IT. IS. DONE.
That's right, you heard it here first! (Ok, actually if you follow me on Twitter or Instagram you would have heard it there first, but let's not be too pedantic just now. I'm celebrating.) That beautiful steampunk/art deco inspired Stephen West shawl I have been slogging away at for over a month? I decided Sunday night that come hell or high water I was finishing those last 35 decreases and it was going to be off my needles.
I sat down, I put on some DS9, and I gritted my teeth and whacked out the rest of that damn shawl. then I had a glass of wine in celebration. I also gleefully messaged everyone I could think of to say the fraking thing was DONE! (Sorry to my friends who are less excited about wool than me, but I'm sure you understand on some level.)
Here's a photo of the project fresh off the needles. I will get a photo of me wearing it up for you soon. This is going to involve getting someone I trust to take my photo in decent lighting, so it might be a few days.
In other wooly news I've got new fibre on the wheel. I had intended to split it in half and then in half again, and then in half again and again until I had nice thin slips of fibre to spin into a sock weight yarn. But it turned out that the fibre snake didn't want to split evenly for me, so instead I'm going for a 'striping gradient'. Youngling says, and I quite agree, the little piles look a bit like a family of ducklings with their parent.
We'll see how well I manage it. So far the single is coming out with some lovely colours if nothing else. For anyone wondering the fibre is a 100% 21.5 micron merino from Waratah Fibres bought at Bendigo in 2015. No I can't believe it's taken me this long to get it on the wheel either, but life happened so here we are.
The next question is:
Do I make one bobbin for each 'half' of the fleece and then ply them together for a two ply? This would leave me with one single that has very long stripes, and one with the stripes that repeat but increase in length each repeat.
OR
Do I try and get it all onto one bobbin (it's possible) and then chain ply it back onto itself to preserve the colours and just have the stripes move along the yarn in increasing length?
This is both why I LOVE and HATE spinning. So many darn nifty things to try! I'll take your suggestions below. (I've fixed the comment thing so you can comment without needing a blogger account now - go me!)
Also, we finally got the box of yarn from Knit Picks. A friend and I had gone in together on a yarn order to save on shipping and feel a bit less horrible about mail-ordering and wouldn't you know it DHL decided to be slow like the southern drawl on a pissed off debutant. Nevermind that we only get a few weeks of cool enough weather to enjoy our knitted garments and Claire was hoping to get the last few balls of yarn for her cardi... That's what we get for mail ordering for a WiP.
On a happier note - YARN! And Knit Picks finally got on board with my constant requests to not include plastic in my orders - thank you to whichever warehouse boxer I got this time, myself and the whales really appreciate it. Keep up the good work!
On a not so much happy but definitely hilarious note, I don't remember why I bought half of this yarn. Some of it was for more muluks for Liebling and myself, and a pair of legwarmers for Youngling... And Claire gets the three balls of Gloss DK...but the rest? No clue. I'm not usually one to buy yarn without some notion of what I'll do with it, despite most of the time it not ending up as the thing I originally thought it would be, but this box looks suspiciously like an impulse yarn shop. Oh well, it's in my house and therefore part of the stash now - I needed to bulk up on what I had in the DK/worsted range anyhow, right?
So in order from bottom left to right is:
WotA tweed (North Pole), Galerie (Impressionism x2) (Pop Art x2),
WotA tweed (Marine Heather)(Wellies Heather x4)
WotA tweed (Autumn Heather x2), Felici (Hopscotch) (Hibiscus),
Stroll Glimmer (Peacock)(Frost)(), Alux (Whirlpool), Gloss DK (Hawk x3).
I also got a little pressie. How metal is this? :D It's going right onto my travel pack with my other patches.
See ya tomorrow - I've got to go make room in my yarn stash for the newbies. Let me know your thoughts on which route I should take with the spinning in the comments.
