Lab Goddess Fibre Club February 2016

As I was finalising the March shipment of the Fibre Club this morning, I realised that with all the hubbub of the last few weeks, I completely missed showing off the February club colourway - so here it is!

When I dyed this fibre, it had been very grey for a very long time in London, and I was desperate for something blue! This colourway is inspired by Eugenie Clark, a world-renowned icthyologist (i.e. shark addict) who was one of the first marine biologists to use scuba diving as a major research tool.

In addition to her research, Clark was a bestselling writer who's first book, Lady with a Spear (1953), based on her Fulbright Scholarship experiences studying sharks on the Red Sea in Egypt, brought her to the attention of the wealthy Vanderbilt family, who built her a laboratory in southwestern Florida, where she continued to research sharks, with studies ranging from fish test tube babies to training sharks to press targets to shark repellents.

This colourway is a more abstract one, rather then inspired by a particular concept; its my interpretation of what the ocean must look like from underwater, looking upwards – bright shades of blues and greens, those tropical colours of the ocean under the shining sun.

February’s fibre is one that I recommend to any beginner spinner – Corriedale. The Corriedale sheep is a dual purpose breed, and is used for both meat and wool. It is the oldest of all the crossbred breeds, and is derived from Merino ewe and Lincoln ram crosses in New Zealand and Australia. The aim in crossing these breeds was to develop a sheep that would thrive in drier climates and produce longer stapled wool. The Corriedale is now raised all over the world.

Corriedale could best be described as “medium”. It has medium staple length, medium softness, and medium crimp. But it’s not a boring spin by any means, just very straightforward. It won’t take a lot of attention and won’t do anything tricky, so it’s the perfect fibre for some truly relaxing spinning.

If you'd like to join the Lab Goddess Fibre Club for April through June, slots are now open - we'd love to have you join us!

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Edinburgh Yarn Festival, Skyesong and Fibre Club updates

*Quantum Dots, which will be available at EYF on some super soft Falkland merino*

Well. It seems like the last almost four weeks since Unravel have flown by in a blur of wool and dye and chaos. It seems that way because they have! I've been full on prepping for Edinburgh Yarn Festival, which opens for classes today and for vast and fantastic stash enhancement on Friday. I've sent off five (!) boxes of fluff, have crammed a pile more into my luggage, and will be on a train northward in just a few hours, just in time to set up.

However, a few other things have happened in the last few weeks that I'd like to highlight. First off, slots are now open for Q2 of the 2016 Lab Goddess Fibre Club. The club runs £45 plus actual shipping cost (depending on location), and will include three monthly shipments of an exclusive colourway inspired by a woman scientist, either past or current. Check out the Fibre Club page to see past colourways and to book your space now.

Current fibre club members: parcels will ship out next week, and I hope you like this month's instalment!

Secondly - I have a new pattern out! Skyesong is a lace shawl designed for handspun, and I'm super thrilled that it's been published in the new issue of Knitty. The body of the shawl is worked in a garter lace pattern (knit on every row - woot!) until it is the desired size, and then the edge is finished with a border worked sideways and attached to the live stitches.

One important thing to mention: this is proper lace knitting, with things happening on both the right and wrong side rows. However, the body repeat is only four rows long, so it's not too difficult to get into a rhythm. The edging is more complicated and longer (20 rows), but the stitch count changes on every row, so it's pretty straightforward to figure out where you are in the repeat as you go on.

The pattern includes two sizes - the small version was knit up in fingering-weight yarn spun from some gorgeous wool/flax sliver that I got at Spunky Eclectic a couple of summers ago, in the Lobster colourway. The larger version was worked in my own 60% merino/40% flax top, dyed in the Broadbean colourway.

I'll have plenty of the merino/flax top at EYF this weekend, in both semisolid and variegated colourways, so if you're inspired for a little lacey shawl project, please stop by!

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Getting ready for Unravel

It's that last minute press to finish off bits and pieces of prep before packing up on Thursday and heading to Unravel. There's been a lot of final dyeing and prepping and labelling of fibre around here. Want to see some of what's coming with me this weekend?

I'm also super excited to be able to offer kits for my newest hat design, Ironwork.

*Handspun undyed Shetland, with Crystal Violet, Coomassie Blue and Xylene Cyanole for the contrast colours.*

The pattern is written with handspun in mind, and includes tips on how to spin the yarn. It's also got a handy chart to determine the finished size of your hat based on your preferred gauge with your particular yarn and needles. The gauges included run from 4-7 sts/inch, so the pattern can work with anything from fingering to worsted weight.

*Undyed natural brown Shetland, with Congo Red, Ethidium Bromide and Yellow Fluorescent Protein as the contrast colours*

The kits will include 3 oz of main colour and three 0.5 oz bundles of the contrast colours. I'll have the two sample versions kitted up ready to go, but if you want to swap out some of the colours on the day, that's no problem! Kits will also include a printed version of the pattern, with a download code for the electronic version.

