Roma lace yarn

ROMA LACE YARN

I love lace knitting, and the yarn, well it's a little slice of heaven. The best thing for me is that it's very economical. You can really indulge in superbly luxurious fibres because the fine lace weight yarn goes so far.
I have been loaned Nancy Bush's Knitted Lace of Estonia and have decided that as I want to knit at least 50% of the designs in the book that I should just purchase a copy of my own.
Not long ago Mum brought me a copy of The Gossamer Webs Design Collection by Galina Khmeleva, this is another lovely book with lots of ideas and swatches of lace designs that are traditional to Estonian knitting. Many years ago (don't ask how long please), my dear friend Margaret taught me how to knit Shetland Lace shawls we sent off to Jamieson by snail mail and waited patiently for the yarn to arrive. It was such a revelation for me as up until then I had never knitted with anything smaller than an 8 ply, mostly because I was knitting practical adult jumpers, and toddler garments. I had a prolific baby garments knitter in my dear Auntie so never bothered with any ply smaller than the 8ply.
Having started with the yarn company it all comes back to me about those early years and my knitting lace shawls. So even though I have taught myself many things from books and love my books to death there is really nothing like the hands on knowledge of a true lace knitter.
Margaret was taught at a young age to knit as many of the women would have been. She loved her fair isle and Alice Starmore, she loved the harsh but beautiful landscape of the Shetlands and had wonderful memories of growing up there.
There is a sad ending to this story, Margaret recently suffered from a severe disease viral encephalitis it left Margaret at only 55 with brain damage, she no longer remembers a large part of her more recent life, she lives very much in the past and no longer has the dexterity to knit or create as she used to. She does not remember how to knit, or that she was at one time a truly talented knitter. The illness has robbed her and her husband of their retirement as now it is a daily battle just to function and get through her day.
This has made me more appreciative of everyday that I am able to take up the knitting needles and knit. And for that bit of yarn I just had to have, stashed away for that scarf I always intended to make, well, now I don't hesitate, I knit it and enjoy every delicious stitch.

How do you misplace your finished knitting pieces???

Ummmm, well I don't know, it is very odd. One minute I had them finished and awaiting the sleeves to be done and now I can not find them. The front and back of a gorgeous baby jumper.

It was not a great deal of work, but I would like to know where they have gone, what I have done with them??

Could they be in Port Macquarie? I really just don't know. LOL

I would love to finish this little jumper, the cardi and the hat and boots are all done, I have a set of sleeves missing their mate. Maybe I will give up and just knit them again.

The Luxury of knitting

I have always found that creating is cathartic, it allows a balance to the hum drum and the demand of life. It affords a time out from the mundane and I think, if I was unable to create I would most likely go loopy.

I have been known to collect up the fallen sticks from Jacaranda trees and begin to weave with these, small baskets and little woven treasures. This has been a time of stress or boredom and nothing on hand to do. I actually get stressed not having something to do, something to work on at all times. We never know when we will have some down time or waiting time and this is even more true when the kids are young. I have knitted many a garment sitting in the car waiting for children to finish dance lessons, guitar lessons, and a variety of sport.

I often go away with more crafty raw material or WIP than clothes - I find this perfectly normal. And if I don't have a project started and well under way before I leave on a trip then I am anxious to get that done as a priority. I have been known to hold up an outing by racing about the house finding the correct size needles.

After many years of knitting I have come to appreciate the joy of a really nice yarn and some lovely knitting needles, some spoil yourself drop dead gorgeous stitch markers and a really nice pattern and a good reason to knit. What do I mean by a good reason to knit (who needs a reason you may be shouting). My reason to knit is to make something lovely for my daughter, something unusual and unique that no one else she knows will have. It makes every stitch, every row and every minute a pure pleasure, enhancing the experience ten fold for me.

Bambaroo and Footscray - Double dipping

Hey what do you do when you dye a yarn and then don't like the colour??

You dye it again of course.

One skien of Bambaroo, knotted and not suitable for retail, and a much covetted skien of Footscray. I want to knit socks!!! Well Ingrid is more than generous and maybe a bit curious as to what I am going to do with them.

That is Bambaroo on the left and Footscray on the right, (Note how the bamboo yarn takes the dye differenty). I used a eucalypt green and a dash of turquoise. But the turquoise took over. The colours were a lot stronger in real life, the photo has toned them down somewhat, and while I could live with the green in the Footscray as it was for socks, I couldn't quiet cope with the green on the bambaroo that I was considering for a small shoulder wrap or shrug. Impossible to live with this colour near my face, blah, I think I would get seasick from it.

