weight yarn on 3mm needles, at something like 4 rows to the centimetre, and at its worst had more than a thousand stitches on each round. I would knit and knit and knit and knit, and it would look exactly the same. I am onto the edging now (128 pattern repeats, more than 2000 rows, but at least each row is relatively short), and although there is a lot of it I can now actually see measurable progress. It’s a good job it is nice yarn and an enjoyable pattern

The other excitement round here this week (apart from us actually finished boarding the loft – hooray!) has been the arrival of some lovely fibre from World of Wool. I had a play with their new custom blend tool to make this 75% merino, 25% silk blend:

Yum yum! I have a kilo, and am planning a jumper, though that is about as detailed as my plans have got so far. I am really looking forward to spinning it, and knitting with it, and am very pleased with how the colours have come out. There are actually three different shades of green of merino in there, and I love the way they work together.

I also bought some dyed blueface leicester fibre.

300g of purple, and 100g each of royal blue and black. I am planning to blend these together somehow – I’m a little vague on the details at the moment, I think I will have to do some experimenting, and then make the Lanesplitter skirt, I think I will probably spin a 3ply rather than a 2ply to try and make it a bit more hard-wearing.

They were having a special offer at the time so I also got a hessian shopping bag, and a bag of all sorts of little bits of interesting looking fibre with my order.

Back to the shawl now, the end is nearly in sight!

In April we had a lovely week’s holiday in Bath. We were incredibly lucky with the weather, we had to go and buy extra emergency sun-cream, and didn’t need to use our waterproofs at all! I won two tickets in a competition held by the Knitting and Crochet Guild, so at the end of the week we also had a wonderful day at Wonderwool Wales.

It was lovely to look round the show and see what everyone was selling, I was so wrapped up in it that I completely failed to take any photos. One of the things I particularly enjoy about this show is the space. There is plenty of space between the stands, and around the edges of the stands that you have somewhere you can pause and think, and it doesn’t feel claustrapobic at all.

I bought some baby alpaca fibre from John Arbon.

This stuff is so incredibly soft. We really need feely-vision so you can appreciate it

I’m not sure what I am going to do with it yet. At the moment it is sitting on top of the piano so I can give it a little stroke each time I pass by

I also bought British Sheep & Wool by the Wool Board from P&M.

I am looking forward to reading this and learning more about British sheep breeds and their fibres.

I was a bit tired at the show, it was at the end of a hectic week of sight-seeing and enjoying ourselves. But I did manage to say hello to several people I know which was lovely. A very enjoyable day out, and a lovely holiday.

PS. Happy birthday Mummy!

On the last weekend of February was the Unravel show at the Maltings in Farnham. This is the third year it has been held, and it just keeps getting better (it also helps that I wasn’t horribly jet-lagged this year!). They had a great knitted sign up over the entrance to welcome everyone:

And some lovely Gotland sheep from Well Manor Farm were outside too:

I helped with the Surrey Knitting and Crochet Group, and with the West Surrey Guild of Weavers, Spinners, and Dyers. We have a lot of over-lap of members between the two groups so we were sharing about half of the cellar area, and several people were helping with both groups depending on what was needed at the time. We had an exhibition of our work, and were also answering knitting and crochet queries (in my case only knitting, my crochet is a bit basic), and showing people how to spin. Here are Janine and tall Heather (I think that sadly makes me short Heather) setting everything up.

We also had a lot of fun with a spinning wheel that a lady brought in that she had bought in France, I think from an antique shop, for a very advantageous price, which she wanted to get working and learn to spin on. It was actually a double drive wheel, but rigged up as double drive with some of Mary’s string it was a bit temperamental and we had a lot of trouble with the drive band popping off. So with some more string and a couple of elastic bands we rigged it as Scotch tension (with no damage to the wheel, this could all easily be undone) and it span beautifully. The owner did very well starting spinning on it, and I hope has succeeded in her quest for some more bobbins for it too. I do enjoy a nice engineering challenge

We had one low point to the weekend when we thought that the handbag of one of our older members had been pinched, but fortunately it turned out that it had just been mistakenly picked up by another member (oh the difficulties of everyone having black handbags) and so was returned to Nan when it re-emerged from under a car seat a couple of days later.

