Silk alpaca mix

Trying the plying

My first yarn was a double ply and it was quite successful. I really wanted to try a 3-ply but my first attempt left me in such a tangle the yarn really wasn't worth keeping. I obviously needed a Lazy Kate. This is a device that keeps severl spools of yarn neatly together whilst you are plying. I didn't have the money to but one so I thought I would make one from a box and some pencils,

This is the result. Overall I thought it worked - kind of - but I had to hole it in my feet and the yarn was interesting but very rough. Tough but rough! I have since found out that plying was something that only really came into fashion when the spinning wheel was invented and before that most yarn was single ply. I really like making thick single ply, I am drawn to this kind of yarn when I hit the LYS...think Noro with it's beautiful colourways!
I decided that I would probably buy a Lazy Kate at some point to make plying easier.

Spinning a yarn

For my birthday Rob bought me a beautiful Turkish drop spindle and so started my journey into yarn making. I got the hang of it pretty quickly and it seemed as if it was something my hands wanted to do. It's a very silly fancy of mine to think that spinning is so deeply ingrained into the female psyche that I had been waiting for a spindle to be given to me all my life and didn't know it.

So this is my first attempt. It's a rainbow of merino wool. What I didn't realise is that once you have spun the yarn you can ply it as many times as you like and then you have to give it a bath to 'set' the fibres.



so here it is...my first homespun yarn. It's been spun, plyed, washed, dried and balled up and it looks so beautiful.
I am making it into a bag so that I can keep my first skein for myself, also it really is not very even so I would be a bit embarrassed to give it to anyone.

Baby jumper

I'm really loving the 'top down' yoke method of making jumpers. This one is a tiny newborn baby top that I have made for my sister's baby who is due any day now. I wasn't really following a pattern but used a similar pattern as a guideline. Most of this I made up from my head. I really hope it fits!

I love this wool and I have been dying to make something from it from the first time I gave it a furtive squeese in Miju wools. It's quite expensive at nearly £5 for 50g and I've used 100g in this top plus a little bit of something else for the edging. It's 80% bamboo, 20 % wool which makes it slippery soft and a joy to handle. I love the colour changes too.

Things I like about this top: I started out doing something different but when I realized it wasn't going to work I ripped the whole thing back to the starting chain. This is difficult to do as I used to feel every stitch was precious and must be saved for posterity. It's quite liberating to not care so much about the work put in but that the finished object be the best I can make (not perfect, don't get me wrong!).

I also love the crab stitch on the edging, I have finally got he hang of the reverse crochet!

Now I just need to remember to send it to her before he's born.

Quick mum, I need a costume!

My son informed me that he needed an outfit for World Book Day the night before...typical. I made this very quick Garfield hat for him to go with an orange t-shirt.

Quick raglan jumper

I'm not sure what 'raglan' means but I nicked a knitting pattern that my friend used for her jumper and converted it into crochet. I have whipped up this jumper in an evening for Solomon using being-a-good-mum as a cover for trying-out-a-new-idea-in-a-little-size-before-doing-one-for-myself. Works quite well!

Paid for crochet!!!!

I received a commission to make 10 boobies in 5 days.....cue 'mission impossible' music! There was a flurry of hooks and yarn and I managed to fit enough hook-time in around looking after the children and doing the bare minimum of my job... hooray!

Just in case you are wondering....these lovely boobies will go to help women teach new mums how to breastfeed their babies. We don't want to be touching their (or our) own boobs so we use soft crazy coloured boobies. We also teach hand expressing of milk and a prop is essential for that.