Hand-spinning with Blue Faced Leicester Roving.

This beautifully coloured roving was one of my Christmas presents and I've just started spinning with it. It came from Miss Babs, via The Yarn Haven shop in Knoxville.

I have no idea if it was expensive. I've seen Tops at all different prices, more and less. I look in the Etsy shop usually. Perhaps one of you could give me a guide price as to what you would expect to pay in England for this roving?

The colours are varied in this lovely roving. There is everything from purple to brown and I couldn't wait to get started. After the last three months spinning with a mixture of Alpaca/silk and prior to that Merino, I had to practise a little. This yarn is much more woolly and more difficult to draft. I spent a while practising until I felt comfortable with it and then I started.

Here is the spun yarn.  I'll come back and show you later when I've done some plying.

As a contrast, this is the Alpaca/silk spun up.

and this is the Targhee:

All quite different.

I enjoy my spinning.  It's a great way to relax.

What do you do to relax?

Knitting up my own hand-spinning yarn.

I chose this pattern to knit up my hand spun merino yarn. I liked the front panel pattern and the fact that it is short-waisted, like me. I need a jumper that stops at the waist, to look the most flattering. I have very wide hips, like Beyonce! (yeah right!) and long jumpers don't suit me.  It is hard to find a pattern that does me justice. I must be the only one in the world with hips this wide!

One of the problems with hand spun yarn is that you don't really know how much you've got!  I don't have a counter so I can estimate how much yardage and short of using a tape measure, I'm a bit lost. So far I've done it by weight, but since I'm new to hand spinning, I'm still experimenting.

I decided that if anything I was going to be short so I've knitted the back, front and sleeves up to the armhole and no further. I figured that I would definitely have enough yarn for that and if I run out, I can buy something similar to finish it off. Contrast might even be better. Then I'll have a different problem to cope with, that of the thickness of the yarn, not the length. I'll worry about that when I come to it.

Time for another picture:

This is the back, up to the armhole and waiting patiently on a stitch holder to be finished.

This is how the front panel knits up.

I'll be back to show you how I'm getting on later.

In the meantime, sometimes I knit up a scarf...

Hand-spinning and a little bit of knitting.

JANUARY 28, 2013 BY STARPROMS

Hand-spinning with alpaca/silk and a little bit of knitting.

I’ve been spending my time over Christmas and during the cold weather, spinning, knitting and reading. I made this pretty little dress for my new grandchild, who is bound to be a boy now that I’ve made a dress! However, I enjoyed using the fairisle wool. It is unusual in that it is designed to knit up like a fairisle jumper, just so long as you make it the right size.  As you can see from the pictures, it works on the skirt part of the garment, but on the sleeves and the yoke, it goes all stripey. It gives an interesting look and it’s a case of ‘you never know what you’re going to get’ until you do it, of course.

When my own children were babies, the colours were mostly muted, but these days anything seems to go so these rather bold colours (to my eye) give a more modern look.

Now for the hand-spinning. I have been practising with the alpaca/silk combination. It is a dream to hold, very soft and silky, much like human hair, but not so easy to spin with. I think it requires a lot of practice. On the lazy kate below is a merino wool on  the left, alpaca/silk in the middle and a tarhee roving spun up on the right. All very different to spin with.

I think I got a bit too much twist in some of it, but that will work out when I ply two strands together (I hope).

I’m knitting with the merino yarn at the moment.  It is very soft and so far, my favourite. I’ll let you see what I’m making in a future post.

After tea I have to clear out the kitchen, ready for the horrendous job booked for tomorrow (see previous post) on my Wordpress Blog.

Wish me luck.

Star

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A White Baby Dress

I've just finished this baby dress. I don't know who it's for yet, but it feels so soft and looks so pretty. I just love making baby clothes.

They are also good for taking with you when you go away for a few days because they don't take up much room in the bag. I recently went to visit my son in Bristol and took this one with me to work at while I was there.

I made the dress with a size 4.5 crochet hook and 4-ply white Snuggle baby wool.

Isn't it cute!

This is my ball winder, which is really useful for winding skeins of yarn properly. Together with the Swift, see below, you just wind away and the ball appears in all its perfection. Then if you use the thread that comes from the middle, the ball will sit nicely on the floor and not run away under the furniture all the time.

There is a short video of the Swift and ball winder in action at the end of this post.

Remember my spinning wheel? I am still loving it, loving it, loving it!

This was the first proper skein I made while I was in America.  I used the ball winder and Swift to ball it up and brought it back with me to knit it up.

It's knitting up really well and it feels so soft to the touch.

It gives me a great feeling to knit up yarn which I spun myself.

Here's the short video:

So I'm a happy spinner!

A warm cardi...

I made this warm cardigan during the recent very cold weather and I was so glad I did because it kept me warm during the -5 deg temperatures.  I bought the wool in America. It's a worsted and a bit thicker that our DK here in the U.K.  It's somewhere between DK (double knit) and Chunky so it took a bit of getting used to. I love the colour - it's a rich dark brown, with different coloured flecks in it.