It’s been quite quiet on the knitting and spinning front for a while, hasn’t it? I’m afraid I have only one finished object since the bookmark I made with my handspun from MHE.

I have been doing some spinning; I was working on some lovely super wash merino. It spun up nicely, though it was drifting in places, and I decided to Andean ply it. This, it seems, was a mistake. I now have a tangled mess of singles in my waste bag :( fortunately it was just a sample 10g. I’ve moved on to some BFL from a local shop, Grace and Jacob. It is shocking pink and red, exactly what I feel like spinning at the moment. I’m managing quite a fine but high twist single. I’ve split the fibre in half, and then split one half into 4 lengthways to try to minimise the striped effect. It’s like the fractal experiment I tried recently, but not.
I’ve barely spun any yet though, but I will.

On the knitting front, I haven’t gone back to my hoody yet, though I shall. First though, I want to finish the second of these baby cardigans. The one linked has already gone to its new home, and I am on a green one now. There are a number of babies on the way at the moment, so I might have to consider a different pattern for the next one, though this one is nice and quick, and quite easy to adjust. I’ve also got some way still to go on my honeymoon shawl. Perhaps I’ll pick that back up tonight. It’s an easy enough pattern, and I have plenty of yarn left. I’m going to finish the ball to give me the biggest shawl I can manage from 400yds of Zauberball!

I have promised myself I will knit something with some of my handspun too, though I don’t know what to knit, or which handspun. Sadly they’re different enough colours that they wouldn’t really work as one garment (there’s an excuse to spin more).


they are also plied differently, the middle one was Navajo plied, I think the other two were both just two-plied from bobbins.

I have been keeping an eye on the scrap swap on ravelry though, which is giving me ideas! I’ve been thinking about buying a pack of small amounts (5-10g per colour) which would normally be for felting, and then having a go with that. Or maybe buying up some plain undyed fibre and dying it myself…

Or, as I saw in a post by MHE’s Helen, I could take several “skeins” of fibre, line them up in order of a colour progression, split them in half to create two plies and then “shift” one ply to fade from colour to colour.

e.g.

Before Sorting		.	After Sorting
A	A	.	A	A
A	A	.	A	B
B	B	.	B	B
B	B	.	B	C
C	C	.	C	C
C	C	.	C	D
D	D	.	D	D
D	D	.	D	A

That would give the effect of “barber pole” where A and B overlap, and where B and C overlap etc. If they’re similar colours then this would be quite subtle. For more contrasting colours it would be a definite stripe! Of course for a 3ply this effect could be made all the more striking. I saw an article, I think it was in spin-off about a scarf knitted like that, using lace weight yarn but knitting with six strands held together, changing out one strand for the second colour until all the strands were of the second colour. It worked really well! I love that subtle fade stripe effect, similar to that in Noro yarns. Of course if fibres A, B, C and D were all hand dyed fibre too, and were not solid colours, then this might be even more interesting!

This is the trouble I have though; I have all these ideas but no time to bring them to fruition! It sucks! I guess too much inspiration is better than not enough though. Certainly if I want to be creative I have many outlets though which I can express myself, whether it’s painting, cardmaking, knitting, sewing, crocheting, spinning, writing this blog, designing, cooking, gardening... the possibilities are (almost) endless!