Aqua and White Lacy Crochet Scarf

I am sticking with this gorgeous scarf pattern but going back to the Vintage aqua blue Luxury Mohair by Chevy that I used to make a broomstick lace scarf and pairing it with some off white Vintage Lister Lee Tahiti.  The overall fibre content shifts slightly to be 79% Mohair, 13% Wool, 8% Nylon.

78% Mohair, 13% Wool, 9% Nylon

81% Mohair (including 9% Kid Mohair), 14% Wool, 5% Nylon

This Lister Lee Tahiti is very nice and I would say that it is the softest Mohair yarn that I have ever worked with so far.  I do have some very well world-wide known Rowan Kidsilk Haze, which is a laceweight Mohair yarn, but I cannot compare it to that as I have never gotten around to using the Rowan yet.  I do have a good amount of vintage Lister Lee Tamarisk, which is kind of a finer version of the Tahiti, so that will interesting when I get around to working that up in the future, and I had to pinch a bit of it for the off-white fringing as I ran out of the Tahiti so had to combine the two for the fringing.  I digress.

So, straight in with the finished product photos.

Summer Berries Lacy Crochet Scarf

I love this crochet scarf pattern so much that I am going to stick with it for a while and make a few of these in different colours.  So, I've picked up the left overs of the Colinette Mohair Summer Berries from the broomstick lace scarf I made and paired it with some vintage Lister Lee Tahiti in a lilac colour, which looks like it will work with the Summer Berries.

78% Mohair, 13% Wool, 9% Nylon

81% Mohair (including 9% Kid Mohair), 14% Wool, 5% Nylon

I've not used the vintage Tahiti before, I have some of this in other colours, and it is very soft, much softer than the Colinette Mohair, probably the Kid Mohair element has something to do with it.  The overall fibre content shifts slightly to be 79% Mohair, 13% Wool, 8% Nylon. With the differences in colour of the Colinette Mohair skeins, due to it being "hand-dyed", I used up some of the darker left overs for the middle section and then switched to the lightest skein for outer edge sections.  This does show up on the scarf and gives and interesting effect.

Once again, no work-in-progress photos, so straight to the finished product.

Cosmic Broomstick Lace Scarf

This time I am using some yarn that I bought recently from a visit to my local craft shop and I saw this and could not resist the colours.  King Cole Riot Chunky in shade "Cosmic" and I used both skeins but I did have to colour match the join from 1st to 2nd skein as it didn't flow but then I used the length removed at the start to add to the end.  

Because this yarn is thicker I only used 6 pattern repeats across the row instead of the usual 8 and then I done 142 rows instead of 118 to use up the yarn and also so that both ends of the scarf were the same colours.   The yarn is 70% Premium Acrylic, 30% Wool. 

Summer Berries Broomstick Lace Scarf

I have a couple of skeins/part used hand-wound balls of Colinette Mohair in shade Summer Berries.  I wound them into cakes, when it then became obvious that there was a lot of difference between the skeins.  This is normal and expected with Colinette yarns and there are even instructions on the band that states this fact and to alternate between two or more skeins when working with them.  One is very very light, one is dark and then the part skein is even darker than the second one!    

The pattern that I am working has a standard length of 118 rows, which is what I worked.  I worked only with the two darkest skeins and alternated between them every two pattern repeats. The yarn is 78% Mohair, 13% Wool, 9% Nylon

I didn't take any work-in-progress photos but I did hold it up against the light for an interesting stained glass effect.

Aqua Mohair Broomstick Lace Scarf

My next scarf is again some vintage Mohair but this time only one of the 5 balls have a label so I have no idea if they are all the same dyelot but they are Luxury Mohair by Chevy.

I am sticking with making broomstick lace scarves for now.  The yarn is 78% Mohair, 13% Wool, 9% Nylon.  The pattern that I am working has a standard length of 118 rows and this is what I worked.

Once again I didn't take any work-in-progress photos and this colour is just beautiful.

