Pretty In Christmas Green - Design LF433

This shawl I started making way back at the end of August 2016, using the time spent on a long train journey, there and back, to crochet the centre of the flowers in gold, but only just finished making it on 2nd January 2017.  I find that with the motion of travel I cannot knit but I can crochet quite happily.

It's another of the 1970's crochet motif design shawls made with Twilley's Goldfingering thread that is of varying ages, but all of it is 80% Viscose, 20% Metallised Polyester.

This I have chosen gold, forest green and emerald green.

Because I was making Christmas baubles for the past 3 or 4 months of last year I found that I didn't have much time to spend making this and so really only picked it up again once the baubles had been made.

The photos above show my bag of gold on a train, spread out on my lap being worked on and getting ready to trim that fringe straight.  I have a laminated board just the right width to match the perfect length of the fringing so the knots get lined up along the top edge of the board and the fringe can be trimmed straight using the bottom edge of the board.  In this photo I still have to push it upward to the top of the board.

The true colour is probably best represented by the photo of the shawl in the box that it will be delivered in.

Portland Fleece - Part II

First up is one of the double knit weight yarns, which is 106g/328m.  I dyed this using Greener Shades dye at a dye depth of 1% in shade Sunshine Yellow.  A 1% dye depth means that you use 1g of dye for every 100g of yarn.

I had decided that I wanted to have a go at trying to obtain some peach yarns.  Peach can be a difficult colour to achieve, getting the tone right is a nightmare, never-mind trying to get three different shades.  I was using my micro scales to weigh out the tiny tiny amounts of dye needed in the percentages of each colour required and a milk bottle screw top cap was "the bowl" to weigh the dye into.

This first yarn is double knit weight and 105g/259m, dyed using Greener Shades dye at a dye depth of 0.1%, made up of 75% Sunshine Yellow and 25% Sunset Orange.  A dye depth of 0.1% means that you use 0.1g of dye for every 100g of yarn and then this total amount of dye is split 75/25 between 2 colours.  Can you imagine weighing out 0.075g of dye and 0.025g of dye to make up that one-tenth of a gram of dye required!

This yarn is just as I had hoped for.

This yarn is double knit weight and 104g/274m, dyed using Greener Shades dyes at a dye dept of 0.2%, 75% Sunshine Yellow, 25% Sunset Orange.  Technically this is just a dark shade of the first yarn.  The colours and percentages used are exactly the same, its just the dye depth that is increased, which means that I use double the weight of dye for the same amount of yarn which produces as stronger/darker shade.   Not too bad, a tad orange, but maybe that was my dye weighing.  The micro scales that I have are not the best as a really really good accurate set cost a lot of money, which I hope one day I will be able to afford to get.

The final yarn is worsted weight and 105g/255m and again dyed with Greener Shades dye at a dye depth of 0.2% made up of 75% Sunset Orange and 25% Ruby Red.  With hindsight I am thinking that instead of shifting dye colours and introducing Ruby Red that perhaps I should have just doubled the amounts of dye used on the previous 2 skeins again to make a 0.4% dye depth or even calculated for a 0.3% dye depth.  

 And finally a pretty photo to show all 3 colours off together. It's just a pity that I didn't use all three double knit weight yarns for this dye experiment, I could have used them together in one project if I had done that.

Portland Fleece - Part I

I brought a kilo of Portland fleece online from Farnell Farm in Kent back in July 2014.  Portland is one of the many breeds that are classed as a conservation breed where they were close to extinction but efforts have been made to dramatically increase numbers and save the breed.

They are a small breed and the fleece washes up to be a warm shade of white.  There can be red kemp in the britch area of the fleece, and I did encounter some.  Kemp is a very coarse hair like fibre that you really want to remove during the preparation process.  The photo below shows a couple of locks, with a small amount of "seconds" attached, so called because it is the very short fibres produced when the shears go over a sheep a second time, shortening the fleece that is remaining on the sheep, and some will inevitably stick to the fleece as it is removed.  These are easily removed by wool combs during the preparation for spinning.

 The photo above, on the left, shows a clump of washed fleece with lots of red kemp in it and the photo above on the right shows a washed lock and an unwashed lock of fleece.

