As promised here’s a little rundown of what I’m working on right now. Without further ado, lets go.
Knitting. I’m working on a couple of things at the moment, I’d been trying to work exclusively on my Driftwood because it’s definitely getting a bit autumnal round here but I managed to misplace my 4th and 5th 5.5mm dpns which made life a little difficult. I probably wasn’t looking very hard for them as Stu found one a few days later and then Felicity suddenly appeared brandishing the other a day later, but hey ho, I can get on with it now. It gave me a few days to work on my super sneaky blankie project, which I am loving knitting and hating not being able to share for now.
Sewing. I loved the New Look 6262 pattern that I made up recently so much that I’ve already gone back for round 2. This is actually the dress that I originally planned to make but I couldn’t quite squeeze all the pattern pieces on the fabric. Because the first dress was a little too roomy I’ve cut the smallest size this time and as luck would have it I have enough fabric for the slightly smaller version. Yay! Progress on this has been entirely stalled by the refurbishment of the dining room so it’s sitting by the sewing machine with only one side of the zip sewn while I wait for a power cable that will reach my machines. Then I just need to whizz up the other side of the zip, do the facings and the sleeves and the hems.
Spinning. Yes, spinning! I bet you forgot I did that! One of the main ideas behind the dining room redesign was so that we could make it really safe for the girls, allowing them the freedom to come and go from that room. Up until then we’d had a baby gate at the door to the kitchen which blocked them from the kitchen and dining room. So far it’s been great and I’ve found that they largely stay away from my wheel now it’s less of a novelty so I’ve really rediscovered spinning over the last few days. That’s not to say that I haven’t had a few disagreements with disgruntled toddlers about whether they should be touching the spinny thing but we're definitely getting there. Cassie and I have come to an agreement that she can touch any of the bits that aren’t moving and she seems quite content to sit opposite me with one finger on the back of the bobbin holder and Felicity has become a bit more wary since she stuck her finger in between the spokes which I was spinning. And that folks, is how you prick your finger on a spinning wheel! I’ve mostly been spinning up some South American fibre that I hand dyed a wee while ago, I’ve done the first 100g with 100g left, and that is just having a little sit before I ply it up. In the meantime I’m plying some singles that I spun at least 4 years ago and has been sitting in my corner of shame ever since.
The fibre was a lovely braid of BFL and sparkles that I got from FeltStudio and I spun it up on one of my drop spindles. I really loved the colours and didn’t want to mix them so I had my first stab at chain plying on a drop spindle. Let’s just say that it did not go well but I was determined so I set about pre-chaining the singles so that I could add the twist in a separate step later. Believe it or not that turned out to be really tedious and I did about half of it over a few sessions before I gave up entirely. Fast-forward to yesterday and I finally realised that I have some beautiful yarn just sat there waiting to be finished and that I was stupid to keep putting it off. I didn’t need to keep pre-chaining it, I could just break it off, run the pre-chained stuff through the wheel and then have another go at chain plying which turns out to be much easier for me using a wheel. I’m so happy this is nearly done although I do feel intense shame at having it left so long. And so, after barely spinning at all in ages I should have 2 skeins of finished yarn to show you in the next few days, how exciting!
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