I've done it again!

I seem to just forget about this blog everytime something gets in the way. I think I'll make a regular time and day to post and try and stick to it. I've started a few new projects, A heritage quilt, a felted woven bag and I want to do the crochet along on Ravelery for the Seraphina shawl. I also have monster amount of wool to process and I've decided to wash some everyday till I get it done. I want try a method I read about in Spinoff magazine. I want to spin enough for a big project but we'll see how it goes. I have enrolled in the Vic Guild one year spinning certificate so hopefully I'll learn lots of new skills this year. I did a workshop on woollen spinning and discovered I haven't really been doing anything wrong. It's supposed to be lumpy and bumpy!

Breaking the one sock syndrome

Okay I admit, for years the whole sock thing has totally defeated me. I've tried and tried to knit socks. There's the green socks for Daughter No. 2 and the blue socks for the ex....... Got one of each plus one lovely blue and tweed slipper somewhere in my WIP's. But not two.

It's hard knitting socks. There's all these peculiar instructions and they keep talking about turning the heel and heel flaps. Weird stuff, not very intelligble to this crocheter. But then ..........

My spinning buddy, Ruth, turned up with this fantastic book! Crochet patterns for socks. It's great and it has heaps of ideas around two basic patterns one for 5ply or sport weight and one for worsted weight. It also has a very nice lace pattern. The book is called Learn to Crochet Socks by Kathy Wesley. It is American and uses their terminology but it doesn't assume any knowledge and includes instructions.

I made the basic sport sock pattern and it was sooooooo easy. This is the yarn is used.


The apricot yarn is left over from a baby jumper and is Patons Big Baby.
The multi coloured yarn came from my raid, I mean, shopping excursion, at First Editions in Euroa.



The first half of the first sock seemed to take forever because the yarn is a little finer than sport weight so I had to do extra rows. The band is crocheted sideways, going into the back loop of the stitch which creates a lovely ribbed effect.



The multi coloured yarn is actually a sock yarn and it has a lovely spongy feel - probably from the nylon in it. It bought an extra 100 grams of this undyed and next guild meeting I'll having a go at doing self striping yarn - like the lovely Opal sock yarn in my stash on Ravelry.

Once I got on the heel shaping on the socks, it was easy peasy. Okay, I did have to frog it once. The extra rows didn't match the pattern, but it was easy to fix. I just needed to see it first to work it out. Here are my finished socks. I really like the way the multicoloured wool pools the colours. It creates random patterns, nice serendipity!



They fit really well, and I have long queue of people wanting a pair. Sister Jay gave me money for birthday fibre at First Editions, so she's first cab off the rank! I finished spinning the yarn for her socks today and will post pics and a new post when it's dry.

Suzie moves in.

WoooHoooo. I've finally bought my new wheel and she is beautiful! Her name is Suzieb and she is a Majacraft Suzie Professional. I also bought a wild flyer kit and head and ordered a lace kit. I've been very flat out and haven't had as much time to spin as I would have liked but I've spun some very fine possum and merino, some fine merino, a medium yarn and I finished the spinning the yarn for a new pair of socks last night. It still has to be plyed - I think I want to Navaho Ply it. Will do a trial tonight to see if it will be fine enough.
The top picture is Suzie set up and ready to go. This picture is Suzieb folded up ready for a car trip.

Spiral Beanie

This started out as a bit of playing around. I was trying out some of the shapes from "Freeformations" using the leftover yarn from the scarf and some baby yarn. I really liked the look of it and it was already a flat circle shape so I just kept going into the classic beanie. The spiral effect isn't really obvious to a casual glance but it shows up beautifully from the top or from the rolled up sides. I love spirals and I'll definitely play with this shape some more.




Ruth wanted it to be long and a bit wider than normal so I added a few more increases than I normally would. She has lots of hair and likes to stuff it under her beanies!!! I think this would felt well if I made this again because it's big. Hmm...maybe a spiral bag would be good.









I think the scarf and the hat look great together as my lovely model shows. Ruth wore them when we went to Bendigo for the Sheep and Wool Show and we got lots of compliments so that was nice.

Ruth's Scarf

This is a current favorite. I love the way it came together. I wove the scarf on my Ashford Knitters Loom using Ashford Tekapo and Naturally Hand Knit's Aspire DK. I used a mixture of both in the warp and the weft.


This created a lovely random tartan pattern as the Aspire picked up the crossovers. Aspire is a wool/alpaca mix - very soft - that is spun to resemble a hand spun singles yarn. Both these yarns behaved beautifully and the colours are fantastic. Only problem was that the Site Supervisor i.e. Ruth, decided a beanie might be nice as well..............



The finished scarf modeled by our friend Nicky

I'm back

Well it's been awhile. I just didn't really get into this properly, but hopefully now I will. I have lots of things to post about. Ruth's hat and scarf, Kim's poncho, Lina's Hat, Mary's Scarf and the SOCKS, will do to start with. I've also got the Bendigo show stash, the visit to Bendigo Mills and the Ravelry Stash story. It's been a while. Here is a peek of some of the projects. This is Ruth's Hat and Scarf.




And this is some of my new hand spun yarn.
I'm away from home a fair bit at the moment so I'll be doing lots of crochet and weaving in the evenings so I'll try and catch up on some of my missed bits before it all becomes too much
Back soon

The Beanie

This post is about the hat that I made for my nephew for his birthday. He wanted a beanie and he wanted one that looked hand made. This is the result. It was an interesting process, because I decided to try not to spin too finely and to let any naturally occurring lumps and bumps stay that way. It was harder than I thought, I kept wanting to smooth bits!

The wool is from a coated fleece I bought at the Victorian Sheep and Wool Show, 4 years ago. It is a brown Corriedale fleece which is naturally light and lofty and I wanted the spinning process to enhance those characteristics. I choose a random selection of pieces from the fleece going for softness rather than a similiar size. Here is a comparision of two of one of the longest and shortest pieces of fleece. The longer piece is approximately 15 cms (six ins) long, with the shorter piece only 9 cms (3 ins).



I don't know that I'd recommend it as a regular practice. I think I should have stuck to just one area of the fleece. But the drum carder sorted it out. I fluffed up each lock of fleece on the carder before I fed it through. The final batts were a light fluffy mass I couldn't wait to play with. I split each batt into two pieces and rolled them into giant rolags to spin from.

I decided to spin the wool using a woolen spin with a medium draw to preserve the lofty feel of the wool. I also decided to card the wool in the grease and hopefully keep a small amount of lanolin in the final product to make it waterproof for my uni student nephew. He catches public transport a lot and I thought it might be it might be a bit more useful that way.

I spun the singles "z" twist and slightly over-plyed two singles "s" twist as I had decided to crochet the beanie. The over-plying helps compensate for the untwisting the crochet causes and to stop the stitches from slanting too much. This is a close up of the stitching, as you can see there is not a lot of slant and there is a natural variation in the colour which I think worked well for the handmade look I was going for.


I used the toque pattern from "Not your mama's crochet" and fiddled with it to do what I wanted. My nephew was very pleased with the final result and so was I but I wasn't that thrilled with the colour so I decided to so some dyeing! More in my next post.



This is the only bit of wool left. Not a bad estimation, huh?