Fruits of my labours

Good afternoon! It's been rather a gloomy day here on the North Norfolk coast - perfect knitting and spinning weather though! I've tried to do some spinning most days since getting back from my weekend away, and now have three skeins of reasonably knittable yarn.

I used a braid of BFL superwash from the Skein Queen for my first go. Even though I thought that I'd given the yarn a lot of twist, when it came to the Navajo plying, it soon became apparent that I hadn't, as I got quite a few breaks, so I have too many lumpy joins. It's really soft yarn though, and I can see the benefits of this plying method to show off really long colour runs. I will probably knit this into a snuggly hat for next winter.

The next fibre I chose came from Colourful Designs, and is a 70/30 mix of BFL and seacell. The seacell gives it a silky sheen and it feels rather luxurious. This wasn't as slippy to spin as I'd thought it might be, and I decided to split the fibre into two halves and then spin them as singles before plying them. I've ended up with almost 200m of yarn - enough for a little neck shawl I think!

For my third try, I used some merino cross that I'd bought from the EasyKnits stand at KnitNation last summer. Merino isn't as easy to spin as BFL as the fibres are more slippy. I decided to have another try at Navajo plying, and spun a thicker yarn to try and avoid breakages. I'm really pleased with how the finished yarn looks. The colours are lovely, and slightly chalky compared with the original fibre. It's a pretty chunky yarn, and there's not much of it. I do have a little project in mind for it though, so watch this space!

All of this spinning means that not much knitting has been done. I've finished both sleeves on my Peasy cardigan and am knitting my way down the body, but it doesn't make for very exciting blogging!! I've done a few more granny squares for the Crochet a Rainbow project, and I need to play catch up with my Innocent Smoothie hats. And today I received a pattern from Anne Hanson that I'm test knitting, so I need to concentrate on that for the next few days. I need more hours in my day! Have a good week, and I hope you find some time to knit or spin too! xxx