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Wednesday 2 July 2008

next project - baby on board!

I am nearly done with the first of the two chenille pillows - so I decided to work on the next project. this will be first spinning, then knitting of something like this - the baby gizmo from the last post!
a friend is expecting her second child and I wanted to redo the pattern anyway - because the first time round I forgot to take notes! so I started spinning a colourful yarn for this. the fibre is nz lamb, soft and cosy and I hope the right thing for a baby! I dyed it with the leftover gaywool dyes I had mixed for the "hummingbird shrug" (bought from Derryaun Crafts). they turned out a bit stronger than on the silk, but I still like them (not for myself though:)). I am just not sure if I should keep spinning and plying like this! I took off shorter strips of top and divided them lengthwise into four parts. I then ordered them into a sequence and spun the same series 4 times, until the bobbin was full enough. I first thought I might navajo ply, but the yarn has quite some loft and I didn't want to do a 3ply as this would have been too chunky! so I simply plied half of it with the other half and this was what happened:
rather colourful? well, yes, but then who said that babies should wear pastels all the time?:)) anyway, I read that babies can't really see the pastels we often dress them in! I guess before I go on spinning I am going to do a quick knitting sample to see how it looks in stockinette.... after that - it's either back to the wheel full speed - or back to the drawing board as they say! I could also spin a reversed sequence - so that most of the colours fall together with their counterpart (ie. blue with blue etc.) when being plied. we'll see....

2 comments:

Helen said...

Hi Bettina I love the turquoise baby garment-quite lovely-lucky baby! I found your book reviews very useful thank you and I am glad that you too like India Flint's book. I think that is a new "classic" one destined to stay on the book shelf for a very long time as a recource to dip into.

Woolly Bits said...

hi Helen, yes, I do like the Flint book very much myself! there is just too much to try out to do it all in a short time span, so I'd have to come back to it again:)) I just wrote a review for the irish guild newsletter and hope that many people go for it- it's really worth it! and I already started to work on the "ice-flower" idea - though for me it's ice-berries! I picked two bags full of berberis darwinii berries - and there are plenty more to pick in a little while! enough to try acid and alkaline treatments.... looking forward to the results!