Deadlines are very helpful

So. Strangely enough, writing down that I was going to write up that pattern and post an update by this morning meant that yesterday I actually sat down and wrote up the pattern. It's in a rough form, and I need to add the charts, but it is written. A few photos, a bit more formatting, and I can send it off to the tech editor. Accountability works: who knew? 

I'm finding impending deadlines to be really useful in other parts of my crafting life too. In just under three weeks, Porpoise Fur is going to be exhibiting at its first show, the I Knit Fandango. So I've been dyeing like a mad woman (it's amazing how much I can dye when I have a schedule, a plan and - oh yeah! - a deadline), and also trying to knit up some samples for the booth to show off the spun up fiber. On Saturday morning, I cast off and promptly blocked what might be the world's biggest Nymphalidea.

This is knit out of handspun Shetland in "Clotted Cream" and "Yellow Fluorescent Protein". I spun this yarn last year, as part of the Porpoise Fur Two-Color Shawl SAL/KAL (which has sadly gone very quiet over on Ravelry, but I'm going to be resurrecting it ASAP), and finally cast on about a week and a half ago. It flew off the needles, once I decided which color combo to do (yellow welts with white lace, or white welts with yellow lace). 

Yesterday, I started up my second handspun Porpoise Fur Shawl - Penrose Tile, in The Far Pavillions and London Fog, also on Shetland. Bliss...

And so it begins, with Unravel

This past weekend was the start of the Wool Festival Season here in the UK, and as always, it was a complete pleasure to make the journey down the A3 to Farnham for the wonderful Unravel, held at Farnham Maltings.

It's hard to convey the feeling I had sitting down on the train at 9:15 on Sunday morning with my mum, Allison, and her mum, knowing that I was going to spend the day surrounded by wool and color and creativity. We arrived just after ten, and after a brief photo shoot of Alli's finished Munchkin Baby Blanket, we headed in to the show.

Let me just get this out of the way now, since everyone wants to know: how much did I get?

That's 300 g of fiber from John Arbon (100 g each of Exmoor Blueface, Exmoor Horn, and an Exmoor Blueface/Zwarbtles blend). There were two skeins of Canopy Fingering from The Fiber Company (yarn support so it doesn't count as stash enhancement, right?) and a pile of shade cards for their different yarn lines which have my designer brain jumping up and down in glee. I also managed to snag an old needle gauge/row counter from Eliza Conway. Plus a lovely shawl pin from Textile Garden. Not pictured is my lovely poster of all the different varieties of colors and markings in Shetland sheep, from Judy Hardman.

More important then the buying were the people. We talked to people we'd like to see at the Yarn in the City Pop Up Marketplace in September, we talked to old friends and to (hopefully) new ones. I looked at lots of stalls to get inspiration for my upcoming Porpoise Fur stall at I Knit Fandango in May. I feel like I spent most of my time gabbing with people, but I came away from the show with lots of excitement and inspiration and full of creative energy. What could be better?

Fiber and handspun galore

Happy Monday morning! It's chilly out there, and last night I had a big Porpoise Fur update, including fiber AND a whackload of handspun.

Embers on Shetland (also available on Texel under Phat Fiber colorways), Haematoma on Corriedale, Holly Walk on BFL and Snow Shadows on BFL.

Handspun clockwise from top left: Hooray Sheep! Corriedale 2-ply, Ply by Night BFL singles, Twenty Ten Corriedale singles, Night Must Fall Humbug BFL singles, Scarab Shetland/Shetland-silk 2-ply, Scarab Shetland singles, Death to MRSA BFL singles, Botany Bay alpaca/merino singles.

Just in case anyone is in need of some woolly goodness to help ward off the chill...;-D

Fundraiser for Boston Marathon Victims

As you may know, I grew up in Boston, so the events of last week have been fairly traumatic all around in my household. Both my husband and I have many friends in the Boston area, and loads of running buddies, so we are very grateful that no one in our circle of friends and family were affected by the bombings beyond having to stay in their houses all day on Friday.

I'm running a fundraiser for The One Fund Boston, a charity set up by the Governor of Massachusetts and the Mayor of Boston to aid the victims of the bombings and their families. The US healthcare system has vast issues, but chief among them is the fact that sudden catastrophic injuries, and the therapy and technology required for functional recovery can bankrupt families before they can blink. All proceeds from the sales of my Travelling Hats collection between now and 15 July 2013 will go to The One Fund Boston. So please help if you can.

More details, and links to all the patterns can be found on my knitting blog here. Thanks!

Spun up colourways: Pink Lemonade

Pink Lemonade samples

Some more samples from Wool House, this time Pink Lemonade on Texel. I did a bunch of different samples this time around (colors are best in the above photo).

First up, a single, spun and finished more or less the same way I spun up the Parakeet Corriedale.

For a not-very-soft wool, this fiber spun up into a really lovely single. The colors stay nice and bright, and the crunch of Texel makes it a very easy spin. It's also got a lovely halo that I think will be great when it's knit up.

Next up was a standard 2-ply: also with some lovely fuzziness. I'm reserving judgement on how much I like it until I knit up the swatch, but there are some solid colored sections along with the marl.

Next up were the 3-ply samples - both a traditional version (left side, top and bottom) and a chain plied version (right side, top and bottom). The traditional 3-ply ended up with some similar fuzziness, while the chain ply was a much smoother finished yarn. I think this largely reflects the fact that when I chain ply, I tend to smooth the plied yarn before it goes on the bobbin; this may or may not happen with the regular 3-ply.

Hopefully you can see the difference in the color mixing between the two: the 3-ply has some sections where all the plies are the same color, but more often there's a mix. The chain ply has much less mixing, and will therefore knit up with clearly defined stripes.

Finally, I got fancy and did a cabled yarn. Cabling (in reference to spinning) is when you take 2 or more plied yarns (of however many plies you want) and ply them together again. The singles are spun one direction, then the singles are plied together in the opposite direction with a bit of extra twist. Finally, the plied yarns are plied together again, with the wheel spinning in the same direction as it was when the singles were spun.

This yarn is a 4-ply, with two 2-plied yarns plied together (I feel like I'm writing "plied" an awful lot here...). I seem to have issues with photographing cabled yarns - the way the colors mix and combine is really interesting, but tough to capture. Particularly in this colorway, for whatever reason!

So that's what one colorway looks like when spun up in different ways. It was a really fun experiment, and I'm looking forward to the next batch of sampling I get to do. Hopefully I won't wait until next years Wool Week to try it again!