I’ve done it! My employer has approved my request to go down to 4 days a week. This means I will have a dedicated day for dyeing fibre and yarn.

It was the prompt I needed to quickly submit my paperwork to be a vendor at Fibrefest. I’m excited and terrified at the same time. I have a little bit of stock, but I really need to get busy on Fridays (my day of ‘working at home’) to have enough stock for the show.

I’ve recently added another exciting fibre to my range – British Alpaca. I uploaded these braids to my etsy shop yesterday:

It’s really soft and doesn’t have any coarse hairs in it which I’ve found before with fibre that’s been labelled as ‘baby alpaca’. This feels almost as soft as the cria fleece I bought last year.

It spins up in to a soft and fluffy yarn. The natural colour is on the left and ‘Broadmarsh’ on the right.

I may have to pinch one of the braids to spin up for the Tour de Fleece, which I am participating in again. In case you haven’t heard about this before, the guideline is to spin every day of the Tour de France. I’ve had a dodgy start and didn’t manage to get any spinning done on the first day, but managed about half an hour last night.

On the subject of business, my sister has opened an etsy shop selling her gorgeous hand made cards (my favourite is still ‘Best Fishes’). Please go and have a look – postage seems pretty reasonable from Australia too!

In knitting news, I finished a pair of socks for Mr M. I’ll get pictures of those in the next day or so.

Pattern: Garter Yoke Cardigan by Melissa LaBarre from Knit 1 Fall/Winter 08

Yarn: Cascade 220 in shade #9326 Colonial Blue heather

Needles: Knitpicks/Knitpro harmony interchangeables 5.0 mm

Mods: Knit as per 36″ then I did additional decreases to give waist stitch count for 34″ size,  then followed the pattern for that size. Picked up 5 additional stitches on each underarm when starting sleeve (I have had gappiness there on previous raglans), then decreased in 4 pairs over 6″ to remove these stitches and make the upper arm fit snugly.

I loved every minute of knitting this cardigan. It went really quickly because of the thickness of the yarn (worsted) and I loved knitting with cascade 220. I’ve been trying out taking the train to work for the last couple of weeks – it takes longer, but I get plenty of knitting time, and a lot of this cardi was done on the train.

I think I will wear this lots in the cooler months.

My webs yarn had finally arrived! I had to pay customs charges which made it not such a fabulous bargain but still good. They’re absolutely gorgeous yarns and you certainly can’t get Peruvia over here easily.

I love the peruvia it’s so floofy and smooshy and the teal colour is gorgeous. I wish I’d ordered some other colours.

I don’t think you can get this shade of purple from the stockists here in the UK. This is destined to be a Forestry/Old Penny cardigan.

I’m also pleased with the blue sky skinny cotton in basil which is going to be a cardi for my nephew-to-be.

I’ve swapped a skein of it with Wordsandstitches for a skein in cherry to make something else – probably another argyle slipover – I just need another contrast colour cotton for the argyles. The colour isn’t right in this photo – I’ll have to take another one soon.

I’ve finished the knitting on my garter yoke cardi and only have a couple more buttons to sew on. Will post an FO pic soon.