FO Friday- Slippers

I have a new plan for choosing projects. For a few months I am going to try to pick small projects that use stash yarn and can be made during weekends. This should help clear up the odd balls and scraps and means I don't get distracted by wanting to knit when I should be working during the week.

The first project to get this treatment was a WIP. I bought some Regia slipper soles and had started to use the free pattern that came with them to make slippers. I was using two lots of handspun from the tour de fleece. Baby alpaca and a beautiful alpaca/merino blend from the Wonder Why Gal.

They were coming out a funny shape and I was going to run out of yarn so I frogged the alpaca blend section and restarted the foot using some Debbie Bliss chunky cashmerino from my stash. Instead of following the Regia pattern I worked a basic short row heel sock with a ribbed top to the foot.

I think I need to look at a photo or video tutorial for short row heels the next time I do them, they come out ok, but I think there is something a little odd, maybe I am twisting some of the stitches or getting the wraps wrong.

Sewing the soles on is not the easiest task. The first one I put on and sewed while I was wearing it. This requires rather more yoga style moves than I am really capable of so I had to take it off to finish it. The second one was not so bad, I pinned it all the way round using dressmaking pins while I was wearing it, then took it off to sew. 

I think I would have been a little happier with slightly longer cuffs. If I was redoing them I would work toe up to use all the blue yarn, then finish off with the handspun on the cuff.

Mmmmm, cosy. Because the only thing better than wearing a pair of handknit socks is finding a way to wear two pairs at once.

I have been wearing these every evening since I finished them. They are super cosy and the ribbing holds them nicely in place. The soles felt a little narrow when I first wore them, but they seem to have settled in and are a good fit. I may be making some of these for Christmas this year (see, planning early!)

Tour de fleece day 9

Today has been another busy day, I had hoped to get loads of spinning done this weekend, but it has not turned out that way. However, I have managed to navajo ply the alpaca and baby alpaca from the last few days.

I used my wheel to navajo ply the singles. Today's learning experience was taking the single off the spindle shaft to make a singles sausage rather than trying to ply off the spindle or having to widn a plying ball; and the fact that sliding it on to a knitting needle is much easier and ends up with less tangles.

There's about 26g of alpaca (the chocolate brown) and 32g of baby alpaca. The baby alpaca is much softer than the alpaca, after the tour de fleece I might buy enough to make a decent sized project.

Tour de fleece day 8

Today has been a busy day, so not much time for spinning. I still haven't done any plying on the alpaca, but I did manage to get my fifteen minutes in (a little more actually) and have finished spindling the baby alpaca single, there's about 30g.

It is pretty thin and will be navajo plied. Tomorrow will be a plying day I think.

Tour de fleece day 7

More alpaca today, but this time baby alpaca.

I prepped this in the evening of day 6, and couldn't help spinning a little of it right away. It is so soft and fluffy, the difference between the two types of alpaca is amazing.

I have done about half of it, which should be 15g or so, spindled fine to make a three ply. I possibly should have wheel spun this as 30g is a lot to spindle, tearing it into ver fine strips is helping a lot though. 

Tomorow I will finsih this and navajo ply both types of alpaca, then I think it will be time for some colour!

Tour de fleece day 6

An early post today because I did my daily spinning this morning. I do tend to get a little obssessed with whatever I am working on, so because of the tour I am totally hooked on spinning, knitting has taken a back seat (where it has not been for months).

I did the prep and a little of the spinning for this yesterday, but it was too late at night to alter my day 5 post. I have returned to alpaca and this time used my spindle. It was one of the fibres I bought over a year ago to do a big project with lots of fibre types, I am only just getting round to spinning them up.

I split it into skinny roving strips again, I have found this makes my spinning so much faster, and the airer is a good way to store the strip without getting in a mess.

It does look a bit creepy, like human hair.

I made a fairly thin single from this, it will be navajo plied tomorrow using my wheel and then be put with the banana for knitting after the tour.

