Dear Jan,
Perhaps you ate burgers and brats over the holiday weekend, but I had a diet very high in fiber. It featured a mixed blend in a (nearly) finished object, a lovely mousse of fiber puffs, and some silky smooth iced Tee.
Have I mentioned how wonderful Berroco Blackstone Tweed is between your fingers? The blend of wool, mohair, and angora is super soft. You’d think I would have finished Hazelnuss long ago. Well, she is all done except the weaving in of ends and adding of buttons. Here is her neckline - I added a row of crab stitch (single crochet done from left to right, backwards kind of) to the recommended row of single crochet. I think the improvised edge (shown on the right side) is much nicer. The fit is fine on this sweater, but the photos I took to show the fit were not. I’ll make sure and get some better ones when I have her really truly complete.
For an airy little confection, feast your eyes on those fibers I was washing the other day, now all combed up and ready to be spun. The Suffolk (grey) really could have used another wash to get a bit more grease out - it is kind of sticky and resisted combing, but oh, is it spinning up nicely to a super-fine singles. I’m still deciding on whether it wants to be 2 or 3 ply. The Welsh Mountain (black) is sturdy but silky, softer than I expected, and the Dorset Horn combed out so easily, with very little waste.
Next on the menu was some Teeswater roving - what smooth and silky stuff this was! And can you believe that luster? I spun a fairly fine single planning to use a chain-plying method to make a 3-ply. In this method, also known as Navajo-plying, you make what amounts to a chain of loops like slip stitch in crochet except each loop is as long as you can make it. This allows you to get 3 plies off a single bobbin and works great - except that this time the yarn didn’t want to bend! Instead of disappearing into the yarn, each chain intersection popped apart.
I switched to 2-ply, winding some of the singles off onto a spare bobbin and then plying them back on each other. The 2-ply is on the left and the 3-ply on the right - you can see how much rounder the 3-ply is and how the 2-ply doesn’t control the singles as well so there is more halo. Each has their own charm.
As does Selkie.
Have a productive and short week!
Love,
Ellen
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Jan and Ellen are identical twins who have always had an innate fashion sense. Crafting is an integral part of their lives and they stay stitched together sharing their love of knitting, family and community.