Here she is!!

I managed to get a photo taken of her today....



I'm thinking Pamela would be a good name for her, but I'm not sure. I seem to have found a bit of my flow now. It's not perfect, but I'm getting there :)

I also took some other photos, but they will come later. Right now I need to get something to eat, as I am off to the gym with Mike at 5pm.

The best till last...

I have neglected this blog yet again. Is it too late to make a new years resolution to update more often? I don't think it is...

Craft wise, I've been busy knitting. I made my Dad a pair of cable socks as a thank you for helping me with my car. They took me longer than expected to make, so he had them over Christmas when I was there. I managed to finish knitting them on Christmas Day and as soon as I gave them to him, he put them straight on. Nice!

Unfortunately, I forgot to get a photo though. In my defence, I was befuddled by good food, booze and distracted by the Christmas Gavin & Stacey on the telly (which was ace).

I made a hat for Mike with my handspun - a basic 2x2 ribbed hat, although I am yet to get a photo of that. It's not too difficult to get a photo though, seeing as though we live in the same house!

Neil is still awaiting his seasonal handknit. I have promised him a Space Invaders hat and a pair of gloves. I got 2/3 of the way through the first glove and then realised that it was too small. I'd cast on enough stitches but forgot that intarsia makes my knitting tight - I was doing a Pacman design on them. There is a theme here - Neil is addicted to computer games so it makes sense that anything I do knit him has gaming in there somewhere. Last year he had a pair of BMP socks for Christmas.

I finished another garment for myself - the shapely tank. I will take a photo asap!

I bought lots in the John Lewis sale. I got 10 balls of organic merino DK in a pale mint green for £22, which I am going to turn into another shapely tank or tee. I have overdyed some of the yarn in a darker green and I also plan to try and knit it in the round, which should be fun with the short row shaping at the bottom (I have a plan!!).

I also got 10 balls of the Rowan Eco yarn in a very pale mustard yellow for £24. I plan to overdye this again, but maybe some different colours, with a different shade of yellow, some orange and scarlet on there for good measure. We'll see how that comes out!!

I then got 10 balls of Cygnet Wool Rich 4ply in an olive green colour for £11. Bargain! I have already cast on a lace wrap for this. I have only had one minor experiment with lace before and I failed badly, although it wasn't the pattern - it was the poor choice in yarn. Anyway, after a poor start I've got on well with it. I'm knitting Ella from Knitty with it which is a very forgiving pattern. It does of course help that I've got a week off work with Most Haunted Live on in the evenings all week. I love that show, it's so crap, but it's funny to watch anyway. I don't plan to use all 10 balls for that wrap, only 6 at the mo, so I should have enough for at least 3 pairs of socks as well. Not bad at all for £11!

The big big news is that I have just bought myself a spinning wheel from the Threshing Barn. In the end, I went for an Ashford Traditional, because it seems like a good wheel to start on, plus you can get the jumbo and lace flyers for it, plus it will convert to double treadle. There seems to be a lot of accessories out there that are easy and cheap to buy, so that swung it for me.

I tried and failed to spin a merino and silk blend on her, but it's the first time I've spun with silk, so I will go back to my spindle for that. BFL is fine though. I'm going to give the merino and silk blend a go on my drop spindle so I can get used to spinning it.

I have found that I'm putting a bit too much spin in the yarn as I'm not treadling fast enough - I haven't found my optimal speed yet (to be fair, I was only spinning for 10 minutes or so!), although I think I should switch to the higher speed whorl so that the yarn takes up faster on the bobbin.

It's all good though. I will get pictures of her and put them up of course, but I will also need to name her. I was thinking of Dot or Dotty but now that I have her, I'm not sure that they suit her very well. She doesn't feel like a Dot or a Dotty anyway.

Finally!!

Shock horror, I've finally made some more jewellery. I was utterly fed up and miserable this morning with nothing to do, so I tried to cheer myself up with making some jewellery. I fiddled a lot and came up with these two pieces.

Red brooch front:-



Red brooch back:-



I swear my camera is playing up lately, I'm having real problems getting it to focus. It could be my hands shaking though. Never mind. Anyway, the red brooch was made with a few new findings that I bought on the internet the other day. I used some monofilament and crimps to hold the beads in place, threading random beads in random places until I liked what I saw and decided that it was finished.

Then there's this one, made from left over fresh water pearls, green cloisonne beads and some green glass beads. This is basically a kilt pin with three hoops on it for adding beads.





Not sure about that one. I like the beads, but I've never gone for this style of brooch before, because there was a phase where this was the only kind of brooch you'd see for a while, so I avoided it. However, I realised this kind of style might be nice to fasten a knitted shrug or something like that. I was thinking that the same shrug could be dressed up for nightwear with my brooch, or dressed down with a crocheted flower or something like that :)

Also seeing as though I've been doing a lot of spinning and dyeing lately, I wanted to show off my latest handspun.