I am glad this was not my first alpaca spinning because I think I would have been put off a little. It is very hairy to the touch, although a close look shows all the fibres are the same, so I don't think it is a dehairing problem (I am not sure about the details of this though). The colour is a gorgeous chocolate brown and it did draft very nicely and the roving joined easily, so not all bad, but I think there is nicer alpaca roving out there (actually I know there is as I started the tour with some).

I couldn't tell if it was Suri or Hucaya, it was a fluffy roving cloud, but I could not see any crimpiness in the fibres. I have a few waste scraps left so I will compare them to the bags of Suri and Hucaya when I get those out to spin.

I have some baby alpaca to spin next, which is much softer to the touch so I think that will be a better experience.

Tour de Fleece day 3

Today was all about plying, the two singles from yesterday were spun into a two ply using my wheel. The fibre is a penicl roving 70% alpaca and 30% merino from the Wonder Why Farm.

I realised why one bobbin was much fuller than the other, I had divided it as if it was 100g rather than 4oz (Fibre tends to be done in 100g in the UK), so I had some more lovely fibre than I had realised (Thanks Andrea!).

I plyed the two until I ran out of one single, divided the remaining single in two and plyed that together, which left me with just a tiny length of single.

The large skein is about 90m and the small skein about 20m.

It is a fairly thick two ply, about aran weight.

I am planning to make some slipper socks from this, it is beautifully soft, possibly my most lovely squishy yarn ever as the fibre is wonderful to work with plus I am working on reducing my tendency to overspin during the tour.

Tour de fleece day two

I had another good tour de fleece day. The roving is so lovely and spins so fast that I did way more than my minimum target of 15 minutes today. In fact I went until I had finished the whole lot. Today I did about 3oz of this lovely merino and alpaca.

I thought I had split it evenly between the two bobbins, but obviously I didn't. Tomorrow I will ply the two together and probably navajo ply whatever singles are left.

I am going to be looking for more pencil roving in the future as it is so much fun to spin from.

Tour de Fleece day one

Today was the first day of the tour de France, and therefore the tour de fleece- hooray! I have been really looking forward to this as I missed it last year. I might not post every day, but thought I would share the progress from my first day.

I have some possibly overly ambitious plans, but today went well.

I started with this beautiful alpaca and merino fibre from the Wonder why alpaca farm and Haze the alpaca.

I thought it was a batt, but when I went to open it up and tear it into strips found it was skinny roving. I love roving (Andrea you may be psychic and are most definitely a star)!

I am trying to spin this fairly thick and not overtwisted, both challenges for me. So far it is going well, the lovely pencil roving means I can work from the bag so no ends to join together and only a little drafting is needed.

I have done about 28g (that's about 1oz) today, this is far more than I ever usually manage to spin in one day so I am really happy. I am going to see how full the bobbin is at 33g and decide if it will be a three ply ,if the bobbin is full; or a two ply, if I can fit another 20g in.

Melton Mowbray country show (the fibre bits)

Yesterday the weather perked up and we went across to the Melton Mowbray country show, I have some pictures of the fibre related bits to share with you all.

There was a pen full of alpacas, I think the owner said they are all Hucaya, but she has some Suri alpacas too. I have been learning the difference thanks to The Wonder Why Gal's super blog post. I was quite pleased to be able to identify the bag of Hucaya fleece by myself.

A bag of each of Suri and Hucaya came home with me, so I have another 200g to play with during the Tour de Fleece. I am looking forward to being able to compare the two.

A lovely alpaca shot taken by my OH. It was a very hot day and I think this one had had enough of being patted. I think the out of focus blob in the foreground is a stick, but near animals you should never look too closely just in case!

Too hot for this sheep in his long woolly coat!

There was a "Sheep show". They do a bit of a talk about sheep and farming followed by a shearing demo. This is a mini one with just four sheep. I learnt that the Suffolk breed was made by crossing the Norfolk Horn with the Southdown.

The one labelled as Suzie Southdown (behind the shearer) was actually a boy, I don't think we were meant to notice!

