Spindlitis

I’m using some handspun yarn for my new shawl. It’s a Shetland fleece from Ingrid Painter that I bought at Black Sheep Festival some years ago. I hand carded it and it’s not very uniform. I made a shawl out of it but it was too small. I took it apart and let it set.

This shawl is a reproduction of an old Danish shawl. I think the yarn gives it a nice Rustic look. I think of it as a very 1970s project, because it does not look like it was produced by a machine. The problem is that I do’t have enough yarn for this project.

I started looking for fleece to buy. December is not a good time to do this. On Etsy, I came across Wing and a Prayer Farm. She had some roving that looked like a good match. I’m in the process of spinning it now. It’s been nice to have the wheel out. I’ve had several spindle projects going, but I think I will finish some of those on the wheel. Will be nice to have some new yarn to play with.

I am still working on the blends shown in the last post. One is tussah silk and alpaca. I think the other is camel blended with something. They are close in color and I’m considering plying them together. I have also been working on the blue wool that I got on the way to the Toledo boat show. I did some spinning during the Messabout last weekend and it was nice to sit outside and spin. I have no idea what I’ll do with it when I finish it. It’s nice stuff.

You can have a spinner’s desk!

With the holiday almost on us, I’ve even managed to do some spinning. I recently found my Hatchtown and Alhambra spindles so I added it to the collection in front of my monitor. I don’t find much time to spin so it really helps to have this at hand. I’m not sure if this is two different batches of camel/tussah silk or a different blend.

is start posting links to interesting videos. This one is from Rosemary Knits, which is a blog I really like, both for spinning and knitting. Take a look.

Rosemary Knits: Update to Tammy Rizzo's Navajo Ply on the Fly technique.

It seemed like a great project at the time but I’m starting to feel like I will never finish it. I’m getting close but bad stuff continues to happen. I took the time to string a lot of beads to try and finish it. Then I found a bad spot in the yarn. All wasted time. I was in the process of moving to a larger needle too.

I was listening to a cooking show the other day, while I was working on the edging for my Featherwwight cardigan. The hostess was talking about how you could vary the dish by changing the spices. It seemed to me to be a lot like what I was doing, setting off a feather and fan edging with a reverse stockinette stitch welt, adding some short rows to the collar. The pattern is a pretty basic one. I just spiced it up a bit, to make it more to my liking.

This has been a fast knit so far with one small snag. Lolo was on my lap the other night and managed to unravel a section, causing me to rip back 4rows. I just have a couple more rows to do.

I didn’t get to take any classes but I did make it to the marketplace. Fun times at the marketplace.

I just couldn’t make up my mind what yarn to buy and had a very limited budget. I wound up with fiber, both from Crown Mountain Farms. The fawn color is 70% alpaca/ 30% tussah silk, one of my favorite blends. The darker is Blue Faced Leicester, which I’ve spun before and also really love. Both are 4oz bumps, enough for a small shawl.
Fiber from the marketplace

I really love sock summit and am sorry I missed out on the flash mob, which looked like this: