Bellatrix FO pics! They look more twisted than they feel, which is ideal. What's not ideal is the obvious colour difference despite matching dye lots :-( Still, perfect matchingness isn't high on my list of priorities, and I love them. And there's enough yarn leftover to make another pair of something else :-)

Black alpaca and purple merino sample

I'm not sure how well this picture has come out, because the colour details are quite subtle even 'in the flesh', but this is my latest beginning-planning spinning project. It's about two-thirds natural black alpaca hand carded with about a third purple merino, and then rolled sideways off the card so the fibres are roughly aligned, then spun and plied. In person this is really quite lovely, with black bits and purple bits and blacky-purple bits, and somewhere around DK weight. I have about 400g of the alpaca and 250g of the merino, so together that should be enough for an actual thing, possibly a gothy lacy shawl.

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Baby rainbow coriolis

Baby socks: quickest thing to knit ever. Started on Tuesday evening, finished this morning. And the Lorna's Laces rainbow which looks so lovely in the skein and so horrible knitted up actually works in a garment this tiny. Especially on the heel flaps - it makes an actual rainbow! These are coriolis master pattern, not practice sock, because the practice socks are on stupidly-large needles, but using the master meant I had to guess/estimate/research baby foot sizes. I hope these err on the side of being slightly too large rather than slightly too small, but having no experience of baby feet I'm not sure.

Also afoot: plans to knit ChildHood, although probably without the hood, just because the pattern says the hood knits up large and benefits from being tried on, and there's no way that's practical. I think I'll do this with red as the main colour and orange as the contrast. This is, of course, utterly unlike anything I'd knit for myself, but that's the point of having small relatives, no? (She will be a niece, by the way; I'm knitting bright colours because I hate the tyranny of blue-for-boys-and-pink-for-girls, not because we don't know.)

Lilac alpaca for MiL, batches zero and one

And I now have a picture of the yarn I'm spinning for my mother in law. That's batch zero (the small one, before I started carding it, rather bumpy and uneven) and batch one, carded, mostly smooth and nice. It's not actually as much fun to spin as I'd hoped, partly because it's really dirty (much more than it looks) - my hands feel all grubby quite quickly, and unless I cover my clothes, so do they. But I'm scared to wash the fibre unspun in case I felt it, and because drying it after dying took ages and got in the way, so I don't want to repeat the experience. So I'm steeling myself to spin it dirty, and I'll wash it before plying.

The current plan for what I'll knit this into is a garter stitch seafoam scarf or shawl, although I haven't yet swatched to confirm I like the stitch, but I had such fun knitting Bellatrix (which is basically seafoam in stocking stitch), and it gives a nice open texture (also, more area for less yarn!) that it seems a good plan.

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No photos of this yet, but I've also been spinning the alpaca I bought in Hay and dyed a variegated pinky-lilacy-grey. I started off spinning it as-is, but this turned out to be a pain, so I've now started carding little bits at a time (so as to avoid mixing the colours too much) and spinning the carded fibre instead, which is much easier. It's quite fine, and is going to be two-ply (it'll probably be somewhere around fingering-sport weight) and is currently intended to be a Christmas gift for my MiL, who told my partner that she was expecting 'something spectacular' from us this year after he told her about my spinning and knitting. This isn't actually a demand, so I don't mind going along with it, and the alpaca is in any case too pastelly for me, but I think she'll like it. Depending on how much yarn I produce, I'm probably thinking of a lace scarf or mini-shawl (there's 200g of fibre), although I haven't thought about patterns yet other than to decide I'm going to design it myself rather than follow someone else's pattern - I rather like the idea of telling the MiL that I dyed, carded and spun the fibre then designed and knitted the garment, all by hand. I'm such a show off ;-)

(In other family gift news, it's only just dawned on me that I should knit baby things for my BiL and his wife, who are planning to produce a neice or nephew for us in October. Note to self: research baby knits on Ravelry.)

