Pearlesyarn

Sunday, 9 May 2010

It's been a while so ......Big Update

Hello Friends:-)
It's been a while since the last instalment and there is quite a lot of news to tell.

First of all Callie, one of our hens, was not very well. In fact she was very sick and we were very worried about her so I rang the vet in our nearest town and we took her in for a check up on the Saturday morning.

The vet was very nice and kind and sent us away with some anitbiotic liquid which I put in the drinking water for two consecutive days. Callie looked very poorly and we were fearing the worst but by the Wednesday she was perking up and eating better and had her voice back. By Thursday morning when we took her back to the vet she had improved enough for the vet to think that she would make it. We were so relieved!!.

The vet was still worried though as she'd lost a lot of weight so we made another apointment, for this Saturday morning. When we took Callie along the vet weighted her and was very pleased as she had put on 200 grammes which is alot if you only weighted 2kg to start with. So Callie is on the mend, yay:-)

Here she is (on the left) with Caroline.

And here are all the girls out and about (Callie is at the back while Miranda is front right and Caroline is front left)

I have been knitting my squares for the knitty squares blanket and have so far made these. I've been knitting them on the bus as well. It's going to be a very colourful blanket.

To keep me from getting knitty square fever I have also started and got quite a long way into another Elizabeth Zimmerman knit; her Pi Circular Shawl which I am knitting in Noro Kureyon sock yarn in colour 150 (lot F). I bought two balls of the yarn from Get Knitted last Saturday and got cracking as soon as I got home....instant gratification! So far I have done all the increase rounds and am 18 rounds into the last bit. I have't decided on the edging yet, will have to have a think about that. Here it is.

It looks a bit, well alot actually, like a bag. Which is quite handy because I can stuff the yarn and needles into the "bag" and stuff the whole thing into my work bag and the whole thing is so compact that it's good bus knitting which means that I'm motoring along with it. I am thinking that I will make another one in a solid colour and make that one in lace patterns.I've decided that for the solid colour version I'll use Jamiesons Shetland Spindrift which is also a 4ply weight and comes in 220 beautiful colours all the way from the Shetland Isles. I ordered the colour card and it arrived the other day. Now all I have to do is pick a colour!!

1. Jamiesons Spindrift Colour Card, 2. Jamiesons Ultra lace weight colours #2, 3. Jamiesons Ultra lace weight colours #1, 4. Spindrift colours #1, 5. Spindrift colours #2, 6. Spindrift colours #3

I've also bought Whimsical Little Knits 1 and 2 from Ysolda Teague. The designs are very cute and the books are small so they are very portable. I'm planning on knitting Veyla with one of these two skeins of Natural Dye Studio "Darling" sock yarn. It's made from alpaca and merino so it's lovely and soft. I think I will use the pale blue for Veyla and use the grey/blue for one of Ysoldas one skein shawls.

The last bit of news is that I am now a member of a knit club :-) We meet each week in a local pub, drink diet cola, chat and do a bit of knitting or crochet. There were five of us at last Thursdays meeting. We are all ages and it's fun; we're going on a stash enhancement outing on the 31st of May to Coldharbour woollen mill in Devon to see fleece spun into yarn, drink tea, eat cake and buy some yarn.

Guess thats all for now, take care, see you all soon :-)

Sunday, 18 April 2010

Spring is springing

For the past couple of weeks the weather has been getting warmer, Spring is springing!.
This was the view from the field behind our house early one bright spring morning. The tree is an oak and he's in the middle of the field; you can just see the back of our house over the river if you look really really hard.

There are no leaves yet just tiny little buds which are just about to pop.

Here's the tree from furthur up the field, its such a groovy tree and must be very old.

At the top of the field a stile takes you through a little patch of woodland before popping you out on to a lane which follows the side of the hill. On the way through the woodland I came across these little violets which are, suprisingly, white not violet. There was quite a big patch of them and they were all white.

The lovely weather has continued into the weekend which has been lovely and sunny. In order not to waste the lovely sunshine I bought a washing line spinney thingy. You see we lost our washing line when we had the house fixed up last December. The original line was along the path at the side of the house; fixed between the telegraph pole at the back of the house and the cast iron rain water down pipe at the front of the house. When the cast iron rain water down pipe was replaced with a modern plastic one (the builder tried his best to save it but it was beyond hope) we couldn't tie the washing line to it as we didn't want to break the pipe.....so, no washing line:-(. I have looked and looked and no one seems to stock washing line poles, the ones that you sling a washing line between. All new washing lines are the worrly spinney sort, so I have relented (for now) and we have a worrly, spinney washing line. Here it is in action! I do like putting out washing:-)

The garden is looking pretty with lots of spring flowers blooming. Down the side of the house I have daffodils, hellebores, spurge and the flowering currant.

And the Victoria Plum tree has lots of blossoms on it so hopefully we should have lots of plums again this year

The hens have been chilling in the sunshine. DH said that Caroline looked like a teacosy, he he:-)
She wasn't laying an egg just chillin' out and at one time during the afternoon I reckon she was acctually snoozing, very cute.

In spinning and knitting news I did a spot of dyeing followed by a spot of spinning. This was the last of the BFL fibre that I purchased from the Spinning Wheal

I have also been trundling on with the Knitty Squares blanket. I've found that the squares are really very portable which means that I have been knitting them on the bus in the morning on the way to work. Our bus has a couple of single seats one on each of the wheel arches of the front wheels and they are perfect for knitting so I have been sitting there recently. The squares knit up pretty fast and as of today I have these completed.

They are all the same size with 34 stitches on each side. The plan at the moment is to make lots of them and then pick a "joining colour", do a few rounds in the "joining colour" and then graft the whole lot together.

