Here’s a recent piece of spindle-spinning.

90 metres and 34g of 3-ply Masham yarn, chain-plied on a 34g Bosworth midi spindle.

Truth be told, although I have not lost my love of creating, my creations have not been working out very well lately. I think I am doomed to never be happy with something until I have knit it twice. This applies doubly to anything that I design myself, though I follow the advice of my design books with zeal and measure everything three times. The mistakes seem so obvious with hindsight, as mistakes are wont to seem. As such, I have a growing pile of things-to-be-unravelled. The silver lining in this paragraph of gloom is that knitting practically invites unravelling, and no harm is done (save to my knitter’s confidence, of course).

I’m playing it safe at the moment; I’m only slightly (ha!) modifying someone else’s design. It’s Fay by Kim Hargreaves, and although I’ve changed the yarn and the stitch pattern and therefore the stitch count and I’m not sure it’s the right size and I’m a little concerned that the waist shaping may turn out to be too severe… despite all that, I’m hopeful that it will all turn out well and that I won’t have to add this one to the pile, too.

Just over a month ago I was spinning a beautiful braid of Wensleydale fibre from The Thylacine’s November fibre club, and I’m happy to say that I’ve finished. Being a longwool (and a Google image search will make the meaning of that term abundantly plain) it has a lovely sheen and a good deal of strength. It’s not as soft as a shorter fibre like merino, but it’s very hard-wearing. I haven’t the faintest idea what I’ll make with it, but am quite happy to admire the skeins for now.

Where I live it’s getting darker, colder and snowier—just the setting for curling up with a book and a hot drink. The brains behind the advertisements for Carte Noire (an instant coffee, two words which should never exist in the same sentence) think so too. They’ve got Dominic West, Greg Wise and Dan Stevens to sit and read book extracts of ten to fifteen minutes in length. If you can ignore the occasional soft-focus shots of coffee mugs and focus on a) the wonderful prose and b) the lovely men reading them, I think you’ll enjoy these little videos. I know I did. Here is the link; I recommend Dominic West’s reading of a certain infamous scene from Pride and Prejudice in particular.

It’s official: I love spinning. The great thing about using a spindle is that it’s so portable; it takes up hardly any space so it’s okay to stop right in the middle of something, shove it in a bag, and forget about it for a while. If I had a wheel… but let’s not go there. I once thought I would never spin, so I won’t be making any resolutions about not-owning-a-wheel lest I be proved completely wrong again.

The purple-grey merino (from The Thylacine, in the Kinvarra Estate colourway) above is half spun up, and I’ve been making little doll-sized jumpers with the resulting yarn (photos soon). I may use the other half for something for myself, but we’ll wait and see.

At the moment, I’m spinning another braid of fibre from the November instalment of The Thylacine’s fibre club. (My birthday was a few weeks ago and I decided it would make an ideal present, since the gift goes on for several months and there’s an element of surprise in the type of fibre and the colours.) It’s Wensleydale, which is a lustrous long-stapled wool with some similarities to mohair. The browns, oranges, golds and dull grey-blue remind me strongly of autumn leaves against autumn skies – or at least, the autumn skies here in England! I’m still not quite used to the early evenings and chilly weather, although they’re a knitter’s delight.

I hardly know what I’ll make with it eventually, but then that’s not really the point, is it?

Summer is not my most productive time of year. I don’t know why this is, but ever since the weather’s been getting cooler I’ve been just itching to do and make. I won’t over-analyse it, but I’m glad that I’m feeling more enthusiastic.

Witness the results (both are works in progress, but both are well on the way towards completion!):

Aeolian shawlette, just pinned out to dry.

Some of my handspun being knitted into a doll-sized cardigan.

The problem with having (seemingly) twenty million projects on the go is that one has nothing to write about, and then it’s three months later and one feels slightly stupid when one notices the last date of one’s post on one’s blog. Ahem.

I have pattern writing that I’ve been putting off by the simple expedient of designing more knitwear, some of which is going well (we will not speak of the hat that I have now started five times). I’m enthusiastic about using beads, and I’m making a simple yoked cardigan with what I hope will be a scattered necklace effect around the collar.

The yarn is Wensleydale Longwool which I bought at iKnit some while ago. I’ve found it hard to match to a pattern, and this is my third and happiest attempt. The yarn has a definite halo, which when combined with the dark grey colour, means that it really doesn’t look at its best in a complicated pattern. I’m keeping it very simple, therefore, with some neat twisted ribbing and smooth stocking stitch. The beads will do all the talking. (I hope. I wouldn’t be surprised if I ended up having to do some unravelling, given my recent track record…)

I once read that buying a book is like a promise to yourself: a promise of making the time to one day sit down and read it. I think the same goes for crafting materials, don’t you? In that spirit, I bought several hundred grams of grey merino top a while ago, and I am really looking forward to the day when I sit down, open the bag, pull off a big chunk and start to spin it.

I believe the correct expression is OM NOM NOM NOM.