I've been spinning!

As mentioned previously I made these batts a few weeks ago. They're made from generic wool and I just wanted to see what would happen if I mixed a load of colours. I must admit I wasn't sure how this would spin up. But I wanted to try spinning some of my new batts just as a testing exercise.

 So I chose the one on the right, with the least blue in it and started spinning.

 I normally spin as fine as I can as I prefer thinner yarns but it takes forever to spin fine yarn so for this one as I don't think I want to spend a lot of time on it. I decided to spin it a little bit thicker.

 I think my finer singles are more even. I must admit I find it a struggle to spin thicker. The colours of the singles don't look as muddy as I thought they would. I'm planning to use the second, bluer batt to spin another batch of singles for plying. Not sure I'll ever knit with this but I could do with the spinning practice.

 For a few months now i've been working on some green, sparkly batts I bought at Woolfest last year. I've finally finished spinning the first half. This is much more finely spun than the batt above and has taken me ages.  I did wind off some other singles that I spun last summer at Knitnation during my Judith Mckenzie/McCuin class and that's much, much finer than this. I'm shocked at how well I spunduring that class. It was like magic.

 Before I took the Knitnation spinning class I was working on this pink Sweet Georgia fibre which I thin is either bamboo/merino or merino/silk blend. I'd spun up the first half and was halfway through the second half when I attended Knitnation. After the class my spinning had improved so much that I didn't want to finish this. I did spin some more of this fibre into much thinner singles and some of  that is still on a bobbin as I wanted to compare how much better my spinning had become but I don't know what's happened to the rest of the fibre. I may navajo ply those singles though as I could do with practice navajo plying. i've never quite gotten the hang of it.

 This yarn hasn't been washed yet. I quite like it but I'm not sure how much there is or if there's enough to do anything with it. Perhaps some handwarmers or a hat.

 I've been knitting a lot too. A friend asked me recently if I could knit her a shawl to match a pair of handwarmers I gave her for her birthday. I wanted to use the stitch pattern for a new shawl design anyway so I said yes and cast on straight away. It's a crescent shawl and I'm on the short row section. May get it finished today as the short rows are quick. I'm getting this officially photographed before I give it to my friend as this will be a new pattern.

I've been doing a lot of knitting on a project I've not touched for a year. It's a shawl in Dreamy Lace with lots of beads. I've finished the first half and started the second half. The two halves will later be grafted together. I'd like to finish this soon but it's something I need to concentrate on so can't knit it out and about. Both these new shawls will be part of a new collection of hopefully 4 patterns that I want to publish in June. It'll be a push to get the fourth pattern done by end of May though.

Today I'm teaching at Spin A Yarn, we're doing Toe Up Socks which is a fun but full on class. If you're interested in knowing more about my lace workshops this month, then read the post below.