Anemone gradient Wensleydale shawl - Design F213

Seeing as we are now in Spring/Summer I wanted to make a small, lightweight shawl that is just perfect for the season.  I found a sweet little pattern and decided to make one using my own hand-spun yarn.  It is a top-down shawl so I decided that I wanted the lightest colour at the top and so made sure that I began knitting with the lightest end of the yarn.  I also chose to use the same colour beads as on the Victorian lace shawl that took me almost 2 years to knit as the colour went perfect with this as well and they are Size 6 Toho round seed beads in shade 1076 Magenta lined grey.

I began knitting on 2nd April and finished on 4th April 2013.  Its pretty much a stocking stitch knit, with a few rows of garter stitch to add interest with "lines" or "ridges" throughout and finished off with a lace edge to which I added my beads.  I used 244 beads in total which added a little bit of much needed weight.

It was so crumpled up when it came off the needles but soaking and blocking soon sorted that out.

I am so proud of this shawl as it the first one I have made with my own hand-spun yarn.  I have made hats and things like that with my own hand-spun but this is the first shawl.

Want to know how I made the yarn for this shawl?  Just click Wensleydale Gradient Yarn

Apricot Smoothie - Romney Fleece & Dyeing with Food Colouring

Wanting to try another breed of sheep I purchased a small amount of Romney Fleece from Philippa of Kingston Manor Farm in Canterbury.  Her flock has won awards for their fleece.  I bought approx 500g of Romney wether fleece (a wether is a castrated male) that has 15cm long staples with good crimp and a soft handle.  Romney Sheep are part of the Longwool family.

Really, really nice fleece, very soft with lots of lustre, a little yellowed in places, but not too bad.

I washed the fleece first and when dried it weighed 500g, so she must have given me quite a bit more than 500g of fleece to begin with.  I got to work combing it and was left with 375g of lovely combed nests ready to spin but I noticed that some of them were "dark cream" so I decided that I would try dyeing it at the point.  I have been reading some interesting information about dyeing fleece and fibre so I thought I would start with food dyes as I am too scared to try proper full on acid dyes yet.

I went to the local Morrisons Supermarket and purchased some natural food dyes in a range of colours, they don't have a large range but red, blue, pink, green etc, the basics.  I chose pink for this wool and dyed it in two halves.  The dye pigment in the pink food colouring is Beetroot.

I soaked the wool in 1 litre of water containing 1 tablespoon of white vinegar for about 20 minutes.  In the meantime I filled a heat resistant glass bowl about half full with warm water and added a splash of white vinegar and half a bottle of the food colouring.  I carefully lifted the wool out of its bath and gently squeezed most of the water out and then added it to the prepared bowl of dye.

The next bit is to cover the bowl and heat it in the microwave on full power for 6 minutes then you have to let it stand for 5 minuted and then heat again for a further 6 minutes and Ding!, it's done.  Remove the bowl from the microwave and leave it alone now to cool down.  Once it is cool you can remove the wool from its dye bath and squeeze out any excess fluid.  Rinse the wool in warm plain water until no dye bleeds from it.  Obviously I went through this process twice due to the amount that I was dyeing.  Leave it to dry.

I got lemons, oranges and coral pinks.  Reminds me of the sweets as a kid that were called "fruit salad".

I had to re-comb it all once it was dry as I had inadvertently felted some of it and I wanted to blend the colours.  I ended up with 336g which I spun as a sport-weight single yarn with 804m.

Alpaca - Amorcita

My third and final bag of Alpaca fleece from Aston Alpaca's was this pretty gingery brown from the fleece of girl Alpaca Amorcita, which is a Peruvian name and translates into English as "Little Love".

The total amount of fleece in the bags was 232g and after washing all the dust out I had 215g, 90g of which was "hair" and unsuitable for my spinning needs and so I made two pieces of felt with that.

The fleece which was nice and fine was long enough to put through my wool combs and I got 90g of lovely combed top to spin with.

I decided that I would make a 2ply yarn, spinning as fine as I could and I achieved an amazing 268m from my 90g and I am pretty impressed with how lovely and even my plying looks.

It took me a some time to decide what to make with this yarn but I went with a pretty lace edged shawlette, teaming the yarn with some size 8 Toho round seed beads in shade Silver Lined Milky Light Topaz both in the lace edging and on the tips of the picot cast off around the neck edge.

Natural Black Shetland Fleece

I bought a natural black Shetland shearling fleece on 24th June last year from a farm in Morval, Cornwall, having being sheared on 2nd June 2012.  It weighs just over 2kg and the staple length is 5-6 inches.  The tips of the locks are a little sun bleached but that happens a lot, especially with dark fleeces and any damage will break off during the preparation process.  Natural black fleeces are rarely jet black.

A shearling is a term used for a female sheep that has been sheared once and is old enough to have two-broad teeth, whereas a Ewe is a term for a female sheep after it has been sheared for a second time.

