Angora

This was originally a bag of 100g delicious white angora from Silkwood . I spun it quite finely and produced 554 yards of two-ply. I dyed the hank aiming for purple, but the colours didn’t melt like they do when I dye roving. The colours are also a bit harsher in this picture than reality and I have to confess I didn’t like them. The lesson – I shall just have to practice dyeing yarn! I have stash that was bought for this purpose.










After a few weeks of breakfast knitting and a
short absence while it was hidden in my filing
cabinet when my parents came to visit (it will be a Chrimbo present for mum), it turned into this.

The pattern is Branching Out from Knitty, and it vastly improved in appearance, with the colour changes not quite so harsh, once it was blocked though it did end up a bit longer than I was expecting.





Niece Number Three came to stay again on Friday for 24 hours. It’s as much as I can cope with… She spun some blue roving I had got lying around. The Kiwi wheel is fab for beginners in my opinion, as the rhythm of treadling is made nice and easy by having a double treadle. I then forced her to practice her knitting. Boy was she glad when my brother turned up to take her away from this child cruelty. Not so much textile fun this time but we did go swimming and baked ginger shortbread (a WI recipe of ginger flavoured shortbread with a ginger icing).

After a long time of resisting knitting scarves as I think they are boring to do (yes I do knit boring stockinette for jumpers but somehow that’s more bearable), I have cast on another lacy scarf. This was using a two-row pattern in Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Knitter’s Almanac. The yarn is a random amount of purpley variegated yarn sort of DK weight, and it’s coming out quite stripy. The lesson from this ball has already been learnt – break up the bits of dyed roving to give a more even variegation. I have tried trawling my stitch books for suitable lacy patterns, and have found one for the other half of the Angora. Partly I am thinking I don’t actually have many items to display at our Guild’s annual exhibition on 11th November. And partly I really enjoy starting projects. The joy of seeing a new pattern emerge gets me every time.