An Unexpected Mini-Jaunt

A non-knitting post today (more or less).

A few weekends ago (the last weekend before the girls broke up for the summer holidays), I got home from my Sunday shift at work and hubby asked me if I definitely had the following weekend off.  I said that I did and he then said that I'd got plans for that weekend.  "Oh, are we going somewhere?" I asked.  He then told me that no, we weren't, but DD1 and I were.  He'd decided that we might like a night away in London.  We could either stay overnight on the Saturday or the Sunday.  As he's been away for work so much in the last nine months, he'd amassed a fair amount of Hilton loyalty points and so we looked at hotel availability and it came down to a choice between the Hilton at Marble Arch on the Saturday night, or the Hilton Tower Bridge, which is the one he usually stays at as it's close to his office.  We decided on Sunday night at the Tower Bridge hotel (hubby stays there so often, the staff know him and give him good service).  So, the hotel was booked and hubby even pre-booked first class train tickets for us (which worked out the same price or possibly even cheaper than buying standard class tickets on the day).

What did I immediately do (other than give him a thank you kiss of course!)?  Went online and checked Loop London's opening hours!

Sunday morning, DD1 and I left the house at 9.30 with our little wheelie case and off we went.  Once at Liverpool Street, we left the station and walked to Moorgate tube (much quicker than getting the Circle/Hammersmith & City line one stop and then switching trains) to pick up the Northern Line northbound to Angel.  Why did I want to go to Loop?  Because it's the only yarn shop in the UK that stocks Brooklyn Tweed yarns.  We were there more or less as the shop opened and I had a good squish (while DD1 looked a bit bored).  This yarn looks very nice online and I can confirm that it looks and feels even better in Real Life.  So nice, in fact, that I bought a bit more than I'd planned (but only two extra skeins):

Six skeins of the purple Thistle shade and one skein each of the yellowy Sap and blue Almanac (the pink is the bag Loop put my purchase into).  I would have bought six of the Almanac instead of the Thistle, but they didn't have that many.  I'm going to give the Sap to my sister for her birthday and make a hat with the Almanac.  The purple Thistle is going to be a sweater/cardigan for me (bet you didn't guess that!) but I haven't decided which one yet.

After Loop, we took the Tube to London Bridge station, walked along Tooley Street, went through Hays Galleria and had a little wander along the river and then went to see if we could check in to the hotel (which we could - it was a Sunday; the hotel wasn't very busy).  Hubby had stayed at the hotel the previous Thursday night and had confirmed that we'd be upgraded to an Executive room, which meant access to the Executive Lounge, which was very nice as well.

We took advantage of our upgrade to have tea and snacks in the Lounge before walking along the river again, seeing how much it's been developed in the 14 years since I worked in London full-time.  We had pre-dinner drinks and nibbles in the Lounge and then dinner in the hotel restaurant and then I made DD1 come with me for a long-ish walk along and over Tower Bridge, along the north bank to London Bridge and then back down the south bank to the hotel.  A nice break away from home - a mini-jaunt with yarn purchase as a bonus.

I took quite a few photos while I was there (some of which I've used in my 50 words photo challenge, which I'm doing again this year).  Here are some of them:

Tower Bridge

The White Tower at the Tower of London

New developments on the north side of the Thames

The Mayor's office, with The Shard behind

View down-river to Canary Wharf
(I lived for a while in a warehouse conversion flat not far from that building with the blue bits on it!)

The Tower of London from the North bank

 

St Pauls from the Executive Lounge 

The Thames at night
(HMS Belfast on the right; our hotel is a short walk from it)

Tower Bridge all lit up (taken from London Bridge)

On Monday morning, we got up, had breakfast in the Exec Lounge and then went and got our bags, dropped off the check-out slip and walked to London Bridge tube from where we got the Jubilee Line to Stratford and spent the morning at Westfield shopping centre (which I found almost too big).  We spent a bit more money (including buying a pair of ceramic hair straighteners to try and tame DD1's hair - but not for everyday use, she's been warned), had some lunch and then went back to Stratford station to pick up our train home (I'd phoned hubby the night before and he'd confirmed that the train we were booked on stopped at Stratford, so we didn't have to go back to Liverpool St first).  And then, after a short walk from the station, we were home again and back to reality!

All in all, a very pleasant day-and-a-bit, thanks to hubby.  I think I'll keep him!

I've also worked out that 'popping' to Loop on a day when the girls are at school is very do-able (I could spend at least and hour and a half in there and make it back home on time).  Might start saving my £1 and £2 coins in a jar for a future visit.

Some Hurricane Alpaca yarn and a WIP

I did it!  I made yarn from sheared fleece.

