Look at what you’ve missed since I moved….

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See you over there!

I’ve also been doing quite a bit of sock knitting. Patterns are still being written, some photos need taking and test knitting is still taking place. I have 4 sock patterns at various stages of completion.

After being asked many times at Wonderwool if I had any laceweight, I decided I should probably get some in. I’d avoided laceweight because I don’t really like knitting with it and it didn’t seem right to sell yarn I wouldn’t use myself. But I had a look at some of the laceweight bases from my supplier and picked one which I liked the look of and that is on the heavier end of laceweight (800 metres per 100 grams) and that I think I’d be happy using.

The result is ‘Mawson Lace’ – 80% Superwash Merino / 20% Bamboo. I already love the sock weight of this base and the yarn takes dye beautifully. This is a new-ish colourway ‘Dampiera’

A friend also kindly donated me a few skeins of laceweight silk. This colourway is ‘Honey Myrtle’. It’s beautiful and shiny and dyed up beautifully. I had to give it a bit of special treatment to reduce the stinky silk smell.

I bought an advance skein of this new 50% merino / 50% silk sock weight yarn at Wonderwool. I loved how my test dye came out so I had to order some more. This is ‘Denison 4-ply’ in colourway ‘scarpantoni’. The usual colourways come out a bit paler than usual, so I may develop some new deeper ones.

This is ‘Glaziers Bay’ on Merino/silk fibre. The colours were inspired by some tiles I saw at my local DIY store, and the dye method by several bumps I’ve seen in people’s stashes on ravelry that feature the white of the base fibre as part of the colourway.

This is ‘Stony Rise’ on shetland/silk. I custom-dyed this for a customer, but I like this so much I will be doing it again.

‘Clover Hill’ on grey shetland. I’m having a bit of a purple phase and I wanted to add another couple of purple-on-grey colourways to my list.

And finally an un-named colourway on 100% seacell. This is the result of the brighly coloured parcels I posted about a few weeks ago. This is my first real go at hand-painting using fibre-reactive dyes. Although the dyes looked very bright while they were on the fibre, a lot washed out leaving the finished items reasonably muted.

The seacell, merino/silk, shetland, and laceweight are currently listed in my etsy shop, along with some grey shetland/alpaca and some shetland/silk.

These little beauties went in the post yesterday to be included the next Fibreholics box. They are (clockwise from top-left) Grey Shetland in ‘Bay of Fires’, Oatmeal BFL in ‘Caveside’, Zeehan yarn in ‘Redgum’ and ‘Braddon’ merino/nylon sock yarn in ‘Bush Mint’

This round has a theme of ‘Summer garden party’ or parties in general as the co-operative has now been running for one year. I’m seeing the red fibre and yarn as summer berries, the green as a lovely summer lawn, and the purple as cottage garden flowers.

I’ve been doing plenty of dyeing recently. Some alpaca/merino 4 ply.

And I’ve been dyeing all sorts of re-discovered gems (aka the last 100-200g of a batch or blend that got shoved in a box and forgotten about). Pictured below is some Superwash BFL/Seacell, UK Alpaca, Fawn Alpaca/Silk as well as some of my usual Oatmeal BFL.

I’ve also been playing about with hand painting with fibre reactive dyes. This is some seacell which I put in out in the sun this afternoon to try to get the temperature up.

These are different to the usual dyes I use so the colours aren’t quite the same. They don’t need to be heated like the acid dyes, but I read somewhere they take better when they get a little warm – a couple of sunny days should be just perfect. When I’ve dyed Seacell and other cellulose fibres before, a lot of the dye has run back out when I rinse, resulting in a pale colour, so I hope this works. I’ll post the results in a few days once I’ve rinsed and dried.

Mr M and I also moved and re-arranged my dyeing space in the kitchen so I have more dedicated space and there’s some shelving for my dyes.

I’ve also been working on two sock patterns. I have quite a few others planned out (at least another 8 so far). I can’t really show you the patterns yet, but have taken pictures of the foot to show how the yarn is knitting up.

This one is in my new ‘Braddon’ merino/nylon sock base, colourway ‘Honey Myrtle’. This one is going to be an all-over twisted cable pattern.