Red Mohair Broomstick Lace Scarf

I've decided that I need to use up some of the smaller amounts of vintage yarns to make smaller and quicker to make items that still fit within the lace theme of the shop but that might be more marketable and at a lower price point.  I have 10 balls of Charisma 83% Mohair Rich but 7 balls have one dye lot and the other three have 2 different dye lot's between them.  

Using the 3 rogue balls with odd dye lots I decided to make a broomstick lace scarf, putting the two balls with the same dyelot on the ends and the other ball in the middle.  The yarn is 83% Mohair, 9% Wool, 8% Nylon.  The pattern that I am working has a standard length of 118 rows but I worked 134 rows to use up as much of the yarn as possible and to make sure that the same number of rows were worked for each of the balls of yarn with the same dye lot so that if there is any slight difference in colour those sections would be equal.

I didn't take any work-in-progress photos.  I must get back into the habit of doing that!

Advent Calendar 2023 Day 18

The Tradition

Day 18 is called Homemade Advent and the tradition comes from Switzerland.  Who doesn't enjoy getting in the festive spirit by decorating their homes. And what is more enjoyable than decorating it with things made by you, your family and friends?  Cookies are a popular thing to make and share and there are special flavours and shapes and all decorated with piped icing.  The Advent is usually celebrated with store-bought or home made advent calendars, just like in most other parts of the world that celebrate Christmas. 

Some small towns and villages take it one step further and organise an Adventfenster, otherwise known as Advent Windows. A window in 24 buildings (homes, schools or business) are decorated with a homemade Christmas design using black paper and colourful dragon paper that will let light shine through and show the design, so a bit like making a stained glass window of paper.  The designs are kept hidden by closing shutters over the window until the allocated date of reveal.  Every evening at a set time people gather outside the relevant house for that day and watch the shutters be opened to reveal the window design for that day. Music is played or a Christmas carol is sung and often cookies and a hot drink are offered too.  The windows will stay lit until at least Christmas eve and often for the last night, a tour is made of all of the previously revealed windows before gathering outside of the last one for the final reveal.

The Fibre

The actual fibre content is 50% Eider (White), 50% Wool blend (Neptune, a mixed wool space dyed blend using colours yellow, orange, sage green, blue, purple).  This is an Eider and wool blend.  This has got some lovely earthy tones in it.  Eider is a semi-lustrous and slightly bulky fibre and it is the white you can see in the blend. It has a nice rustic feel to it and whilst you can spin it fine if you want to it really does play best when you give it a nice bulky light spin with a lot of loft.  It helps trap all of the air in and so the bulkier the spin, the warmer your final garment is going to be.  The colour is brought by one of our space-dyed blends and you can see how the colour changes throughout the blend and that is lovely. That means that no two blends are going to be the same and it also means that every time you spin it and work with it you can get a different colour variation.  The eider really does pull this together nicely, not too bold, not too bright but lovely and rustic.

My Thoughts

The colour of this one does not get me excited at all, very dull and boring despite there being many colours within it and it's not soft, it's definitely one of the hardwearing wools that would be great for hats/scarves/gloves.  The camera on my phone captured most of the colours at the time but I think my proper Canon camera has done a better job.  Ooh, if only they had chosen to base the colours and tradition more on the Adventfenster, which they didn't actually mention in their description of the tradition, I found that information myself when trying to find out more from the internet.

The information that has been printed on the bags is not always correct and there are no fibre content percentages, these have been provided on the chat boards.  The percentages that they gave on the chat boards seem to be correct for this one.  

What I have done with my bags is to write the actual fibre content on the bag using a gold gel pen in the gap immediately below the printed details, pretty much the only thing that will show up on black are the metallic gel pens.  This is why I have not taken "new" photos of the bags.

Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2023 Stage 12

The Cycling: Stage 12 is 169km of a hilly route that starts in Roanne and ends in Belleville-en-Beaujolais, France.