A shearing close up. The sheep receiving her haircut was a Scottish Mule. I claimed a handful of the fleece to add to my collection of breeds, it is soaking at the minute as it is very sheepy.

We noticed that the shearing demo sheep had had a belly trim, so I guess they do take some of the fleece off in the spring to avoid them getting too hot and reduce the fly strike risk. The show travels round all summer, which would be a long hot time to spend in full fleece.

There were some stands displaying spinning and knitting, but the people on them were busy chatting so I spent my time admiring the critters that give us their lovely fleeces instead.

If you would like to see some photos of the non fibre bits of the show, they can be found here.

Tour de Fleece teams and challenges

Welcome to my first Tour de Fleece post, this will be the first year I have taken part and I am quite excited about it. I am not a huge fan of cycling, so that aspect does not really interest me, but I am into the spinning part. I need to get more practise and this is a good way to motivate that.

For anyone not familiar with this the idea is to spin along with the Tour de France, spinning each day the tour rides from Saturday July 2nd to Sunday July 24th July apart from rest days on the 11th and 18th. An extra task is to spin something challenging on the day of the mountain stage (Friday 22nd).

First up, the teams. You can joint more than one team, and there is a choice of Main teams and Wildcard teams.

I have joined the Peloton team from the Main teams group, this the group for the pack and really the only option as I have been spinning too long to count as a Rookie (over a year) am not aiming for lace (Sprinters) or art yarn (Breakaway) and hope to spin every day so am not a Lantern Rouge. Climbers is a group for those with a big personal challenge, but I think I will save that for next year. I have not found a badge for this yet.

For Wildcard teams I have picked a few:

The Team of Wonder 2011, as some of my challenges are alpaca based, including a lovely Batt of Wonder.

Team UK, because that is where I live

I don't have badges for the rest of my teams yet, but I have joined Team Kromski as my wheel is a Sonata. I am using my wheel for my larger projects.

And the Spindlers team, as some of my challenges will be done on a spindle.

I have also joined Team Hopelessly Overcommitted, because I am :D.

Next my personal challenges:
To spin for at least 15 minutes each day apart from the rest days. This can be wheel or spindle.

To spin this beautiful merino and alpaca batt courtesy of Haze the alpaca and the Wonder Why Gal. I want to make some slipper socks so need a two or three ply that is fairly thick.

My third challenge is to spin up some of the fibre samples I have collected, I would like to try them all, but am aiming for three so I am not too over committed! There is baby alpaca, alpaca, humbug Bluefaced Leicester, Wensleydale, plastic bottle, tussah silk, seaweed and crab. I am going to spindle these into a thin single then navajo ply them using my wheel. I may make my mountain stage challenge to do a whole fibre sample in one day.

Finally I have this beautiful roving from Shunklies (post about the purchase to come later in the week). I tried to resist this as I think I have plenty to keep me busy just with the above tasks but it is so pretty. If I finish the other tasks this will start its journey towards becoming socks.

So with fibre waiting I am eager to get to the start line. I need to do some training first though, by which I mean I need to empty my spindles. 

FO Friday- I socks

These were almost not made in time to appear today. They have taken longest of all my alphabet socks so far. Possibly because I started making the pattern It's tea time by Stephanie van der Linden but decided the grey yarn had too much fluff to see the texture. I switched to this pattern, but had to wait over the bank holiday to get my hands on some green yarn.

Also less knitting gets done during holidays than you expect, there is always other stuff that needs doing.

Anyway, enough back story, on to the socks!

The photo should be here, but for some reason Blogger hates me today, so it is at the end (no time to sort it, have to leave for a meeting in a minute). Oh look, it will not let me do hyperlinks normally either, grrrr!

Pattern: In the Highlands by Stephanie van der Linden-http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/in-the-highlands

Yarn: UK Alpaca sock in charcoal, Regia 4 ply in leaf and random undyed 4 ply from stash

Needles: 2.25mm dpns

Mods: On the second sock I did not do the extra rows on the full diamond but worked the triangle then across the diamond needles.

