The Big Experiment - finally finished!

So I have finally gotten around to dying the skeins that I wanted to dye using blue dye.  I got out my favourite Greener Shades dyes to discover that I hadn't got enough of the River Blue by itself so I added a bit of Coral Reef Aqua into the mix too to make up the dye powder weight needed to dye this at 0.5% dye rate, which is using 50% of the dye you would use to get the standard colour strength for the dye.  I wanted it to be slightly lighter so that the colours of the merino might stand out a bit more rather than potentially be obliterated by the dye.

The colourful Merino have not reacted with the blue dye like I expect it to but its still made an interesting yarn.

The oddments blend has taken the dye well and looks quite similar to the other 3 skeins, its just that the fibre content is very different.

The mini skein of just Jacob wool has produced an interesting variegated yarn too.

The big experiment is finished - almost!

I have taken a deep breath and just got on and finished up something that I started months and months and months ago.  I got sick of looking at it, sat there in a bag staring at me, pulling faces at me.  That's what it felt like at times.  It was one of those projects that I wanted to do but then couldn't bring myself to finish what I started.  Lockdown hasn't helped at all.

So, I finished all six skeins as intended earlier this year.   Now that I have finished it I do actually like the way it looks as it is but I still also want to know what it will look like if I over-dye it blue so I will keep 3 skeins as it is and dye 3 skeins blue.

I had about 85g of spun single left over from the lightest grey part of this project at the end so what I decided to do was to put together some odds and ends and spin another single and ply them together and then add the finished skein to the dye pot when I dye the other 3 skeins blue.  The beige-yellow part that I used in this blend is from the same fleece as the rest of the Jacob and is what I had tried to dye using Marigolds in this post here.  The other bits and pieces were all from a lap waste bag.  It all went through my blending hackle to produce the bump of fluff in the biggest photo below.

I spun it up and plied with the left over and then there was still a small amount of leftover, which I just plied back on itself to produce a tiny little skein of pure Jacob wool.  In the photo of the two bobbins, the darker one is the new blend I just created and the light one is the last of the Jacob.

The new large skein works out at approx 64.5% Jacob wool, 15% Corriedale wool, 11% Merino wool, 7% Icelandic wool, 2.5% Mulberry Silk.  The small skein is 100% Jacob wool.

B528 in King Cole Drifter - Jakarta

I enjoyed making that last shawl so much that I've made another.  This time I've use one of the yarns that I bought as a potential candidate for the custom make last year but then it turned out not to be anything like what the customer was thinking of.  Its made with King Cole Drifter Chunky in shade "Jakarta" and is 69% Acrylic, 25% Cotton, 6% Wool.

I think this is just about as busy a yarn that this design can take, anything more busy and it will tip it over the edge for me.  The stripes of the lace pattern work nicely with the stripes of the yarn but if I'd used a different lace pattern, featuring leaves perhaps, then this would not have worked out very nice. 

I finally got around to taking photos of the finished item, if it was nearly 2 years later but then I have been up to my eyeballs in British Sheep Breed fleece and Covid Lockdown and all sense of time passed just vaporised into thin air!

Yet another new design - B528

This one is another simple, but effective, shawl pattern and, again, I have used another of my hand spun yarns for this one too, this time a recently spun one that you can read about here.

Knitted simply in repeating 4 blocks of 4 row patterns and the colours in the yarn balances nicely with the simplicity of the pattern, neither are too busy for the other.  The first photo of the shawl on the needles is more true to colour than the photos of the finished item on my kitchen floor.  That wintertime artificial light is playing havoc again with the colours in my photos.

Finally got around to taking photos outside on a good day, even if it was nearly 2 years after I made it.  How time flies when you're up to your eyeballs in British Sheep Breeds and Covid Lockdown.

Another new design - W529

This is another new design, its a simple granny square shawl, nothing spectacular about the design but simplistic enough to show off slightly more "fancy" yarns without the pattern being totally obscured and overshadowed by the yarn or the fancifulness of the yarn getting buried by too much pattern.  I see, all too often, photos of knitted or crochet lace in complex designs and made with a really colourful patterned yarn and its just too much for the eyes to take in.  You need to think about balance and choose one or the other, what do you want to show off, the complex design or the complex colours of the yarn, putting both together in one project does not work in my opinion.

This is made with some Jacob wool that I spun way back in 2013 and you can read all about how I made the yarn by scrolling to the bottom of the blog post linked here, its the last yarn made from that particular fleece. I used both skeins to make this shawl.

In the final product photos, the colourful parts look almost luminous but as you can see from the last set of photos, it really isn't at all.

Design SB188 in natural black Jacob wool

One more shawl of this design before I move onto something else.  This time I have chosen some natural black Jacob wool that I spun 4 years ago.  The fleece for it was sourced locally and you can read more about that here.  

This time, when I finished the shawl I had a lot of yarn remaining and so instead of finishing and then making a brooch, I lay it to one side, made the brooch and then came back to the shawl and added extra rows of pattern to the bottom edge so as to be able to use up all of this lovely handspun yarn.  This means that this shawl is slightly longer than the ones made in acrylic yarn.  Also, because this shawl is made from pure wool which has been processed carefully by hand for spinning and then spun by me it does mean that this shawl will be a lot more expensive than those made from acrylic yarn as there is an element of labour charges involved, as well as the price of the buying the fleece.

I use long strong cable ties to help form scallops when I am blocking any shawl that has a scalloped bottom edge.  Obviously I still need to use pins to keep it in shape and place but the cable ties mean I can use less pins and help create a smoother line.