The Daily Challenge: Spin a plant fibre - if you want a real challenge, find some plant material from your garden to spin.

Suggested Fibre: Flax/Linen

What I did

I had found a fibre braid that was mostly plant fibre but I was nervous about spinning that as this time.  I want to take my time over it and sometimes the TdF can feel a little bit time pressured because you want to try and attempt the challenges and spin as much as possible for the team.  I'm glad that yesterdays spin has spilled over to today and I will just finish that instead.  It's nice to do the challenges when you can but its not the be-all and end-all of the event.

The finished yarn is greyer than I expected it to be.  I thought it would have more of a brown tinge to it.  I am considering over-dying this in the future and maybe going for a medium blue as the tone of the grey will affect the dye and I will be hoping for something similar to the blue of the last Fibonacci spun yarn, National Trust, that is a lovely muted shade of blue. The finished yarn is 100% Wool (Castlemilk Moorit x Norfolk Horn) and is sport weight.  One skein is 225m/75g and the other is 224m/74g which means overall I have 449m/149g.

I've combed the Olive Green Jacob fleece

Back in September I dyed 427g of Jacob fleece a kind of Olive Green using Greener Shades dye at 1%, made up of 45% River Blue, 45% Sunshine Yellow and 10% Ruby Red.  I have now combed that fleece and am left with 246g of fluff to do with what I want, most likely used in a blend.

As you can see from the photo showing a sample of the nests I got from it, it has created hand combed nests in a variety of shades but once its spun up or used in a blend and spun up it will all work well together to make something pretty and interesting.

Dyeing the Whitefaced Dartmoor for a second time

 A couple of weeks ago I tried to dye some combed Whitefaced Dartmoor wool using some left over cold water dye.  It didn't work.  At best it turned some of the outer-fibres of the hand combed nests a very very pale silver grey but it hadn't gotten down into the inner fibres. Today is the day that I am going to give this fibre some colour.

I am using my usual Greener Shades Dyes and have chosen to dye this at 0.5% dye depth (half a gram of dye per 100g of dry fibre), there is 282g of fibre and the dye is made up of 75% River Blue, 25% Amethyst Purple.

I did loosen the hand combed nests a bit before putting them in the dye pot in the hopes that the dye would reach all of the fibres and I am happy with the results.  The plan is to use this fibre in my own blend and add some other fibres and colours to it to make it more interesting and to add a bit of softness as well.

An interesting patchwork of blue and pink-y purple that I am sure will eventually make an interesting spun yarn and then go on to be made into something that someone would love to buy from me.

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!

Advent Calendar Day 17

So this is a really small packet compared to the others and only weighs 60g, all of them besides the 24th are just over 100g.  Very disappointed on opening it as it isn't spinning fibre, its a ball of boucle yarn and I'm not a fan of boucle yarn.  It's their Hoop yarn in shade Blue Jay and actually it's 75% Mohair, 20% Wool, 5% Nylon and someone who prepared the info slips has been at the sherry again as they think its 100% Mohair along with whoever prepared the ball bands because that adds up to 105% on there and thirdly it weighs 60g, not the 50g stated on the ball band.  What a mess up, no wonder they've taken the opportunity to get rid of them.  I will most likely use it as suggested, as a ply with something else.  Todays festive saying is "run run rudolph" and now Bruce Springstein is in my head.

Advent Calendar Day 3

Packet 3 of the Advent Calendar contains a braid of Shetland fibre in shade Cherry.  It's 100% Shetland and today's saying is "fa la la la la la la la la".  Very festive, I like it.

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.

Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2021 Stage 19

The Cycling: Stage 19 is 207km long and starts in Mourenx and ends in Libourne.  The route is a transitional stage with a descent and just one Category 4 climb, rolling terrain and one uncategorised climb before being mostly flat.  A big crash just a few minutes in but no one was hurt.  Matej Mohorič won the stage.  

