spinning (not just plates)

I’m still here, and it’s time for another update. The rejig of our family life that was imminent last year has re-rejigged itself – my husband has gone back to work full time, having been offered a decent job, and so my knitting/spinning has returned to the level it was at previously – fits and starts, with all the other bits of my life jostling for priority!

I’ve got some yarn on order for another post box topper, hoping to get that done in the next week or so in time for our village summer fair, and this afternoon I’m going out to a knit’n’chat group in Kilsyth with my spinning wheel. Before Christmas I took some dowels, CDs, fibre, and my Louet along to a craft skill-sharing group run in our village for everyone to try their hand at, and recently one of the women at the group asked me if I could come along to their knitting group with them too. I’m always up for encouraging people to take up spinning, so that’s me organising my bits of fluff this morning ready for an hour or two of chatting, treadling, and probably a bit of dropping spindles.

I don’t have any wool fibre left to take with me, at the skill-sharing group somebody had brought along some bits of coloured wool fibre from a needle felting kit, but all I have personally (aside from a little handful of silk leftover from my wedding shawl) is plant fibre.

I bought some carbonised bamboo from Wingham Wool Work back in November, so I’ll be taking that, and possibly the ramie I got from them too, though that’s really slippery so I think I’ll just be giving them the bamboo to start on. The other thing I ordered at the time was corn fibre, and when I opened it at the demo before Christmas it smelled very strongly of some kind of chemical. I assumed it was maybe flame retardant or something, and had meant to email them to check it was okay, but forgot – having just opened it, the smell has faded (though there’s still a smell), but the fibre is ruined, sadly. It basically just breaks when you draw it apart, at first I thought it was just a very short fibre, but no, it’s snapping. There was no mention of this (and any necessary airing or other care required) on the site itself, so I’m a little disappointed, but I really should have followed it up straight away so that’s that. I probably won’t be buying more of that from there, though.

I’ve also got my little collection of plant fibres from Flora Fibres that I’m still a little too nervous to use on my wheel until I get a bit more practise with plant fibres, and one of these is flax. This is something that I’m hoping to have a go at growing in the not too distant future – one of the other things that has been distracting me recently has been a project that’s almost been going for two years now, to set up a site for community allotments in our village. It’s taken a long time, but we’re not far from arranging a lease from the council of a field within the village that we can use. While it started primarily as an allotment site, the project has metamorphosed into a place for wildlife, as well as community growing and get-togethers, alongside the individual plots, and some of what we hope to do there includes heritage craft activities.

Natural dyeing has been a popular suggestion, and while I was researching this (and other crafts such as basketry) I stumbled across a project to revitalise flax growing in Scotland. This led me down a bit of a rabbit-hole but I ended up reading about the old flax mills locally, notably in a village called Waterside, just along the road from the village I live in. One of the things that I think would be interesting to do as a group, then, would be to try growing, spinning, dyeing and weaving some linen, from ‘seed to shawl’, as it were.

The mill was dismantled years ago, and nothing remains of it now, sadly. It was, by all accounts, such a lovely place that people would travel from Glasgow to see it on the ‘Puffer’ steamboats along the Forth & Clyde canal, and which is presumably why this postcard of it exists.

 

baubles and beads (no bangles)

I mentioned a few weeks ago that there were things afoot, and I realise I haven’t said anything else since, so this post is an update on that, with some added extras.

I’ve spent the last three weeks knitting little covers for baubles, and I have to say it’s a little addictive. I’m going to be writing up my pattern for one of the designs eventually, and the ones I’ve made are for sale – I’ve already sold a few, but while I’m also taking a few custom orders in the run up to Christmas, there are still some ready made ones available, listed on my facebook page here –

https://www.facebook.com/spilikins/posts/6930812596929612

So far I’ve done a few different lace stitch patterns – diagonal mesh, leaf lace, little arrowhead and a few improvised combinations of yarnovers and k2togs – but by far my favourite is an Estonian lace motif, the double waterlily. I got the basic idea for the eyelet baubles after seeing a vintage pattern on the wayback machine and adapting it to fit the size of bauble I had, and after trying various yarn weights I decided to have a go at something a little more decorative.

