So since finishing the Autumn Garden View shawlette my next spinning was to finish off some black Hebridean fleece with a little bamboo lightly blended through it, that I started in December. It's a bit darker than the photos show, but hard to get that on the camera in recent daylight.
Hedridean fleece handspun
This has spun up lovely as a DK/Worsted yarn that I think will make lovely socks, and there is 369m of it that will go a long way.
Once this was off the wheel it was time to spin some of the lovely fibre I received in the Secret Santa swap on Ravelry. I decided I wanted to spin the Shetland blue/green roving, and the lovely Romney batt (with silk, firestar and glitz) and ply them together. There was more of the Shetland so the remaining I made into a 2 ply yarn to complement it. These are the fibres
Shetland roving above and Sparkly batt below
These are the skeins. I love these, and have plans for a shawlette/scarf with this. There is 224m in total of these skeins.
With Christmas decorations being packed away, my Louet wheel made a re-appearance and so I could have both wheels working on different projects again. I hadn't used the Louet for a while so we got reacquainted and it was lovely. I spun another batch of Hebridean fleece on her, this being slightly lighter than the other one above and a lovely amount of yarn 347m. So good to see those huge bobbins full again!
Hebridean fleece spun on my Louet wheel
Once the Wee Peggy was free I finally got around to plying some rainbow merino singles that had sat on bobbins for a long time ... I hadn't realised how long until I looked back at some pictures and realised it was 18 months (oops!). The problem was I didn't know what I wanted to do with it. So I decided to n-ply it into a nice bulky yarn, it went curly as anything as the singles were so stale but after a wash it was perfectly balanced.
Rainbow yarn n-ply
My daughter Imogen saw the yarn and put in a request for something for her, and asked for a close fitting cowl. So a cowl was knitted. There was still just less than half the yarn left so she asked for a hat. I wasn't sure there was enough for a hat but hey presto there was. I enjoyed knitting it so much I knit it twice! Yep, it was too small so I frogged it and restarted only a little bigger.
In her cowl and modelling the first hat -
she's wearing the new bigger hat today (looks pretty much the same just fits better!)
Phew, that's quite a bit to share already but hey I'm not finished yet. Ready for some more? Good because I have some lovely pictures to show you!
This was some more off my swap fibre, some Merino/Silk blend from Winghams. I split this in two and spun the singles and plied together.
Merino/Silk blend - single bobbin and plied skeins
And finally on the spinning was this lovely fibre from my stash - some Colinette fibre which is lovely and soft and drafts beautifully. I've heard and read some bad stories of their fibre (felted, etc), some recently on a ravelry post, but the fibres I have had from them have all been lovely. This one was inspired by Monet's Waterlilies which I think you can see from these pictures.
Monet's Waterlilies painting
Monet painted fibre
Nests of fibre for spinning
I separated this into pencil thickness lengths to spin and also separated the darker parts from the lighter ones so that some of the yarn comes out in darker shades. I have ideas of this being knitted and felted into a bag so this will work well with that - more on that another day. Here is the yarn which I am so pleased with.
Monet Inspiration handspun
I told you I had the spinning bug this month. As I sit here typing this both wheels are empty, waiting for the next fibre.
Now I have cast on a couple of new knitting projects, nothing to really show yet, but one is the shawlette/scarf in the sparkly Shetland blend yarn above. The other project is a tunic top for my daughter using some blue yarn I spun last year, some she helped me dye.
I think that is most of it, there are some other knitting projects going on too, using up odd balls of this and that yarn - mostly becoming new cushion covers so these will take a while and a lot of yarn, and some other fun projects I'll show you sometime over the next few months.
I'm not sure if I can keep up with this kind of productivity but we shall see, and I am having so much fun with it at the moment and have plenty to keep me busy.
