Tuesday 14 April 2009

Easter Holiday


I'm typing this in bed with a cup of coffee, looking through the curtains at a cherry tree laden with sugar pink blossoms. I have taken the rest of the week off, so it's nice to have some more lovely weather today.

I finished my cabled scarf last week, and very nice and snuggly it is too! It's put away in the cupboard now until next winter.
Over the Easter weekend I have been knitting some socks:


the pattern is an old favourite: Hedera, which is a lovely lacey sock pattern, and the yarn is Lana Grossa Cotton Fantasy. The colours remind me of cherry blossom and sugar almonds. I saw a version of Hedera on Ravelry yesterday with a picot edging instead of a ribbed cuff and it looked so nice I might just have to make another pair to try it out.


I have also been learning to spin! A week ago I went to Diane Mulholland's Superspin 1 class at Socktopus. She had us spinning in about ten minutes, and explained the whole process very clearly. I made yarn right away - and she showed us how to ply it and finish it too. My yarn isn't great, but it is a lot better than my previous attempt!


The class is in two parts, and our homework between the two is to spin a bag of fibre into gold - no wait, into yarn (phew!). I've done half the bag and yesterday I plied it and set it, and here is a little skein of it. I think you can already see the improvement, mainly in consistency.


I rewarded myself with some coloured fibre to spin! I got this from Socktopus after the class, it is Wild Lily from Chameleon Colourworks.

I've ordered another spindle from etsy, and two more lots of fibre. I am finding spinning very addictive, did I mention that? At the next class we are going to try some spinning wheels. I am planning to buy a wheel, so more of that in due course.

Right one more cup of coffee and I'm going to get up and get on with my huge list of projects, which includes gardening, hoovering the car, cleaning the kitchen, finishing my socks, spinning some more and sewing. I fancy having a go at these bags.