Back at home

After a 2 weeks holiday on Cabo Verde we returned home to (rainy) Belgium on Wednesday. It's good to be back home. The holiday was relaxing and I found my knitting mojo again, so it was rather great. Of course, now it's almost back to work (normally I'm back to work on Monday but someone is ditching me and so I have to work tomorrow ... happy happy, really not at all, I hate it when people do this!).

Of course now it's all about doing laundry (all done now), ironing and cleaning the house. But, I didn't do anything this morning as I wanted to finish my Raspy, finally! That sweater has been on the needles for years! It's in the washer now, and I'm so nervous it'll turn out horrible and I'll have to turn it into raggs or something! The sewing was horrible and well, I'm just totally scared and nervous! More of that in the next post.

Of course I ended early in my Tour de Fleece reports. I got less done then I had intended, but I'll wrap it up and keep the knitting I did for a next post!

Wheel spinning, I did ply all the Myrtle up :

The plied yarn is still on the bobbins so I have no clue about yardage. It did turn out ok, though it's quite a fussy yarn which is a bit dissapointing.

I planned on spinning 2 yarns on my wheel but didn't get much further with the second one then this :

This is Eric, Southern Cross Fibers polwarth (limited edition). I have 8oz of it and plan a 3 ply yarn. So this is one third predrafted. Let's see when I find the time to start spinning it!

I took my spindles and some fiber on holiday, and for the first time ever I actually got something spun up on my spindles! Not the amount that I had planned, but I did get some spun up :

This was already on my spindle when we left. It's an alpaca/silk/merino blend I bought in the US last year. It's 2oz total (I don't know the other stuff, it's upstairs in the yarn room and I'm to lazy to go over there to look it up! :D). As you can see I had some problems getting the first cop off my spindle. I use ButterflyGirl Design spindles and they are lovely, but the beautifully crafted shafts apperently keep the yarn from sliding off nicely. So the second time I wrapped a piece of paper around it and it came off perfectly! I'm going to ply these on my wheel, and I hope to have enough yardage for a scarf or small shawl, and I'm hoping for laceweight. We'll see.

I just managed to get this on. It's Hello Yarn Frosted Forest (Club yarn from way back!) which is Soy Silk/Wool. This will be a 2ply as well, And I'll try to match up the colours a bit but I'm not going to worry to much about it!

I also had my Turkish spindle with me and I managed to spin up one of the 2 Abby-batts I had with me. Fist, the batt :

These batts are really small, but when you unroll them they are quite a bit of fiber and you can split them in 3 perfect colours. So this is the spun up stuff :

As you can see I had to wind off the green. I dropped my spindle a few times while spinning and it was stuck in place to badly I had to wind off the yarn first, and then I still had a hard time getting it loose again. I plan on spinning singles from the second batt as well and then ply them so I have 3 nice little skeins of yarn.

I didn't start the second batt but started some other fiber on the Turkish spindle :

It's 100% Tussah Silk died by Spunky Eclectic. I have 2oz. I wanted to try a 2ply laceweight and the idea was to spin the singles, ply them and get started on a shawl whil on holiday, but I didn't get that far. I did get one little cop done :

And the second one is well on it's way. I'll ply it on my wheel then, but I might just get all teh singles spun first, we'll see (I might try plying 2 cops to see how it turns out though, I'm so nervous about this!).

Actually, I'm quite happy about the spinning I got done and I'm totally in love with both my Turkish spindle and my other spindles! Now I'm thinking about getting me a regular bottom whorl spindle, but I'll see. August and September are usually quite expensive months for me so I might just have to wait. Maybe a Christmas present for myself!

More soon, with all the shawls/scarfs I knit and hopefully a succesfull Raspy!