Blue July

Well, August has suddenly arrived in full swing (it's gotten hot here, FINALLY!!!!), and I've discovered that there was quite a bit of blue in my fibery pursuits last month.

 

These include: some yarn I overdyed for a new men's sweater design, but ended up with some dyelot issues, a lovely pile of merino/alpaca/camel/silk fiber from Knit Nation, mohair/nylon/merino from Adrian, a finished Lacey Baktus for Dev's Year 1 teacher, my first Polwarth (from David) and two girls who finished yet another year of school. Not pictured: some lovely 3-ply SW merino/bamboo sock yarn I finished on Sunday evening, and a couple of handdyed BFL tops in navy and turquoise. I can not believe how quickly the summer has gone by so far, and there's a bit more to come before autumn!

August's colors are purple and pink. Hmmm...I think I'd better hunt through the fiber stash and find something to take to spinning tonight that falls into those categories. 

Tdf Yarn #1: SCF Cairns Polwarth

Fiber: Southern Cross Fibre's Polwarth, in the Cairns colorway, 115 gr
Spun/plied: 12:1, 15:1, short forward draw (worsted)
Stats: 3-ply skein: 168 yds/3.5 oz, ~10 wpi. 2-ply skein: 49 yds/0.7 oz, ~14 wpi.

This was my maiden voyage spinning Polwarth, and I wasn't really sure what to do with it. Out came my handy dandy copy of "In Sheeps Clothing", which recommended worsted-style spinning. Okey dokey. I prepped the fiber Saturday night while the girls were having a bath: I split the entire length of top into three equal pieces by weight (40 gr, 40 gr, 39 gr). One length I left alone, one I split in half and one I split into fourths - hello fractal spinning!

Spinning on back porch while girls/dog played in sprinkler = win/win

This particular braid of fiber was also my maiden voyage into David's world, and was part of my prize pack from last year's 4 Oz Challenge event. I enjoyed every single moment of this spin, and it went by far too quickly! I managed the to finish the three bobbins by yesterday morning, and started plying last night. Finished off the plying today - I ended up with extra singles from the half-width and quarter-width bobbins, and put those into a 2-ply mini-skein.

3-ply

2-ply

I wasn't sure as to the provenance of the colorway name - living in the UK, all the cairns I've ever seen are mostly rock colored. Or covered in moss. But a quick Wikipedia glance reveals that Cairns is actually a city in Queensland that serves as a starting off point for going to the Great Barrier Reef (among other things). So the images of coral reefs and gorgeous blue and turquoise oceans that were floating through my brain while I spun this weren't far off. Well done David!

Goodby Green June

 

1. Miss R's scarf, 2. New sweater yarn, 3. June sock in Kynance Cove, 4. Men an tol, 5. RAB tent city, 6. The Lizard, 7. Sprout prepped, 8. Sprout, 9. Canadian sock yarn, 10. Cheshire, 11. Bodmin Moor, 12. RAB map

Created with fd's Flickr Toys

The past month's Project Spectrum photos. There was not a huge amount of knitting that got done over the past 29 days, but I did manage to get Dev's new yarn finished after I returned from RAB, knit up a sock design prototype in worsted weight yarn (hooray for a 2 evening sock!), and finished off the first teacher gift. Oh yeah, and rode my bike 965 miles across Great Britain - I guess that counts for something too!

Now on to July - blue is my all-time favorite color. I've got one blue project on the needles already, which needs to be done in a week, so that will take care of that. Socks...I need to finish this month's socks first, so maybe no blue socks this month (sad day). As for spinning: the Tour de Fleece starts on Saturday, and I've got one mostly blue top and one partly blue top in the lineup. Now if I can just manage to get the girls to feed themselves for three weeks, I'll be all set!

Admitting defeat in the face of ridiculous odds

Not surprisingly, after the amount of time I spent not knitting this month, my June socks are not going to be done. Sad day. In fact, as of June 21st, they looked like this:

Which is not all that different from how they looked on June 10th, on my way to John O'Groats.

Oh well, such is life. Recent knitting time has been taken up with teacher gifties - numero uno (which is actually the second one I started) will be finished tonight,

which will let me get back to numero dos, which is about one third done. I'm hoping that garter stitch goes faster then stockinette on this one. The socks will just have to wait for July, and having one sock almost done will hopefully make up for the fact that the Tour de Fleece starts (gulp) this weekend!

Farewell Red May

 

There was some spinning, some knitting, some yarn hoarding and some photography. Looking forward to Green June!