Team Challenge: "We're getting in to the last few days, chaps!  The flat stage today is perfect for those who are looking to sprint to the finish.  If you're feeling a bit sprinty, why not don the green jersey (we know you've earned this!) and grab something green.

Today's challenge; either spin something green or take a picture of as many green things as you can gather in one place (who said things had to be serious?)".

What I planned to do and what I achieved:  Just a small skein today.  I chose to spin some South Down, just a 50g bump that I got in a Breeds Sample box that I got from Fibre Hut.  I spun it sport weight and I got 107m from it, adding another 321m to the team total.  These are pre-wash measurements.

As for the challenge, I took photos of my back garden, specifically the raised vegetable bed.

Lots of green things in the garden right now.

Tour de France/Tour de Fleece 2021 Stage 3

The Cycling: Stage 3 is 182.9km and starts in Lorient and ends in Pontivy.  Two category 4 climbs on the route today. There were a number of crashes towards the end of the stage, with one mid-peleton crash just 4km out from the finish line and a final crash bringing two riders down just 150m from the finish line. Tim Merlier won the stage.  

Team Challenge: "The finishing destination for Stage 3 is Pontivy, a town with a lot of cycling heritage, a river and a canal.  It has also had a bit of an identity crisis over the years having being called Pontivy (twice), Napoléonville (twice), and Bourbonville. 'Pontivy' harks back to a Lindisfarne monk named Ivy who built a bridge over the river (Pont d'Ivy or Ivy's bridge).

Today's challenge: spin something a bit watery.  It could be Aquarius, Glitzy Ocean, something Aqua or a bolt from the blue.  Extra kudos if you can produce a very tenuous link connecting your definitely-not-water-coloured fluff to water".

What I planned to do and what I achieved: I carried on spinning the second skein of Welsh Hill Speckled Face and finished plying it. I've measured it at 281m/125g, which means another 843m is added to the team final total.  The most tenuous link to the challenge that I can come up is that sheep drink water.

Today's skein forefront with yesterday’s skein in the background.

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!

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.

Wensleydale X Texel Fleece

I follow a Facebook page for a local-ish farm, according to Google Maps the shortest route is about 31 miles, and they posted that they had some Wensleydale, Texel and cross-breed fleeces for sale and at a really good price.  Obviously, because of Covid-19, a visit in person to check out the quality of the fleece is not really practical so most transactions were taking place online.  After a little deliberating, mainly me wondering if it would be a case of "you get what you pay for", i.e. pay a low price get low quality, I decided to take a punt as at such a great price I would be stupid not to take the risk. 

My ideal fleece would have been the pure bred Wensleydale but these had all gone by the time I had made my decision to just get one and see and so I chose the Wensleydale X Texel fleece, as my preference is for the longer staple fleece.  So I paid my money and waited for the fleece to arrive and I have to say that I was not disappointed.

It was a little lighter than I anticipated, as with the long staples of the Wensleydale and the sheer size of the Texel I was expecting a fleece in the region of 4 or 5 Kg at least but when it came it only weighed 2.65Kg, maybe it is a lamb fleece and not a full grown adult, but still a great bargain as far as I am concerned.

I didn't leave it long before washing this fleece and I noticed that in places there seemed to be a significant amount of "rise" at the sheared end.  This is the point where last years growth ends and this years growth begins and given the size of the rise I would say that the sheep were quite late in being sheared, probably had problems getting a shearer on site due to this pandemic.

Aside from the rise issues, most of which I pulled off as I separated the locks for washing, the fleece is surprisingly fine and soft.  So my starting weight was 2.65Kg and after skirting and washing I'm left with 1.52Kg, which will reduce further when it goes through my combs but I am hoping for around the 1Kg of yarn from this in the end.

This isn't quite the full fleece, I had already washed a small amount and the blue area didn't wash out and so was thrown away.

Despite the muddyness of the locks the fleece is really fine and soft.

Side by side, dirty locks and washed locks, this process still amazes me.