There are lots of charts and tutorials out there for all kinds of lace stitch patterns, but I found the waterlily on a blog which sadly appears to have been dormant for the last ten years, called ‘New Lace, Old Traditions‘. All the charts for the motifs there are available as free pdf downloads on ravelry, for knitters to use in their work.

I’ve knitted a few pieces from patterns comprised of traditional Estonian lace stitch patterns before, and find their almost organic forms particularly beautiful. I’m fairly sure the first one would have been Evelyn Clark’s Swallowtail Shawl, which I knitted for my husband’s granny in 2009, and blogged about here. It’s a lovely pattern, though there are *lots* of nupps to knit. The second one was, I think, Laminaria, which I’m ashamed to say has still never been blocked (coincidentally, you can see the fibre I dyed for that in the post before the one about the Swallowtail).

I’ve still not changed anything on the site as yet, I’m hoping to get set up with a proper host and domain name and all that jazz, but have yet to decide on who to go with (I’m thinking bluehost, but need to do a bit more research). Once that’s done I’ll be able to play with the inner workings a bit more.

The main change that I alluded to in my previous post has basically been that I’ve started to focus on being more business-like with my knitting, helped in part by my husband currently only working part time. ‘Business like’ sounds dreadful, but it will hopefully mean that I’m a lot more organised (like I used to be, when I started this blog), and I’m counting on the knock-on effect of that being that I’m a lot more productive, which doesn’t sound quite so dreadful.

I’ve already done much more research into yarns and fibre than I’ve done in the last couple of years, and I’m hoping that I can feed back sales of little knits into my business, buy more yarn, and develop and test more patterns. And, I’ll be honest, I’m hoping this will rekindle the spark that got a bit knocked out of me when I took the decision to stop using wool (it has to be doable, seeing as I never touched it for the first twenty odd years of my knitting life).

I’m also hoping to branch out a little, and record a few video tutorials for youtube. If I can get my setup right before Christmas the first will be one of these baubles, they’re such a quick knit and while they look quite complex, they’re just two repeats (horizontally), with only one intricate stitch – maybe not good for a complete novice knitter, but anyone that can happily knit stocking stitch will be able to pick them up with just a little extra guidance, I think, and it’s the kind of thing that youtube is made for.

the colour of nostalgia

I had a quick run out to the Hobbycraft store in Easterhouse this week to see if I could pick up some yarn to start work on some Christmas knits, and completely drew a blank on getting any festive red yarn in a shade I liked, let alone a red and white in the same yarn.

Determined not to come home emptyhanded, I chose these –

They’re not what you’d call traditional colours, but the combination somehow reminded me of Christmas when I was really young, with its twisty crepe garlands, and silk and glass baubles hung on the tree – there would definitely have been some turquoise and silver somewhere in there too, not to mention quite a few plastic decorations. (I lost a whole bunch of these in a house move, but I don’t beat myself up too much about missing the couple of boxes that got left behind in the cupboard in the hall – I’d not long had my second child, and there was a lot going on!)

The yarn is Patons 100% Cotton DK, in Raffia, Fuchsia and Kiwi.

I’m now trying to work out what I’m going to make with them, and in what combination/s. I’m not sure whether socks (particularly stranded motifs) will work, they might look a bit of a mess – stripes of varying thicknesses might work, although my other thought for little Christmas knits for this year was bookmarks, but I’m not sure how I’d combine these colours for those, either. It’s possible they might work in twos ie green/bronze, purple/bronze and maybe even purple/green, worked in double knitting so the patterns would be reversible, but that would also make them chunkier than would probably be ideal.

Time for some experimentation, I think… and maybe a trip to a different yarn store, to see if I can get myself some red and white for some more traditional knits.

things are afoot…

(Not strange things, and probably not at the Circle-K.)

You’ll likely have noticed that it’s been quiet here for some time.

There are a number of reasons for this, initially it was mostly down to a project I’ve been working on for the last eighteen months, but latterly, we’ve had to adjust to a major change in our family’s circumstances. I’m happy to announce, though, that while that adjustment has been far from smooth and easygoing, it has enabled myself and my husband to make a lot of changes for the better, in terms of both our family and working lives.

