Heartland...

Here as promised, at long last is the completed Heartland Shawl....

The design is by Evelyn Clark and was the winner of the 2006 Buffalo Gold/ Wild Fibers magazine creativity contest.

The fibre is Buffalo Gold # 4 which is 90% de-haired bison down/10% “buffalon” nylon. It's very soft to knit with and is a gorgeous chocolate colour. I used 4.5mm needles as stated in the pattern and did 5 repeats of the bison tracks pattern before starting the River of Life edging. I ended up with 12g of fibre out of the initial 186g.

Once I managed to get a reasonable amount of time to knit it I enjoyed knitting the shawl. The completed shawl came out 72" across the top edge and 36" down the spine.

As the kit was a birthday gift from my friend Mike in 2007, this one is mine to keep; and will be only the 2nd shawl I possess, as all the others are given as gifts...

Anyway here are the photographs.....







On the sock knitting front here are the completed Opal Magic 1040 socks for BIL's birthday... I've now started a couple of other pairs of socks to keep me out of mischief...


I've also made a start on a 2nd pair of Marvelous Mitts and am toying with casting on Spring Things shawl in the next few days with the lace yarn I spun....

Just a Quick One...

The Heartland shawl is finally finished, with 12g of yarn to spare ;o) !!!!

The Magic socks are also complete and ready for the 6th June, yes I've cast on another pair already :o)

I appear to be on a mission of finishing projects at the moment.... Or is it the incentive of new projects?????

Fibre is good for your diet, isn't it?

On the knitting front I completed DH's socks. My favourite pattern to work Lana Grossa Meetings (7740), this is the 4th time I've knit this pattern and the 4th different colourway.....

I've cast on another 2 pairs so I've Lana Grossa Bosca on the go (I'm starting my Christmas socks early this year) and Opal Magic which is for BIL's birthday at the beginning of June; I'm part way through the leg of the 2nd sock, so it's looking promising.....

The Heartland shawl is very nearly there I had a big push yesterday on knitting it, and I'm over halfway through the River of Life Edging, so hopefully next blog post will see it finished and blocked :o)))

And last but not least on the knitting front, do you remember the red & yellow sock yarn in my previous post? I said I'd given it to my friend Ann (blogless) to knit, well look what she did with it...... proudly presenting the Sunset Socks...

Hasn't she done a great job of making virtually matching socks... I think it's more down to my inability to split roving in half lenghtways evenly and my spinning skills that the pattern has gone astray on the foot of the 2nd sock..... To save you scrolling back down the fibre was my February/March fibre (BFL superwash) from The Yarn Yard Fibre Club.

I apologise now to everyone who isn't a spinner and isn't interested in spinning or looking at graphic images of fibre pron, as the rest of this post is spinning orientated....

Not by design, but I ended up with quite a bit of fibre arriving just in the last week or so.... The following 3 rovings are from The Yarn Wench and she was having a sale, so what could I do but participate? Serves me right I came in just over the £18 import on purchases so I had to pay the VAT & duty as well as the Royal Mails £8 handling charge; that bits gets me riled every time!!!

This is Chroma 2 - Falkland
This is Speckled Egg 1 - Merino

This is Sweet Pearl 2 - Falkland

Then my fibre from the The Yarn Yard Fibre Club arrived, which is gorgeous and is 50% Merino & 50% Tencel.....

Finally as I wanted to take part in the May SAL on Spinner Central on Ravelry (OK I've been looking for an excuse to order some roving from Amy)... I ordered some roving from Spunky Eclectic so I might as well make it worthwhile, so I ended up with :

M*A*S*H - Wool blend

Monkey Farts - Superwash Corriedale (DH can't get over the name ;o) )

and finally the reason I ordered the rovings, 'Joshua Tree' in South African Fine...

Now the Joshua Tree has since been turned into this:-

and finally in to this.....

A respectable first attempt at lace weight 636m / 100g & 28wpi & 6tpi (I used the 11.3:1 ratio on my Rose)

Now my only decision is what to make with it.... I've considered a few options but either I haven't sufficient yarn or my yarn is a bit thicker than a few of the patterns. I know that doesn't matter but I don't want to run out of yarn and would like a reasonable sized shawl... I have however decided not to include Swallowtail in the list having done 3 already I thought I'd go for something new. So far I have

1. Spring Things
2. Shetland Triangle - E Clark
3. Flower Basket
4. Forget-me-Knot
5. Hyacinth Lace

I would like to have done Laminaria but I don't have sufficient to do the larger version and I'm not sure I want to do the smaller version..... Anyone got any other suggestions?

