Busy Woolly days

Busy days again. Spinning, knitting, crocheting and have been felting a little lately too. Ah it must be time for Woolly Wednesday.

Since my last post on spinning, yes last months WW (still not finding more time to blog yet!), I continued to spin the Masham rainbow fibre. This was so lovely to spin, such a lovely feel to the yarn.

 Masham fibre and spinning on the bobbin

I then also spun another rainbow of Tussah silk fibre. A different rainbow, different dyers, with similar shades to the Masham but also some differences. My idea was to ply these two together, not knowing how it would look.

 Tussah Silk and spinning on the bobbin

(still have a skein of this silk to spin!)

To say I was pleased to see these plied together would be an understatement. I love how they plied together, sometimes the colours matched up, other times not, but love the overall look. This is destined to be a shawlette/scarf for me but the knitting hasn't started yet due to other projects and commitments.

 Skeins and on the Niddy noddy of the finished yarn

 Silky, smooth and scrumptious!

Soon after finishing this yarn it was our Guilds sampling day with Winghams visiting and filling the hall with all their goodies. I didn't really have a lot I wanted to pick up, just a few bits and pieces, but went with the intention to have some fun sampling fibres. And fun I had. There was a moment in the afternoon that I (and others!) embraced the trilobal fibre - blending it in with everything. Gold, silver, copper and rainbow trilobal were consumed by the wheels!

I always come away from guild meetings inspired to do more and dug into bags and picked out oddments of fibres and continued to create a medley of samples. The results of all this fun are below which is navajo plied to keep the colours and blends seperate.

2 skeins from sampling day and fun at home

Still inspired by this I then dug into my box of dyed merino fibres, mostly used in felting, and selected handfuls of many many colours and laid them out in a rainbow. Spinning from one end of the colour wheel of fibre to the other, navajo plied to retain the colours again and it resulted in these lovely skeins - squeeeeeee  I love these and plan to do this again, a lot.

Rainbow yarn skein and on the niddy noddy

 close up of the purple and blues end

Couldn't resist a picture of all the rainbow and sample yarns together, makes me smile!
Now the bobbins once again lay empty, waiting for my next inspiration.


I have been busy knitting and crocheting too. After finishing previous projects I decided to pick up a project I started back in May and knitting a few rows and then put down not to be picked up again until last month. It's my Sheep Heid hat, a fabulous pattern, made with singles yarns of various breeds - mostly Icelandic shades (5 of them), with some Shropshire, BFL, Norwegian, and maybe another that I can't remember now. I adapted the pattern to suit my preferences, keeping the sheep and the rams heads.

 My Sheep Heid hat keeping warm this Autumn

At the October Guild meeting we had a flock of sheep heids ... baaaaa!

I love this hat, had a few arrrggh moments - just me not reading the pattern from the correct point on the charts, but nothing major, just my own lack of concentration. I would totally recommend it as a pattern and have plans to make another soon.

I also have been knitting and crocheting a few hats and scarfs to send to The Great Syria Knitting Project, to give warmth to the children affected by the ongoing Syrian conflict; many of whom have lost everything, displaced from their homes. It warms my heart to know that I have been able to create something to keep them warm this winter.

Parcel of warmth to Syria

My other knitting and crochet is .... a secret! Cannot share it yet, nope sorry. It's something previously mentioned and been an ongoing project, and is now nearing the end. It's something for our Guilds annual challenge which this year was entitled "2nd time around", to be interpreted as you like but with the emphasis and recycling or re-using something, giving life to something that may have been discarded. This is going to guild on 16th November, so if I can get organised I will post about it then and if not it will feature in Decembers Woolly Wednesday.

Commencing some Christmas knitting and spinning soon.
Looking forward to seeing what you're all up to.

Dawn x