Post Woolfest Blues

This week has mostly been idled with indecision. What to do with my shineys!?  As promised, here's a photo of my haul.

Now, those of you who've been with me for a while will notice the problem with the picture. I had originally said that I'm not buying fibre this year. And 4/5ths of this photo is fluff! I bought 5 skeins of yarn and 2 balls of uber-itchy natural brown wool to dye and make a bag with (that's the black hole in the bottom left of the picture), and the fluff arrived because I needed to spend my Christmas gift vouchers from winghamwoolwork. I know what I'm doing with most of it, so I'm not too bothered.
Not included in this photo is the lace flyer that's currently on Whenu, a gorgeous African ox horn shawl pin, Ben's spindle and his fluff. As shopping spree's go, I'm happy with that

As for the rest of the week's happenings, they have been few and far between. Friday was the re-run of Ben's sports day. It was washed out last month, but Friday was glorious and I once again went home with my one-sided sports day sun burn! Needless to day, I sat cheering Ben on while I knit!

 Well, it would be rude not to would it not!?

Also this week Matthew has suddenly decided to make some progress on my new kitchen. Let me first describe the word 'new'. By new, I mean 3 years old! When he put the kitchen in he also put a Velux window in, since then he's been deciding what to do with the ceiling. This week work started. I came home on Friday and nearly cried. My whole house is covered in a not so fine film of plaster dust. It's everywhere! I can't say anything because my kitchen is being completed, but still it breaks my heart when I look around and see the mess. I'm not the most house proud of folk, but still. Happy thoughts. It will be great when it's done.

Feeling the love this week -

Don't die off in shock, but Wisteria saw the light of day again. I'm working past the underarm down towards the waist shaping. There's not a lot to see hence no photo, but I enjoyed working on it.

My rejected socks also saw the action and I'm now very near to putting the waste yarn in for the heel. It's definitely not going to be at the same point in the colour repeat. It's not going to be that far off, and I'm still confident they'll look fine once they're done.

Jean's scarf has maybe had 2 drop stitch repeats added to it. I not feeling it at all. I think it's the needles that are my problem. I just don't like the feel of the straights in my hand. At the moment her birthday is far enough off that I'm not feeling the time pressure to get it done either which isn't helping.

I have cast on a new project. As I mentioned earlier I bought 2 balls of pure wool from Woolfest. It was a natural brown heathered colour. When I saw it I knew it had to be one of my felted bags.
This is the result from my first attempt at overdying with food colouring.

The dying wasn't a great success, but I think it did unify the colours of the 4 skeins.  So this time round  I used  Colourcraft dyes I used purple and plum. I skeined the yarn and soaked it overnight in a water and white vinegar bath. I used the plum dye first and them the purple. I'm really happy with the tonal variation and it's knitting up beautifully

Ok, today I'm thinking happy thoughts! It's 4.15am Monday morning. Been woken by the boy who feels sick. So before I try to go back to sleep I decided to do my usual check on my phone. You know, Facebook, plurk, emails, ravelry and the blog. My phone says this week's blog is still a draft. I'm sure I published it yesterday. So I pressed publish and then went back to check how it looked only to find half of what I'd written yesterday is now missing!!! Sob!!!!  

So here we go again! 

This is how my dyed yarn is knitting up. I love how the little undyded bits are popping up every now and then. They're caused by the fact I tied the skeins too tight. A happy mistake I think

This Saturday saw the start to week 2 of Tour de Fleece. I decided to carry on spinning the polwarth. I finally finished the singles on Saturday night and started to ply Sunday morning. 

My progress this week - I worked on the second single and also I spun a little on the ragged robin batt 

The nunoco fibre is spinning really thin. It's truely gorgeous to work with. 

Ragged robin on my home made spindle. 

Finished singles and the start of plying. It's going to be a lace weight, maybe a heavy lace in places. So far in happy with the way it's plying. The barber poking is much more subtle than I'd hoped. Only the blue on yellow really pops, the other shades seem to just read as yellow. Maybe when it's knit up I'll be able to see more. 

On the horizon - 

I'd like to say I'll work on wisteria and Jeans's scarf, I know I need to, but it's just a matter of finding the motivation. I'm sure I'll work on the rejected socks - maybe even get to the cuff (!?!?). I'd like to get my handbag done too. Here's hoping because while that's all happening the spinning is still in full swing. I'll finish off the polwarth and stash dive to see what's next on the wheel

As an aside, I've done a new YouTube video as requested by suncountry on plurk. She asked me to do a tutorial on how I make my spindles. Ask and thou shalt receive! I don't seem to be able to embed the video from my blogger app on my phone (I'm still in bed, it's now 4:37!) so I'll edit this post later to include the video

So, for the second time I hope you all have a great week. 

Ellen x