Done, and done

Drama Llama Akapana is all done and had its first outing on the same trip to Sheringham I talked about on saturday.

It's only my second garment ever, and it has some flaws, but in general I'm pretty pleased.

Awkard pictures below the cut.

The joy of planning

By the time you read this, the buttons will be sewn onto my Drama Llama Akapana and finished pictures will be up on Ravelry (plus a final blog post about that vest), and I will most likely have cast on for the Carats vest.

When I saw this I fell in love. A very kind person on Ravelry bought me the pattern as a gift AND sent me some lovely discontinued Rowan yarn to make it with. I'd be very happy if more people would send me garment quantities of yarn!

Craft Families

My husband has been 'knitting' much longer than I have. Except, he knits with pliers and steel.

He makes chainmail. And he's very good at it.

He hand winds every link himself, cuts and fastens them together. He makes full shirts and jewellery.

Sheringham

Today I went to Sheringham, a local seaside town with a strong tradition of yarncraft, to check out a small local yarn fair that was advertised.

It was very small, but had a nice selection of booths, including a woman selling yarn spun up from the sheep she raises. I didn't get any of that, because Watercolours and Lace were there and I fell in love with an alpaca/silk/cashmere laceweight skein almost the exact colour of the sea.

Purple and sparkly

I am not a very good spinner. But then, I've been spinning using a drop spindle just over a month, so I can't really expect to be excellent.

My first ever yarn can be seen below. Yuck.

Yuck

(Crazy brain, of course, says 'if you can't be the BEST EVER, INSTANTLY, what is the point?' We don't listen to crazy brain).

Spinning is, if anything, even more mindless and soothing than the simple knit stitch. And it's a miracle of physics, too, which I enjoy a lot.

I recently spindled up some lovely Gothika fibre from Countess Ablaze. My two-ply thick and thin yarn isn't the prettiest in the world, but the pictures certainly don't do it justice. It's sparkly, and full of subtle gradiations of purple.

I love purple.

Purple AND sparkly

I've been working on plying together some corriedale I bought from a local shop. It's two shades of - what else - purple and I experimented with mixing in some tester fibre that countess ablaze sent me. I quite like the effect, and will do a full post on that another time.

It knows what it did.

This is my Rough Comfort shawl. I started knitting it because I wanted something I could snuggle into when I was having a bad day. And look! Look at those pretty, subtle cables and that jagged contrast edging.

 

The problem is IT'S having a bad day. It's hibernating in my knitting bag right now.

You see, the problem is it has an added bit, that is delicate and lacey and full of deliberately dropped stitches. And I have made a MISTAKE on that section. I started knitting the jagged point in the wrong direction.

So I have had to very carefully unravel it, and now I have to get the energy together to keep knitting and figure out where I am.

FLUFF DELIVERY

As well as a knitter I'm a spinner. I use a drop spindle to turn fluff into string, and it's wonderful and I love it. Stay tuned for an update all about that in the near future.

Right now I just want to be excited about my new fluff that just arrived today.

Fibre