The kindness of strangers

And a stranger's just a friend you haven't met!

Yesterday I received a gift of a Brother KH-710 knitting machine from a Londoner on Ravelry who unfortunately is moving out of the country. She wanted it to go to someone who would get use out of it. I am really grateful to her, because I've been intensely curious about knitting machines for a long time but had no idea where to start or what kind of investment would be needed.

Here's a photo of my first properly-cast-on project, the details of which I can't go into detail until after Christmas:



Shortly after taking this photo, unfortunately, I was merrily knitting along when disaster struck. I'm not sure how, but it appears that an entire row of stitches didn't take, and just left a string of yarn in *front* of the machine. When I started moving back the other way, the stitches promptly knitted onto thin air and the entire thing began to curl off the machine! I caught it about a third of the way across and eventually managed to restore order (triage with a lifeline and then painstaking work with various hooks and needles). Fortunately I was close enough to the end of the project that I was able to improvise and repair things. It was really weird though, and didn't happen until I was several hundred rows in!

You know what this machine really means though? I can try knitting up sock blanks for dyeing! I probably won't get to really go into that till after my craft fair, but I'm looking forward to it!

Progress

My pile of animals for the craft fair is growing...



Four bunnies, three sheep, two cats, one mouse, a bear in a jumper and a really big bear in the middle.

All of them are handknit, nearly all of them are from handspun yarn, and several of them are hand-dyed as well. The bunnies at top right and bottom left glow in the dark.

Some of these guys are available (or will be available) on my Etsy shops - links on the right. Anything that doesn't sell by the end of the craft fair will go up on the shops too.

My sheep is famous.

A very nice person convo'd me on Etsy to tell me that my knitted sheep has been featured in someone's Treasury collection. Here's the link to the collection, which is called "Wanna Snuggle???":

http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=14232

How fun!

I'm still busily crafting away for the fair. I have about a dozen stuffed animals finished, not including the glow in the dark one that sold on Etsy last month.

Been busily crafting...

A month of silence...sorry about that! I've been spending every free minute spinning, knitting or crocheting for the craft fair. I haven't even had a chance to take photos of the animals I've been making. Hopefully this weekend.

Today I receive a batch of glow in the dark yarn from my supplier, as well as some extra spinning bobbins, so I'm all set for a weekend of making glow in the dark handspun! I've got a full bobbin of white Wensleydale Longwool ready to ply with the glowing stuff, which should make a white, fuzzy glowing plied yarn.

I'm about to send off my "freebies" too - promotional items to be placed in the We Make Christmas bags. On the day, visitors will be able to buy decorated tote bags filled with little handcrafted goodies from vendors. This week we're sending in samples that will be given to the media so they can advertise the fair. My freebies are crocheted star/flower keychains and tiny knitted sheep!

Upcoming craft fair!

I'm proud to announce the participation of Sheepshape Spinning in an upcoming London craft fair! We Make Christmas will be held on 6 December on Tottenham Court Road. See this blog for full details:

We Make London Blog

I'll be spending the next few months building up my stock - handspun yarn, handspun sock yarn, and knitted animals will be my primary items, but I'm also working on Christmas stockings. My very special item will be glow in the dark teddy bears! Made with handspun and glow in the dark yarn, like the cat I made earlier.

This is going to be a lot of work, but a lot of fun too!

Using up lots of yarn...and some glows!

This weekend I made a Fuzzy Mitten present for my husband, using some of the Freecycle yarn that I received a few weeks ago. Here he is!



Also, I finally finished my present to myself - a stuffed cat (again a Fuzzy Mitten pattern) using glow in the dark yarn that I spun myself! I really like it - though next time I will use a different pattern for the head, as I think it could have been better shaped around the muzzle:



I am hoping to make glow in the dark toys for my etsy shop but first I need to get more glow in the dark yarn.

Fuzzy Mitten patterns rock

I spent a very enjoyable weekend watching Star Trek on TV and knitting a polar bear. And a mini jumper.



This is one of a set of patterns by Barbara Prime, owner of Fuzzy Mitten. I really like her patterns. I am very much a newbie knitter but even I can manage them. I bought her book of patterns from Lulu.com, and these coupled with a huge lot of yarn that I received from Freecycle last week mean there are many little knitted animals in the Sheepshape future - though I need to learn to knit less tensely, I think. My bad elbow hurts a bit today, so I need to give it a rest for a little while..

