Busy Bee...

I have been busy :o) over the last week or so and lots of things are starting to come together...

Jane of Janes Probably Knitting and I had been discussing between ourselves about the distaste for knitting gloves, mainly due to all that itty bitty knitting of fingers.... so we decided we would have a glove along together to gee each other on into getting the gloves knit....

I started a pair of fair isle gloves for a Christmas present... the Hand Painted Gloves by Karendipity but despite having done 2 pairs of her Mitts I couldn't get on with these so as life is too short for projects your not enjoying I frogged them last Friday.

Now knowing Jane is knitter supreme and quick too... I thought I'd better come up with something quick, as otherwise she would have finished her 2nd Selbuvotter mitten (scroll past the fibre) and have completed her gloves too....

Anyway I decided (foolishly perhaps) that I would do my own simple fair isle glove; it would have plain cuff, fingers & thumb (I didn't want to be bald for Christmas & I have other things to do) and there would be no purling involved except in the rib (read that as no left handed purling with contrast colour!)

So armed with several basic glove patterns and Shelia McGregors book The Complete Book of Traditional Fair Isle Knitting... I actually came up with a fair isle glove pattern... I still can't believe I have and I keep picking up the glove and showing my husband and saying look I've done this I can't believe it! (it's wearing a bit thin now ;o) )

So here it is.... I still have the RH one to do... but I'm going to type the pattern up 1st and then follow my instructions and if successful I will put it up as freebie for people....

This leads me nicely onto something that Natalie of The Yarn Yard has set up which is called p/hop (pennies per hour of pleasure) you can read more about it here, but In a nut shell it allows you to freely make a donation (it's not compulsory & isn't attached to the patterns when you download) large or small for free patterns that you use and the money is going to Médecins Sans Frontières.

Moving on to completed objects. I want to make my friend a pair of slipper socks for Christmas, so I bought the moccasin soles (Regia) & I used some of my handpsun that was too thick for socks but were perfect for this.

I followed the pattern that came with the moccasin soles (size 40/41) but followed the pattern for 42/44 as I thought I'd got size 43 soles (don't ask me how). As you can see the upper stops a bit short and I don't like it but they are OK for me and as I've discovered they're great for spinning in... I can't spin in my stocking feet as they slip on the treadles. and am conscious that the wood on the Rose is quite soft and easily dented, so with these I don't have to worry about grit and such likes getting embedded into my treadles from my shoes and marking them and they keep my feet warm too :o)) so a happy mistake and useful too....

I've also completed another 2 pairs of Christmas socks....
Kaffe Fassett Landscape - Earth


Regia Jupiter - Camouflage

and to finish off a bit of bright colour to brighten up November.... This is Sunny Side from Spunky Eclectic... it will become sock yarn ;o)

And the winners are....

• Anita / dippy2knit (ravelry) won the merino fibre form The Yarn Yard
• Sally won my handspun merino / tencel yarn - 'Summer Pinks'
• Cathleen / Cobol (ravelry) won the lovely Posh Yarns Cashmere / Merino sock yarn 'Flirt'
• UKYorkie won the merino / bamboo sock yarn from Babylonglegs
• RunningDeere aka as DH bought me the merino lace yarn from Kraftykoala

I would just like to say thank you to everyone who took part whether you won or not and the very generous ladies who jumped in and offered goods for this auction.... we raised a total of £90.00 and with a further £25.38 from gift aid that makes a grand total of

£115.38

As everyone paid up so promptly I've already made the donation to Breast Cancer Haven and here's the receipt I got....

Once again, thank you for your support

Ann

Thankyou...

to everyone who bid....

I shall be contacting you by email to let you know whose won this afternoon and will post tomorrow who has won what and how much we raised....

Thanks

Bids

For those of you have placed bids I have replied to your email just so you know your bid has been recieved. If you haven't recieved a reply from me then I haven't recieved your bid.

Only 2.5 days to go....

October was Breast Cancer Awareness Month

As the title says October was Breast Cancer Awareness here in the UK... we were reminded 'to get in the pink' through various forms of the media and many people blogged about it, such as Janes Probably Knitting. She gently reminded us each post that it's important to check our breasts on a routine basis by simply asking us 'Have you?' at the end of each post. Jane also did a subtle reminder throughout the month of October by spinning some gorgeous pink merino / silk fibre from The Yarn Yard.

This got me to thinking about how I could best put my talents to good use and it was whilst spinning this merino / tencel I aptly named 'Summer Pinks' I decided when finished I might like to have a silent auction for the finished yarn to raise money.

I pondered long and hard whilst spinning and many thoughts flowed through my mind as I sat and spun. I'm not an accomplished spinner by any means and people may not want to give their hard earned cash for my handspun, especially in this economic climate. I may not raise an awful lot of money from the auction, and I would feel silly for thinking I could; but then I thought any contribution would be a positive contribution, no matter how small. Every little helps a worthwhile cause.... and whilst I admire people who raise thousands of pounds for charity, where would charities be without the people who make small, regular, annonymous donations...

I decided to see what my friend Natalie thought of the idea, she responded by saying it was a lovely idea and was generous enough to offer some fibre from The Yarn Yard as part of the auction.

I decided as the month of October is past and it was all about awareness it would be nice to give the money to a breast cancer charity that is helping women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer and are undergoing treatment. With this in mind, I have chosen Breast Cancer Haven as my charity. As cancer can affect a patient both physically and emotionally, Breast Cancer Haven offers a free programme of care to help patients, and those supporting them during this difficult time.

