Isabel

Just realised I haven’t shared my new friend. I “needed” an extra spinning wheel to take to the farm, as there is so much lovely fibre there waiting to be spun. I trawled Ebay and the Ravelry boards to find a nice portable wheel, and I found this lovely upright.

Isabel is a Camelot wheel from New Zealand and has huge capacity bobbins (wonder if she knows I talk about her this way). We haven’t had much chance to play, as I have been trying to get some knitting done to clear the decks prior to Tour de Fleece (Ravelry link).

However, I have done a little bit.

That is some machine wash merino hand-dyed (colourway: ormeau) by Marnie at Ewe Give Me the Knits. I’m hoping it will be a 3ply sock wool when finished.

Warming heads with Seaweed

Personal training sessions at 6am in Melbourne winter lead to cold heads. So I am on a hat-knitting frenzy. Really, I have knitted one hat, but I have vague thoughts of knitting more.

The first is from the Zeebee pattern - garter stitch and seamless. I am happy with how it turned out. It is a tad “relaxed”, as I forgot to stretch the swatch before measuring my row gauge. This is no biggie, but I had hoped to make these hats the same size for kids and adults.

I used Comfort10 from Celia’s Basket in “Seaweed.” This knits up very mottled in effect - quite similar to how the yarn looks in the skein.

Looks a bit silly in warm sunlight, doesn’t it? Maybe it’s just the expression on my face.

Spinning new socks

I was inspired by some adventurous spinners, and decided to experiement with plying commercial yarns. I chose a horrible 3ply (light fingering) nylon baby yarn, and plied it with a Bendigo Woollen Mills 5ply (sport). So I have ended up with a DK weight yarn with nylon and wool. I am hoping it will knit up for boot socks that are hard-wearing.

It’s not the best spinning I have ever done, and it is my first time back after a big break. But the best bit of the experiment was definitely my assistant.