More dyeing experiments

I dyed some more roving yesterday and would like to post a picture but my memory card adaptor and my computer seem to not be talking to each other at the moment. I'll have to try to get them off the camera using a different adaptor. Sorry!

I can at least describe what I did. I've been working with braided dyed rovings from HipKnits lately and wondered if I could make something similar. So I took a length of Romney roving and braided it to itself (the remembered skills of my seven-year-old self do come in handy sometimes!). I then soaked it in water while I prepared the dye baths.

I decided to dye the roving three colours, in sections. I mentally divided the roving braid in half and folded it over so that the centre of each half would stick down into a jar. I then prepared Berry Blue and Orange Kool-aid in two different canning jars. I put the folded fibre into the jar, leaving the ends and centre of the whole braid out. I let these cook on medium for a few hours, and then pulled them out and rinsed them.

Then I prepped a third jar with red (well, it was leftover red, I don't know which mix it was) and put the still-white centre of the braid into the red. I left that for a few hours as well.

This morning everything had cooled. I rinsed the braid, unbraided it and left it to dry. It looked really cool, and I took a picture to show you, but unfortunately I can't get it off the camera at the moment. I need to find my other card reader...


Edited - OK, I've gotten the photo sorted out now:

New camera = new pictures!

I've gotten a new digital camera (Casio EX-Z1080, on sale at Jessops) and that will help me get photos taken and uploaded more quickly.

So here are some new photos!

The first is some of that Donegal wool that I mentioned in my last post. I took some of it and dyed it with blue and red Kool-aid, both colours at once in a slow cooker. I really liked how it's turned out but I can't decide the best way to prepare it for spinning - carding or combing. Suggestions?



The second pic is a collection of some of the handspun I've done in the last few months.



The two green ones are from a large Ebay lot of wool and they turned out surprisingly nicely, but I don't know for certain what type of wool they are. I will probably make a stuffed animal from them, as there seems to be enough of it for that.

The brown at the top is the first skein of my most current spinning project. It's Shetland Moorit. One single was prepared roving and the other (lumpier) single is from wool that I washed and carded myself. I have a whole bobbin full of the single from the roving, but am balking at carding more of the moorit...it's been very difficult.

The two multicolour skeins (well, one is a ball) are from home dyeing projects with Koolaid earlier this year.

The blue skein is some of the dyed roving I bought at Wonderwool Wales this year. It's very soft and is from the same seller as the pink yarn that is currently in my Etsy shop.

Back from my sheepy holiday

I just got back from Ireland last night, and most of my checked baggage was wool! I really wish I had been able to take all the wool that was offered to me - it was amazing how it kept turning up.

I got some carded and coloured wool from Studio Donegal in Kilcar, which wasn't too expensive, and I got to go into their back rooms to pick out whatever I wanted from their stock. They literally upended big black bags of roving onto the floor for me to pick and choose from!

I also got a white and brown alpaca fleece from a friend of a friend who has an alpaca farm in Kilcar - once she found out I was a spinner she brought over a huge bag of wool.

AND one of the farmers in Glencolumbkille gave several fleeces to another spinner who was visiting, and once she had chosen her fill she offered them to me! It was painful to leave behind three or four nearly complete fleeces but I got as much as I could manage into my bag.

I also learned some Aran knitting stitches while there and am making a scarf from some locally produced donegal tweed yarn but I had to take it off the needles for the flight home, so that's on hold until I get it back on again.

Finally, a friend from the states brought me a bunch of Berry Blue Koolaid, so I am restocked for blue yarn dyeing!

And that's just the crafty side of the holiday! My Irish language skills are polished up again, and I need to work harder at keeping them from tarnishing this time....might have to update my Gaeilge blog!

Temporarily out of the country

I'm off to Ireland on Saturday! It'll be my second trip and my first one as a fibrecrafter, so I'm looking forward to seeing what fibre goodies I can discover. Back after the first week of July and I promise I will get more photos up of recent craft activities!

Same dye + different fibres = different colours

This skein is pretty interesting. I spun it in a workshop at Wonderwool Wales where we used a variety of materials - wool, alpaca, silk, cotton, and I think a few more I can’t remember. Once back home I navajo-plied it on itself and dyed it in a slow cooker with one pack of Lemon-Lime Koolaid. The different materials took the dye differently - one material even turned tan instead of green!

Unfortunately, other than the silk (the darkest colour), I am having trouble identifying the different materials. I think we may even have used two different types of silk (I do remember the word ‘tussah’), because some seems to have taken quite a lot of green while another has stayed pure white.

Has anyone else done something similar?