Blue, da-ba-dee, da-ba-dai

I've had that song running through my head since I started spinning this stuff back in late January!

A fellow Posh Knitter was destashing, and I'd never tried Falkland fiber before. It drafts beautifully. And Spindlefrog's dye work is amazing, though a little internet searching tells me she's no longer selling fiber. A shame - I really enjoyed this!

Some stats:

100 grams
327 yards
n-plied

This is the finest 3-ply I've done yet. It actually beats a couple of commercial sock yarns (coughcoughJitterbugcoughcough) in the yards per 100g category, making this my first true sock yarn. I'm not going to use it for socks, of course - there's no nylon in it, and I don't think it's sufficiently tightly plied to withstand so much wear. But I'm getting there!

I think I'll probably knit a shawl with this. I know, don't all faint in shock. Me? Knitting a shawl? Surely not!

So long, June...

An interesting month. It started off really well, as I cut out a new gown, knit frantically on a new shawl and did a ton of spinning. Then I had an emergency root canal. I lost about a week in a codeine-clouded haze, in the worst pain I've ever been in. I couldn't even knit. Things picked up again after the dentist went to work, and I'm now mostly better.

So, things that happened textile-wise this month. I missed World-Wide Knit In Public Day because I was in the emergency room dealing with the tooth. Made up for it be getting to the grand opening of Loop's new shop a week later, though! The shop is amazing. It fills 4 floors. Two are full of yarn, one is the stock room, and the fourth is the future classroom. S and I got there early enough that we were among the first 100 people through the door, which meant that we received goodie bags!

A canvas shopper, some patterns, a discount card, some 2.5mm DPNs, point protectors and YARN!

And there was cake and Pimms going around too. The chocolate-walnut brownies were amazing. I didn't buy anything because there were so many people that it took over an hour to get to the till. I figure I'll go back at some point soon and pick up a few lovely things. It's really nice that a small business is doing so well right now that they need a bigger shop. Long may their success continue!

I also had a moment of knitting insanity. This is my new shawl. I started it last Sunday. I cast off on Friday and blocked it yesterday. A 6-day shawl. A new personal best!

The pattern is Ishbel, the yarn is the Noro Silk Garden Sock I bought with my birthday money. I knit it on 5mm needles. I only knit the first 4 rows of chart D and then went straight to chart E because I didn't have enough yarn for four more rows. I'm delighted with how it turned out.

I've done a load of spinning too, but that will have to wait until it's had a bath and dried before I blog about it.

Tackling the fluff

My fiber stash is growing, inevitably. A friend emailed me a few days ago to say that she'd an entire fleece for me! So, on with some spinning to make room for what's coming in.

I'm in the middle of a batch of very fine blue laceweight, but I decided to take a break for a few days and quickly spin up some chunky art yarn. Chunky being relative, of course, as this stuff is somewhere in between a DK and an aran! I started out last autumn with an art batt blended by Rockpool Candy. It's a blend of fibers and has inclusions.

It was only 50g, so I planned to acquire something complementary to ply it with. Opportunity knocked when someone on one of my swap forums offered a custom 50g batt in the colours of one's choice, so I went with black and crimson to tone down the crazy a bit.

(The lady who did the batt sells her stuff under the name Jellypod - it was beautifully blended and a real pleasure to spin.)

Ended up with 160 yards of 2-ply. I shall probably save it for a gift at some point - goodness knows I've enough kooky friends to find someone who will love it!

And as a little bonus, a pair of mitts I knit up from some yarn I dyed last year. Perfect for the chilly London weather. :)

Finally finished!

The extra yarn arrived yesterday, so I spliced the new onto the old and started knitting! I finished this morning, then hauled the mister out of bed so I could strip the bedding off for blocking. (Don't feel too badly for him - it was almost 11am!) A burst of afternoon sunshine on the bed dried it fairly quickly, so I was able to get a photo in before it got dark.

Pattern is Ene's Scarf by Nancy Bush, published in the Interweave book Scarf Style. Love this book, although I did get it just for this pattern. The yarn is Posh, of course, in the discontinued Laura 4-ply. Mostly in the colourway Drift, but the triangle at the very back of my neck is in Blizzard. It's noticeably different at some angles, but it's the same base colours so it doesn't jar too much.

I love the size, too! The pattern was originally written for laceweight, to make a scarf, but I'm much happier with this size and weight. It swooshes nicely too, courtesy of the cashmere in the yarn. I may have spent ten minutes or so twirling around my bedroom admiring myself in the mirror. :D

A FO!

Not my shawl, I'm still waiting for yarn. I finished a new garter stitch scarf, this time from aranweight Posh Yarn. Just one skein of Elinor Aran in 'Three Foxes' let me knit up this loveliness:

Isn't it pretty? And given the grotty weather we've been having, I suspect I'll get plenty of wear before the summer.

Well, crap.

I ran out. 26 stinking rows before the end of the shawl. See?

And for an idea of how close I actually got:

Fortunately, a couple of Ravellers answered my desperate plea on the Posh forum. I've got two skeins of similar colourways being sent to me tomorrow, so (postal service permitting) I should be able to finish this week.

Thank goodness for Ravelry.

My current shawl project is Ene's Scarf, a Nancy Bush pattern originally written for laceweight yarn and tiny needles. I decided to knit it up in a fingering weight for added warmth. First point for Ravelry - lots of other people have made a similar decision, so I could easily browse through other project and estimate the amount of yarn I needed. All good, I had a lovely pair of Posh skeins equalling that amount. Lovely grey-green-slate cashmere, mmmmmm.

I started knitting. The first chart was eating yarn, since the pattern is a bottom-up triangle. I was worried about running out, but no worries - there's a support group on Ravelry for this very shawl, and one clever lady had worked out the row-by-row completion percentages for the whole thing. Chart One is a full quarter of the knitting, so I stopped worrying. Then the worrying started again, because I got halfway through my yarn but not halfway through the knitting.

Running out of yarn would be a real problem with this shawl. Unlike top-down triangles, the triangle shape doesn't exist until the whole thing is finished. Running out would leave me with a weird wedge-shaped gap at the back of my neck. And because I'm using Posh yarn, which is all one-off batches in limited numbers, there was no way I was ever going to be able to get more.

Or so I thought. Third point for Ravelry - I was able to search through other people's stashes of this yarn by the colourway name and locate two other ladies with skeins from the same batch! I contacted one, who had used hers up, to see whether she'd any scraps left over that I could have. She did, and I've now got an extra 2 grams of yarn on my knitting table. (Thanks, C!) I'm waiting to hear from the other, who had a whole skein, to see whether she'd be willing to trade me.

In the meantime I'm knitting away, crossing my fingers that the extra two grams will be enough to get me to the end. I should know by the end of the weekend - I'm at 80% knitted!