Tag: merino

Weekend Knitting

Feather & Fan

This weekend so far has been mostly about the knitting. Paul and I are both in the grip of a minor lurgy, and there isn’t a great deal we can do to hurry the house move along, so it seemed like the perfect time to have a quiet day curled up on the sofa.

The picture above is a lovely laceweight cowl, which I thought I’d almost finished… but now I think I might only be halfway through. Because the silk & merino yarn is so fine, it folds down to almost nothing when you wear it. So I’m going to double the length, which will allow it to be pulled up over the head and worn as a snood as well as just a cowl.

I’m really enjoying knitting this, it’s very therapeutic. Only one row in six is patterned, so just as you start to think you might get a bit bored of nothing but plain knitting, a simple patterned row comes along to make you concentrate for a minute or two. Even though I’m quite a slow knitter, this one seems to be coming along quite quickly.Hopefully it’ll carry on that way, because I’ve got quite a lot more knitting to do between now and Christmas!

My husband went to Canada…

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…and came back with some slightly confusing yarn.

I’d asked Paul not to bring me any chocolate home from his business trip (having recently received a mountain of very fine choccies for my birthday) and suggested that yarn would be an appropriate substitute.

As everybody* knows, souvenir yarn doesn’t count towards your stash, so it’s an excellent gift. But in order to make a good souvenir, it should ideally be something that you can’t just walk into a yarn shop and buy locally. So I sent Paul yarn shopping in Canada, with these criteria in mind, plus a couple of Canadian brand names in case of emergency.

So, you may be wondering why the yarn in the top picture is very clearly labelled “Zealana” and “Kiwi”. Apparently New Zealand’s in Canada now. Perhaps the lady in the Ottowa yarn shop, who sold this to my poor unsuspecting husband after he’d explained that he wanted specifically Canadian yarn, is in need of a little geography lesson.

But, it is a yarn I’ve never seen locally, it’s super-soft, and it has the exciting new-to-me ingredient of possum, so it definitely works as an excellent souvenir!

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Bless him, once Paul had realised that the first yarn was definitely not Canadian, he went yarn shopping again!

This, which is done absolutely no justice by the photo (the purple yarn is much more of an aubergine colour), is the softest yarn on earth. This is by no means an exaggeration, I spent a good half hour last night just stroking it. It’s Illimani Royal 1, and it’s made IN CANADA, from the finest 1% of the fleece from Bolivian alpaca. The colours above are hot pink (of course!) and eggplant.

Softest. Yarn. Ever.

It’s crying out to be some kind of scarf or cowl I think, so I can snuggle my face into it as often as possible. Or I might just leave it sitting on the arm of the sofa, so I can stroke it like a soft little pet. (What? The knitters know what I mean.)

I don’t know yet what I’ll make with the Zealana. I was thinking originally of socks, but the cotton content (organic cotton, no less!) gives it such a nice drape, I’m thinking that maybe a little lacy shawl might be in order.

I do need to catch up with a few knitting photos though, as I have managed to find the time to actually finish a few things lately! This is good, as all the things I’ve finished are intended to be Christmas gifts. This has the added bonus of getting some of the yarn out of my house and into other people’s, which I’m sure Paul will be really pleased about!

 

* By “everybody” I clearly mean “knitters who are looking to acquire more yarn without the attendant guilt of purchasing it for themselves when they already have a cupboard full at home”. By which I mean all of them.

Learning to spin

Spinning!

Look! I made yarn! I started with fluff, and now I have yarn!

Yes, I am exactly as excited as that made me sound, if not more so. Yarn!!

So, yes, anyway. I borrowed the drop  spindle from work, months and months ago, along with a bit of leftover fibre from the felting sessions. I thought it might be handy if I could teach myself to spin, given that there were a bunch of spindles right there not being used. I found a couple of books, read a couple of magazines, and gave it a try. But it didn’t seem to make sense, I wasn’t able to make yarn, and I got a bit cross and shoved it all in a  bag and pretended I wasn’t sulking about it.

Fast forward to last night, and I went along to a local knitting group where Felix very kindly taught me how to spin! It turned out that what I needed was a person to demonstrate the principles, and then it turned out to be really easy!

Of course, the little bit of yarn I’ve made so far is terrible. It’s inconsistent in thickness, lumpy in places, disastrously over-spun, and almost certainly useless. However, I am assured that this is widely considered to be Art Yarn, and that I should make as much of it as I like until I start to get the hang of consistency. Usually I would be upset at the prospect of making an increasing amount of crappy yarn. Thankfully I’m so excited about having learnt this new-to-me ancient method of transforming fluff that I want to make as much of it as I possibly can!

As you might expect, I’m already coveting new fibres and new tools. I’m currently using a cheap MDF spindle, and spinning merino tops. That’s great, I’m making yarn… but trying out Felix’s lovely little walnut spindle with a little bit of fluffy Estonian wool was something of a revelation. Felix also suggested that I might want to look up Hilltop Katie on Etsy, and now I’m having a really hard time trying not to buy one of everything. Her beginners’ kits look like a great place to start.

I can’t go back to the knitting group next week, I’ll be at work. But the week after, I’d love to be able to go back and show them a whole  spindle full of Very Artistic Yarn!