There were several talks and workshops during the weekend, which unfortuantely I didn’t manage to get to, but I did get a chance to dash round and have a quick look at all the exhibitors despite the fact that we were very busy all weekend. I was surprisingly restrained with my purchases (which could have had something to do with the number of enthusiastic people we had come to chat with us so I didn’t have too much time for buying – probably better for the old wallet).

I bought some 90% Exmoor Blueface, 10% nylon fibre from John Arbon:

As the name suggests Exmoor Blueface is a sheep which is a cross between an Exmoor Horn and a Bluefaced Leicester. It has the robustness of the Exmoor, but the longer staple, and softness of the Bluefaced Leicester. My plan is to dye this and then spin some yarn for socks. It isn’t the softest yarn in the world (the Exmoor is quite a robust wool) but it should be hardwearing hopefully, which is a good quality in socks.

I also bought two balls of the new Excelana 4ply yarn in Ruby Red, also from John Arbon.

This is a blend of 70% Exmoore Blueface, and 30% Bluefaced Leicester and is a collaboration between John Arbon and Susan Crawford. I think this will also be destined for socks, I am hoping that it will show textured patterns well.

As is often the case with these events the best thing was the opportunity to meet and chat with so many enthusiastic and knowledgeable people. All of the people who came to learn to spin were very quick on the uptake (it really does put my own speed of learning to shame!). It was lovely to catch up with lots of people I don’t see very often and hear and see what they are up to at the moment, and also great to meet lots of new people too. Roll on next year!

Shortly after Unravel, I finished spinning the Bowmont fibre I had started spinning while at the Devon Fibre Retreat (bought on the Devon Fibre Retreat the previous year).

I have a total of 103g and 302m of a 2ply construction, approximately commercial 4ply weight yarn. I am not totally happy with how this has come out. As you can see it is a bit all over the place, and not very consistent at all. I found the fibre to be a bit sticky, I know a lot of people like a bit of lanolin left in their fibre when they spin it, but I am not one of them. I have very sticky hands (particularly in hot weather) and have trouble sticking to the fibre if it is not completely clean. There were also quite a lot of noils and second-cuts in the fibre, which was disappointing. It looked like it had gone through machinery that wasn’t really capable of dealing with such a fine fibre. I did start off trying to remove them all, but quickly realised that if I did I would have nothing left! I’m not quite sure what I am going to do with the yarn, I shall continue to ponder. It has been a learning experience It would probably have come out better if I had tried a more woollen (rather than worstead) approach, which is another reason why I need to improve my woollen spinning.

Another rest day for the cyclists, so some more catching up.

Those of you with very long memories may remember that for the Tour de Fleece last year I was spinning some sunshine yellow 70% merino, 30% silk into a 3ply sock yarn. I finally finished in November:

I have a total of 193g, and 1209m, it is a 3ply construction and a bit thinner than a commercial 4ply in thickness. I’m not sure what I am going to do with this yet as it has come out a bit thinner than I was planning. I had originally thought socks, but now I am not sure. More thinking needed.

The cyclists are having a well-deserved day off today, so I thought I would have a break from the spinning and catch up with some other bits and pieces from the last six months.

Back at the end of October I went to Devon for Terri‘s second lovely Fibre Weekend. The Friday starting early with me packing all my stuff in the car, having a think and then re-packing. Then I finally set off to collect Marty, and re-packed the car, and then down to collect Joanne, and you guessed it, re-packed the car again. I was quite impressed that you could get three people, three spinning wheels and their luggage including bedding in a Nissan Note, and no-one had to be strapped to the roof or balance their spinning wheel on their head, though Joanne was squashed in the back with a wall of stuff along side her.