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Having a wool gathering with White_Hart and Dyddgu earlier, I finished the heel on Bellatrix, and now with an evening's TV viewing behind me, I've knit a couple of inches of leg as well (photos below were taken a couple of hours ago) - this goes surprisingly fast :-) I love the eye of partridge heel (even though it doesn't really suit the yarn/pattern perfectly), and I like how the sidestream sockitecture makes the foot part look slightly twisted (it doesn't feel twisted, just looks it). The pattern is lovely - I really like how it messes with the colour changes, and leaves big fat blobs of colour in the middle of the stripes.

Very happy with these, and hoping to finish the first sock this week, although the wool gathering has made me feel all spinny again, so I'll be doing some of that too :-)

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I do sew sometimes, but it tends to be because there's something I want to make rather than because sewing is something I want to do...

Recently I lent C a Regency frock for her Jane Austen-themed hen day, and she loved it so much she asked me to help her make one herself, and thus an idea for a wedding present was born. However, I'd made several failed attempts to buy fabric for the project and was about to give it up as a dead loss, when I was ambushed outside the Ballroom (a clothes shop catering largely to the college ball market) by a basket of reduced saris on the pavement. I chose a lilac and purple one for myself, and was then struck by inspiration: saris are perfect for Regency dresses. The type of silk and of woven design are both fairly authentic, and it's a good amount of fabric. I bought a red and silver sari, and over the next couple of weeks I turned it into this:

Regency frock

The pattern is easy - I've made it several times before, including once entirely by hand because I'd lost the power cord for my sewing machine. However, easy pattern or not, it's not straightforward to make a dress for someone when the only idea of their size I had was comments she made about the fit of my dresses when trying them on. It's also not straightforward to lay out pattern pieces on fabric with vertical columns of woven motifs (as seen in the skirt above). I decided I wanted the top of the frock to be mostly plain, so I had to fit all the pattern pieces in the spaces between lines of motifs; not all of the grain in the top goes the way it should, because fitting the pieces in was difficult. It's not obvious in the picture, but the shoulders and the cuffs of the top are cut to include a band of the smaller motifs, to visually link the top with the skirt, and I'm really pleased with how that worked out.

To maximise the chances that the frock would fit C with no need for alterations, I added a drawstring to the neckline, but had a problem finding cord - nothing I've got would go. I was seriously considering spinning sewing thread into a cord when I was struck with the idea that's obvious if you've read the 'spinning samples' post a couple of posts down... I took some plain red scraps left from the cutting out, frayed it into individual threads and attacked them with my hand carders until they became a fluff of silk fibre, then spun it and plied it and turned it into a perfectly decent, and perfectly matching, drawstring cord. (I say 'perfectly matching', but it actually looks darker because the carding took away some of the shiniess of the fabric, but it's still a much better match than anything else I've got.)

This is the first sewing project I've done in ages, and I had loads of fun and am really happy with how it turned out. More importantly, C loves it, and it fits her perfectly. Now to decide what to do with my purple sari...

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Bellatrix

Having made my decision, I did not wait to put it into practice. I started knitting Bellatrix as written, but the cast on edge was too tight, even as a tubular cast on, and I wasn't sure about about the gauge. So since I was frogging anyway, I switched to toe-up, with Cat Bordhi's beautiful whirlpool toe. I've got a different number of stitches, so the dropped stitch sections don't line up the same way as in the pattern, but I like it anyway :-)

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As I said a couple of posts back, I have at least twelve pairs-worth of sock yarn in my stash. I've now resolved to actually knit some of it, but I'm not entirely sure yet where to start - which pattern, which yarn. Part of the point of this post is that I don't always know what I think until I say type it...

Cherry Tree Hill supersock

This Cherry Tree Hill (left) was bought to be Clessidra. There are two skeins, so it's clearly long socks, and it's still a pattern I want to knit. This is also my only totally solid colour sock yarn, so perfectly suited to cables, I think. I've had it for ages, though, so I keep overlooking it in favour of newer and shinier yarn. Also I'm scared of second sock syndrome in long socks.

