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.

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?

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.

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 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.)

I would like to expand on the photos, but as ever, have run out of time. I’ll just mention a rather unusually beautiful video I saw today: a Guy with a camera in his head broadcasts footage from inside the flames. Eerie and moving.

I was reminded to post these by the recent news on Stonehenge’s construction date. Sadly (but unsurprisingly) the Stonehenge stones have been roped off since 1977, unless you make a special booking. At Avebury there are no ropes or barriers, although I imagine that attempting to climb the stones would result in your immediate removal!

Further reading: Avebury: a present from the past

After an exhausting week, during which I’ve managed to injure my hip and shoulder (temporarily, I trust), this weekend is going to be pure bliss. I intend to move very little, but might start spinning up this fat braid of chocolatey BFL roving, courtesy of The Yarn Yard:

Good enough to eat. But I won’t.

Brace yourselves…

There, isn’t that perfectly hideous? I’m proud of it, though. It’s about 43 yards and 10 inches, or 39.5 metres. I don’t know what weight it is because it varies between slubby and thick to almost dental-floss thin. I’m happy to report that my spinning evened up considerably towards the end, though.

I used up all of the Bowmont roving that I bought at the iKnit day, and promptly ordered 100g of Blue Faced Leicester tops from World of Wool.

Attempt the Second:

I’m getting the hang of it now. It’s still thick-and-thin, but seems to get more consistent every time I pick up the spindle for another go – and I do so frequently. There is certainly a learning curve, but I like the challenge very much. I’m leching after a lighter spindle (so as to spin fingering and lace-weight – I would love to be able to use my own handspun in my doll clothes, for example!) and maybe a spinning wheel at some nebulous point in the future.

Further reading:

• iSpindle.com

  Lots of instructive videos, covering all aspects of spinning on a drop spindle.

• Spin-off magazine

  PDF articles on spinning basics and techniques.

• Ravelry group: Beginning Spinners

  Extremely informative forum – Ravelry members only, for now.

• Youtube: Spinning Up Close On a Drop Spindle
• Youtube: Drop Spindle Basics

  Abby Franquemont’s video tutorial and tips.

• Youtube: Drafting on a drop spindle

  Close-up of one drafting method.

• Wikipedia: Spinning article

  A good overview of spinning in general.