At the time of spinning the yarn my camera had broken and I didn't have a decent camera on my smart phone and so, unfortunately, there are no photos of the wool being combed, or of the combed nests or even of the spun un-dyed yarns.

I can tell you though that from my unwashed fleece weighed 1086g and after washing and removing a small amount of coarse fibre, including the red kemp, I was left with 675g of clean fleece ready to be prepared.  After combing I was left with approximately 420g of nice, clean, soft fibre to spin.  I spun 2-ply as usual and made 4 skeins of yarn, one in a worsted weight and 3 in double knit weights.  I decided to dye the yarn and will cover this in Part II.

Baubles - November 2016

This will be the last and final post about baubles cos I don't know about you but I am getting a bit fed up of them now, despite how beautiful they are.  These are all of those that I made in November.

80mm black glitter baubles with vintage gold Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm black glitter baubles with vintage blue in 3 shade of Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm red matt baubles with vintage bright green Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm bright red shiny baubles with vintage pale gold Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm dark red matt baubles with vintage pale gold Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm red glitter, shiny and matt baubles with vintage gold and silver Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm bright blue shiny baubles with white Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm blue matt baubles with vintage silver Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm pale blue matt and shiny baubles with vintage navy Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm champagne glitter, shiny and matt baubles with vintage brown Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm white glitter baubles with vintage silver Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm black glitter baubles with bold colours of vintage Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm black glitter baubles with vintage bright green Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm black glitter baubles with vintage silver Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm black glitter baubles with vintage 3 shades of pink Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm black glitter baubles with white Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm white matt baubles with vintage black Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm white shiny baubles with vintage bright red Twilley's Goldfingering

Baubles - October 2016

I am enjoying making the baubles, seeing what colour combinations I can come up with.  Other than the first two sets made way back when I was figuring out sizing and designs, no two sets are the same colour combinations and if there are then different designs have been used  These are Octobers offerings with some unusual combinations just to be different to anything else out there.

80mm silver shiny baubles with vintage purple Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm black glitter baubles with vintage purple Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm silver glitter, shiny and matt baubles with vintage pink Twilley's Goldfingering

 80mm silver glitter, shiny and matt baubles with vintage pale blue Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm red shiny baubles with vintage gold Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm black glitter baubles with vintage lime Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm silver matt baubles with vintage blue Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm red glitter baubles with vintage black Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm black glitter baubles with vintage burgundy Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm denim blue matt and  shiny baubles  with vintage silver Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm black glitter baubles with vintage cerise pink Twilley's Goldfingering

Baubles - September 2016

Carrying on from my post in August about making Christmas Baubles, these are what I made in September.  There are quite a lot!

80mm cerise glitter baubles with vintage pink Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm gold, silver and dark gold smooth baubles with vintage Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm gold glitter baubles with vintage bronze Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm gold glitter baubles with vintage green Twilley's Goldfingering

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80mm gold  smooth and glitter baubles with vintage royal blue Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm glitter, shiny and matt gold baubles with vintage black/multi Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm gold shiny baubles with vintage burgundy Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm silver matt baubles with vintage bright red Twilley's Goldfingering

80mm black glitter baubles with vintage bright red Twilley's Goldfingering

Brave the Shave 2016

No, I'm not shaving my hair for charity but my husband is.  We have had a number of friends and family that have battled Cancer, some of them have pulled through, some of them have pulled through more than once and sadly, some of them have not made it.

Garry decided some months ago that he was going to take part in Macmillan's Brave the Shave Fundraising Campaign and contacted the landlady of a local pub, The Railway Inn in Whitacre Heath, to ask if he could hold the event there.  The landlady, Maxine, not only agreed but she also decided that she would shave her hair and help out with the fundraising.

Money came pouring in from regulars at the pub and so did donations of prizes for a raffle that would be drawn on the night of the shave event, which was set for  17th September.  They even had an article in a local newspaper, which created even more of a buzz about the event and on the night the pub was packed to the rafters and a local man, know as Bear, also shaved his hair off.

I managed to get a video of my husbands shave, it is quite noisy with people shouting and talking but its good, no swear words or anything, or at least I didn't hear any.

In total Garry raised £401.95, I'm not sure how much Maxine and Bear raised but that is a nice boost to Macmillan's Fundraising.