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.

All the June parcels have arrived now so it’s OK to share the picture.

Here’s the before – 50g purple shetland, 25g grey merino, 25g dyed purple seacell. The purple was dyed with fibre reactive dyes using a cold method.

The fibres were striped together in 3 batches. Then the resulting batts were carded again. I spun up in to fine-ish singles and then 3-plied.

The result is approx DK weight yarn with a beautiful gloss from the seacell and a slight heathery/tweedy appearance. I’m thinking about using it for weaving but I’d need to do some more.

I can’t wait to see what the club members do with theirs!

Now I have to get going on the July parcels.

Last week I sent off some samples for to be included in a Fibreholics box.

The photo was taken in a hurry and ended up being a bit blurry. Here are a couple of better shots of previous dye batches:

Cherry and Espresso

Home Hill (named after a Tasmanian vineyard). Both on Oatmeal BFL.

Fibreholics is a new venture giving UK spinners and knitters a way of sampling fibre and yarn from independant UK fibre artists. There are 3 varieties of box  (fibre, yarn, mixed fibre and yarn) available in two sizes. For more info on the boxes and the hand-dyers participating look at the Fibreholics Blog.

I finally had the patience and frame of mind to finish the tweaks on this pattern and list it for sale.

Available now from Ravelry’s pattern store for a mere £3.00

My lazy kate arrived last week!

I got started straight away plying the trial carder’s club fibre. Those parcels have been posted so I’ll be able to show you the yarn soon. Then I plied another test batch – this is corriedale/tencel that has been cold-dyed blue and then acid dyed blues and teals. This is it pre-plying:

I’m almost finished the body of my garter yoke cardigan. I’m getting all obsessed about sweater patterns again (and waiting impatiently for my WEBS yarn to arrive) and was thinking about making a second order that included some malabrigo worsted (possibly for an Amelia cardi by Laura Chau). However common sense got the better of me and I decided I should be able to make my own malabrigo.

I test-spun, dyed and swatched some oatmeal bfl/silk and some grey merino.

I’m particularly pleased with how the colours on the grey merino came out (blues and teal). I’m going to swatch this and see how it looks.

While blocking my partially complete garter yoke, I got bored and decided to rush in to my next sweater project. It’s the B-Side cardigan also by Laura Chau. It’s knit on 3.5mm needles, instead of the recommended 4mm for the Sublime Angora Merino I’m using. I’m getting 25 stitches per 10cm instead of 24, but I think the denser fabric will help control the floof and pilling of the loosely spun angora.

It should hopefully be a quick-ish project as it’s all in one piece to the armholes. I might try knitting the sleevees top-down and short rowing the shoulders to make it almost seamless.

I knew the hardest thing about having a fibre club was going to be keeping it all a secret.

I’m currently spinning up the test batch for the June Carder’s club parcel, and I’m so pleased with it. But I suspect some of the members read my blog and so I can’t tell you what it is.

However I can tell you it’s spinning in to lovely fine singles which are going to become a 3-ply. I just need for my new lazy kate to arrive so that I can ply it all.

I’ll be able to show you in a week or so once I know the packs have reached their destination (currently they’re being dyed).

I’ve been trying to do lots of work on my garter yoke cardigan this weekend. I’ve made good progress so far and I’m about to split for the armholes. The colour isn’t quite right in this photo – I’m still trying to figure out the new camera.

I had a nice parcel arrive on Friday – a couple of kilos of Polwarth lamb fleece. It’s a breed of sheep that is a cross between a merino and a lincoln and has the fine fibres of a merino with a much longer staple. It’s incredibly fine and crimpy.

I washed up a small sample. It turned in to a big ball of fluff!

I then spun it. I didn’t reall card it properly so my sample was a bit lumpy-bumpy but so lovely and soft.

It needs really carefull washing so as not to felt it. I’m not looking forward to hand washing 2.5 kilos of it so I’m looking in to having a mill commercially process it.

It’s been finished for almost a month, but I put off weaving in all the ends for ages. In the end I cheated and wove in at least two at a time. I didn’t dare count how many or I never would have started.

Pattern: Origami Bolero by Jo Sharp [Ravelry link]

Size: Small

Source: Jo Sharp Knit Issue 7 (Christmas gift from my Aunt)

Yarn:

A. Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran – Beige, 2 balls (180m) overdyed grey
B. Alpaca Kid Lustre (dk) – Verona (dark blue), 1 ball (111m)
C. Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran – Potpourri (purple), 1.75 balls (175m)
D. Sublime Cashmere merino silk (dk) – Powder Blue, 1 ball
E. Alpaca Silk Georgette – Briar (mink brown), 1 ball (130m)
F. Hand dyed, drumcarded and handspun shetland in grey/blue

Needle 5.0 mm knitpicks options.

It was quite fun to knit, although changing yarns each row produced all those ends, it kept things interesting. I was hoping to be able to wear it as a jacket, but it isn’t long (wide) enough to overlap under the bust to use my shawl stick on. I can wear it the other way around, with the blue moss stitch bit as the collar, but I don’t quite like how it sits.

I’m quite pleased with how the colours combined, considering I mostly used what I had in stash.

Well the guild’s exhibition was the just-gone bank holiday weekend – it happened as part of the Oxfordshire artweeks festival. I put in a few things for display including my opulent raglan. I love how it was displayed with a felted bead necklace and earrings.

In fact I loved this whole section of the display. It was mostly neutrals, greys and blacks with a hint of colour here and there. The two ladies who arranged it seemed to really have an eye for display/design.

Unfortunately you can’t see too much of detail on the black jacket but it was pretty incredible.

We also had a ’shawl corner’. I helped set out the items for this section. The peacock shawl on the left of this picture was all laceweight spun on a drop spindle.

This was one of my favourite items, a lovely lacy cardigan. I think it might be melon stitch.

On Friday I demonstrated. I loaded the car up with my wheel and my drumcarder and decided to start making some heather batts. Mr M’s workmate from the workshop doesn’t look elegant but was extremely convenient to bolt the drumcarder to.

I had almost as much interest in my carding from guild members as I did from members of the public. Lots of people hadn’t seen this model of drum carder and were also intrigued by my use of a brush to pack more fibre on to the drum.

I had a great time, but talked so much I had a very dry and sore throat at the end of the day.