Fleecey

Last year's shearing has produced, in this year, a 20g ball of 2ply brown wire that is tough and scratchy and horrible. This year I said I didn't want to keep any, until Nathan sent Byron in to give me a little handful of this:


Barely a hint of dirt or grass with long white fibers... Why on earth did I start with the short, dirty stuff from the black sheep last year? I haven't washed it. Just trimmed the very end off, which is felted into tiny curly tips. Makes your hands a bit greasy, but spins up great as it is! I've been pulling it from the side, just like that, though I can't do it quickly enough to use my wheel with this stuff.
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Inspired by my baby sister, I thought I'd attempt a felted scarf. I laid out my long strip of bubble wrap (3m at the post office was about $2.50) and laid out a mat of fibre running acrossways. Layer two was lengthways. Layer three was stripes of pale blue and pale green (as opposed to the white), and layer 4 was more white.
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This is 250cm x 30cm, laid out on towels on the floor (while the kids had a nap). Then I wet it, rolled it up, and agitated it around, scrunched it, microwaved it, threw it against a chair, washed it again, put it in the dryer... even ironed it. I also did Kelly's trick of trimming the sides with scissors!

The blue and green stripes were supposed to be hard to see, but this was a bit too light. Anyway, it ended up 200x25cm, and was far thicker than I guess it should be, but I wore it out on Friday and it was warm!!

See the storm coming in? It's rained all weekend.

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I have done some socking, including 8 teensy heels, but I got distracted again by the Lacy Baktus version of Baktus.

The colors don't really look like that. Silly fluoro light bulbs. It's WFF Elizabeth in Waterlilies, a rainbow mix of very soft colors.

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No yarn purchased so far this month. Pity I can't take off 200g for the felt scarf, but I didn't count my fibre in the big yarnweigh.

Two and a half FO's.

A little beanie whipped up out of the BWM rustic 12ply I dyed with RIT. I cabled the top with a random-make-it-up-as-you-go method that worked ok. Though cables are a bit pointless with dark yarn, hey?


Here's Zachy, fast asleep on the beanbags at playgroup, while 20 or so kids ran around him screaming! Can't half tell he's a number 3 child!

My Casbah socks are up to the gusset increases. They are taking forever, as 4ply socks with 2.5mm needles two-at-a-time do when you have three littlies. But I am loving every soft stitch! And weirdly (I don't even know why I chose these colors) the teal and purple and gold are appealing to me very much. Hmm.

Another FO! I actually finished this back in July or something, but it was too short and rolly. So I snipped off the ribbing and knit another skein on (about 6 inches) with some double garter on the bottom. Sorry about the dodgy photo. It's dark green Picovoli.

And yes, I have a few Zachary/chocolate rolls to shed yet. Must get onto that some time. Yaaaaawwwn!!!

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Byron and Jasmine picked me these from one of Nathan's many natives in the front yard. Not sure what it is. Some kind of purple bottle brush. Cute.

More green Fargyles.

Yep, I ran out of yarn. They're short little Fargyles, but I love em, and the Tosh Vintage was really nice to knit with. I don't seem to have the hang of twists; instead, I just do single cables, and this tightly twisted yarn is nice and non-splitty, which is pretty good for cabling without a cable needle. Also, I'm starting to think that knitting is a little bit like my brother described carpentry: All the skill is in covering your mistakes well! Hehehe.