Tuesday 29 January 2013

More Yarn!

My mission for a while now has been to reduce my yarn stash - i.e to use up said yarn by knitting it into useful and beautiful objects and either sell them or foist them on to generously give them away to my friends and family.

However, since I have started spinning my yarn stash has increased as I am using up the knitting time and also buying fibre that I eventually turn into more yarn!  

So I am trying to use up some of the stash by plying existing yarn with just-spun yarn.  Like this...

Tanis turq plus brown sequin 2

Here I have plied some turqoise mix fibre from Tanis Fibre Arts with a brown mohair with sequins from ICE yarns.  This is the brown...

Brown with sequins

and here is a close-up of the sequins after plying the two yarns together...

Tanis turq plus brown sequin

I think it will knit up very well.

Sand and Sea


My most recent piece of knitting is another Sand and Sea shawlette in a shetland yarn (cinnamon) from World of Wool. I plied this yarn with a soft, fine cotton in cinnamon and green shades which I have had in my stash for ages...

tomato1

I normally don't much care for Autumn shades, but this shawlette is lovely...

tomato2

tomato, close

Setting the Twist


Yesterday I drove down to a bit south of Rochechouart (famous for the meteor crater) to see a new friend (hope I can call you a friend, Sue) who taught herself to spin last winter and is, naturally, streets ahead of me.  She has her own sheep, shears them herself, cards and spins the fleeces and manages lots of other things in a typical day too!  (I'll have to stop there, I'm feeling tired just thinking about it...).
Anyway - Sue told me I should wash my plied hanks and hang them with a weight on them to 'set the twist', so I'm trying it with this one to see if it really does make a difference to the final knitting.  (Normally I just ply, then wind onto my swift and then straight into a 'cake' with my ball winder (ooh-er missus..).
So this is my trial skein...

blue Noro with flatiron

...as you can see, the only weight I had was an old flatiron! It's certainly heavy, so should do the trick!



4 comments:

Kara @ Petals to Picots Crochet said...

The yarn you plied together looks wonderful! And your shawl turned out lovely!

Elizabethd said...

How nice that you have found someone else who shares your interests.
The autumn shawlette is so dainty and delicate.

Babajeza said...

There is never enough yarn, and the shawl is very nice! Have a great day! Regula

Debra in France said...

The autumn shawl is gorgeous. Great idea to use the iron as a weight. You are doing brilliantly with your spinning, well done. xx