Knitting Beyond the Hebrides - Lace Symposiummiles ahead of myself as usual

for madam’s jumper. her requested colour scheme is the last one and that’s pretty much what we’ll go with, once i get up the nerve.

branching out: i’m sure it’s ubiquitous for a reason and i just can’t think of a better use for the measley 100g of black alpaca i’ve yet to spin.

have been working up to it and i think a fine singles will be the way to go. i’ve been practising with different preparation techniques. while joanna may be able to spin the stuff just flicked open i’m just not skilled enough to do that and turn out a yarn i’m anywhere near happy with. i’ve carded the flicked fibre and spinning from those rolags is a joy, but i’m going to experiment with just carding and see how well that deals with the vm. i found with flicking the locks i lost a lot of fibre i.e. my final skeins weigh in at just under 70g from 100g of raw fibre.

it would be nice to think that i can skip straight to the carding stage and save prep time as well as be able to use all the tangly fibre that gets discarded when you flick and try to keep the locks intact.

i really need to find an efficient processing method since i have a large amount of raw alpaca winging its way to me as i type (i hope).

i might find out if it’s possible to widen branching out if it turns out i get 75g plus out of 100g.

at magknits, nice idea for an issue too. i really should start finding projects for using up my skeinettes, or even just get round to adding to the interminable beginner yarn blanket. i’ve been knitting up swatches recently and remembered how enjoyable small amounts of easy knitting are to do.

Warm Threads - Natural Fibers and Yarns, Spinning and Felting Supplies :: Yarn Gauge/Weights

i’m toying with the rather ambitious idea of spinning yarn for a jumper for madam (although not as ambitious as planning to knit it myself - nanny’s volunteered for that). i’m really not convinced that i’m up to spinning around 400g anything like consistently but it seems like a challenging next step.

if we don’t use one of nanny’s existing patterns i quite like the look of childhood from knitty. it looks like it’s a worsted weight yarn (what on earth is the uk equivalent?), roughly 11 wpi, 250g of the body colour, 150g for the stripes.

another full coe submission here. i find these an absolutely fascinating read and very educational. whilst i might not aspire to actually completing anything along these lines i certainly aspire to those mad skillz.

i tailed right off the fibre work over the summer, it’s just been too damn hot - aside from the crochet blanket i have (intermittently) on the go which looks set to take at least a year. but a trip to the craft fields at the big green has got my juices flowing again so i hauled my wheel out of semi-retirement as soon as we got back.

i decided to splurge a bunch of birthday cash on something fibre-y but dithered excessively about which way to jump. in the end i decided that right now i want to focus on the spinning over the dyeing (plenty of time for that) so went for a kilo of different coloured merinos and a pair of hand cards. at first i thought i’d made a mistake going for the fine cloth carders but after a bit of reading it turned out i just didn’t have a clue on technique and once i was doing it properly it worked a dream (although i still have to use my hands to get a decent rolag - can’t manage it between the cards).

i’m going to have so much fun playing with blending on the cards and just by predrafting various colours together, and the cards are working a treat on the raw alpaca i’ve been struggling with. i remember now how much i enjoyed spinning from rolags at the spinning day and i can’t wait to get the wheel out tonight (i’ve spun up a little on the spindle, but the rolags are a little tricky to handle with it).

yay for carding