I'll be in the Barley room, next to the Yarn in the City booth (which will have copies of the London Craft Guide and yarn for the projects!), and I do hope you'll come by and say hello! And if you're around on Friday afternoon, please come to my talk on "Dyeing Science" from 4:00 - 5:00, where I'll share a few of the stories behind some of my more science-inspired colourways.

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Lab Goddess Fibre Club January 2016

This month, credit for the woman scientist who served as the colourway inspiration goes to a club member, who recommended Inge Lehmann as a potential candidate.

Inge Lehmann was a Danish geophysicist and seismologist who was active throughout much of the 20th century (she lived to the ripe old age of 104!). She is known for being the first person to identify that the Earth has a solid core, in contrast with the theory at the time that the inside of the Earth was completely molten.

Her use of seismic data to identify discontinuities in the Earth's mantle and crust helped to identify differences in the upper surfaces of the Earth, and have impacted seismology every since.

This is not the last geologist who will feature in the Lab Goddess Fibre Club, as I happen to live with a geologist who is full of suggestions of people to include! This month’s colourway comes from my mental image of what a cross section of the Earth might look like – brilliant pale yellow for the ultra hot core, shading through orange and red as we move up to the surface, where the molten outer core finally cools to form the solid mantle. I couldn’t resist adding in a pop of green for the biosphere, the outermost layer of Earth. The name reflects the dramatic shift in the understanding of the Earth's structure that her discovery provoked.

I’ve dyed the colourway this month on a custom blend of Jacob wool. Jacob sheep are typically raised for meat, as their wool tends toward the sturdy end of the spectrum. These sheep are unusual in two ways: both sexes have two to six horns, and in one animal’s fleece you can find multiple colours – black, grey and white. This makes their fleece difficult to sell in the UK, as more effort is needed to separate the colours. The blend I’ve used is an equal ratio of white, grey and black Jacop tops, providing a darker undertone to what would otherwise be a fairly bright colourway. I like to think of the combination of colours and dark base as a touch of reality, as we can’t actually see inside the planet.

I love how the colours took to this base, as the darker wool gives great depth to the colours - expect to see more of this fibre at Unravel coming up next month!

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How I spent my Christmas holidays

Happy, happy New Year to you all! In my prennially late fashion, my inaugural new year post is coming after 2016 has already kicked off for almost a week. And I'm afraid that I haven't yet settled down on my plans for 2016 - unlike many people, I have a very hard time making plans for the future until it actually arrives. In other words, my brain had a very had time even considering 2016 before it was 2016.

This tendency to procrastinate was not helped by my coming down with some true awful bug on Boxing Day, which left me feverish and miserable on the couch for three days, before morphing into a pretty horrible hacking coffee that is hanging on to my lungs for dear life. And just about the only crafty thing I felt like doing in the week between Christmas and New Year's was spinning. So I did....

First up was finishing off my "Mutable Loci" on Cheviot from the Lab Goddess Fibre Club November instalment (places still available for January - March!). I spun this as a true 3-ply, aiming for a plied fingering weight yarn to knit into socks.

I got pretty close to fingering weight on the final skein, but the skein is also pretty obviously overspun/overplied. However, seeing as this is destined to become socks, that is not a bad thing; they'll just wear better.

Next up was a bunch of 0.5 oz chunks of Shetland dyed in the original colours in my Vital Dye series. I spun these up semi-woolen, from the fold, aiming for an approximately fingering weight 2-ply.

*From left to right: Congo Red, Ethidium Bromide, Yellow Fluorescent Protein, Oregon Green, Xylene Cyanole, Coomassie Blue and Crystal Violet*

These are part of my prep for Unravel, happening on the 19th - 21st of February (where I am very excited to be exhibiting AND giving a talk!) (gulp!). I'm planning to offer kits for a handspun, colorwork hat - these colourful miniskeins are going to be paired with a neutral and offered with a new pattern I'm working on. I'm thinking at the moment that I'll have at least 2 colourways on offer: a brown with the red, orange and yellow, and either white or grey with the blues and purples. I have a new blue that might slot in really well with the two colours on the right, so we'll see how that all plays out. In the meantime, swatches are being swatched, and plans are being planned. Stay tuned for more details in a new edition of the Design Diaries starting next week.

The other exciting news I have is that I am going to be at the Waltham Abbey Wool Show in Essex on 17th January! This is a very new development, as they had a last minute cancellation and I've gotten in from their wait list. In any event, that means that the shop update originally planned for Saturday 16th January is going to be delayed by a few days. Stay tuned for the exact timing, or sign up for the newsletter to get notification of the update timing (and other newsy bits) delivered directly to your inbox.

Happy New Year to all, and here's to loads of woolly goodness in 2016!

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Porpoise Fur