Luckily the drive down was nice and uneventful, and we arrived at Sheldon in time to unpack the car and eat our packed lunch before the afternoon’s workshops started. I had signed up for natural dyeing with Amanda Hannaford, which was great fun, and very interesting. Amanda sent us the mordant recipe so we could mordant our yarn before we arrived. I used some 4ply weight superwash bluefaced leicester wool, and made myself a selection of mini skeins so I could try the different dyes.

Here are some of the skeins we dyed drying outside:

And here is everybody’s skeins laid out for everyone to admire:

Here are my 12 little skeins:

From left to right they are: madder x 3, weld x 1, goldenrod x 3, logwood x 1, indigo x 2, and cochineal x 2, all using an alum mordant. I like some of the colours better than others, but it was fun to try it all, and interesting to see the results.

After Terri’s fantastic cooking for dinner and a bit of knitting and spinning we all fell into our beds in time to get a bit of sleep in before the excitement of Saturday’s outing.

Saturday was our busy day, lots to do, so we set off early to go to the David and Charles book shop. There didn’t seem to be quite as many craft books this year as previously, but I did find a copy of Girolamo Cardano’s Ars Magna (English translation) for £1 so I was happy

Then back in the minibus and on to Coldharbour Mill, where we were treated to tours of both the upstairs machinery open to the public and John Arbon‘s machines in the basement which aren’t normally viewable. I love all the machinery, and it is amazing how so much of it is recogniseably the same process as hand spinning just on a much larger scale.

In the shop at the mill I treated myself to 600g of 70% alpaca, 30% merino fibre, in Cappuccino:

After lunch at the mill it was back in the minibus again to go to Westcott Farm to see Lesley Prior and her Bowmont sheep and Cashmere goats.

Here are some of the sheep:

And here some of the goats:

It was great to see Lesley again and catch up on what is happening on the farm. It is always interesting to talk to someone so passionate about what they do.

After the tour of the farm Lesley very kindly made us all tea and fantastic scones. I couldn’t resist buying some of her lovely cashmere:

This is 4ply cashmere, 25g, 116m. I’m not sure what I am going to do with it yet, but it is such a lovely colour and feels very soft and squishy.

In the evening we all went out for a delicious dinner at the Nobody Inn, there were enough of us that we got our own room

Tired and very full we trundled back to Sheldon.

Sunday was less formal, but still packed full. In the morning we had a go at blending different colours of fibre on drum carders and hackles.

Here is some of the carding in action, with the enormous pile of fibre to choose from behind it.

And here is Terri having a go on Rachel’s hackle.

I spun up my efforts when I got home:

The red is merino blended on the hackle, and the greens are a mixture of merino with a little bit of silk carded on a Minty Fine Carder. I enjoyed having a go at this, particularly because I don’t own a carder or a hackle, it was very useful to be able to compare. I prefered spinning the fibre from the hackle, in general I prefer a combed preparation and like to spin smooth yarn, although I prefer the colours I chose with the carder. I love playing with colours and seeing the different effects you can create and would like to have more of a go at this soon.

After the tables were cleared away the floor was used to share out the two enormous bags of waste fibre John Arbon had given us, a mixture of alpaca and different wools. I decided this was best as a spectator sport!

And this is my share:

I’m not quite sure what I am going to do with it yet, but I think it will come in really handy for learning new techniques.

After a delicious roast dinner, there was just the clearing up to do, and then all too soon it was time to pack everything back in the car and say goodbye.

Very kindly Joanne gave me this sheep for doing the driving:

He has a lot of character, and is currently keeping an eye on me from on top of the printer.

And Marty gave me a skein of 4ply Alpaca/BFL which I am looking forward to dyeing:

The drive home went ok if rather slowly, there is always a lot of traffic on a Sunday afternoon.

In all a wonderful weekend. Lovely to see so many old friends and make new ones, and to have such a fun time.

