why I knit

Both my maternal and paternal Grandmas knit and they found the time to teach me how when I was a young and impressionable girl. I remember making a garter stitch scarf and even a whole cardigan (which I don't remember actually wearing) before wandering off to other things.

I didn't get back to knitting until many years later. Too late to enjoy knitting with one of my Grandmas, which I greatly regret.

This week, my other Gran passed and I am still in a state of disbelief that she's gone. Both of them were utterly amazing and wonderful women and I feel extremely grateful that they were my grandmas.

I'll miss you very, very much Gran.

fleece project, part 3

The wool I am in the process of washing-carding-spinning-knitting is a fleece from my friends' Welsh Mountain sheep. I've been doing some reading and the typical staple length is 8-10cm and micron measurement is 35-28. What I have is a lovely mottled brown / grey and reminds me of some shetland I spun last year.

I'm spinning a 2-ply

resulting in a roughly dk weight

I have about 230 yds so far. When setting the twist I gave the yarn a final bath of hot water with detergent to get out the last of the lanolin. You can probably tell my carding and resultant spinning was not the smoothest in the world, but the end result exhibits a certain rustic charm I'm enjoying.

I'm getting some prepared Welsh from Lisa soon, so I'm looking forward to spinning more of this lovely breed. My friend has chickens in her backyard. I'm sure no-one (but my dog, maybe) would notice if I had a little sheep in mine...

wip wednesday

miscellaneous works in progress...

messing around with light scarf ideas and fingering weight yarn. fabulous skein from Dani.

test-knitting this piece of brilliance from Connie

(the crazy heat ended, so back to) spinning the fleece I washed and carded

making these. they rock.

starting obedience classes next week. though she's already perfectly awesome.

more on everything soon.

contiguous study

Pattern: SusieM's Contiguous Method for the shoulder seams and sleeve caps, then the rest was from my head

Yarn: Madelinetosh Sock Yarn, 3 skeins in colour 'kelp'

I love top-down construction for sweaters, so I wanted to try out this method for establishing the shoulder seams and sleeve caps. It differed quite a bit from other methods I'd tried...I kept thinking of it as sort of an amalgamation between a raglan and set in sleeve method. You work along a single line of back of neck stitches, increasing on both ends to form the front and back shoulders, then increasing again to make the sleeve caps.

From there I just stayed simple, making 3/4 sleeves and easy stockinette with some garter trim. Nice loose gauge in fingering weight yarn in an absolutely fabulous deep teal colour. Great summer knitting.