Advent Calendar 2024 Day 9 - Knecht Ruprecht

I have never heard of this character and the spelling is a little bit confusing to me, I kept reading it as Rupert, but it isn't helped by the fact that the main heading in the booklet has a spelling mistake in the fact that there is a K before the last letter of the first word when it should be a H. All other instances of the word are spelt correctly, as far as I can tell.  All the information can be found in the first photo and if you click on the photo you can zoom in if you need to.  

I wonder if the design on this packet is meant to represent the children in the tradition.

I have undone the tightly wrapped little bundles and made them into braids to take any pressures off the fibres and also so that I can see the colours properly and feel the texture too.  It's nice and soft quite smooth so I have no idea what I will pair this with right now but I do notice that this is the fourth fibre on the bounce that has been quite dull and in the grey/browns kind of range.  I do hope we have a nice colourful one soon.

Spinning up "Khadi" from October 2019

This is another of the monthly fibres that I used to subscribe to and I have almost spun up all of the ready-to-spin braids that I have left from this supplier, just a few more to go.  I still have bits and bobs in my "ingredients cupboard" for when I make my own blends, but that is a different matter.

This one is from October 2019 and was based on some Indian cloth called Khadi that was championed by Mahatma Ghandi. 

The fibre looks like its got some different neutral colours in there but this doesn't seem to show in the finished yarn.  It was a very simple, straight-forward spin of splitting it in half, pre-draft the fibre and spin it and then ply the two singles together. 

I had intended to spin this to a thickness that would work with another yarn in my stash but I seem to have missed this by a mile and it has bloomed on washing as well. Oh, well, plenty more wool on the sheep in the field.  This one has spun up to double-knit weight and I have 102g/274m and the fibre content is 50% Merino, 25% Polwarth, 25% Tussah Silk.

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 18

Another white one today, soft and fluffy.  Its called All the Trimmings, and they're not joking, 50g and 8 different fibres but they've not given out the percentages on this one.  It's made up of Huacaya Alpaca, Bluefaced Leicester, Hill Radnor, Merino, Mint, Pineapple, Polwarth and Tencel.

Advent Calendar 2022 Day 17

"Oh little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie....", no that's not it "star of wonder, star of night, star with royal beauty bright..." no, that's not it either.  This one is called Star of Bethlehem and is 50% Polwarth, 25% Camel, 25% Soybean and is really soft and fluffy and I love it.

After Christmas, in the New Year, WoW made additional 100g braids of fibre of all of the Advent Calendar Fibres available to purchase to those who had purchased the Advent Calendar.  There were limited stocks of each one available, it was on a first-come-first served basis and there was a short time frame of priority before the remaining stock was made available to general purchase.  This was one of 7 fibres that I bought an extra 100g of.

Luxury blend Autumn yarn

Onto the next fibre braids, again I got this from someone else's de-stash and its only about 2 years old but this time I have two the same but that throws up a few choices or ideas that I need to consider.  Do I spin them both in the same way or do I spin one of them one way and the other one in a different way?  Regardless of whether I do both the same or both differently my first decision is "what are my options?", so I needed to list different ways that I could spin the fibre but to focus only on the methods that would produce a yarn that I would actually use, so not likely to choose any kind of chain spun methods.

Option 1: split the fibre into two down the middle, the full length of the braid, and spin one single from one end and spin the other single by starting at the opposite end and then ply these two singles together.  This would result in a barber-pole yarn, for the most part at least, and each of the colour sections would be quite large due to the amount of fibre in each half of the braid.

Option 2: split the fibre into two down the middle, the full length of the braid, one single being spun from each half with the second single being spun by starting at the opposite end to the first but before I spin each single to split it further, once or multiple times but each half needs to be split the same amount of times, along each length to make each clump of colour smaller and spin each split length starting at the same end and then ply these two singles together.  This would result in a barber-pole yarn, for the most part at least, and each of the colour sections would be smaller, so whilst technically similar to Option 1 it would look different because the colours would change more frequently.

