Tag: Fleece

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Three Shelves Full

Just a short one today, though lots has happened in the week (and I did manage to avoid falling over again!).

Doris’ fleece is now clean and drying. I posted about the cleaning process yesterday on social media, so for now, here is a photo of the final drying stage; on a heated airer, with tea towels between the fleece and the bars. The heat was only on for about an hour and a half and it made a big difference. It’ll stay there now til tomorrow.

Creamy-white sheep fleece lies drying on a three-tier heated airer in the kitchen. It is sandwiched between the fridge-freezer and the oven. Tea towels poke out between the fleece and the bars of the airer.

Audrey, my sourdough starter, had a disaster. This morning I found a fruit fly in the sealed jar… So, she has had to go away. Sadly I hadn’t got any dried starter as back-up so I shall have to start again from the beginning – Audrey is gone, long live Audrey 2!

The full fancy version of Into the Vortex was published on Friday and the large version of Into the Vortex is coming on nicely – so far there’s an altered Part Seven and a brand new Part Eight.

Four images of Into the Vortex shawl posed on Desdemona the mannequin show some of the wearing possibilities. One uses a shawl pin (bottom left), another has the small pointed end draped over the left shoulder (top right), a third has the point of the wide end draped over the right shoulder (bottom right)and the fourth is worn more like a scarf with the shawl bunched up more on the shoulders (top left). Images taken on a sunny day on the patio by the brick garage wall.

Part Nine will be coming into being this evening. I’m hoping there will be enough yarn for 11 parts in total, but we shall have to wait and see. There are currently 165 stitches on the needle and it’s amazing how much extra yarn one stitch extra every other row takes up over a section.

165 stitches sounds like nothing though compared to the i-cord bind-off for the Brioche + Mystery Shawl by Suzanne Sommer (Sosuknits) – there were over 1000 for that once I’d picked up along the top edge! It does look splendid, even before blocking. I’m hoping to block it before the end of the week. The gorgeous mixture of 4-ply yarns are: Artist’s Palette Yarns’ Smoothie Sock in Ocean Sky (light blue) (no link as they paused trading in 2019), Lottie Knits‘ Little Bird Sock in Nightshade (dark blue/purple), The Knitting Goddess‘ Britsock in Blackened Yellow (olive green-ish) and Triskelion Yarn‘s Elen Sock in Freo (magenta). The yarns all played very nicely together!

A close-up of a shawl worked in a mixture of garter stitch, two colour brioche, bobbles and an i-cord edging. The four yarn colours are combined in different ways to create a variety of effects.

Tomorrow will be a busy day – it’s price rise day for my knitting patterns! That means I will need to go through 42 of my 46 published patterns on three platforms and here on my website and alter the price for each of them. If you’re canny and you have your eye on a pattern, you might beat me to it. There’s nothing as fancy as automation here, it’s all done by me, one at a time. Remember you can get an on-going discount code (for ALL purchases, not just patterns) exclusive to subscribers by signing up to my monthly newsletter; the next one is coming out on Monday 6th September.

That’s all for today. Stay safe and keep knitting, K x

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It’s All About Ewe

Well, the weather this week doesn’t seem to know quite what it wants to be doing! Hot and sunny one minute, then grey and drizzly. We didn’t get any of the thunderstorms the weather forecasts kept promising us – just the muggy, headache inducing feeling that usually comes beforehand.

Currently though, it’s beautiful, and I am lucky enough to be looking out of the window at rose bushes (albeit a bit bedraggled), geraniums and foxgloves. I’m also watching the birds doing a very good job of keeping the aphids at bay. Oddly enough they still haven’t found the jar of ‘bird peanut butter’ complete with insects, even though it’s been there for quite a while now. I shall have to try a different position for the feeder.

My lovely sheep fleece is still in need of cleaning and I want a stretch of reliably warm and dry weather ideally to do that as I intend to use the patio.

