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.

It’s probably a little too late to wish everyone a happy new year, but I will do so all the same: may it be good to you and your loved ones! Mine has started out in fine style after a delightful Christmas spent at home with family and far too much chocolate. I had some lovely presents (mainly books) but the most enjoyable has been a belated birthday present: a Bosworth mini drop-spindle with a purpleheart whorl.

It spins so well and I find I can get thread-thin yarn almost effortlessly. It came packed in pencil roving (it’s wool, though I’m not sure what kind) and I wasted no time in spinning it up and then plying it (I used the Andean plying bracelet technique) into this, a heavy laceweight:

I’ve already begun knitting it into something, and although this will undoubtedly confirm suspicions that I am a very odd person, it makes me so happy to know that I can take what is essentially fluff and turn it into a finished garment. The next step, of course, would be to buy a raw (unprocessed) fleece which I would wash and sort myself, but as I am still a baby spindler, I think I will leave off on that ’til I have more experience.

I spent the last few days of my holiday designing a new layout for the blog. I liked the previous one well enough, but I was tired of it and wanted something more muted. You can’t get much more muted than grey! I think (hope) I’ve ironed out all the niggles, but if you find any then do let me know. (I was shocked to read in my stats that most of my visitors use IE6 (IE7 or Firefox or Chrome or Opera are all so much better!) and am aware that the sidebar ne marche pas in that browser. I will try and fix it some time, but as I am pretty certain that the fault lies in the browser’s inability to render correct CSS, and not in my coding, that time may not be soon.)