This is a nice pattern, you get an Argle effect without seaming or intarsia, but it is a lot of short rows. In fact, I am now officially fed up with short rows and I hope the next few pairs of socks are short row free. I have to admit it is very good practise though.

There are also a lot of yarn ends and I got holes at the corners, but the ends were used to sew the holes shut so I guess that all worked out in the end.

The alpaca sock yarn has a lot of fluff factor, which meant it was no good for the original pattern as the fluff obscured the purl stitches. It may also prove to be tickly but I have not given it a go yet, will report back when I have.

Dyeing adventures- alpaca and nylon

I bought some thick sock yarn off the Internet, but as always there is the peril of colour choices. What I thought from the photo was dark grey, undyed and hot pink turned out to be dark green, yellow and reddish pink. I have to say I was not in love with it, and I had 200g!

s

My first response to "meh I don't like this colour" is "oh well I can always dye it". The problem here was that this is an alpaca and nylon mix, I had never dyed either of those before, and I had heard alpaca will felt if you look at it crossly.

s

Since I really couldn't think of anything to make with the yarn I figured I would give it a go on one ball and see what happened. I skeined both and dunked one in a pot of blue dye.

s

Woohoo! No felting and the nylon didn't melt (even though the pot got rather hot and may have boiled a little, I am not sure what the melting point of nylon is). The dyeing was not a total success- the colours are still not quite what I hoped for, but I think they are an improvement. This is most likely due to the high nylon content which is unaffected by the acid dyes, all the fluffy alpaca fibres are now a nice bright blue.

s

s
I still don't know what to make, it is meant to be a sock yarn, so maybe socks, but there are quite a lot of fluffy alpaca fibres sticking out of the yarn, so it may be somewhat tickly.

If there's fibre I will find it!

Ok, so it was not exactly hidden, it was sitting in a tent waiting to be bought.

s

We went to another show today, the Asby de la Zouch agricultural show. Lots of different animals to see this time- sheep, cattle, alpacas, horses, rabbits, ferrets, dogs as well as lots of other things to look at like dancing diggers, craft and food tents, show jumping and trade stands.

Sheep, of course:

s

s

Alpaca with attitude: "You looking at me?!"

s
s
Is it normal to look at anything fluffy and think "I wonder if I could spin that"?
s

s
I got excited when I rounded the corner in one of the craft tents and saw a line up of spinners with wheels, a big display of handspun yarn and knitted items. No fibre though (sob!). The second time round I had a nice chat with a couple of them, they let me pet some silk roving, gave me the name of a rovings suppliers and told me that I should go to Woolfest in Cumbria next year (I think all spinners are enablers!).
s
Fortunately there was another small stall selling some roving and yarn. Most of the fibre was unlabelled so I opted for a 50g bunch of Cheviot x Border Leicester. The label says it is by Moro Rovings.
s
s
Finally a stroll over to the WI craft competition, I eyed up the hand knit socks and was very interesting to read the comment cards, think the competitions are not open to non members though.
s

Woolfest Leicestershire style

Today was a very exciting day- my first ever Woolfest!

s

Beacon Hill near Loughborough decided to hold a mini woolfest this year, it was a good turn out with spinning demos, knitting lessons, refreshments, peg looms, feltmaking and weaving.

s

For me the highlight was a walk up to where they keep their sheep and two guard alpacas. The sheep were not feeling overly sociable, but these two stayed around to investigate. The sheep are used to graze the grassland, the alpacas look after them and stop them being hassled by dogs. I even got to hand feed the brown one a few sheep nuts, it was very much cupboard love on his part- as soon as the food was gone he lost interest and there was to be none of that head rubbing or anything!

s

s

Of course there was the opportunity to buy things, I just resisted buying a fleece from one the park's sheep (only because I could not think what to do with a fleece worth of manx yarn), but sucumbed to the fibre stall. I went for a handful of every different type of fibre they had, ranging from alpaca to crab. Only a little of each, just to try them out, once I get started I will post pictures and reviews of each type.

s

The show was kept quite small this year as it was the first year, but it sounds like it will grow so one to put in the diary for next year.