Red and pink sock yarn

These bright reds and pinks (right) are already incarnate as a fairly new pair of Coriolis, so knitting up this is probably low down the list of priorities. It's a good level of variegated, though - enough to be interesting without obscuring a pattern, so I'll definitely  make more socks with it. Part of it is already in Stranded Sock Project Number Three, but I think this one's destined for a froggin' too, so it might be time to think about Number Four...

Pomatomus

This Trekking XXL (left) has begun to be a Pomatomus, but I think the pattern is too interesting for me to be able to knit it while doing something else, like watching TV, so I might frog and make it into something else eventually. Or I might resurrect it if I'm in the mood for complicated knitting - the colour is perfect for the idea behind the pattern, and it's not as if I desparately need more sock yarn available to knit with ;-)

Mystery blue-purple variegated

This blue and purple (right) is mostly a clapotis, but it's sock-weight, and there's plenty left for one, or possibly even two, pairs of socks. It's a bit scratchy though, so I'm not sure how much I like it. Also not a high priority.

Dream in Colour Smooshy

The Dream in Colour Smooshy was implicated in Stranded Sock Project Number Two, but wasn't contrasty enough with the black. I originally planned for this to be Embossed Leaves socks, but I now think it's too dark, and in any case I'm not sure I want to knit them at the moment. Drawing board time, perhaps.

Knitwitches sock yarn

And here (right) we have a suspect from Stranded Sock Project Number One, the Knitwitches purple variegated. Probably too dark and variegated for many patterns, so I'm not sure. I sort of want this to be lacy for some reason, so it'll take careful thought to pick a pattern that will work.

Opal Handpaint in autumn colours

There's little debate about this Opal Handpaint (left), because the yarn belongs to friend-R, so the socks will be for her too. I think she wants Coriolis socks, but I made my pair too recently to be ready to knit another yet.

Trekking XXL in starling colours

The Trekking XXL (right) is a colourway I am choosing to call starling, because that's what it reminds me of. It's too dark and too variegated to be suited to many patterns, so I've no real idea what to do with it. It's very pretty though.

Purple stripy sock yarn

This (left) is of course the yarn I want to knit. It's new and shiny, and I think might be well-suited to Bellatrix. The problem (there's always a problem!) is that there are three balls, so they could be long socks, or I could use the leftovers with some of the plain black leftover sock yarn kicking around to make an attempt at Stranded Sock Project Number Five. I'm a sucker for two handed knitting, apparently :-)

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So this is what I've been doing with the alpaca...

The first five pictures are various combinations of dyed lilac-grey alpaca and black alpaca. Sometimes carded, sometimes blended together, sometimes spun as-is.

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Ages ago now, I went to Hay-on-Wye with friend-R. I bought second hand books, as you do in Hay (it's a small village in Wales with dozens of second hand book shops), including some vintage knitting books. I bought them for various combinations of because they're funny and because they're useful - one has marvellous mini-stories about Little Johnny and Little Susie* and how they feel about each other, their clothes, and their mother who knit them. Another, while having deeply humourous seventies-ish fashion photography also contains what looks like good and useful advice about designing and adapting patterns, although I confess I haven't read it yet.

What I didn't expect to buy was yarn or fibre, but buy them I did!

Dyed alpaca

The alpaca fibre is still somewhat in limbo, too. I dyed it with two different shades of purple cold water dye, which may have been a mistake because the colour didn't take very well, hence the pastelly shades it's turned out. I like it though, and it feels lovely. I've also supplemented it with a big bag of natural black alpaca from my local alpaca farm! Yes, I have a local alpaca farm. It's in Great Milton, about eight miles away, and their natural black actually mostly is black, unlike the natural black shetland I've spun before. I've been making various sample cards of the two alpacas, which will be the subject of another blog post soon.

*Names may be misremembered.

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