Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Stash Wars

In the first battle of the Stash Wars, I got up at 6:45am (on a day that was my turn to sleep in) and put my little computer onto the ironing board (so as not to wake any children). 7am was battle time, and I was ready with my trigger finger. It was the battle of the Southern Cross.

It all started with a challenge between three dyers. Southern Cross Fibres, Hello Yarn and Spunky Eclectic decided to each do some special edition dyeing, based on a picture. We put a bunch of pictures into the mix, and then voted. They took the top three and chose one to base their colors on. Here's the winner:






David of Southern Cross Fibres was first. He dyed 40 lots each of Bond (a merino/lincoln mix) and Spelsau. Each fibre also had 40 lots of a coordinating color, so there were 160 lots (about 100g each). They sold out in 15 minutes :)

And I got two of these Spelsau lots


And four each of these Bond :)






I'm going to work them all into a jumper and accessories of some sort, maybe an Idlewood and some gloves and a hat... not sure yet.

The next battle was the battle of Boogie, in her shop Spunky Eclectic. This was a battle of only two fibres, and although I missed it by five hours there was still some Wensleydale left. So I nabbed two :)





The final battle was the Corriedale Rambouillet Battle of Hello Yarn. It was the first night after I did three night shifts, so I stayed up until 6am for the update. I clicked "refresh" on the shop page every 5 seconds, so was right there when the battle began. It was sold out in seconds! I missed All. The Rambo was particularly pretty, look... but never mind. I've kind of spent all my Bendigo money, now... lol. Well, I have some from Mum and from Nathan, and some Flybuys money, and 5 or 6 weeks still to save up. Hehe.

So the Tour de Fleece is coming up, and I'm trying to finish off the green laceweight at least. I've almost done another bobbin full, with one more to go after this. It's slow going, especially with silly work getting in the way :) and I've been knitting Jasmine a top, and myself a hat. But it's getting there.





The silk in this one makes the singles a bit stronger, I think, so a bit easier to keep thin. The single, folded back on itself like in the second pic, is what the finished 2ply should be like, so if I can keep it under 1mm, it should be more than 25WPI.

And now, back to spinning. I have 2 hours before picking up Zachary from kinder...


Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Soooooocks!

I've been finishing them.




Chocolate Socks, as I've been calling them, or Cardio Socks. I listen to a podcast made by fellow House Cuppers (and Slytherins) called "The Weasley Sisters", and they decided to run a Cardio Sock Swap. You had to make at least 25% of your socks while exercising, and then send them to your secret swapee. (I'm not sending mine to X yet, since the deadline is the end of June)

This next pair are Jaywalkers. I thought I'd make them for Kelly's birthday at the end of the month. I used some hand-dyed yarn that was supposed to be stripes of red and white and blue with sections of navy and stars... but it didn't quite work (cover your eyes):






So I did some overdyeing experiments


and decided on a darkish purple, which came out kinda reddish. Much better. These are Kelly's photos (and feet):




And as soon as I was finished those ones, I cast on these ones, using up some handspun that I've been meaning to sockify for ages. The handspun is quite thick, comparatively, probably the same as 8ply/DK. I did the foot with 2.75mm needles (very dense) and the leg with 3.5mm needles. They're waaaarm :)

And mine!







Yep, I've started some new socks. But they're cabled ones that may take me a year... so next time: New Stash. :)
Locations of visitors to this page