Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Here's hoping the new year will bring health, wealth and happiness to you all! :)

I've been pretty AWOL for a while, I was insanely busy over the festive period.. ok so I still am, but not to the same degree!

I have a long post here, and have missed out many knittted presents that I forgot to photograph, amongst other things.

First off I recieved this gorgeous hand dyed yarn from BabyLongLegs, aka Sarah - Thankyouuuu! I've done a tiny bit of weaving with it on my wee loom, and it's fantastic. Pics will ensue once I decide what to use it for!



Shortly before Christmas I went to the spinning class at Alston Hall. I met a lovely group of people there, and had a really enjoyable day. I spun on my spindle, and in the afternoon had a go on a wheel, which was brilliant!

Over the course of the day I spun up the natural coloured singles you see below, and in the weeks afterwards I slowly made my way through my own hand dyed sliver/roving/whatever the term is. I plied them together and finished up with this rather pleasing yarn!

It's not photographed too well, it's under the bright influence of my craft lamp that I recieved for Christmas. What a good idea! Anyway...

Ok, next, not knitting, but equally as pleasurable - snow! Yippee!

We had loads :D waist deep in some places, and knee deep in most places. We went sledging and built a huge snowman. What fun!

Ok this isn't exactly in chronological order - going back to christmas, my lovely OH got my this ace snowman teacup/pot! He also got me some delicious fruit tea, yarn and knitting books - he's incredibly well trained. I will remember to photograph the yarn for th enext update. It'll just be in the wrong update that's all!

Ok going back again, here's what I made for a member of my family, and they were really well appreciated ;)

Here's Timmy:

And Shaun:

His knitting needles are what I'm particularly proud of!

And Timmy's mother:

Ok so now we're moving forward again in time. HEre's my first ever short row heel. YEy! I love it! It's a sock for my Godfather in as close to the Welsh colours as I had in stash! It's also ribbed with a cable that I've added.

I love the short row heel, it's infinitely neater and nicer than the standard heel.

Here's my latest, well first-for-a-long-time sewing project. A DPN holder. It's only semi done, I've just done the pockets, I need to get material for the outside and a flap and a ribbon, then it'll be done. There's surprisingly more work in one of these than there appears to be.

My sewing needs some serious improvement!



And finally - some Sugar Plum that I dyed yesterday, which I'm very pleased with!

My WIPs are:

- Socks for Godfather

- Gnome for Godfather (his birthday was actually laszt week)

- FC in KSN (been sadly languishing on hold for a good month)

- Hoody for OH (need more yarn!)

- DPN roll

I've got nso many ideas, it's just finding time to do them all!

Ok, I'll do my new year's resolutions:

- Start designing (I've got the ideas, just need to do them)

- Start paying off my three overdrafts *gasp/sigh*

- Lose weight (ha)

- Do well with my course!

- Update this more regularly!

So... I'm off now to take pics of all the things I forgot! Like the yarn my OH got me, the books, the yarn I got in the sales, etc etc.

Dyeing, Spinning etc

Been really busy this week, working on Christmas presents, which are going ok but I'm starting to panic!

Anyway, here are my adventures.

First I dyed up a sample skein, in 100% laceweight lambswool. It's called SugarPlum :)





So I was really happy with that, so went ahead and dyed up some BFL roving.



BUT managed to semi felt it. Doh!




I decided to try and spin it anyway. Since I only know how to spin via pre-drafting, it meant I could pre draft the lot, then spin it. I'm looking forward to learning to spin 'properly' (ie without predrafting).




Looks a bit Noro-esque to me, mostly because the colours are darker than I expected, and it's semi felted. Anyway I dyed up two lots of singles.

Then plied them.

Making this nifty wee skein. I'm very happy with it :)

There's not many yards though. I think once I've got a pile of small sample skeins I will knit them all up into an abstract scarf, hand dyed, hand spun and hand knitted :D


I dyed some bright red lambswool too :) just to be different!

Little update

WEll I can't really post much because I'm knitting all Christmas presents, so if you know who I am on Ravelry you can see my projects there ;) (I'm about to go update there).

So no WIPs to show you I'm afraid on here. But I can show you some yarn I dyed, it's 2 ply lambswool. I've got loads of ideas for the shop but finding time to do them all is the hindrance ;)

Anyway here's my 'Ice' colourway which I really like (I know, I'm biased).

I'm making handpainted/sketched personalised tags for everything which I Think is a rather nice touch, and it's enjoyable for me!

I also made a load of Jack Skellington stuff, which I really enjoyed too. Here are the earrings, hanging on my pretty purple pin (well one of them)!

So apart from Christmas presents, my other WIPs are the FC, which is really getting long, I'm nearly at the end of the second out of three balls of Kidsilk Night. Obviously WIPs for me have completely taken a back seat since Christmas isn't far away. I'm also doing that retro sock. I had to frog it all because I cast on too many stitches! I'm nearly to the heel. Actually I'll take some pics of that and the FC and will update with them :)

Haven't got any spinning done recently :( but I'm going on a day course soon, which should be brilliant!

My OH got me the book 'Spin to Knit', which I would highly recommend!

Ooh just thought, if you're a member of the UK Swaps group on Ravelry, they are having a load of contests and I'm proud to be sponsoring one of them.. how exciting!

Ciao for now then!