As you have probably guessed it has been a busy couple of months here. One good thing about being snowed in for nearly a week is that I have had a bit of time to start to catch up on things. I am going to try and be fairly chronological otherwise I shall be even more confused than usual, so it might take me a few posts to get up to speed.

Anyway, back in the middle of October I made the annual pilgrimage to Alexandra Palace for the Knitting and Stitching Show. Unfortunately Mummy couldn’t come with me this time as the dates just didn’t work out (this being retired lark seems to make one very busy), so as it was just me I only went for one day (the last few years we had been going for two). I had a lovely time looking around at all of the stands and chatting to everyone.I even had a bit of a look at the exhibition too. There were some very interesting sculptures made from paper in the exhibition, very delicate, intricate and beautiful.

Unsurprisingly some of the lovely goodies came home with me. I had a nice chat to the lovely people on the Buffalo Gold stand, and bought this gorgeous fibre from them:

1 oz of 50% buffalo, 50% silk. I think I need to improve my longdraw before I have a go with this. Just sticking your hand in it is pretty good though. Better than a stress ball

Also from Buffalo Gold I bought one skein of Lux, and a scarf pattern to go with it:

40g, 330 yards,  45% bison, 20% silk, 20% cashmere, 15% tencel in Malachite (how could I resist such a lovely colour).

Then I went to the Koigu stand. This was their first year at the show, and despite being in a rather dark corner they seemed to be doing very good business. It was wonderful to see such a large collection of their colours all in one place. Stash in Putney used to stock their yarn, but could understandably only stock a fraction of the possible colours.

I bought two skeins of their Koigu Premium Merino in a semi-solid blue, it is a bit darker than I have managed to capture:

2 x 50g, 160m, 100% merino wool, colour 1020. I think they are going to be some socks with twisted stitch patterns on, but I haven’t decided on a pattern yet.

Next I moved to the JC Rennie stand, and found this lovely ball in their oddments bin:

50g Supersoft Lambswool (4ply) in Pagan. It was in the sale bin because it was the only one in that colour and had lost its label. I was really drawn towards the interesting combination of colours this is made up of. It is a colour with a lot of depth, and although it looks like a Shetland type wool it is much softer than you would expect. I am hoping to make some fingerless mittens although I might have to find a contrast colour to eek it out. I was impressed by the range of colours JC Rennie has and look forward to trying some more of their yarns soon.

Following on the theme of unusal yarns, I found this lovely one-off skein at Artisan Yarns:

100g, 400m, 50% merino, 50% silk. I had to buy it because the colours are fabulous, though I am not sure at the moment what it is going to become. Initially when I spotted it I thought socks, but that was before I realised it was 50% silk. I am a bit concerned that with that much silk it will knit up to a fairly inelastic fabric and that socks would loose their shape and fall down. Although the yarn would make good lace, I think the colour is a bit noisy for lace. I shall continue to think on it. If anyone has any suggestions I would be most grateful.

As is often the case one of the most enjoyable aspects of the show was the chance to catch up with people and to share knitting and fibre chat with so many lovely like-minded people. I had a very enjoyable, though rather tiring day.

On an entirely different note, a couple of days before Ally Pally I happened to be in Lidl in Leatherhead, and found they were selling sock yarn!

4 x 50g, 210m, 75% wool, 25% polyamide, colour 3305. It is a lovely forrest green though that is a little hard to tell from my rubbish photography. I recall it being a very reasonable price, but in typical fashion I have now forgotten what that price was. I think I see a couple of pairs of textured socks in my future.

I had a lovely time last week at Knit Nation. Luckily my foot was much better and I was pretty much completely mobile (it has improved even more since then, and my foot is only slightly swollen now, and the blister is healing quite well). I went up to London on Wednesday evening, and checked into the hall of residence so that I didn’t have to drag the wheel through rush hour traffic in order to get to my Thursday morning class.

