Monday, June 15, 2015

Fred and George


This is the "Fred and George" part of my NEWT. To represent their twin-ness, I made skeins that were matching but different, and made of the same stuff. I spun up a skein of colorful fibre and a coordinating blue fibre, and Navajo-4plied them into two skeins. This is Fred’s (because it was finished first), which is 3 plies of the colorful one and 1 of the blue


 and George’s, which is 3 plies of the blue and 1 of the colorful.



The skeins are both made of the same colorways of Polwarth/Tencel, the same construction, and almost the same yardage (266 and 270). They go well together, but are not exactly the same.


It wasn't easy to ply! N4ply is a bit tricky on its own, but that kitten of ours was making a nuisance of himself again. Still, it's done, and the two together are more than enough for the triangular 'scarf' that I'm going to make with them for Bill.


And then, I finished these for Zac.


He loves them, and has worn them so much they look old. He immediately began pestering me for the matching balaclava I said I'd make him. lol.

I've put a few more hours into Sprig and Paprika, but mainly I've been spinning. I won a random draw over in the Southern Cross Fibres group (for knitting that Barley hat with SCF a few months back). David sent me this Discworld one.

We are having a "mega spin-a-long", which involves a few popular dyers dyeing colorways that have to do with the characters from Terry Pratchett's Discworld. This one, however, wasn't available to buy, as far as I know; it was just made for prizes. So I spun it up into sock yarn to make some bright Finn socks... maybe next month.

Horace the Cheese
I've been reading a bunch of his books, too (there are about 40 in the Discworld series). Silly but clever, much like "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".  Pretty funny. Make me chuckle to myself as I walk around the supermarket, sometimes, like a crazy person. :)





Wednesday, June 3, 2015

The Fiend!


This teeny thing


has been driving me nuts all week. He loves wool, and I think he loves flashing shiny knitting needles even more. He likes to jump from nowhere and knock over my loom, or run off with my spinning fibre, or unwind and tangle a ball...

Sigh. It's like having a small kid again, one that won't let you do anything for 2 minutes in a row, or won't let you use two hands at the same time. Lucky he's cute.

I did finish this scarf, with not to many weft threads clawed. It was an experiment, or rather, a copy cat project, because I saw one of my Slytherin friends try something similar. The idea is to warp your loom with thick yarn and use thin yarn for the weft. Here are mine.






Two skeins of thick handspun and one skein of laceweight silk.








It's so long, almost 3.5m. I wore it this day wrapped once loosely around my neck and the ends hanging below the hem of my black coat. And it is soft! All the fibres are merino, faux cashmere, rose fibre and silk. Not an inch of itch. Love this one. I was going to send it to Kelly for her birthday (with the socks) but... too bad! Hehe.

The socks






These flew north to my sister in Sydney. It was her birthday, and she appreciates handknitted socks, having knit some herself.  She also gave me wool for my birthday. :-)  They're made with the Holi yarn I dyed a while back, and knit with two strands held together, nice and tight on 3mm needles. Hopefully they'll resist the urge to wear out for a bit longer! I ran out of yarn, and used some blue Solemate for the heels and cuff. Literally had about 3 inches of Holi left.

I finished some spinning

Into the Whirled. "Quoth the Raven". Fingering weight N-ply (despite trying to spin thickly!)
Merino/silk from Kathy's Fibres, with pinches of sparkly stuff as I went. 144m of N-ply.
And I made Byron some cotton gloves (ie a sideways garter stitch tube with a hole in the seam for his thumb) to match his birthday top.






Now, I'm making Zac some. He wants dark blue and light grey stripey ones, and a balaclava. He even went though a box of wool with me, to choose the colors himself. Hehe. I'm also knitting away on my Mission for the game, which is Sprig, and Jasmine's birthday top, which is Paprika, spinning dark blue Polwarth/tencel for my NEWT (the Fred and George yarn) and making teeny clothes for a little wooden magnet man, just for fun. So much to do. Luckily, this month I have holidays (2 weeks) coming up soon, and I should get some things finished, at least.






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