I hope that you have all also been having good weather wherever you are:-)

Monday, 5 April 2010

Easter Knittyness

Hello Everyone and Happy Easter!
The sun is finally shining here although it is very blowy indeed and a bit chilly.

So, what have I been up to?

Well, I recieved a lovely package from Patsie over at French Letters. Thank you Patsie.

Patsies package contained two skeins of her hand dyed and hand spun singles yarn and a skein of fussah silk which she spun from fibre from Tree Top Harmonies. The wool singles are at the back of the picture while the silk is at the front. With the yarns came a lovely letter which containes a pattern for basket cables. I'm not sure what I will make with the yarn yet but I think I will probably go for a shawl and edge it with the silk? not sure...mmmmm.

I have also be doing as spot of dyeing. This time with red, brown and green which produced this.....

The colours came out a bit paler than I thought they would but I do like them so I'll keep it like it is. The fibre (BFL) was dyed using the "roasting tin baking method" which seems to work well in the simmering oven of my AGA. It's a lot simpler and easier for me than steaming the fibre in a pan on the hob so I think I'll stick with baking it! I haven't spun it up yet, but when I do there will be pictures I promise.

Carrying on the dyeing and fibery theme DH and I went to the Spinning Wheal where he got to see what I spend my money on! and I got to spend some, ha ha :-) I bought some more dyes - scarlet, rust and green; they are Ashford Wool Dyes for Protein Fibres I also got a couple of bobbins and some more BFL combed top. I have also been getting to grips with some of the Jacobs fleece that my neighbour donated to me. I washed a load of it by teasing it out and submerging it in hot water with a dose of Fairy Liquid added. I then put it on the hob and heated it up to 90 degrees C and held it at that temperature, with the help of my jam thermometer, for about ten minutes before rinsing it carefully. I managed not to felt it and it is definatley cleaner than it was. I just need to card it and it'll be good to go:-) Here it is after being washed. It's drying out on a towel placed on the top of the simering plate lid of the AGA.

Now the question of what to knit after the marathon that was the Snowflake Blankie has been rumbling about in my head for a while now. I did think that I would start on a crocheted Ripple Blankie and so have been gathering together lots of different colours of double knit, mainly Patons Diploma Gold, which comes in a range of lovely colours, is machine washable on the wool cycle and does contain a fair amount of wool. But I have also been contemplating a few other things as well one of which is another blanket but this time a knitted blanket.

This blanket is from the April chapter of Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitters Almanac. It is made up of squares knitted from the centre outwards and then grafted together to give the impression of a piece of knitting which has been knitted in many directions at once.....how interesting! So I have been experimenting with squares and have decided on a method that I like. My method is slightly different from EZ's April Mystery Blanket and should mean that my blankie is a little simpler than hers but just as good.

1. 1st Mystery blankie square, 2. Knitters Almanac, Elizabeth Zimmerman,
3. Mystery Blankie in progress, 4. Mystery blankie square - prototype

Instead of yarn overs eitherside of a single seam stitch I'm going with a double increase of M1, K2, M1 so that I can join the pieces together right to the corners before picking up stitches all round and knitting an edge. As this is a long term project I'll probably be knitting other things along the way as well as finishing off some items still to be completed.

And to finish off todays post here are some Easter pictures of some of the flowers in our garden. The dafodills, which are by the back door, where being very well buffeted by the rather blustery conditions this afternoon.

1. Forsythia, 2. Blustery daffs, 3. Flowering currant, 4. Primroses

Happy Easter:-)

Sunday, 28 March 2010

Spin. spin, dye, spin

This weekend I have been busy spinning, plying and dyeing.

I plied the 100g of BFL that I had spun up a few weeks ago. It turn out a bit like Collinette yarn, lol. I then dyed it...........here it is being dyed.

I used Kemtex acid dyes and baked the yarn and dye in a roasting tin in the bottom oven of the AGA for about an hour (maybe a little more). The tin was covered with foil during baking. I then took it out, removed the foil and let the whole thing cool to room temperature before rinsing the yarn in warm water.
Here's the finished yarn.

Next I made this little 50g skein of BFL. I will probably dye this as well but I'm not sure what colours yet. It's a bit more evenly spun than the one above.

Then, as I was on a bit of a roll! I spun up the merino roving that my neighbour bought for me from when we went to the Spinning Wheal. It was very easy to spin. It kind of flowed into the twist, the fibres flowed very easily; it was a really good experiance in terms of learning to feel the flow of the fibre, very cool. Anyway, here it is............

After that I just had to spin up the BFL roving that I dyed the other week.

It went from this

To this......

Both the merino and the BFL need to be washed to set the twist but I'm pretty pleased with both of them. I think that maybe one or more would make a nice yoke for a sweater like the one here in Knitty Winter 2009

Tuesday, 23 March 2010

Lack of knitting so Hens instead !

Hi,
After the epic of the Snowflake Blanket I am rather stuck for what to do next. There are a few options I have been considering...and they are....

A ripple blankie - I have lots of yarn for it in lots of pretty colours. I have the pattern printed out. I have the crochet hook.
A 4 ply cardy/sweater. Top down set in sleeves from Barbara Walker's Knitting from the Top. I have been swatching with some orange sock yarn I got from Lidl last year.
An aran cardy/sweater that is not another Garter Yoke Cardigan but could be a la Knitting From the Top as well.

Something completely different.................

Decisions, decisions, decisions.

By way of an interlude and instead of knitting I give you our hens, Miranda, Callie and Caroline, who have been enjoying the spring sunshine lately....