This will likely be reflected in upcoming changes to this website, about which there will certainly be more details to follow very soon, but for now, here’s the progress of the socks I was working on way back at the start of the year – one down, a little less than one to go!

bringing back the mojo

I’ve had a short break from postbox topper crafting while I got on with a commission, a pair of socks with a yarn I’ve never used before – it’s a cotton/acrylic blend, Scheepjes Softfun, and I’m very happy with the results –

(apologies for the quality of that second photo – it was a quick snap before they were parcelled up, and I hadn’t noticed it was blurred until it was too late!)

The yarn is a DK, so they’re nice and cosy (the gauge on the ball band is 21sts/30 rows with 4mm needles, and I used 3mm needles for a tighter knit, which in its pre-washed and blocked state was  24sts/32 rows). When I ordered the yarn for these I also got a couple of balls of Stylecraft ‘Naturals’ Bamboo/cotton DK, and the main reason I’m not using that for these socks is that despite the DK written on the band, it looks much more like a 4ply or sport weight yarn.

This one apparently has a 4mm needle gauge of 22sts/28 rows, but I’m assuming that would yield a thinner fabric, at least compared to the one I got with the Softfun. I’m going to definitely make use of ravelry’s yarn/projects search to see what people have made with it and hopefully get some ideas of what it might work best with, though I might just turn it into a pair of socks anyway.

I think my next new-to-me purchases are going to be primarily chosen for sampling, most likely a ball or two of Drops’ Bomull-Lin, which is a cotton/linen blend in an aran weight, and some Scheepjes Skies Heavy (which is listed as a DK on their site but as an aran on ravelry) for comparison. I’d also like to try some Scheepjes Organicon, a 4ply, and some of their Bamboo Soft, which will require a wander through the projects pages for these on ravelry too, to see if I get any inspiration for some quick little knits. That said, I’ve seen a recommendation this morning for Go Handmade’s Tencel Bamboo DK, and that’s piqued my curiosity, although stockists for Go Handmade yarns don’t seem so plentiful here in the UK. There’s Hobbii, who I first heard about after they advertised on Facebook a while back, and another company called Lindehobby who I found on a google search. Both of them are based in Denmark, and I’ve never bought from either of them before, so if I go for a sample of this yarn too that’ll be a double first.

The postbox topper construction can now continue, of course, though I’ve gone and  sidetracked myself with a pair of socks in Drops Safran that I think may just end up being mine (otherwise they’ll be for my elder daughter). I cannot for the life of me get a decent photo of the colour, which Drops calls ‘Petrol’ and looks like this on their site –

Closer to how it should look than the photos I keep taking, but still not quite right as in real life it’s darker and maybe just a smidge greener – though that changes in different lights, too. This is the most recent photo I have, taken this morning –

which is dark enough, but not green enough. I’ve noticed my phone has a tendency to super saturation – as you can see in the photo I took yesterday –

That neon pink yarn *is* neon, but it’s not actually fluorescent! And the other pinks are relatively muted. The reds aren’t quite that bright either. Not sure why it does that to yarn – as you can see, my mug of tea isn’t glowing, so I’m assuming it’s a surface thing – the worst culprits in this image are mostly acrylic yarns.

Off in the bottom left corner you can see all that I’ve managed so far of my ‘Coachie Bear’ for one of the post boxes. He’s a long term WIP, and I’m not thinking of releasing him into the wild for a while yet. I think my ‘current’ topper is going to be mostly rainbows, but I need to work on a pattern for those, and I’m hoping that by my next post I’ll have at least one to show off.

The other thing I’ve been doing is fiddling with the settings of my instagram account. It’s been there for ages, sad and unused, so I thought I’d better tidy it up a bit. It seems to be quite a nice way to share quick little posts, and I expect I’ll use it more now I’ve swept the cobwebs out (and actually downloaded the app to my phone), though I still need to get properly used to it. Previously I didn’t really have a phone with a camera worth using, but my new one is much more suited to the job, saturation notwithstanding. I used it for all of the photos bar the second one on this post (taken with my ‘proper’ camera, albeit on a fairly low quality setting, I think), and I think it holds up reasonably well, though it’s definitely harder to keep still than my DSLR.

If anyone’s interested in following me, my instagram account lives at –

instagram.com/spili.kins/