Option 3: split the fibre into two down the middle, the full length of the braid, and spin each single from the same end and then ply these two singles together.  This would result for the most part at least, a solid colour yarn with long colour changes due to the amount of fibre in each half of the braid.

Option 4: split the fibre into two down the middle, the full length of the braid, and spin each single from the same end and then ply these two singles together. but before I spin each single to split it further, once or multiple times but each half needs to be split the same amount of times, along each length to make each clump of colour smaller and spin each split length starting at the same end and then ply these two singles together.   This would result for the most part at least, a solid colour yarn with short colour changes due to the amount of fibre in each half of the braid.

I went with Option 3, splitting it straight down the middle and spinning from the end so that I have long colour changes.  I also decided to spin both braids in the same way.  When I was spinning the first braid I had already spun the first single the previous day and  I spun the second single and plied them together whilst we had a couple of young workmen in fitting an air circulation system in the loft (roof space) with the vent over the stairs.  One of them was fascinated in what I was doing and couldn't believe I had finished it before they left and was watching me split the second fibre braid down the length and could hardly believe that this is what unspun wool looks like and loved the colours and the look of the finished yarn.  His mum knits, apparently, so he is used to seeing yarn but has never seen anything as amazing and as nice as this.

The finished yarn is 200g of Double Knit weight yarn, 360m in total, with a fibre content of 50% Polwarth wool, 25% Black Alpaca and 25% Mulberry Silk.  It is pretty amazing and the colours are spectacular.  There is a tiny amount of barber-poling in the areas where the colours change but this is minimal and has to happen to some degree, it's the nature of the beast with colour changing yarns.

A Little Luxury Blend

I'm working through the oldest fibres in my stash that are ready for spinning.  This one I bought back in April 2018 and it's 50% Polwarth wool, 25% Alpaca, 25% Mulberry Silk and was one of my first purchases from my new favourite fibre supplier.

I've spun this to sport weight and I have 102g/170m and it's really, really soft.

October's Fibre is here - Khadi

A neutral colour and ohhhhhh so soft, this will make a fabulous shawl once its spun and knit.  I've never heard of Khadi that was mentioned in the letter but there are are all sorts of cloth that I've come across before.  I like this one, such a delicate colour.  50% 18.5 micron Merino Wool, 25% Polwarth Wool, 25% Tussah Silk.

Spinning up Tante Violett

This is another spinning fibre that I brought from The Fluffy Viking seven years ago and this also spun like a dream with no issues.  This one is also 60% Merino, 20% Polwarth, 20% Bleached Tussah Silk.

Its gorgeous, spun from the end and made a 2ply yarn that is sport weight and 103g/353m

Spinning Isbre

Seven years ago, yes, seven, I bought some spinning fibre from The Fluffy Viking, who has either changed name or gone out of business and it is still absolutely amazing after all this time.  It spun like a dream, it hasn't compacted, felted or anything.  My usual spinning method, split down the middle length-ways, spun from the end, make a traditional 2 ply.

Its 60% Merino Wool, 20% Polwarth Wool, 20% Bleached Tussah Silk

Lovely and soft, 102g/350m of double knit weight yarn.

Polwarth - Summer Skies

Back in April I spun up a compacted braid of Shetland wool that I called Lilac Sparkles and I said at the time that I had one more braid from the same supplier to work on.  This is it!

Its a pretty braid of Polwarth fibre, Polwarth is closely related to Merino and has a very fine fleece and I've recently made a shawl with some Polwarth that I prepared from fleece myself and spun up.

This one started out as a 140g braid in shade "Summer Skies" and it would have been interesting to spin this directly from the braid as it would have given a variegated yarn.

Sadly, I couldn't possibly spin this from the braid as it was too compacted so I had to put it through my wool combs to create lovely soft fluffy nests of fibre ready for spinning.  Look how wonderfully fine it is and how the colours have blended together.

