NEWT 5

They are done!

Now, I've finished 5 NEWTS and have lots of new yarn :)

L to R: Single ply (slightly fulled), 3 green skeins of 2ply, 2 skeins of Navajo ply, 2 skeins of yellow cabled 4ply, true 3ply and true 4ply. Total yards of finished yarn: 4000. (9500y of singles)

I'm most proud of this lot. 300g of batts (merino/polwarth/silk) into 1962y (about 1800m of 2ply laceweight)

The light green is my best yardage ever: 1392y/1272m per 100g of singles. Not sure I'd ever bother to knit with laceweight, but I might weave a huge green scarf with it, or something. We'll see...

So the NEWT is done, and I also finished Quidditch. When the final round started, I sat down and started spinning; 6 hours later (I watched "Oklahoma" and "The Green Mile" while I spun, and finished at 3:30am) I was the first person to hand mine in. Slytherin is doing so well in this Quidditch game that hardly any of us needed to actually compete in the Final, we were that far ahead. But I had to do All the Things...

Then the Tour de Fleece started. I started off my spinning with this colorful orangey one, which is one of Kathy's Fibres, a new mix of BFL, mohair and silk. Really nice to spin. Spun into 2 skeins of 2ply (for socks :) with a fractal pattern.

 Then I spun up this one, which was the 3ply for my NEWT. It was fiddley to ply (I like n-ply better) but I do like the way it mixes the colors up.

And then I did green laceweight for daaaaays... :)


 This is the newest club fibre from Kathy. It's the Winter edition; not very Wintery colors, but she said she was thinking of Minestrone. lol.

 I also got some more BFL/mohair. Hehe.

Jasmine had her birthday! She's 6, now, and I gave her the 'sweater dress', plus the top and leggings to go with it. She couldn't have a party with her prep friends (middle of the holidays) but she spent the day with 6 of her cousins, so she had a ball!

P.S. I measured her. She's 127cm tall. (!!)

The hood is weird, and mucks up the nice cowl neck. She doesn't care; she wanted a hood. I unpicked the top of the cowl neck, did a Fleegle heel, and some rounds of ribbing. It looks so bizarro... LOL.

Made a few more hats :)

Flora

And a "mock cable" hat.

Most fun are these little cute things. The green one was from last month, and the blue one with extra buttons is this month's work. Next month: a new nephew to put into them! Hopefully, I'll get to see at least a picture before he grows out of them (if he's not already too big... LOL)

Next time, what I got up to at the Bendigo Sheep and Wool Festival last Friday!

End of June

I spun up one of the lots of Wensleydale. Don't like the feel of it much; it's a bit coarse. It spins up pretty easily, though.

Had fun making this one. I started this one in church, as I sat there with just Zachary, and I told him I was making him a green hat. He flung his arms around me and said, "Oh, thank you, Mummy!" with lots of enthusiasm... So funny. I added some Shrek ears, too, which he loved. Really. This is his "I'm an OGRE!" face :)

 The second lot of laceweight is done. I have 150g each of the dark and light green, so I decided to spin 3 skeins, one of each, and one with a strand of each. So the one on the left here is the new one, with a strand of each, and the one on the right is the previously spun laceweight in the dark green, for comparison.

 This one turned out to be the thinnest yet: the single was 100g and measured 1240m.

I also pulled out this green "Dream in Color" yarn, leftover from Jasmine's 3rd birthday top, and made up a teeny Puerperium. Only took a few days to knit, but I washed it, and it took several days to dry! :) It's for my nephew (due soon)... and I think I'll make another in blue Rios. I've washed and de-pilled Jasmine's old top, too, which Zac has now grown out of. Might give it to Lyla (the new nephew's big 2yo sister) so they can match. Hehe.

Also spun a bit of merino. Was trying to spin this thickly (for Quidditch, where the minimum was 300 yards) but accidentally got twice that length (in singles). hehe. 

I finished spinning this one, today, again, trying to spin thickly. 648y. I just can't spin the fat stuff very well. It ended up being only a quarter of that, because this is the 4ply yarn for my NEWT. It was fiddley to keep tension on 4 plies at once, but I like how it worked out. 

The Tour de Fleece is coming up shortly. The Hogwarts Headmistress asked me to be the captain of the team this year, which is fun, and exactly 100 people are signed up so far. Think I might start with some green :)