Thursday, December 21, 2006

Back Again, finished yarn in hand

Hi, everyone. Gee, I can't believe it's been so long since my last post. Whew - I've been busy at work for a change and been going to bed early on top of that. Sleeping instead of being on the computer has made me better at work, and non-productive here. Oh well.

As promised in the title, I have spun the 2nd bobbin of that Spinderella thrums and plyed it up. I finished that and the very last bit of my Border Leicester (for my Pi Are Square shawl) this past weekend and I sure do wish I had more of the BL to spin. It was wonderful. :) I've gloated about it on the photo pages (my old stuff is
here if you haven't seen it) way back when I started spinning it, and maybe again when I was working a bit on it at the fair last October, but I gotta say it again - great fiber, wonderful roving and not bad spinning, if I do say so myself. heh.

Anyway, I'm sure you're sick of reading and want some eye candy. With no further ado...

The blue yarn on top is the plyed thrums from Spinderella. I took it to work and showed it off. It looked really great held up against Phil's jeans, but I'm just not thrilled with the color. I think it has too much black and not enough of the bright royal bits. It doesn't take much black to really drab a color this stuff is plenty drab. I'm going to try plying it with some dynomite royal blue romney I have here. I was going to post a photo of that yarn, but apparently I didn't take it's picture (or I lost it, entirely possible). I know where the yarn is, tho, so photos will be coming. I think I have about 8 or so oz of the roving left - plenty to ply with the remaining 12oz of the thrums.



The yarn below the light blue thrums is that I spun from the BL roving. Gosh, that was wonderful wool. I emailed Rose and asked her to send me 2lbs of silvery fleece. I washed the fleece and sent it off to Stonehedge for processing. Deb and Chuck did their usual spectacular job and I was thrilled with the roving. It was SO easy to spin that I had to lock it up at night so it wouldn't spin itself. :) The photo directly above was taken before I started my PiAreSquare shawl, so it's pretty old. The shawl was the very first big thing I ever knit with my own handspun and I was amazed at how different handspun feels from mill spun. Kind of alive, ya know? I'm hoping to bore you silly, so I'm gonna post another shot of this marvelous fiber - this is the singles on the bobbin - check out that shine!!



Hmmm... Will this entry be complete without a shot of the in-progress shawl? What the heck! I stopped knitting on this shawl the beginning of last winter - I knitted up all of the yarn I had spun and needed to get the rest of the roving spun up. I was thinking I might do the edging and collar in a different yarn, but now I'm thinking I'll do the edging in the same yarn and try to spin up some really soft grey stuff I have for the "shawl" collar. This Border Leicester, while very fine for BL, is just a teensy bit too harsh for the back of my neck.

pr2 front view Nov 22, 2005 sandeleh

Wow, that was different. One of the reasons I'm blogging instead of putting up more photos at Webshots is that the photos are no longer mine. I can't download any of my own photos as jpg images - only as Webshots proprietary format that only their software can display. And I'm paying for that "service!" So, since I don't have a photo of my shawl on my own computer, I have to link to the one on Webshots and to see the pix you gotta click on it, get taken away to Webshots and I can only hope you will return here. (sigh)


2 comments:

Barbara said...

Great Blog Sande....

That BL looks wonderful spun up - the luster is so pretty. I like the idea of using a softer yarn for the neck of your PI R square shawl.

Anonymous said...

Hi there,
I love EZ and Meg Swansen and recognized your shawl! It's beautiful! Did you enjoy knitting it?
Thank you for your blog! I plan on starting one New Year's Eve.
NancyMaria in WA
br549rb@msn.com