The main excitement for this week is of course the launch of Into the Vortex – our Mystery Knit-along with Yarn O’clock. I was asked to design something that would use all of the available yarn (2 x 200m) and I do believe I have! This is what I had left at the end:

3m of the blue and 16m of the multi-coloured yarn. And with the best will in the world, people will knit to very slightly different tensions, which will have quite an impact with such small margins (3m being only 1.5% of the 200m length). So! For added excitement, the seventh and final part of Into the Vortex is going to be in a ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ style, depending on how much yarn you have left. It will be really exciting to see the slightly different end results. There is still time to join in – kits (yarn and weekly pattern instalments) from Yarn O’clock or pattern only from me. All you need to supply are your time, trust and some 4.5mm needles.

Last week I promised you some pictures of the latest socks in progress. The first sock is now complete and I’m about halfway down the leg of the second sock. These photos were taken as I was completing the gusset of the first sock. I love this yarn – Nene from Riverknits in the colour way “Starry Night”. This is the same yarn base as the solid coloured yarn in the MKAL.

It’s good tv knitting at the moment as it’s just knit every round; though I do need to be careful not to drop any stitches with the needles being so thin – 2mm!!

I also experimented with something new in the week – gift labels, particularly ones for knitted gifts. I was really pleased with the results, but have since discovered that the shinier surface of the white card means that the ink will still smudge and smear even days later, which is no good and such a shame as the colours showed up so well on the white. The buff and black cards are both great though.

Last night I made the dough for a 50% wholewheat and 50% white sourdough loaf. I did wonder if it was over-proofed when I took its shower cap off this morning and it was attached to the dough. I gave it 5 hours in the fridge in its banneton after that, but I wasn’t confident in its ability to ‘rise to the occasion’. Sure enough, it’s come out more like a flying saucer than a loaf, but hopefully the loaf will still taste great. Back to doing the bulk proof in the afternoon/evening and into the fridge overnight I think…

What have ‘ewe’ been experimenting with lately? Stay safe and keep knitting, K x

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Mysterious Girl

Last week I met someone in the main car park of my little town and exchanged two jars of homemade preserves (blackcurrant jam and seville marmalade) for a large and very full black bin liner. It sounds very mysterious, doesn’t it?

The bag has since been sitting in my study as the other parts of my life have taken on some deadlines (more later) and I haven’t yet been able to play with the contents. But it keeps reminding me it’s there and every time I take a peek inside I get excited.

So, what on earth did I swap for jam and marmalade?

A black bin liner has its top rolled open to show it is full of freshly sheared sheep fleece

A fleece. A whole one, from a sheep named Doris. Here are her before and after shots!

She is currently Mandy’s only sheep and, knowing I have taken up spinning, she asked if I would like it. Oh, yes please! It’s completely unprocessed and Mandy and her hubby sheared Doris themselves. Doris is a very clean sheep so there are not too many bits in it. So, I have a new learning curve to go on. Having washed a few locks of fleece is somewhat different to this type of quantity, but I have some notes and I will do some more research. A fine day on the patio seems like a good starting point. I did learn from the tv last night that any remaining less spinable parts of a fleece are excellent for rhubarb – Mandy mentioned this too as being generally good for homegrown fruit etc.

So what kept me away from Doris’ fleece? Well, I have submitted two (yes, two!) designs to a magazine I haven’t worked with before (deadline is next week, but, as you know, I don’t like to get too close to deadlines). Fingers crossed!

Also, I have finished my latest shawl design which I showed you last week and it’s going to be published in the next couple of weeks. It also now has a name – Angel of the North. See if you can tell why:

Finally, the MKAL I have been working on in conjunction with Yarn O’clock begins in 2 weeks!! It is in 7 parts, beginning on July 2nd and each part will be released weekly on Fridays. Because we like to keep you guessing, we’re not even saying what item the mystery knit will become, but you do need to know that for this one we are using Riverknits Chimera and 50g of Nene, both British Bluefaced Leicester 4ply and hand dyed in Northamptonshire (or 50g each of a multicoloured 4ply with a contrasting solid/semisolid one). Yarn kits are available for £25 from Yarn O’clock or you can buy the pattern on its own for £5.00 from me. The needles you will need are 4.5mm (60cm circular or 30cm straight).

An image of a simplified vortex in shades of blue with the Yarn O'clock logo in the bottom left corner and "Into the Vortex, MKAL by Kath Andrews" in the top right. This is the image placeholder for the pattern while the MKAL is running.