Feeling Citrussy

You may remember that I have been a member of Picperfic's Luxury Fibre Club for three months this year. I have been thrilled with all the fibres I have received, and shall definitely be signing up for the next round of fibery goodness later in the year. Marianne has a wonderful eye for colour and I have not been disappointed with any of the fibre blends or colourways I've bought from her. April's squishy parcel revealed Darling, a blend of superfine merino, cashmere and silk. Marianne spiral dyed it so the colour changed gradually from aqua through to black.The colourway is Esme, after Marianne's new grandchild.

Marianne suggested spinning it from the fold, using this video to help.

One of the things I like about Marianne's fibre club is that she offers suggestions for spinning, and includes a sample of the spun fibre. Sometimes she also suggests a pattern to knit using the spun yarn. I chose to spin the yarn using my usual drafting technique, but did follow the suggestion to spin a single with a view to knitting a Citron shawl. It took quite a while, but eventually my bobbin was full. In this photo you can see the darker shades, all the aqua and blues are hidden underneath!

I wound the yarn onto the niddy noddy, and managed to do so without any breaks! It was quite overtwisted in some places. I changed my spinning ratio part way through the spinning as I thought I was putting too much twist into the yarn. I loved the colour changes I could see.

When I took the skein off the niddy noddy, it sprang into a 'mess' of tangled spaghetti! Had I not read Marianne's accompanying newsletter, I'd have been seriously panicking by now!

But I followed the instructions for fulling the singles, with two rounds of soaking in very hot and then cold water, followed by some serious thwacking and snapping of the skein! The skein was left to dry. After drying, much of the overtwisting had gone, although it wasn't perfectly straight. I posted this photo in Marianne's Ravelry group, and the view was that once knitted and blocked, the little springy parts would disappear.

So I wound the yarn into a lovely, fat yarn cake. It gave me great pleasure to see how the colours changed towards the centre of the yarn. And it was my hand spun, mine!!!

I cast on the Citron shawl, it grows very quickly and proved quite a distraction during my report writing!!

The ruffled sections got slightly tedious towards the end, since you are doubling your stitch number during these rows. But it is an easy, mindless knit - perfect TV knitting, or for when you don't want to have to think too hard. I ended up doing 6 repeats of the pattern, and the ruffle was slightly narrower than it should have been. I just wanted to maximise my yarn usage. I think I achieved that as I only had about 20cm left after casting off!

It took a week to knit, but I was motivated to knit it as I wanted to see how it would look as the yarn changed colour. After a good, long soak, I blocked it and left it to dry overnight. I was conscious of not blocking it too severely, as I was aware of some thinner parts in my spinning and didn't want a blocking disaster on my hands! Mr JK was then in charge of the camera for the photo shoot.

It has definitely turned out a wearable size, although an even bigger one would look good too, don't you think? I can picture one in shades of purple!! (No surprises there then!)

I wish that I'd had it ready for photographing when we were out at East Ruston last Saturday, as there was the most perfect stone 'Citron' that would have been great to use in photos. Never mind, you can get the general idea from this.

The Tour de Fleece starts on Saturday, so I hope to be doing a lot of spinning over the next month. I have a couple of projects in mind, I'll tell you all about them next time! See you soon! xxx