I spun it up, noticing that it does still have slight shade variation throughout, producing an kind of two-tone effect.  I do only have 83g left out of the original 140g but I still have 274m of double knit weight yarn from this and it is really lovely and soft.

Parcel of Fibre from World of Wool

I have treated myself to a range of commercial ready-to-spin fibres from World of Wool.

I've bought a couple with the intention of spinning these as they are, a sample pack of British Breeds because I've heard a lot about some of those included in this pack but not sure if they're right for me and my needs and I don't want to fork out on buying a whole or part fleece only to discover its not for me, and the rest I've bought with the intention of using as ingredients with other fibres to create my own blends, although this means that I will have to look at buying dyes specifically for plant based fibres because I only have dyes for animal protein fibres.

The first one is 100g of 50% Polwarth, 25% Alpaca, 25% Silk and the last one is 100g of Zwartbles combed top as I wanted to try Zwartbles again following the poor quality fleece I had the unfortunate opportunity of processing previously.  The samples of British Breeds contain 25g each of Dorset Horn, Whitefaced Woodland, Moorit Shetland, Brown Bluefaced Leicester, Light Grey Herdwick, Light Grey Swaledale, Black Welsh and Black Jacob.

Dorset Horn I have only tried previously as a cross breed fleece I had.  Shetland I have had a few times but never in the Moorit colour.  Bluefaced Leicester I have spun once before, back in my early days of spinning and Black Jacob, well, I've spun lots of Jacob fleece, I've probably spun more Jacob than anything else.  The other breeds, Whitefaced Woodland, Herdwck, Swaledale and Black Welsh I have never spun before so it will be interesting to see how they handle.

The Merino/Suri Alpaca blend I might spin that and then dye it afterwards, not sure yet exactly what I will do with that.  The other fibres are all plant fibres and can be used blended with each other or I can blend them with any of the fleece as I process them.  These will become part of an "ingredients box" along with the various colours of Angelina that I have.

Vintage Daisy Shawl - Design DK428

I recently made 3/4 of a shawl when I realised that I didn't have enough yarn to finish it and it wouldn't have looked right if I had made it shorter than the pattern.  I also realised that it didn't have enough drape either, it was too stiff for this design and that was down to gauge.

I undone the entire thing, about 2 weeks work, and found another design to use the yarn with.  I had a few issues with this design as there aren't any photos that show how the motifs are joined together or what the finished shawl looks like other than the one photo on the vintage pattern that just shows it from the front and draped over the arms of the model.

Each motif consists of 6 rounds of crochet, with the 6th round being the one where you join to other motifs, and then you have to crochet round the whole thing once finished to make the nice edging.

Made from some of my own hand spun Polwarth wool that I spun back in 2012.

Before and after fringe being added.

Its been blocked and is modelled by my teenage daughter.  It reminds me of a giant dreamcatcher and I think its beautiful.

Polwarth again, are you green with envy?

I've been shopping at The Fibre Fairy and bought a few things but instead of showing you all of my purchases I will just show them to you as I spin them.  I know, I am such a meanie.

I bought 150g of Polwarth top in shade "Emeralds Kiss".

I spun it as a double knit weight 2ply yarn and got 425m from my 150g.

I thought I would try some Polwarth fleece

I bought 300g of Polwarth fleece from The Whorl's End.  This fleece comes from her own Polwarth Sheep, a ram called "Cassy".  Even with the dirt in the fleece you can see that this is really really soft and fine.  There was no VM in the fleece so just mud and grease to wash out and this left me with 268g of clean fleece.

I combed the lovely clean fibre and I got 202g of lovely soft fluffy clouds ready to spin.  I split this into two equal amounts and spun as fine as I could and then plied the two singles together to give me a skein of sport weight yarn weighing 200g/612m and it is incredibly white.  This will have to be knit into something a little bit special.