More Detail

I finally got some decent photos of the seacell/silk yarns I dyed last week.

On this one, I started with sky blue at the most saturated and then added water to at intervals to get lighter shades. One of the fun things about hand painting yarn is naming the colours. I'm calling this tonal one "Blue Skies".

It would work well with a lace shawl with lots of detail.

I haven't named this one. I think it was dyed with vermilion, purple and teal.

I used turquoise, spruce and lilac on this one. It will look better once I reskein it.

I tried to copy Elaine's version of these colours: chartreuse, turquoise and sun yellow. I'm calling it 'Parakeet'.

And this is my favourite, "Autumn Splendour" in its reskeined format. I has teal, russet and Aztec gold.

Reskeining involves putting the hank of yarn on my swift and winding it on my yarn winder, then rewinding it onto my swift at its maximum circumference. Thus all the colours are blended instead of appearing in swatches as they were painted.

Then at Knit Night @ Kniterary, Martina was working on a short row ruffle scarf using Jawoll Magic sock yarn in beautiful autumnal colours of yellow, orange and green (84.0059). Once home, I got onto Ravelry and found Lucy Neatby's "Sea Lettuce" scarf and bought the download on Patternfish. I had some KnitPicks Imagination Hand-Painted Fingering weight sock yarn in my stash that has 50% superwash merino wool, 25% superfine alpaca and 25% nylon. This colourway is called Seven Dwarves.

The short row stitch pattern is quite simple but Lucy uses 7 pages of notes and instructions. Ever the teacher, she methodically outlines how to do picots using the 'modified conventional bind-off', unwrapped short rows, provisional crochet cast-on and reviews the knitted cast on. I found this YouTube video for the provisional crochet cast-on because I'm not always able to decode diagrams. And I was away to the races.

There are two versions to this scarf a 20 stitch version (to be used with DK and heavier) and a 32 stitch version (for DK and lighter). The scarf gets quite heavy as the knitting of it progresses so the 32 stitch version is definitely not desirable for the heavier yarns.

I'm really liking how the adjacent picots are all different colours. The alpaca and merino content make it very snuggly - perfect for a scarf.

I finished the Provence Lace Baby Cardigan and just need to sew it together and add the buttonbands.

If I had to do it again, I would knit the 5 moss stitch button bands as I knit the fronts. I also mirrored the lace detail on the front. It is an 8 row pattern so to mirror it, I started on row 5, knit to row 8, then 1 to 4. Easy peasy.

This afternoon I went to look at an Ashford Traditional spinning wheel that was for sale and in my price range. Unfortunately, as I tried it out, an annoying squeak developed and got worse and worse in spite of oiling, adding bushings to a tenon, etc. I decided to wait and see if the owner's husband, who is well versed in spinning wheel repair, could eliminate the squeak. Nothing is more annoying than a squeaky spinning wheel. It really interferes in the serene atmosphere whilst spinning. The owner was mortified that I had driven 45 minutes only to find a squeaky wheel but I assured her that I enjoyed the drive. I listened to my current book on my iPod Touch (Craig Ferguson's autobiography, "American On Purpose") and stopped for fries at the chip truck at the corner of Ramsey Road and Simcoe Street at the turn to Valentia. After having tried the Ashford single treadle, I really think I prefer a double treadle wheel after all. There's still a DT Lendrum on eBay that I'm keeping my eye on.