I was really, really worried that this had felted when I washed it, but apart from it sticking together a little bit where I'd tied the skein, it was ok.  It's perhaps slightly fuzzier than I'd have liked, but it's oh-so-soft (sorry for being a bit trumpet-blowy there) and I'm so pleased with it.  By look and feel, I reckon it's about a DK-weight yarn and pre-washing, there was more or less 150m, which should be enough for an Awesome Hat (bought the pattern today - Mimi's patterns are always well-written).  I might have to make the turney-uppey brim a bit shorter by a couple of cms, but I reckon I've got enough (famous last words - if I try to knit fast, will the yarn last longer? :D ).

So, that's the yarn.  What else have I been knitting?  Well, there's a pair of socks.  Well, not really a pair.  One sock.  Which I've been knitting since the end of May.  I turned the heel last week (I'm toe-upping, as per usual) and have done a couple of rows of the leg on the first one, but that's it.  Rather lame really, so I won't show you a photo until I've done a bit more.

The other thing I've been - here and there (more 'there' at knitting group on a Monday) - knitting is my Reine cardigan.  I think I started this around the same time as I started the socks.  I have no idea why this is taking so long, other than the end of term/summer weather stuff I talked about in my last post.  I think it must be summer knitting ennui.  Anyway, the lack of progress is nothing to do with the pattern, which is as well-written as any other Brooklyn Tweed pattern I've knitted.  Comprehensive, detailed, a good schematic, isn't crammed into as few pages as possible, etc.  I'm about 12 rows away from dividing at the under-arm.

Photos?  OK then!

The top one's a bit clearer, the bottom one shows a more accurate yarn colour on my laptop screen.  Can you see why I like this cardigan?  No ribbing at the bottom, but some garter stitch ridges instead, which makes the bottom lie flatter.  A ribbed button band?  No, thank you - let's have some cabling instead, working up the fronts and along the edges (I'm decreasing up the fronts at the moment - a simple matter of an ssk at the right front and a k2tog on the left, but inside the cabley bits).  What's so thoughtful about this pattern is that all the shaping decreases and increases occur on the same row as the cables are done.  So are the buttonholes (every third cable cross row).  Inspired design thinking in my book.  None of that cable on row x and then remember how many rows since you last did a buttonhole and hope you've got it right malarkey.

The yarn is my handspun (grey North Ronaldsay - bought and spun to make this cardigan).  I've absolutely no idea why I'm not just getting on with it as I'm really looking forward to finishing it, choosing buttons and wearing it.  I've even left it like this since early evening:

See?  Started a row, got distracted/my attention or help was required, and there it's sat all night.

It's the summer though.  Children hindering me (DD2 is sleeping particularly poorly at the moment).  Even Jess is being more hindrance than help.  She likes the alpaca (raw fleece and yarn).  Jess is the reason for the poorer-than-usual photos today.  Look:

See in the background?  A black paw.

Zoom pulled back a bit:

And this is when she had a hopeful 'can I pick it up yet, Mum?' look about her (the answer was a firm 'no'):

We've had a funny couple of weeks with Jess.  She's been in season.  She's now 3-and-a-half.  Prime breeding age.  She's been unsettled, wanting to go out in the garden umpteen times every day and have a widdle.  Hubby was worried she was unwell.  I gave him one of those "for someone clever, you can be really stupid at times" looks.  "She's not ill - she's feeling frisky" I told him.  Not that we're going to breed her; I don't think I could cope with puppies + DD2.

Usually, Jess is more likely to be found in this position:

Or this one:

Most glamorous!

I have other non-knitting-related things to post about.  Hopefully tomorrow or Thursday, depending on the laundry pile.

How long has it been?

At least a couple of months.

Truth be told, with the activities at the end of the school year and the running around getting things ready for the six-week summer holidays from school, I haven't really been getting on with knitting, crocheting or spinning.  I have got a couple of projects on the needles that I'll show you in a day or two, but I wanted to show you something different today :)

A few weeks ago, my sister phoned me.  "I've got a bag of alpaca fleece in the boot of my car for you" she said.  "Remind me to give it to you the next time I see you".  In the event, the next time I saw her, she didn't have the bag of alpaca in her boot as she'd had to take it out to make room for something else and it hadn't got put back in.  I've got it now though - my parents dropped it off the week before last.

When she said 'a bag', I assumed she meant a supermarket carrier bag full.  No.  It's a potato sack full of the fleece from an alpaca named Hurricane.  I reckon there's a few kilos of fleece in there.  Hurricane's owner is a chap who's a client of my sister's gym (sis re-trained as a sports injury masseuse and has added other strings to her bow and now does other therapies as well as personal training) and when she found out he had alpacas, sis told him that I've got a spinning wheel and, well, things led on from there.  The 'deal' is that if I make Hurricane's owner something (I said a hat to start with because I didn't know how successful I'd be and how much of the fleece I'd end up ruining/wasting).