Thursday I had an all day class on Spinning for Lace with Janel Laidman. She was lovely and knowledgeable yet relaxing and I had a great day. We spent the morning fiddling with our wheels and our techniques, trying out different things, like changing the speed at which we treadled, changing the ratio on the wheel, and changing the tension going on to the bobbin. It is definitely something I am going to be experimenting more with. I was also surprised at how much I loved the highest speed ratio on my wheel. I had been concerned that it would run away with me and I wouldn’t be able to keep up, but actually when you are spinning fairly fine yarns it is really handy, since the likelihood of the yarn not having enough twist and drifting apart is much reduced.

Here we are, all concentrating hard:

And here is my rather wonky efforts from the first part of the morning:

The fibre was a lovely 70% bluefaced leicester/ 30% silk mix. Lovely to spin, I shall definitely be on the look out for something similar.

After that we learnt longdraw, something I had tried before with little success, so it was great to be able to try again and pick up some more tips. My longdraw is still not terribly convincing but I am at least making yarn this time In the afternoon we got to play with several different luxury fibre mixes. Another very enjoyable and useful experience.

We all came away with very useful cards with information about what we had done and samples of our spinning. I shall definitely be using these to keep a better track of my future projects. I am hoping that tying my project card to my wheel whilst working on a project will help me stay a bit more consistent too!

The afternoon’s fibres were 70% merino / 30% silk, 80% merino / 20% tencel, a mixed fibre batt, 50% alpaca / 50% tussah silk, and 100% Mongolian cashmere (I think I need a lot more practise with the cashmere ).

Thursday evening was the market preview. Wow! what a lot of lovely stuff! It was fantastic to see so many lovely yarns, fibres, and various knitting and spinning accessories, and of course to see all the wonderful people who sell them. I did not come away unscathed (what a surprise!). These lovely goodies came home with me:

400g of 70% alpaca / 30% bluefaced leicester fibre from John Arbon:

100g of New Zealand Polwarth in TreeHugger by BabyLongLegs:

100g of supersorted BFL in TangyDoodleTastic again from BabyLongLegs:

A 300g skein of Wollmeise Lace yarn in Grashüpfer (which I am assuming probably means grasshopper):

2 balls of Biggan Design‘s new 4ply in Colour 630:

I am really thrilled that she is making a 4ply now. It is great to see such lovely colours in a nice soft yarn in both 4ply and DK weight.

And finally some fun stitchmarkers from The Bothered Owl:

After all the excitement I staggered off to bed to get some sleep before the next day’s classes.

On Friday morning I went to Wonders of Wool with Clara Parkes. Unfortunately half an hour into the class there was a fire alarm and we had to trudge down the 5 flights of stairs of the Physics building we were in and assemble in the car park. However this was an excellent excuse to continue the rest of the class at one of the large picnic tables in the quad outside the market place.

Clara has a photo of me and the lovely lady from Boston I was sitting next to (who I have unfortunately forgotten the name of ) up on her review of Knit Nation (why is it that I am always talking on photographs?).

As well as learning lots about different kinds of wool from all around the world we got to knit up samples of several very varied wools from different sheep, spun in different ways.

Here is the sample before I washed it:

From the white cast on end these are:

• Saxon merino from Catskill Merino. This one feels gorgeous, a jumper in this would be fantastic
• Wensleydale. A little scratchy for me, although it softened up quite a bit after washing.
• Columbia, which is a mix of Rambouillet and Lincoln Longwool, woollen spun, from Imperial Stock Ranch.

• Columbia, worsted spun from the same fibre source. It was really interesting to observe the differences between the same fibre spun in different ways. This would make great socks. I hadn’t come across Columbia before, and really love both the yarns.
• Dorset down, woollen spun. Springy yarn which bounces back well, I found it a little harsh.

• Finn. Another one I hadn’t tried before, surprisingly nice, a bit similar to Shetland.
• Shetland, woollen spun, from Garthenor Organic. This is the softest Shetland I have ever met, a very nice yarn.

• Icelandic. I found it rather hairy.
• California Red. A really interesting yarn, whitish with occaisional dark red fibres, it felt rather hairy.

