Dark Red-Black Lace Shawlette - Design A197

That was such a quick little shawlette to make that I have sorted out the yarn to make two more.  This one is some vintage mohair with sparkles running through it.

This is Paris by Wendy Yarns, long since discontinued, and its 81% Mohair, 11% Wool, 8% Nylon and the colour is called Antibes.

As I was knitting it up the colours reminded me of something and then I realised what it was.  About 15 years ago I worked at Birmingham International Airport for Alpha Retail, the company that ran the Duty Free shops, and although I worked primarily behind the scenes in the offices I knew most of the products that we sold.  It reminded me of Dior's Fahrenheit bottle, not for long though, it soon changed into a more stripey pattern.

Because of the long colour changes in the yarn it made it difficult when it came time to join in the next ball of yarn and I had to wind yarn off and cut and join in the right place to try to keep the colour sequence flowing.  I've done that before with a baby jacket!

The photos really don't do this shawl justice and its so much nicer in real life.

Salmon Mohair Lace Shawlette - Design A197

Its starting to get a little colder and so I have switched to working with some thicker yarns for a while to get some good snuggly type shawls in the shop.  This one is worked with Aran weight yarn.  I like the lace pattern but I don't like the garter stitch edging in the original pattern so I've changed that to flow better with the shawl and continued with stocking stitch.

The yarn is some good quality vintage mohair that I bought off Ebay ages ago in Salmon Pink.  You can tell if its good quality mohair by the fibre content.  A good quality mohair yarn will have somewhere around 70-85% mohair, a poorer quality/bargain basement mohair yarn will have around 35% mohair.  This one is 78% mohair, 13% wool, 9% nylon.

My phone camera is hopeless when it comes to true colours but with my main camera pretty much out of action, limping along on its last legs I am having to rely on my phone camera for work-in-progress photos.  I am trying to save up for a new camera, I know which one I want, but its difficult to get the funds together at the moment.

I'm not sure what has happened with the colours in these photos, the shawl looks almost radioactive, glowing, but in real life its not that bad.  Yes its quite bright but if you see the original photo of the yarn that is more true to colour of this shawl.

A nice quick little knit that I will be making more of I'm sure!

Black Jacob Wool Laced Edged Shawlette - Design LF195

I'm making another shawlette in the same design as the cornflower blue one I just finished.  I've chosen to use some Jacob wool that I spun in the early days of my spinning experience.  You can read about the fleece and how the yarn was prepared here.  Its a "single" yarn, as opposed to a "plied" yarn and is light fingering weight.

The problem with knitting with dark wool is that it is really hard to see exactly what you are doing and how the pattern is coming along so you need to work in good light and preferably wear light coloured clothes or have a light coloured piece of fabric that you can use as a backdrop to your knitting so you can see the pattern.

I got this one done over a few days, again the picot cast off edge took a good few hours to complete.

Cornflower Blue Lace Edged Shawlette - Design LF195

Some time ago I bought some lovely vintage wool off a lady who's father used to be a sales rep for the yarn companies way back in the 1940's and 1950's.  Lots of 'lots' in an array of colours.  Her father worked for a few different companies and most of the yarns had their original tags on.  No fancy ball bands here.  I have re-skeined all them to open them out and check for damage and weakness, washed them all and re-skeined them all up, measuring them as I go and keeping the old tags.

There is nothing wrong with this vintage wool, its beautiful and has to be the oldest yarn that I've worked with so far.  Yes, that does say 26th October 1948 and I have a shelf full of other similarly aged yarns that I bought from this lady.  This one is from Priestley & Co up in Yorkshire, the mill of course, has been closed down for many years now, as is true of many of the old northern wool mills, which is a crying shame.

It is so fine and lightweight and yet really warm.  I think its scrubbed up wonderfully for something so old and it only took me about a week to make. The picot cast off took me 2 1/2 - 3 hours to complete but look how beautiful it is.

Elford Jacob Fleece No.9

Way back in 2014 I helped a friend of a friend out by taking a number of Jacob fleece off her hands, see this post for more details on that.

I numbered all the fleece and kept fleece's 2, 5, 9 and 16 for myself, along with a rubbish one that was only good for binning or making into a rug.  This is what I did with fleece No.9, a predominantly white fleece with very little black, a large section of cotted fleece in the middle and weighing 2.1kg but the rest is very long stapled and lanolin rich, a spinners dream.

It washed up really nice and I began combing this fleece in January 2017.  Unfortunately, I didn't make a note of the weight of the fleece after washing. After combing I have 816g of lovely hand-combed white fibre waiting to be spun.  I will get to the dark fibres at a later date.

I worked on the white parts of this fleece on and off between January and August, finishing off with the dyeing in August.  Its a large amount of fleece to work on and I've had a lot going on this year with various hospital appointments and major surgery.

I spun one bobbin up in February and this got put to one side until I had time over the Easter break to get back to spinning and then I completed two skeins in less than a week.  In total, I made 4 skeins of yarn from the white part of the fleece in different yarn weights and I after I cooked some homegrown beetroot I transferred the liquid from my cooking pot to my dye pot and dyed all four skeins at the same time, the same colour.  They have all turned out a variegated yellow colour which I am reasonably pleased with.

Worsted weight, 116g/258m

Fingering weight, 120g/523m

Double knit weight, 114g/336m

Sport weight, 119g/431m

Pretty in the Meadow - Design LF433

My next shawl I've been wanting to make for some time but I had to work out how to place the colours in a way so that no two motifs of the same colour were next to each other, not even diagonally.  Now that I have done that using the rules of Suduko as a way of figuring this out I can get on and choose my colours.

I have lots of Twilley's Goldfingering, some in larger amounts and some in really small amounts, not always leftovers from other projects, sometimes I buy it in like that because its in with a 'job lot' that people are selling on Ebay.  The kids are off school for the 6 week summer break so its easy makes like this or spinning.

I carefully chose the colours to use, knowing which colour I would be using to join them all together helped as some colours looked too brash against this colour and got left out of the project.  A massive 9 colours in this one and all but two are Twilley's Goldfingering but they are both look-a-like threads and most of them are vintage too.

I kept this one quiet on Social Media, opting to show only one motif made so everyone thought I was making it in red, white and pale green.  Nope!!  The reaction when I showed the shawl pinned out and drying was pretty good.  I imagine people were like "What? Erhhhh? Wait?  I thought...."

This has turned out so pretty.  There may be more of these in the future, subject to left-overs and if I can find a colour that will tie them all together fantastically.

Pretty in Orange - Design LF433

I've recently come out of hospital after having surgery, I have very little mobility and I need something to occupy my mind whilst I recuperate so I am making another 1970's retro shawl in Twilley's Goldfingering.

Similar colours to the last one but different.  This one is gold, bronze and burnt orange.  Vintage threads, of course, with the gold and the bronze being older than the burnt orange.

The picture of two finished squares joined together remind me of owl eyes, I don't know why, they just do for some reason.

It was actually quite a long time before these product photos were able to be taken as I couldn't get around very much or stand for very long for quite a good while.  My 14 year old daughter is modelling for me and she's done a good job.