Color Affection

I haven't been idle over the last week or so, but I haven't actually got a great deal of knitting done.

I've been spinning instead.

The start of the new school year means that my thoughts turn towards autumn and then, to winter.  Which means woolly-wear!  With hubby at home on hols until the beginning of October, my time in which to concentrate on things has been somewhat limited, so I've been spinning.

I started off with a pack of four 'bumps' of Shetland prepared fleece/roving from World of Wool:

 (I've 'stolen' the photo from the World of Wool website because I forgot to take a photo before I started spinning).

My plan was to spin the natural, grey and black into a thinnish yarn to make a Color Affection scarf/wrap.

I ended up with these three skeins:

Black = 101g/213 metres
Grey = 97g/223 metres
Natural = 94g/276 metres

I'm quite pleased because my spinning was fairly consistent and the three colours are a similar weight (more sport-weight than fingering).

This morning, I wound the yarns into cakes:

And at knitting group this morning I cast on and got this far:

I did the modification that others have mentioned in their project notes, of putting a yo between the first and second stitch at the beginning of each row and then dropping it on the next row to stop the edge being too tight when it comes to blocking at the end.

I'm not sure I'll have enough yarn to do the wrap exactly as per the pattern, so might modify it to make it a bit smaller (but it is rather big), or I might just see how far the yarn takes me and then fudge it a bit at the end.

I'll let you know in a future post.

Tomorrow's the first day back at music school for DD1 and as hubby's going to be doing kitchen tiling, I'll be taking DD2 with me and then, as the weather forecast is good, we might go for an earlyish run around on a beach somewhere (probably Clacton).  Unfortunately, it means that I won't be able to go to one of the quarterly(ish) Saturday get-togethers in Frating, a village a few miles from Colchester, which is a shame, but hopefully I'll be able to get to the next one.

I hope everyone has a good weekend :)

Nympheas Lace Scarf - FO

Yes - finally, I have finished knitting and blocked my Nympheas scarf.

I decided I needed to just get on and do it rather than picking it up, doing one pattern repeat and then putting it down again before picking it back up again a couple of days later.

The pattern: Nympheas by Mimi Hill (Ravelry link).
The yarn: Angel Sock from Natural Dye Studio in a dusky pink.
Needles: 4mm KnitPro Spectra.

The scarf measured 27x110cm before blocking.

After blocking, it had grown to 30x150cm, which gives a decent size.

Here's a close-up of the pattern.

And here's a close-up of one diamond.

Would I recommend this pattern?  Yes.  Mimi's patterns are always clearly written out and with this one, there are written instructions as well as a chart. 

I have to admit that when I first saw that it wasn't perfectly symmetrical but the rows of diamonds/leaves are offset, I wasn't 100% sure, but now that it's finished, I really like it.

Unfortunately, I don't really have anything to wear it with, so it may end up as a gift for someone.