Here's a bag of the fleece:

That's as it came from Hurricane, complete with dirt, grit and bits of vegetable matter.

I read up on the internet and most people advise spinning the fibre and then washing the resulting yarn, although some people prefer to wash the fleece first.  I went with the first option and used my drum carder to make a batt of around 45g:

Then I pulled it off and started spinning.  This is where I'm at:

I'm hoping that it'll wash up ok.  I'm going to make a 3-ply yarn which should be sport or DK weight.  Truth be told, as alpaca's warmer than sheep-wool, I don't want to go much thicker than DK otherwise the hat will run the risk of being too hot.  I've got in mind Mimi Hill's latest hat pattern but if the yarn comes out more 4ply than DK then I'll have a re-think.  I'm not that worried as this is a bit of a steep learning curve for me.  I've used my drum carder to blend fibres, but not to prepare from 'raw' and as the only alpaca I've spun was a silk blend, I don't know how (or if) the yarn will bloom once washed.

I also put some of the fibre into a mesh bag and put it on a wool wash in my machine.  It's currently hanging on the garden gate, drying so I'll see in a couple of hours if it's felted and if it's ok, I might hand-card that (there's only about 20g) and see how it spins up compared to the 'dirty' fibre.  In the meantime, I've got a pair of tweezers to hand and stop spinning to pick out any bits that didn't drop out when I shook the fibre and then carded it.

I'm going to leave this yarn as its natural colour.  Partly because I've only dyed with food colouring (which tends to fade) and partly because I think for this first effort it's the right thing to do.  My in-laws recently moved house and I've been given two saucepans they no longer wanted (stainless steel ones) so as I don't need both of them, I might keep one and buy some acid dyes (I bet that'll go down a storm with hubby :D ).

I have to say that I'm having a fair amount of fun with this :)  I'm just not going to look at the state of the house today, especially as DD2 has been left to her own devices for most of the morning......

A bit meurgh!

It's been nearly a month since my last post.

That's because there hasn't been much to say and the last four weeks haven't been the easiest.

DD2 had to have some dental treatment.  Autism and sitting in a dentist's chair aren't a match made in heaven.  At her check-up in January, it was discovered that she needed two fillings - back teeth, one on each side.  We went back and forth to the dentist in the hope that DD2 would be obliging and have the treatment done there, but it became evident that that wasn't going to happen, so she had to have them done under general anaesthetic, at the hospital.  The treatment went well, but we've had a few weeks of fall-out with challenging behaviour, temper tantrums and such-like, which hasn't been fun.  The treatment was done in the morning and almost as soon as we got home, I developed a pain down the left side of my neck and into my shoulder.  I'm sure it was a lifting of the stress regarding the treatment.  That lasted a few days and then I came down with a horribly chesty cold and cough which is only just going.

As a result of all that, I've found it difficult to drum up the enthusiasm for anything.  I haven't felt enthused by my knitting projects and felt as though I was plodding my way through them.

So, last week I decided to try and kick-start things, delved into my yarn-stash and pulled out some balls of cotton and crocheted some dishcloths:

Quick and easy to make and the satisfaction of getting something started and finished pretty quickly.  The pink and blue/green ones are made from Anchor Magicline.  The orange/yellow one is some cotton I bought in Lidl and the 'greige' is a leftover ball of RYC Cotton Jeans (I've finished my v-neck jumper, but I've been wearing it and it needs a wash before I take photos and show it off).  I used a very simple stitch pattern, working trebles (UK), DCs (US) along each row, but working between the stitch rather than just through the  top two strands of the preceding row.  I got the idea from the Vintage Vertical Stripe blanket.  It makes a nice firm fabric, but the open-weave nature means the cloths dry more quickly than ones made doing regular trebles.

I also finished the pair of socks I had on the needles:

The yarn's Regia bamboo that I bought a few years ago.  These are very similar to the pink garter rib socks I finished at the beginning April, but with a couple of changes.  First off, I did two plain knit rounds and then k4, p4 on the third round.  I also did the gusset a bit differently.  Usually, I increase every other round for the gussets (I knit my socks toe-up), but I have a high instep and particularly with ribbed socks, I notice that the fabric is a bit more stretched from about two-thirds of the way up my foot, so with these I started the gusset increases 10 rounds early and increased every third round.  I think I'll be doing the same thing with future socks as the fit's much better for me.