The second is in ‘Wellington’ Blue-Faced Leicester/Nylon sock blend, colourway ‘Bush Mint’. This sock is going to have a central cable panel with sections of stocking stitch at the sides to make a quick-knitting sock that looks more complicated than it actually is.

This colourway is one of my favourites at the moment – I love how it is knitting up. This pattern will almost certainly be self published so it will probably be the first one of these two to be published.

Now that Wonderwool is all done and dusted it’s time to start thinking about getting ready for Woolfest.

I worked my last day on Friday. My last week of day job was pretty horrendous and involved preparing and packing up for an office move and various problems with trains. All this made me very glad to be finishing.

It’s a big jump but I decided if I didn’t go for it now I might just faff around with part-time jobs forever. If I have to ‘sink or swim’ then I hope I’ll swim.

I have lots of ideas that I can now follow up on because there’s more time. I’ll post a bit more about those in the next couple of days.

This was my stall set up at Wonderwool. A little bare, but a definite improvement on Fibrefest.

You can see better in this photo how I tried to graduate the colours from green in the bottom-left to pink in the top-right.

Although the display in the shelving (custom-made by Mr M) looked nice, people seemed hesitant to pull out the yarn and have a closer look. So on the Sunday we got an extra table and laid out all the yarn for people to be able to see better. I think next time I’m going to ask Mr M to make a second unit with a different construction to hang the skeins on so they can be seen better.

I was even more restrained than at Fibrefest. I only bought a skein of undyed yarn in a new blend. And a stitch dictionary I’ve been eyeing up online.

I met lots and lots of fabulous customers and/or Ravellers and it was really wonderful to put some faces to names/ravatars. I had a great time and although I’m still tired I can’t wait for the next one.

The first batch of remaining stock has already been uploaded to the shop.

The fibre is packed in the back of the car and ready to go! Hope to see some of you at Wonderwool!

My thermal is coming along well. It’s surprisingly fast considering it’s 3mm needles. It’s just round and round and round now for about another 10 or so inches!

I finished the first of the ‘viking’ socks. I’m part way through the second and in the middle of writing up the pattern.

As if I didn’t have enough to think about already, a new design idea is trying to bash it’s way out of my brain. I saw the pictures from Kim Hargreaves’ new book ‘Misty’ late last week and as usual I only really like one or two of the patterns. ‘Arielle’ really caught my eye, and I can actually imagine knitting it in the specified yarn, milk cotton, rather than using wool instead.

I used Milk Cotton for the cardi I knitted for my nephew and was surprised at how nice it was to knit with. However £17 is a lot for a pattern book with only one pattern I like. So I will probably hassle my local library to get a copy of the book and knit the pattern eventually. The design idea is to make something with a similar shape but perhaps a raglan construction, and in wool with 3/4 sleeves. I swatched last night and I’m waiting for it to dry before I decide if I’m going to go ahead with it.

I’ll keep you posted.

Pattern: Puff Sleeved Cardigan by Stefanie Japel from Fitted Knits (borrowed from my local library)

Yarn: Berroco Peruvia in Teal Green

Needle: 4.0mm Knitpro Symfonie

Mods: Knit at 18 sts instead of 22 in the pattern. Made sleeves mostly non-puffy. Added a bit of length.

In the end I did all sorts of jiggery-pokery to get this pattern and yarn to work together. I followed the instructions for the second size (can’t remember now if it was 34″ or 36″), apart from the ones for the puffy sleeves, up until separating the sleeves from the body. After that I have all sorts of numbers written on my copy of the pattern, but I’m not really sure exactly what I did. It all seemed to work though. I’m quite pleased with the results – I should be able to wear this for a couple more months while the weather warms up a bit.

Once again I knit with no ease for bust, planning to mostly wear the cardi only buttoned half way up, as I’m wearing it in the photo at the top. This should be good for wearing in the office as it gets warmer, but everyone else still insists on having the heating cranked up to full.

The yarn is really, really, beautiful with all the variation in colour I try to achieve in my blended batts and more. There are so many other shades of green and blue-green in there as well as the dominant teal.  It’s a single ply so I had to be more careful than usual not to poke my needle through the ply and to watch out when doing decreases, but overall it didn’t give me too much trouble. I really wish this yarn was easier to get over here in the UK! It comes in so many beautiful colours.