I love it. I've decided to call it pumpkin. It was 2 x 50grams of hand dyed BFL plyed togetger. It was spun with a Sublime Spindle. I couldn't get a better picture of it at night because I kept forgetting to photograph it during the day. It's actually lighter than it shows in the photograph. I just wanted to try and show the different colours. I get 18 wpi in the thinner sections which makes it 3ply!! I have yet to measure the thicker sections, but I'm thinking DK or worsted. So I think a pair of bedsocks could be knitted out of this stuff!

Anyway, I'm off to update Ravelry!

Currently listening to: Placebo - Nancy Boy

Nothing fills the hole...

I have been beading again. Hoorah!

The things that I have been making are knitting related though. I have made some sets of stitch markers. They all fit up to 7mm needles. Not sure that I like the results but I wanted to share piccies :)







The pictures are a little lame as I had to use flash and had to try and hold the little buggers still on a 4.5mm dpn - they kept on flying off the end.

As ever, they are listed in my etsy shop.

Yesh!

I have been playing with the Ashford dyes. I got a few in the post a few weeks ago, but I was quite down and didn't feel like doing anything creative at all. However, I'm now addicted to dyeing.

I had about 75g of King Cole superwash 100% merino white wool so I decided to try dyeing it. I took advice from Babylonglegs and got a few bits and bobs like enamelled baking trays and some squeezy bottles.

I was pleased with the way it came out and am experimenting with seeing what I can knit with it and whether it will felt / lose colour in the wash. We shall see!

I like really strong colours so I decided that I would make my dyes a little stronger next time. I had ordered some more of that King Cole superwash from eBay (in fact, I blogged about the place I got it from a while back), so I balled them up into 100g balls and then skeined one straight away to soak and then dye. I chose my colours and this time, I made sure that I got the colour all the way into the yarn, turning the skein over and pressing the colour into the yarn.

Without further ado, here's the results...



Yay, I love it!

I currently have a cat balancing on my shoulder which is making it incredibly tricky to type, so I apologise for the spelling mistake.

That's better, she's gone!

Yesterday, I took delivery of some citric acid, which I have been looking forward to receiving as it meant that I could dye some fibre to spin with.

I dyed up some BFL and it looks ok! I think it would have looked better with some yellow in it and I think the colour is a little too overpowering, but we shall see how it spins and plies. I made 2 50g thingies to ply into 100g.



I think my next project will involve blue, purple and pink. I love that combination. I may even get some pre dyed merino or an alpaca blend or something like that.

Hehe, I feel like a bit of a mad scientist, experimenting with all these colours and stuff!

Lax

Yeah I know. I haven't posted in here for a whole month!! Oops.

Eeep.

However, I do have some lovely socks to show you.

They are a pattern by the lovely Yoshimi. I made a few changes to suit me. I added 2 more pattern repeats, just because I fancied socks with a longer leg. They are a little slouchy, but that's more to do with my fat legs rather than my knitting!

Here they are!







They were fun to knit. I was thinking that they would be so nice with the ribbing all the way round and a cable repeated on the front as well. Maybe next time I can give it a go :)

Haven't felt well lately at all and have been getting rather stressed out at work. I feel like all the happiness is being sucked out of me because of that place. I suspect that it's full of dementors (aka managers). It's not even Christmas yet! It will go ape when it's Christmas. Joy. I need to get the hell out of there asap.

In the meantime, I'm going to go and surf the net while sipping on some wine while wearing my lovely socks.

Damn you Chuck Norris,,,

It's been too long since I last posted. I am oh so bad at updating sometimes!

Anyway, I have been busy. I have finally taught myself how to crochet! Yay, I can do granny squares! I will be doing some pretty crochet things soon no doubt!

Also, I made a bracelet. I'm not sure if I like it yet though, but I'm not finished with what I wanted to do with it. I might make some 5.5mm jump rings and pop them on so I can attach beads to it.

If not, I will go back down the simple route and remake it. However, I might need to get some trigger clasps as I think toggle clasps are the wrong way to go. Heh, go me, I knew it would take an interesting project like this to get me back into the swing of making jewellery.

Am gutted - my Stepmum went to Builth Wells the other day to the showground thingy. They had all kinds of sheep there and they were doing sheep shearing. They were selling the fleeces afterwards and she nearly bought me one, but didn't know whether I was still into spinning or whether I could do anything with it.

Never mind. I still have about 1/2 a kilo of BFL left to play with. I need to get me some Ashford dyes though. It's only £30 or so for the set.

I've had an expensive month with the car (bloody clutch - again!!) and it's my Dad's *and* my Stepmum's birthday, so maybe on payday.