Why am I always surprised?

I know that sometimes, well, quite often, hand-painted roving turns out quite different once spun into yarn.  The colour mixing that goes on can throw up some surprises, some good, some not so.  But, I really didn’t think that the Blue faced Leicester would do it to me.  As a fibre it looks quite bright, [...]

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Spinning for Hats and Sweaters, the importance of samples and what a difference a ply makes

From past experience I have learnt the hard way that if you don’t sample carefully before you begin to spin  for a project you can end up with some surprises.  So, in that vein I have been spinning small samples of the Blue faced Leicester humbug with a view to making another sweater, sometime.
These [...]

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FO – Refined Aran Jacket

Some final details on the Refined Aran.  The colour in these photos are a little washed out, the true colour is more like those in the last post.

REFINED ARAN JACKET
By Pam Allen
Pattern from Interweave Knits Winter ‘07
Yarn: Jaeger Extra Fine Merino DK  in Shade 990 Light Green ( now discontinued)
Needles: 3.5 & 3.75 mm Knit [...]

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Almost another FO

Almost, but not quite.
I finished the final sleeve of the Refined Aran Jacket in pretty quick time.  I don’t tend to have much problem motivating myself to knit the second sleeve as it is usually the last piece and that is motivation enough.  But, I may not have been so motivated if I had realised [...]

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Moving swiftly on

(Warning, picture heavy post)
Saturday was our annual Devon County Show. The weather was not great, it drizzled all day, but as I had on a hand spun sweater it took quite a bit of wet to eventually make me wear anything else – a testament to how wet wool can be and still feel [...]

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A slight miscalculation

Mostly, whenever I knit something in the flat that has separate pieces like a back and a front with sleeves (as opposed to knitting in the round), I make careful note of how many rows I knit. I very rarely use a row counter, opting instead for pen and paper.

This is one of the [...]

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Waiting for worms

Did I say my wormery arrived? I can’t remember, but it did, without the worms.  Apparently you have to send away for them using a little card they supply.  I don’t know why, but somehow this amuses me no end.  I keep imagining lots of little worms in a box, winging their way to me [...]

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Oh Humbug..

A while ago I decided to work through some of my spinning stash, as, I think I said, it was spilling out of the baskets. I spun up quite a few meters of the Crown Mountain Farm Silver Fox before I had an enforced break (my bad back) and the other day I started [...]

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