Another new design - A444 in white acrylic

With the colder weather and a need to create more storage space quickly I've decided to work on items made with the thicker range of yarns.  I've had this pattern earmarked to have a go at for quite some time.  It's a vintage pattern, from a 1976 publication to be precise, printed in the USA and the specified yarns for this haven't been made in years so I've found an alternative in my stash.  

I will be using Jarol Baby Rambler Aran, a 100% acrylic yarn that I've had in my stash for a number of years.  I rarely use Acrylic yarn these days due to the fact that, whilst it is relatively cheap to buy, comes in a whole range of colours, textures and weights, is easy to care for and fairly hardwearing, it's production is not particularly environmentally friendly as the main chemical used in its creation is a fossil-fuel based substance and so has a fairly large carbon footprint.  Also, when you wash Acrylic fibres tiny microplastic particles are released into the water and eventually end up in the Ocean and when you are done with the item it is not biodegradable and so goes to landfill, where it will stay for hundreds of years.

The issues surrounding the use Acrylic yarn have plagued knitters and crocheters for years.  You will always have people who don't care about the environmental impact of manufacturing and using these yarns, you will have people who will categorically not use these yarns under any circumstances and then you have people like me who are torn about its use, some will use it because it's the only type of yarn in their budget range and that's OK.  For me, personally, whilst in my younger and teenage years I used Acrylic yarn all of the time as I've grown older, wiser and more experienced in life in general my views have changed and I don't particularly like using Acrylic yarn.  

My way of looking at it now is that I feel that it is OK to use if I already have it in my stash, as it will have been there for a number of years, having being manufactured years ago and there is nothing I can do to change history.  If I just bin it it will go into landfill straight away.  If I sell it on, donate it to a charity shop for them to sell on or knit/crochet with it at least it has a chance of being a useful item for a number of years but regardless it will eventually end up in landfill at some point in the future.  That is a given so I may as well use it to make something pretty and useful.  What I can do though is not to add to the environmental impact going forward by not buying newly manufactured Acrylic yarn and help in a tiny way to reduce the demand for new.  In general, I don't buy any new yarns at all as I have a vast stash already and I also spin my own yarns but if I do buy new yarns it is usually 100% Cotton, because I can't spin that myself or its a really fine laceweight yarn, usually pure wool, again because I can't spin that myself either, it's a specialist skill that I've not yet mastered. Sometimes it's hard to avoid it in blends and a yarn that contains 20% Acrylic is better than 100% Acrylic but I still try to avoid it if possible and these purchases are rare and only occur in exceptional circumstances for custom made items, but again I will try to avoid new and look for yarns on the second hand market to reduce the demand for new.

Right, now that I've got that off my chest, shall I show you what I've made?

With this pattern, you start at the widest part of the triangle and reduce down each row until you reach the top.  Oh great, I just love counting hundreds of chain stitches.  Quiet everyone, I'm counting!

It's actually a really easy pattern once you get going and yet it creates a stunning shawl.  I will definitely make more in this pattern in the future.

Design B528 in King Cole Drifter - Barcelona

It's been a while since I knit a shawl and I think it's time to start doing some more making.  I decided to use the other one of the yarns that I bought as a potential candidate for the custom a while back, I bought this one and then the same but in pink and I am knitting the same design.  Its made with King Cole Drifter Chunky in shade "Barcelona" and is 69% Acrylic, 25% Cotton, 6% Wool.

I think that the design I have chosen works well with this busy yarn.  I don't like overly busy colours. The stripes of the lace pattern work nicely with the stripes of the yarn. 

I finally got around to taking photos of the finished item, 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!

Design LF433 - Pretty in Brown

It seems that I started making this sometime ago, possibly at the end of 2020, as it's been a while since I made anything and I can't remember starting to make this.  I've really been loosing track of time these past couple of years what with menopausal foggy brain and Covid-19, I really haven't known whether I've been coming or going at times.  Making dated notes is a must and looking back on social media posts helps a lot at times too. 

Since the last time I made one of these shawls, I have discovered that Thomas B Ramsden, the parent company that owns yarn brands such as Twilleys, Robin, Wendy and a couple of others, did actually go into Administration after dwindling profits over the past 15 years or so and they had already sold off a lot of the old buildings and sites that they once owned in a bid to streamline the business and the business has now closed down after over 100 years.  Very sad.

The colours for this one are WG10 Pale Orange (Twilley's Goldfingering), 313 Orange (Anchor Artiste Metallic), 064 Burnt Orange and 065 Chocolate (both Twilley's Goldfingering).  The Anchor Artiste Metallic is almost identical to the Twilley's Goldfingering.

When I picked this project up to work on earlier this month I discovered that all of the flower centres were finished and some of them had petals on.

As I worked on adding the rest of the petals I did notice that about half of the centres were a tad lighter than the others so I put them into two piles so that when I assemble them into a shawl that I can space them out equally across the finished item, like a checkerboard.

All finished, including all the many many ends all sewn in and fringing cut and added.

I finally got around to taking photos of the finished shawl over the first weekend of October 2022.  Better late than never I suppose.

Combing and spinning the white Jacob fleece

I don't need to blog about this breed because I have already done that when I wrote about the Black Jacob back in December 2020

I decided to use white Jacob to join all of the individually knit project pieces together.  I also have a decent amount of Jacob fleece in my stash and therefore at my disposal.

I decided to use the white parts from two different Jacob Fleece that were from the same flock of sheep and that I acquired way back in 2014 from a farmer friend of an ex-colleague and friend.  These were from Fleece No.2 and Fleece No.16, the same as I used for the grey centre piece of the project.

From Fleece No.2 there was 700g of washed fleece and this gave me 446g of fluff after combing.  From Fleece No.16 there was 460g of washed fleece and this gave me 285g after combing.  Each lot was in a different clear bag and I noticed that there was a very noticeable difference in the shade of white/cream between the two.  Well they are from different sheep and no two are exactly the same. Imagine it just like with humans, how many shades of natural blonde hair are there? Quite a lot! I split the contents of each bag into 7 equal weights and put one lot from each bag together on my blending hackle to even out the shade across all of the skeins that I will be making.

I didn't take any photos of the hand combed nests, whoops! I did take photos of the fleece before it was washed a few years ago though and I have those to show comparison between the two.

I did spin it all up into 7 skeins that weigh between 92g and 98g each and are sport weight.

My finished yarn is of medium quality to the touch of the hand and is so much nicer than the black Jacob sample.  In total there is 658g/1433m of sport weight yarn.