• Perendale. Not that keen on this one, a little bit scratchy.

• Columbia worsted spun with some different stitch patterns.

• Columbia woollen spun with some different stitch patterns.

This was a great way to try out lots of different types of wool yarns and I learnt a lot. I definitely see some of the merino, Columbia and Shetland in my future

In the afternoon I was back with Clara, this time for her class on the Wonders of British Wool. Unfortnately my photos taken during the class are dark and blurry so you will have to imagine interested people listening to Clara in a physics classroom

We did more sampling and this is what I produced:

Here is the unwashed sample:

From the cream cast on end these are:

• Bluefaced leicester. One of my favourite fibres
• Teeswater. This feels a bit like Wensleydale. It holds the structure of the stitches well, but I find it a bit scratchy.

• Southdown. Very dense and springy, I was surprised how much I liked this one and will definitely be looking into trying some more.
• Dorset. This was the same as the sample from the morning’s class. It is not quite as dense, springy, or soft as the Southdown.

• Swaledale. Very scratchy, made me think of rope!
• Manx Loghtan. I have had a go spinning and knitting with this before and it is a very nice fibre. Quite rustic but still soft and I love the colour.
• Shetland. This was the same lovely Shetland from the morning, and I still loved it

Another very interesting class, and a great introduction to lots of the different kinds of British wool. I shall definitely be having more of a play with several of these. Especially when I buy a lot of my yarns and fibres mail order or over the internet it is very valuable to know which breeds of wool I do and don’t like.

Friday evening was the Ravelry talk. It was really interesting to hear more about the origins and future plans, and the nuts and bolts, from the horses mouth. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures as at that point I had a roaring headache In all the excitement I failed to drink enough on Thursday and got a bit dehydrated, and even drinking 6 litres of water on Friday hadn’t put off the inevitable headache. Stupidly although I had brought loads of plasters and antihistamines and steriods for my bite on my ankle, I had totally failed to bring any painkillers. Luckily Lisa was a total life saver and gave me some she had in her bag and after half an hour I was feeling so much better.

While we were hanging around in the quad trying to decide what we wanted to have for dinner we noticed that the sun had lit up the tower a most amazingly pinky-orange.

My picture doesn’t quite capture the way the light made the stone glow. Beautiful.

And to round off a wonderful day I had dinner with Lisa, Terri, and Kathryn. Just what the doctor ordered, a nice meal among wonderful and interesting friends

Saturday was an all day class with Judith MacKenzie McCuin on Spinning for Socks. In the morning we each chose 5 colours of merino and practised blending the colours while spinning worsted style. I was having some trouble with my hands sticking to the fibre so I think I shall have to try this again when the weather is cooler and I am less stressed!

We also introduced a bit of dyed silk which I loved. This was the first time I had tried spinning silk top and I am definitely looking forward to trying more.

Into the afternoon we did two more singles and then plied them together. I was a bit slow so two of my singles were about the same length and the third one was much shorter, hence I ended up with a bit of 3ply and then plied the remaining two together to see the difference. The lower skein is the 3ply, the upper the 2ply:

She also gave us some samples of other fibre blends which I didn’t get round to trying during the workshop but which I am looking forward to trying in the next few weeks.

Judith has been involved with the fibre world for a long time and it was very interesting to listen to her talk about all sorts of things not necessarily related to spinning for socks during the workshop. I am looking forward to reading her book, when I find it, I am pretty sure it is in this room somewhere.

After dinner it was time for the Ravelry party.

I only lasted a couple of hours before I had to crawl off to bed, but it was lovely to see everyone again, and to admire everyone’s beautiful shawls.

I came home Sunday morning and was very grateful that Paul retrieved me from the station saving me from the walk home.

All in all a very enjoyable few days. I learned lots and had a great time meeting new people and previous friends. I hope they will hold another next year, although I am rather tempted by a lighter wheel if they do. I love Suzie but she is a heavy girl (rather like her owner).