You could have knocked me down with a feather!

Look at my wonderful stole!




Look at my wonderful stole!






















A gift from David




Pattern: Dulcavina
Yarn: Posh Yarn Eva




Even the wrong side is beautiful :)

What can I say? It is wonderful, beautiful, gorgeous!

I am amazed, awestruck, aghast.

Thank you, thank you, thank you :)

Wow! I love it!

Woolfest? Ah yes, but you see ...

I am saving for Woolfest, right?



but this posh stuff fell into my basket

and my Lace Club yarn came

and I spun this from n's batts I got 117 yds 93g in 2 ply and it'd BFL in floral colourway.


Now I really must be good because Janet from Threshing Barn is saving a Louet Julia for me to try :)

I am, am I?

Your Personality is Somewhat Rare (ISFP)

Your personality type is caring, peaceful, artistic, and calm. Only about 7% of all people have your personality, including 8% of all women and 6% of all men You are Introverted, Sensing, Feeling, and Perceiving.

How Rare Is Your Personality?

handdyed handspun 1

handdyed handspun 1
Originally uploaded by Jam_mam.

Lovely Romney fleece washed and handspun then dyed with 'Easy Dyes'

2 skeins of BFL handspun, grey

berries

and BFL roving. The grey BFL was dyed in the dyebath left after dying the Romney - I think i was a bit over generous with my powders :). The Roving was the byebath from after the berries with the remainder of my dyes added. Not sure how best to dye the roving as it's a bit 'flat' now but I'll spin it tomorrow and see how I get on with drafting it.

Had a lovely afternoon (cooked in the microwave - the yarn not the afternoon!) and far prefer the acid dyes to the kool aid experiments earlier in the year. Just need to get a few more colours now LOL I think you can see which side of the colour wheel I favour here.

Intersesting aside here as I used a bit of merino/tencel to finish plying I had been experimenting with to ply with the BFL and they took the dye differently so I ended up with this nice accident


you can see that the BFL/BFL strands are solid colours but the BFL/merino-tencel are barber pole as the different yarns took up the dye differently.

are you dazzled? LOL

1dazzle 001
Originally uploaded by Jam_mam.

my latest handspun yarn, roving from Yarn Yard, bfl superwash, 100g, 200yds. colourway, dazzle

I am so busy I can't begin to tell you :( it does get like this before the kids break up for the summer often.

Too much to do not enough time.

I have a wonderful stole to show you but I just can't find the time. I will though, because you'll love it :) I do!

n's fibre spun and plied

n'sfibreplied
Originally uploaded by Jam_mam.

Yesterday's post slipped through without words, that's got to be a first for me!

I have someting really exciting to share as I got the most wonderful gift from a Ravelry frend, David *waves to David* but my 'real' life is interfering with my Knitting Life :( I want to do you a wonderful post with stunning photographs but time will not allow,grrr! Maybe tomorrow?

As an aside, I remember being bored rigid by knitters who posted about their spinning! Yawn! Get back to the knitting! LOL But now I
u n d e r s t a n d :) But there has been knitting too and it is entering the home straight so piccies of that soon too.

More spinning

singles
Originally uploaded by Jam_mam.

More Spinning BFL

OOOOoooooooooh I loves spinning. I wants a new wheel I wants fibres, ooooohhhhhh I does, spinny spinny spinny, I's in lurveeeeeessssss. Yum, yum yummmmmmyyyyyy

Time to play catch up ... or what I did last week ... or then there was some more spinning :)

I got this lovely pencil roving from n at yarnyard. it does make spinning even singles easier but the merino tops I plied it with was a bit lumpy :) I ended u with 200g and 80 odd yards (emphasis on the odd).

As the fibre stash has begun to grow cough, I have had a stock take of the yarn stash, cough cough, and decided I need to do, cough, some knitting. So I cast on for a forest canopy shawl but I didn't want a triangular shawl so I am adding an extra panel of leaves to make a half hexagon.







I have also done a little on the woodland shawl scarf/cowl/shrug which hasn't decided what it is going to be yet LOL not got much yarn left for that one.

Got that spinning bug Spoiler Alert for Yarn Yard's Fibre Club

Don't look any further if you haven't received your fibre club parcel yet and still want a surprise.




















Before I learnt to use my wheel (began to learn) I joined Natalie's Fibre Club. This may seem like the wrong order to do this in, but it was the incentive I needed to get spinning. I have had my wheel for over a year and never tried her. I think I was scared I wouldn't be able to do it properly. Knowing that the fibre would soon start arriving meant I had to get going.



