Hand-spinning with alpaca/silk and a little bit of knitting.

I’ve been spending my time over Christmas and during the cold weather, spinning, knitting and reading. I made this pretty little dress for my new grandchild, who is bound to be a boy now that I’ve made a dress! However, I enjoyed using the fairisle wool. It is unusual in that it is designed to knit up like a fairisle jumper, just so long as you make it the right size.  As you can see from the pictures, it works on the skirt part of the garment, but on the sleeves and the yoke, it goes all stripey. It gives an interesting look and it’s a case of ‘you never know what you’re going to get’ until you do it, of course.

When my own children were babies, the colours were mostly muted, but these days anything seems to go so these rather bold colours (to my eye) give a more modern look.

Now for the hand-spinning. I have been practising with the alpaca/silk combination. It is a dream to hold, very soft and silky, much like human hair, but not so easy to spin with. I think it requires a lot of practice. On the lazy kate below is a merino wool on  the left, alpaca/silk in the middle and a tarhee roving spun up on the right. All very different to spin with.

I think I got a bit too much twist in some of it, but that will work out when I ply two strands together (I hope).

I’m knitting with the merino yarn at the moment.  It is very soft and so far, my favourite. I’ll let you see what I’m making in a future post.

After tea I have to clear out the kitchen, ready for the horrendous job booked for tomorrow (see previous post).

Wish me luck.

Oma