I've had to edit this blog because other kind people have offered up items to be included in the auction for this worthwhile cause....

allstitchedup aka Jammam (Ravelry) from has offered up a skein of her precious Posh Yarns Lucia yarn in colourway 'Flirt', which is a 4ply (sock weight) yarn, made from 30% cashmere, 70% merino. 430 yards per 100g. Recommended needle size is 2.75mm (US 2).

Sarah aka BabyLongLegs has kindly offered to put up a skein of hand dyed merino / bamboo sock yarn in the winners chosen colourway.

Kraftykoala has generously offered 2 of her 50g hanks of hand dyed laceweight merino in colourway 'Powederpuff' and with 760m per 50g you'll get a great shawl from this....

So here are the items that are up for auction

'Summer Pinks' - 238m / 88g of 3ply Merino / Tencel

100g of Merino from Natalie of The Yarn Yard

80g of Posh Yarns 'Lucia' in 'Flirt' brand new and ready to knit from Jacqui aka Jammam of allstitchedup

Hand dyed merino / bamboo sock yarn from BabyLongLegs- In the winners choice of colour
2 x 50g Merino laceweight in 'Powderpuff' (760m per 50g) from Kraftykoala


The auction is open to anyone, anywhere in the world as we are prepared to pay the postage to any destination.

Now the way I propose to do this is as follows:

I would like you to email me with your bids to the following email address, in the following way:

charity[AT]littleberry[DOT]me[DOT]uk
(Replace [AT] with @ and [DOT] with . in the address)

1. In the subject please state the item you are bidding for i.e. Fibre, Handspun etc.. If you wish to bid on all of them please send a seperate email for each.


2. In the body of the email please state what you are prepared to pay BUT to make things easier and so I don't have a tie situation, I would like the bids to be in Pounds (£ - GBP) and Pence. i.e. £6.03 rather than £6.00


3. Payment should be either by cash funded paypal or bank transfer.


4. Should a tie situation arise, then the winner will be the first person to put that bid in.
   
5. The auction will be open until noon (UK time) on Friday 14th November. I will contact the winners on Friday afternoon and announce them on Saturday 15th on my blog. However, if you wish your identity to be kept secret I will respect your wishes.

Should you wish to make a donation rather than bid on the items you can do so by going to the Breast Cancer Haven Just Giving Page

Many Thanks to all of you

With which I am well pleased...

Remember in my last post I showed you M*A*S*H from Spunky Eclectic a wool blend I was going to practise on to achieve a good yardage 3ply sock yarn?

Here's a couple of reminders to show you

Well I did it :o))) I managed 412m / 102g and my plying seems to have improved, however, it did take me the best part of 2 hours but I think the penny is finally dropping with the plying....

and just to brighten a dull & dark evening here in the UK (it's been dark for about 1hr now since the clocks went back) a bit of fibre porn.... all are superwash. The first two are Corriedale and the 3rd Merino... yep you guessed it sock yarn it will become.... all 3 from Spunky Eclectic

Sunny Side

Rhubarb

& Lime Fire

October Round Up

OK were to start.... I will try and keep the babbling to a minimum....

With learning to spin I invariably ended up with the initial thick/thin singles and badly spun yarn and even more badly plied yarn that you don't really want to use.... anyway it was taking up space in my fibre stash box and that coinciding with mum saying she was going to get her shawl out just to pop round her shoulders whilst working in the conservatory I came up with this; this is Justify by Lynne Vogel...

Now as I'm obviously not as co-ordinated as Lynne to colour co-ordinate all my early spinning attempts in order that I would be able to use them all together at some future date I ended up using colours from similar/related colour families and then I over dyed the whole thing to 'unify' it.... Here's a front and back shot

Now as the dye hadn't exhausted from over dying Justify, I ended up having ago at dying my own superwash fibre (bfl - what else?) that I bought back in June at Woolfest.... I really didn't spend much time on it as I was working at the same time and TBH I didn't anticipate my results to come out that well so didn't want to waste too much time on it... so you can imagine how pleased I was when the fibre came out like this and it was still fluffy and open despite all my attempts at drowning it, heating it, spinning it dry in the washing machine!

I called it 'Halloween' since I did it on the 31st and it's sort of a purpley-blue and green... OK the method of dying and applying colours leaves a lot to be desired but at least I can still use the fibre after without too much effort :o)

Next remember Lush 2 from my last post? well it didn't come out quite as fine as I was hoping for but non the less will probably be sufficient to make myself a pair of socks...

I got 280m out of 100g of 3ply... I really need to get some lessons to brush up on my plying....

I also finished spinning the merino / tencel from my last post too and hopefully will get time to ply this, this weekend.... you will more of this in the coming week...

Anyway in my efforts to get a good sock yarn I decided rather than 'ruin' anymore superwash sock fibre I would use a wool blend to practise spinning even finer singles, so I opted for M*A*S*H from Spunky from my stash. However, I've seen this spun and plied as 2ply and like the effect so rather than Navajo ply it, I again opted to spin it as 3 separate singles and ply them together.... fingers crossed I get a good 3ply with good yardage...

Now to finish a bit of gratuitous fibre porn :o))))

This arrived in the post this morning from The Yarn Yard it's BFL humbug which has been over dyed to give this lovely stripey effect..... I got 2 x 100g braids too.... so I can do something useful with it...

and last but not least this came on Thursday and is called 'Popsicle' form Julie Spins (Etsy) and is superwash merino, I have just the person in mind that this will make lovely sock yarn for....