Autumn Swap Yarn

After I found out I was pregnant with Cassie I joined a Due Date group on Ravelry and became friends with the most wonderful group of ladies I can imagine.  I love that we are all still chatting regularly, supporting each other through the ups and downs of motherhood.  Every now and again we have a swap, sometimes we knit hats for the kids and sometimes we like to treat each other with yarn and candy.  A few weeks ago I posted about the package I’d received from lovely Gio in Switzerland (she has just welcomed her third beautiful baby boy, congrats Gio!) and I can now reveal what I sent to Dawn in the US now that it has definitely arrived.

Because Dawn arranged this swap she knew that her package would be coming from me so I tried to make up for that by sending her something really special.  Seeing as I was on a bit of a spinning kick it seemed entirely right to spin her some yarn of her very own.  I wanted to spin up 200g, because experience has taught me that 100g very often yields a skein of yarn with and unhelpfully small yardage and a quick nose through my stash turned up nothing helpful so I hit Etsy for inspiration.  My old favourite Nunoco didn’t disappoint and I soon had a 2 braids of their chromatops, in Azzuro and Fandango, winging their way to me.  My plan was to split each braid into thirds for a 3ply and then swap one strand of each colour to get a pair of coordinating yarns.  Here's a quick and dirty representation I did before I decided to go ahead.

Of course I wasn’t sure if this would work as nicely as I imagined it, but I’m really pleased with the outcome.  The fibre was an absolute pleasure to spin and the colours are so bright and lovely that I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t resisted the urge to get some for myself!  The yarn itself is a soft and smooth sport weight and each skein has a pretty generous yardage.  I can’t wait to see what it becomes.

To accompany the yarn I sent some of my favourite treats that I’m hoping aren’t too widely available elsewhere. I forgot to get a picture of those before I sent them but they were all lucky to make it into the envelope without me eating them!

I had great fun putting this parcel together and I'm really proud of the yarn, in fact i'm thinking of spinning something similar for myself quite soon.

An Actual Spinning FO!

It's been over a week since my op and I'm feeling pretty good now. I had a few days where I was pretty uncomfortable, mainly from the gas they inflated me with and once that was gone I've improved loads. Even so I was really grateful that my mum took the girls off my hands for the whole day both Monday and Tuesday. I missed them loads and it was a bit like I was looking for them the whole time, but still two entire days to myself? Hell, yes!

After having a long shower I put the kettle on, fired up Netflix and (very carefully) hauled my spinning wheel into the living room. There I sat and watched and drank tea and spun until I was done. No interruptions, no little fingers spinning the wheel from the other side and no demands to watch Frozen on repeat. I'll have to have surgery more often!

The yarn is pretty special, the fibre was sent to me from Canada by a lovely Ravelry lady as part of a swap. She's not a spinner but she chose brilliantly. It's a polwarth silk blend and is nice and squishy and the colours are perfect, just what I'd have chosen myself. I went for a 2ply so as to not mix the colours too much and I'm really pleased how it turned out. It fluffed out really nicely so it's a bit thicker than I originally thought it might be. I'm always aiming for as heavier weight as I can manage so this is a total bonus. I haven't got around to measuring all the vital statistics, but I'll do that soon so I can start planning what to knit. Spinning really is double the fun!

 

Spinning......thursday?

This week's spinning round up is a day later than usual due to a bit of a technical hitch with the finishing of my latest handspun.  I could have just posted yesterday anyway, but it was so close to being finished and I really wanted to have an FO to share so please forgive my tardiness.

I finished spinning up the last of my purple batts on Tuesday night but left it til last night to wind off into a skein.  I didn't start until quite late because I spent the evening at the church where I'm getting married planning the decorations, but once I got going it didn't take me long - even with the usual feline 'supervision'

Before the dunking

Next step was to give the yarn a bath, I plopped it in some hot water, wandered off for a few minutes and came back to find that the water had turned to ribena!  Slight colour seepage was not the word.  A bit of dithering later and I sprayed the skein with citric acid and water and stuck it in the microwave for a couple of minutes to try and set the dye.  It seems more colourfast now but I'm a bit disappointed with the blue spots that have developed where the purple has seeped in to the white.  I'm sure it will be fine though.  The yarn is all smooshy and bobbly and goes nicely with the pink I finished last week and that's all I was hoping for.  I guess now I finally get to knit something with my very own handspun - how exciting!

After dunking, the blue bits aren't too obvious here.