A completed sandwich

The Harrietville fibre sandwich is finished! From worrying about not having enough purple to ply my sandwich with, I now have 3/4 of a bobbin of purple left, & exactly 200 grams of spun sandwich. (My scales measure to the gram) I love the finished result & am very pleased with how soft it is. I was originally thinking cushion cover, but that may be a waste of delicious yarn whose colours positively zing against the purple (so glad I decided to go with purple). This photo doesn't quite do it justice - I'll have to try for a close up.

In other news, we had a new yarn & fabric store open up here in Lismore yesterday! It's name is Evoke & it contains all that I've been lusting after but haven't been able to get my sticky little fingers on. They carry Noro yarns, oodles of hand-dyed skeins of 8 & 4ply (hand-dyed sock yarns!!!!), Namaste knitting bags, & Addi & Knit Pro needles. I could have spent hundreds in there yesterday, but managed to restrict myself to one skein of sock yarn & a cute little wrap skirt pattern (sewing).

I've been going through some pretty severe yarn withdrawals since moving away from Melbourne, so I'm really excited by this new store. I will definately be going back for more!!!

The trouble with sampling ...

... is that you use up some of which you had planned to use for the real thing.

100 grams of spun purple (all I had) minus one sample skein equals nowhere near enough for this much sandwich.

I didn't weigh my portion before I spun it, but I'm estimating from such a full bobbin that it's more than 100 grams - closer to 150 I think.

Problem. That purple was a one off, individually dyed hank. What to do ... what to do ...

I'm rather fond of all things purple and blue & tend to collect them. I know - I'll go stash diving!

One trashed stash room & an hour or so later I emerged with another purple 100 gram roving. Score! It's not exactly the same (this one has a blob of blue near one end), but combined with the sandwich it should be close enough to fudge it. Now all I have to do is spin it up & hope for the best.

The magic pudding of sandwiches

What began with a simple little pile of fibre sandwich & a "good idea" turned into 3 days of handcarding a never diminishing, neverending pile of really interesting bits. (Oooo look - sparkles, oooo look - is that flax?) From being able to fit into the palms of both hands, it now fills a green shopping bag.

Finally, it's now all carded & ready to go.

Warm up

Isn't it funny the way ones perfectionism tendandcies come out? I don't normally do samples - I usually leap right in & hope for the best. (Whoever heard of sampling for a fibre sandwich?!)

I've been having a fun break from spinning the unending white by spinning some fibre sandwich from a while ago. I wanted to experiment a little with preparing it a little first before embarking on the "good" fibre sandwich all the way from Harrietville. First I ran the sandwich through my handcarders to slightly homogonize it & make it easier to spin (got to break up those cotton balls a bit otherwise they seem to fly all over the room instead of go where they should!). Then I spun up some purple fibre from the Blue Knob Gallery (I've been told that purple is the best colour to ply sandwiches with) & plied the two together.

I'm quite pleased with the result - a nicely balanced, not too bobbly yarn. Don't know what I'm going to do with it yet - it's only 84 grams. But as a test skein, I'm pleased.

Now for the real thing!

Long distance spin-in

For the last 5 months (I just counted that out in my head & I'm horrified!) I've been slowly (you're not kidding!) working my way through a kilo of white roving. It does have the odd fleck of colour through it, but it's soooo boring ...

On Wednesday, I received a lovely email from my lovely friend Textile Teresa. She said she had a portion of a fibre sandwich from Harrietville for me! When I arrived home from spinning group today, guess what was waiting for me?

It usually takes Australia Post a good 4 working days to get anything from Melbourne (Vic) to Lismore (NSW) so imagine my surprise & joy to get this so quickly!
Mmmm ... colours ... Mmmm ... different fibres ...
Mmmm ... it's not white!

I think I can feel my spinning mojo returning - I just have to spin this!

Now that we each have a portion, the idea is that we each spin our bit up, & pop it onto our blogs. Thanks Teresa!

Stay tuned!

Once bitten, twice shy

After talking to my beautiful daughter, I decided to weigh the other ball my old employer gave me (they only gave me 2 samples).

98 grams.

Grrrr ...

Don't assume anything

Surprise surprise it's another pair of socks!

This time with a non-labelled, sample ball of yarn given to me by my old employer. You can see what's going to happen here, can't you ...

I started knitting these ones the same length of leg I normally do (approx 60 rounds), but when I hit the toe shaping ... the remaining ball of yarn looked suspiciously small. Too small for my liking. I weighed the offending ball on my dyeing scales & was horrified by what I saw. A measley 30 grams. I weighed the sock (allowing extra for my needles). 45 grams. Clearly, this was not going to work.

I gritted my teeth, frogged the entire sock (after using a few choice swear words) & began again with fewer stitches and a much shorter leg.

The finished socks come in at 70 grams with a tiny amount over. So much for "assuming" this unlabelled ball was the full 100 grams I expected!