I think I've waffled enough.... I'm a way for the Bank Holiday weekend, so I hope you all have a nice weekend and that the weather is good, but seeing it's a bank holiday I doubt it ;o) but we can live in hope...

Not much to say...

I haven't a lot to say really.... the Heartland shawl is progressing albeit slowly I'm now in my 5th repeat and will possibly have sufficient yarn left for a 6th repeat before the edging....

I finished the 'Firelight' socks for my friend Mike; these were my 1st hand spun yarn to socks project, I'm really rather pleased with them, for those of you who know me well and that I like my socks to match and are wondering but they don't match... I can live with non-matching socks as long as I know they shouldn't match ;o)

I can't show you the originally fibre as it was before I became conscientious about taking before and after photos, but the fibre is BFL Superwash from Natalie of the The Yarn Yard

they nearly match though!

I have more socks on the go as always but I won't bore you with details, suffice to say there's Lana Grossa Meetings (my favourite design) and Opal Magic on the go at the moment....

For those of you into spinning here's what I've been up to, this again is from Natalie of The Yarn Yard; again BFL Superwash but was part of my Fibre Club package... I have tried to keep the colour runs as Natalie dyed them. I spun the yarn to preserve the colour runs by spinning each chunk as it came and then I have Navajo plied it. Jane of Janes Probably Knitting decided to spin it up differently, go and have a look what she did...

I have gifted it to my friend Ann who is hoping to start knitting socks with it this week, so when she has sent me a photo I'll let you know how they turned out.... This was also the last yarn I spun on my Ashford Traveller, it has since gone to it's new home :o)

This was the first yarn I spun on my Majacraft Rose, it's a 3ply yarn and you saw the original Falkland fibre in my last blog post; Leafpile 1 from The Yarn Wench It does look a lot paler because it's had the twist set 3 times as I seriously over plied this.... It came out OK in the end though and fairly even, with which I am pleased...

Last off the wheel is this "Antigua" in Superwash Merino from SakinaNeedles again I Navajo plied this. It's meant to be sock yarn but I think it's a bit too thick so I am on a mission to spin a commercially (length for weight) comparable 3ply sock yarn at the moment in between other things...

I have to say I was thrilled when I opened up Ravelry the other day and I had a message from someone saying that they would be interested in buying this yarn from me :o)))))))))

At the moment I'm attempting to spin my 1st lace weight yarn (2ply) in some South African Fine in "Joshua Tree" from Spunky Eclectic but I'll tell you more about that next time along with my recent Fibre stash enhancement....

If anyone wants technical details of the yarns just ask....

Marvelous Mitts

Here they are finished :o) and in time for my friends birthday next Wednesday....

I'd say each one has probably taken me 5 days to knit, but probably only doing a maximum of a couple of hours in total each day on them...

I'm pleased with the colours and the contrast between the two colours.... The Trekking Ombre yarn was leftover from my socks I did earlier this year, and is variegated enough but still subtle enough to provide a good contrast with the Rowan 4 ply soft...

The pattern is "Marvelous Mitts" from Karendipity and her instructions are easy to follow if you've never done fairisle before as she provides you with lots of hints and tips so you don't have to go off searching the Internet or books for how to do something.....

I ended up using 30g of Rowan (MC) and 26g of Trekking (CC) with the 2mm needles (I did mine on 2 circs). When I do subsequent pairs of this I'm going to use 2.5mm circs as even with my hands after blocking they were quite a snug fit...

Socks are progressing up to the heel on both socks of both pairs. I'm hoping to pick the Heartland Shawl up this weekend and make progress on that.

The spinning on the Rose is far more enjoyable than on the Traveller (for one it's easier on my knees) and I have spun 80g out of the 120g of the "Leafpile" Falkland roving I bought from The Yarn Wench a few months back...

Did I mention she's currently having a sale on her products; 10% off 2 items and 20% off 3 or more items.... you will have to wait and see if I bought or resisted ;o)