Enjoying the blog?
it takes a lot of caffeine and yarn to make this happen! ;)
That's right, you heard it here first! (Ok, actually if you follow me on Twitter or Instagram you would have heard it there first, but let's not be too pedantic just now. I'm celebrating.) That beautiful steampunk/art deco inspired Stephen West shawl I have been slogging away at for over a month? I decided Sunday night that come hell or high water I was finishing those last 35 decreases and it was going to be off my needles.
I sat down, I put on some DS9, and I gritted my teeth and whacked out the rest of that damn shawl. then I had a glass of wine in celebration. I also gleefully messaged everyone I could think of to say the fraking thing was DONE! (Sorry to my friends who are less excited about wool than me, but I'm sure you understand on some level.)
Here's a photo of the project fresh off the needles. I will get a photo of me wearing it up for you soon. This is going to involve getting someone I trust to take my photo in decent lighting, so it might be a few days.
In other wooly news I've got new fibre on the wheel. I had intended to split it in half and then in half again, and then in half again and again until I had nice thin slips of fibre to spin into a sock weight yarn. But it turned out that the fibre snake didn't want to split evenly for me, so instead I'm going for a 'striping gradient'. Youngling says, and I quite agree, the little piles look a bit like a family of ducklings with their parent.
We'll see how well I manage it. So far the single is coming out with some lovely colours if nothing else. For anyone wondering the fibre is a 100% 21.5 micron merino from Waratah Fibres bought at Bendigo in 2015. No I can't believe it's taken me this long to get it on the wheel either, but life happened so here we are.
The next question is:
Do I make one bobbin for each 'half' of the fleece and then ply them together for a two ply? This would leave me with one single that has very long stripes, and one with the stripes that repeat but increase in length each repeat.
OR
Do I try and get it all onto one bobbin (it's possible) and then chain ply it back onto itself to preserve the colours and just have the stripes move along the yarn in increasing length?
This is both why I LOVE and HATE spinning. So many darn nifty things to try! I'll take your suggestions below. (I've fixed the comment thing so you can comment without needing a blogger account now - go me!)
Also, we finally got the box of yarn from Knit Picks. A friend and I had gone in together on a yarn order to save on shipping and feel a bit less horrible about mail-ordering and wouldn't you know it DHL decided to be slow like the southern drawl on a pissed off debutant. Nevermind that we only get a few weeks of cool enough weather to enjoy our knitted garments and Claire was hoping to get the last few balls of yarn for her cardi... That's what we get for mail ordering for a WiP.
On a happier note - YARN! And Knit Picks finally got on board with my constant requests to not include plastic in my orders - thank you to whichever warehouse boxer I got this time, myself and the whales really appreciate it. Keep up the good work!
On a not so much happy but definitely hilarious note, I don't remember why I bought half of this yarn. Some of it was for more muluks for Liebling and myself, and a pair of legwarmers for Youngling... And Claire gets the three balls of Gloss DK...but the rest? No clue. I'm not usually one to buy yarn without some notion of what I'll do with it, despite most of the time it not ending up as the thing I originally thought it would be, but this box looks suspiciously like an impulse yarn shop. Oh well, it's in my house and therefore part of the stash now - I needed to bulk up on what I had in the DK/worsted range anyhow, right?
So in order from bottom left to right is:
WotA tweed (North Pole), Galerie (Impressionism x2) (Pop Art x2),
WotA tweed (Marine Heather)(Wellies Heather x4)
WotA tweed (Autumn Heather x2), Felici (Hopscotch) (Hibiscus),
Stroll Glimmer (Peacock)(Frost)(), Alux (Whirlpool), Gloss DK (Hawk x3).
I also got a little pressie. How metal is this? :D It's going right onto my travel pack with my other patches.
See ya tomorrow - I've got to go make room in my yarn stash for the newbies. Let me know your thoughts on which route I should take with the spinning in the comments.
Enjoying the blog?
it takes a lot of caffeine and yarn to make this happen! ;)
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