Top left: the fleece as seen on the sheep.  Bottom right: the fleece showing the part that was closest to the sheep.
All other photos show a close up of the locks.

I washed the fleece and tried my hand at carding again.  I'm not very good at carding and could do with some hands-on lessons.  I persevered and managed to card 123g of fleece, which I spun woollen style and then navajo plied to make an aran weight yarn which was 117g/88m after its final wash.  I made an adjustable headscarf with this yarn.

After my not-so-successful attempt at hand carding I decided to go back to my wool combs and so the rest of the fleece was prepared this way.  There was quite a bit of scurf and grit in the fleece but all that fell out during the combing to leave lovely soft, squishy hand-combed nests.

I spun as fine as I could to produce some wonderful singles and I decided to leave the rest of my yarns as singles.

I used some of Skein 1 to make a lace edged beret.  After making the beret I still have 177g/730m of lovely yarn left to use.

With some of Skein 2 I made this fabulous 7 panelled beaded lace shawl.  I didn't use all of the skein, I am left with 46g/363m, which is enough to make a small shawl.

Pale Blue Bolero

I had seen a free pattern by Lion Brand that I thought was really lovely and would be perfect to make for weddings.  It was a lovely long sleeved lace bolero with a fluffy edging.  I searched my vast stash of yarns to see what I had in the right amounts and weights of yarn.  I had got some lovely pale blue experimental yarn from Colinette that was mostly Polyamide with a small amount of wool and I also had some Patons Showboat, which is a thick but short fun fur type yarn with a bit of sparkle and both were in similar colours.  Perfect, and so I started work in early March.

I had a fair bit of trouble with the pattern and looked to the Lion Brand website for help where I discovered that almost every person who had written a review had actually given up on the pattern as they couldn't make head nor tail of it.  I decided to persevere with it, figuring it out and almost making it up as I went along.  It worked though and I wrote notes and included instructional photographs to help others who really wanted to make this design to understand how the bolero was constructed.  I made two of these in the end, finishing the second one on 14th March 2013.

Purple Beaded Victorian Lace Shawl - Design L323

The yarn that I used for this shawl was a bit of a mystery so I had to do undertake a burns test and a bleach test to determine that it appears to be 100% acrylic or some similar man-made fibre.  There is definitely no cotton and no animal fibres in this yarn whatsoever.

I chose my pattern and bought some beads for the project which are Size 6 Toho round seed beads in shade 1076 Magenta lined grey, which basically means that the glass is a smokey grey as opposed to regular clear glass.  I am using a size 3.25mm circular knitting needle and started the project on 22nd March 2011.

The design for this shawl has been re-written in modern knitting terms from a Victorian pattern and is what is known as "true lace", which means that every single row is complex lace stitches as opposed to one row of lace on the right side and one row purl.  Having issues with working from the charts for this pattern, what with that and family life I finally managed to complete the first diamond border by mid June 2011.  I didn't touch this shawl again until mid-September and it wasn't until I redrew the charts out myself, removing the silly and confusing colour coding that meant different things on right side and wrong side rows that was used on the originals did I start to make progress.  I was adding beads individually over the stitches as I knit them in the centre of the diamonds and between the two rose leaves.

Oh my, this project was taking forever to actually complete as it was once again sat waiting for me to pick it up again for about 6 months.  It was a combination of "I can't face it" mixed in with "I have all these other things to finish" and plenty of family life not giving me time or the peace and quiet to concentrate on this complicated design.  When I finally finished the knitting on 6th March 2013, this project had taken just shy of 2 years from start to finish and it was quite out of shape.  I used a total of 248 beads on this shawl, which gave it a little bit of much needed weight as it so light and floaty.

Of course, this shawl needed to be soaked and blocked to show it off to its full potential, with little peaks along the diamond border at each end..

It is absolutely beautiful and lovely drape and is so lightweight with just a hit of bling from the beads.

Sea Breeze Triangular Motif Shawl

At the time of writing this I am very much into Colinette yarns, especially their Tagliatelli and Giotto yarns.  This shawl is made using 6 x 100g skeins if Colinette Giotto in shade Sea Breeze.  Giotto is a super bulky ribbon type yarn and is 50% Cotton, 40% Rayon, 10% Nylon.

This shawl design is by Colinette yarns and was designed to be made with their Giotto yarn.  I am using a 6mm crochet hook and began this on 17th February.  I had trouble with this pattern as it just didn't read right and the wording used was confusing.  It also didn't help that the photographs in the booklet are all very catwalk/action style and there are no photos showing close ups of the motifs at all.  I finally figured it out after a few hours and then it was easy and quick to make.  Finishing this huge monster of a shawl on 27th February 2013.  I omitted the final row of motifs due to the sheer size of the thing already.

I don't want to make this again as it is so big and heavy and is really difficult to photograph successfully.