Yesterday the first installment of fibre arrived and it is gorgeous. A lovely pinky blend of colours, not at all 'me' but still lovely. For me one of the advantages of belonging to a club like this is that the choices are made for me. I like purple, did I tell you? :) so I play safe and I choose purple. But in a club you get the club yarn and some months there are fibres (or whatever) that you would not normally choose. This may be why some people do not choose to join clubs. I can see how, if you have a very strong negative reaction, you would feel that you had wasted your money. Of course it could be the favourite colour of a friend or relative so you'll have a use for it anyway. But we all like to open our parcels and say "oooooh how lovely". For me it's a way to push myself out of that purple comfort zone.
I try colours I would never have thought to buy for myself and I find I like them more than I imagined.

Anyway Natalie has been very kind and has sent me a gift with my club fibre of something guaranteed to please. This is, she says, to practice on! Too good for that. I will spin it very carefully, for those wondering about the club colours this was the last club fibre before this months. This months is a Merino Tencel 50:50 blend, LOL, I have no idea what that means or what Tencel is but it is very pretty. I am having a wonderful time discovering new things and learning new techniques.

Along with the club goodies and the lovely gift (thank you again Natalie) I also ordered a fibre sampler pack which contains a little each of
Merino pencil roving, merino top, BFL Superwash top and 50% merino/50% tencel. All a lovely clear shimmering white and all perfect for 'having a go'. Great idea - a try before you buy - for sampling before buying larger quantities.



I also joined Anni's Lace Club and the first one of these lovely laces arrived yesterday too 55% silk 45% cashmere and 800 yds to 110gms and this time it is purple. The base yarn is the same as Posh Yarn's Eva and there is another Posh Yarn Sunday Sale at 6pm tonight. I wondered about telling you this :( maybe, as a devout Posh fan, I should not point this fact out. But I looked at their yarns and decided that the dying makes a huge difference, both yarns may start out the same but each artisan adds their own unique stamp with their dying choices and methods. Anni's yarn is not Tony's yarn and Tony's yarn is not Anni's - both are wonderful in their own way. I know there are people who are frustrated by the limited supply of Posh Yarn so maybe those people would prefer Anni's etsy shop format where you can buy at your leisure without the fierce competition that Posh has for it's products. There is, judging by the 'Sold Out' signs going up after 5 minutes over at Posh, room for both of them. Btw there is a great Posh Yarn Group over on Ravelry, join us :)

Now that I have seen it 'in the flesh' I will defiantly be buying more of this from Anni's etsy shop. I also received a little hessian bag and a pattern designed by Anni as part of the club..

The clubs are about the yarn/fibre for me. The extras are nice but not essential. It's nice to have a new pattern but I don't think i will use this one for this particular lace :) I emailed Anni with a question and received a speedy response even though she is out of the country at the moment. How is that for customer service? Thank you too, Anni.

Promise not to Laugh?

It's my first handspun 2 ply and I lurves it! I will keep it forever and ever, but hall i knit it or wind it into a ball or just reskein it?

When is a day with no knitting a good day?

When it's a walk in the countryside day.

Tuesday was warm and sunny with a gentle breeze, it felt almost like summer. K was off school as she'd been sick the previous day but she was feeling ok so a little fresh air seemed in order. One of the good things about having little or no sense of smell is that I don't notice traffic fumes, one of the bad things is that I can't distinguish 'a little fresh air' but nevertheless I know it is there.

The North East of England is the birth place of railways. This means that now there are lots of disused railways which have become part of the National Cycle Route/Network and many local councils maintain them as public footpaths.

There was gorse of course :)

We headed up towards Consett, industrial heritage all but disappeared under a carpet of green and a lovely quiet way to spend the afternoon meandering. Flat enough for the buggy (that baby's getting heavy!) and no particular place to go so K could explore. We wandered.

K and Daddy looked for creatures and spotted a water boatman,

on closer examination that blocked drain by the side of the track bed had become a deep pool where we saw these.

Smooth Newts, this one is an adult with his spotty sides indicating he's on the look out for a lady friend :)

On the way back to the car I noticed these green shoots poking through the brown of last years ferns.

I love the shapes these make as they are ready to unfurl. Pity I couldn't do some time lapse photography on these. So I guess it must still be spring after all.

Gratuitous photograph of a field :) and just in order to be picturesque, there were tumble down walls ...

and sheep.

This one wont be giving any more wool :( and why it was balanced in a tree I have no idea :)

That brings me to my latest obsession, er, I mean, interest. I have started learning to spin. I got my wheel a year ago but only recently started to try and spin with it. Last night I was up until 1.30am because I was plying my first proper singles into yarn. It's very 'art yarn' LOL very think and thin. But it's getting better and it's very pretty roving so very pretty coloured yarn.

I'll show you when it's dried if you promise not to laugh :)

PS does this

remind you of this

or is that just me :)