What to do?? No -too easy, redye of course. So into the pot they go again and this time with just some straight navy die, had to go darker of course, altho I did consider bleaching out some dye at one point, but no, can not bring myself to that just yet. (stay tuned, you never know what I will do next).

This is the result of the second dipping, a much deeper shade of green and altho not what I had in mind exactly, it is still ok, I think I can live with it (maybe).

Bambaroo on the left and Footscray on the right having taken the deep shade of the navy. I left a bit of the Bambaroo out to retain the first dye lighter green and that should feature nicely. The Footscray looks almost black here, or steel grey but is actually a really nice deep, deep turquiose.

And above a much more successful dipping is the grey for Charlottes tunic, see previous post for more on that and the yarn is Grafton it dyed so well and came up soft and luxurious. I have started the pattern and oh my it is a bit harder than first thought but I will perservere have a good colour pic of the tunic and can see a bit clearer what the instructions are telling me to do.

Fibre Fibre everywhere

When Charlotte went over to New Zealand I asked her if she could possibly find me some Possum fibre or yarn to spin and knit, enough for a small project like a scarf or shawl would have been perfect as I knew it was expensive.

Well Charlotte is not a knitter but she did understand what I was after, she had no luck finding possum yarn, despite visiting several places in New Zealand both South and North Island.

But bless her heart she found me some gorgeous bunny fibre, German angora bunny fibre, 100grams of the delightful stuff, so since then I have been keeping my eye open for something suitable to spin it with. I have a nice suri alpaca fleece in a coffee cream colour, that I could have used but it was a dirty fleece and should really be professionally carded, but who do you get to do that these days??

So when I was at Virginia Farm Woolworks I found a bag of luscious white Merino and silk slivers

100 grams for $12.50, so I purchased two as this seemed to be a nice ratio for the 100grams of bunny fluff. I can not wait to spin this and hope I am not so out of practice that I make a mess of it, but anything around a 4 or 5 ply would be lovely.

I have also been dipping and dying a bit more. I have started the tunic, difficult but rather fascinating in a bizarre sort of way. It is going to be a challenge but it is worth it.

Dyeing to Knit

Dyeing to Knit
What do you do when you work amongst luxurious yarns and fibres, beautiful knitting accessories and stunning dyes??
Well if you are anything like me you have to create! It is not a choice, I don’t think any creative person really chooses to create. Like me you may have a compulsion that takes over, fuelled by gorgeous things, whether it is a fabric, fibre, art piece, design, colour or texture. It can be sparked by anything even sometimes the mundane can have its own appeal and spark a new direction in creativity.
For me starting a project is not a problem, I gather the requirements around me (and needless to say more is better), I sketch and play, colour and sample and just have fun with a thought process, and a germ of an idea until I am satisfied – sometimes a project will be started and sometimes the urge to create is satisfied.
I have an unbelievable stash of UFO’s, every now and then I feel guilty and have a clean out, the process of creating is sometimes more important than the outcome. When I don’t want to have to think too much about my knitting I will make a commercial pattern, and usually with commercial yarn with a recipient in mind or for a charity group. And yes, I do get these ones completed.
Many years ago I learnt to hand spin, I learnt to dye the hand spun yarn with natural dyes such as onion skins and mordents. To say this was enlightening would be an understatement, it was so liberating to not only create my own fibre for knitting but to also be able to achieve a colour of my own creation. Today dyeing has come a long way, the commercial dyes are truly wonderful, very easy to use and the results are gorgeous. Once again I have allowed the urge to create to take over and have been ‘playing’ with fibre and dye all weekend.
I have decided that I really want to use the beautiful yarns that I now enjoy working with. And as I love knitting for my daughter I have chosen a lovely tunic by www.geilsk.dk (thankyou Ingrid for putting me onto this website). Grafton from Yarn Workshop 50% Yak, 50% wool sport weight was the yarn of choice and is so economical, my tension square was perfect for the pattern so only thing to do was to dye the yarn.


Consultation with said daughter resulted in the decision that a light grey would be perfect for her to wear at work. I selected a lovely grey from dyes and added a little of their dogwood which is a light brown, earthy colours that work so well. The resulting yarn is soft and bouncy in a lovely pale grey, variegated slightly and exactly what I wished to achieve. All to do now is to knit the garment, this will be a labour of love and exactly the project I enjoy the best.
Next, Irish socks from the emerald Isle.