I've now got two new things on the needles - a cardigan and a pair of socks.  I'll give you a progress report in a few days.

One more school day to go and then it's the half-term break for a week before the final six or so weeks of this school year.  I think the girls and I are all ready for a week of not having to get up early, although DD1 has end-of-year exams the week immediately after the break, so will be doing revising.

Two Sides of the Coin

More spinning stuff from me today.

Here's a skein of yarn I've made that I'm pleased with:

I started off with this top (which I think Lucy - who dyed it - and I decided was probably Falkland):

I divided it into three and spun each third into a single:

And then I plyed it into just over 150m of a worsted/aran-weight yarn.

It will probably become a hat, a scarf or a pair of mittens.

This one I'm not pleased with (I haven't even taken it off the niddy noddy to wash):

I started off with this merino/silk blend from World of Wool (it's called Gemini).

I originally spun the whole 100g bump into a single:

With the intention of spinning another single from this bump of red-toned merino:

and then plying them together, but as the blue/red/rust one began to spin up, it became obvious that the colours wouldn't work together once spun.

So, I wound the blueish single into a centre pull ball on my ball winder and then made a 2ply yarn.

If I've counted the turns on the niddy noddy correctly, it's 264 metres and a heavy fingering weight yarn.  Probably enough for a pair of socks.

The red?  Well, I've spun the 100g bump I had into this single:

I'm now planning on buying another 500g and spinning it up into enough yarn to make a cardigan.  Red is always a difficult colour to photograph which is why there's a banana in the photo above, which gives quite a good indication of the colour.  It's a very rich, ruby red.

I'm now going to concentrate on my knitting WIPs for the next few days as I've got a sweater and two pairs of socks on the go and could do with getting them finished.

Have a good weekend, even if the weather in the UK has got a bit pants again.

Spinning Around

The last few weeks I've been doing more spinning than knitting.

Last summer I bought 500g of North Ronaldsay top (from Scottish Fibres).  North Ronaldsay sheep are different from other sheep in that their diet consists mostly of seaweed.  This gives their fleece a different feel to that of other sheep.  It's springy - almost stretchy.

I have to admit that when I first started spinning this, it wasn't love at first treadle.  I wondered if I'd made a big mistake in buying it - that it was beyond my nowhere near expert spinning ability and that I should put it aside for future use, but I'd bought it with the intention of knitting a Reine cardigan and I'd already bought and downloaded the pattern.

Early last week I finished spinning the fifth 100g bump of fleece, so washed it and hung it up to dry.

Using my niddy noddy to make each bobbin of plyed yarn into a skein (before washing) and counting the turns, I was able to keep track of how many metres were in each skein and I've got 1087 metres.

Which I'm not sure is going to be enough.  The pattern says that for my size, I need six skeins of yarn, which is 1255 metres for five balls, plus however much of the sixth skein needs to be used.  In other words, 200-400 metres short.

Looking at the finished Reines on Ravelry and reading some of the comments, it seems to be quite a long cardigan, so I'm tempted to read the pattern properly before I start (unusual for me, I know!), knit a swatch and compare the finished measurements in the pattern to my own body length and decide if shortening it would mean a better-looking cardigan for me.  I might just start knitting it once I've finished my current sweater and then buy some more fleece/top if it looks as though I'm going to run out.

I'm quite pleased with this.  My spinning was fairly consistent and the four of the skeins are more or less the same metres/gramme (one's slightly thinner than the others, but that's ok - I can alternate skeins).  The original Reine is knitted in Brooklyn Tweed Loft yarn (knitting the cardigan in that would cost in the region of £80 for my size, I think) which is a woolly, lofty yarn and I think the way I've spun the North Ronaldsay has given me a yarn that's similar in style.

Overall I'm pleased with it and I think working with this breed of fleece has definitely meant my spinning has improved.

I've been doing some other spinning since finishing off this, but I'll tell you about that tomorrow as it hasn't worked out quite how I expected.

Roam Fusion Socks

See this yarn?

It's the remains of the ball of Wendy Roam Fusion sock yarn I used to make this pair of plain socks.

Here they are:

Nothing special are they.  Which is a shame, as the yarn in the ball looked quite promising.

I have to say that it's not a yarn I'll be buying again.  It's quite loosely plyed, which meant it was easy to split it whilst knitting (a bit more twist would have made a difference).  It's also not that soft.  The finished socks feel a bit rough and also a bit hairy.  Once I've worn them and get round to washing them, I might rinse them in some water to which I've added a blob of hair conditioner and see if that softens them up again.

Having said that, I'll probably find that these wear like iron and I'm still pulling them on my feet two years from now!