Serious picture post today!

Well as for a translation at the bottom of my last post, it very simply says (at least I hope it does) that I did some dyeing of wool last weekend and this weekend I am going to buy some more yarn to dye.Vera's yarn really looks like and the colour's are quite true to real:

Actually I have placed a nice fat order to Wingham wool  for some rather exciting fibers, including kid mohair, yak, silk and alpaca. Hm, you can tell it's payday today can't you!!

And now for the really exciting bit, my lovely friend Carl very kindly agreed to take some pictures of my spinning and dying that I have been doing lately. So this is what

So up next is my beautiful mohair I dyed on the weekend in the microwave:

Next!

Next I hear you screaming? there can't possibly be more?? Oh yes there is so much more HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! (in an evil menacing voice)

(Whats more worrying is that I'm writing this and speaking out loud in my office as I write. LOL)

Next up; Cashmere spinning: This is about 30% cashmere and 70 scrummy soft merino.

OK so whats next, AH yes! A little skein tester of kid mohair and a with a little silk blended in, this is such a pretty little yarn, I will definitely make more of this stuff.

Finally I'm knitting a shawl thing from a novelty yarn I made with cotton and silk. here is a sample of the knitting

Here's the Welsh:

Mae hi'n heulog bore ma. Byddai'n mynd i Magor gyda Carmen a Marie yfory. Byddai'n prynu a edafedd a fwyta cinio.

Dw i wedi prynu edafedd ar y rhyngrwyd; camel, kid mohair, a yak. Dw i eisiau lliwio ar nos sadwrn gyda fy lyss mab. Byddi troelli fy edafedd nos sul.

A little repeated but some extra too!!

What's been goin on??

Good morning Campers!!. A prize for the person who can tell me what programme this comes from and what nationality they are.

Things are fabulous in Fyberspates land.  Notice on the banner it now mentions something about this blog being bilingual, yes well, I decided to try and write a little bit about my knitting in Welsh at the end of each post, I am hoping that it will force me to learn new vocabulary and improve my Welsh learning a little. It might only be  a sentance or two to start with, but I am at the beginning!

My secret project is coming along nicely, although it may be a little while before I unearth it.

I've been dyeing like mad! I have avoided using proper acid dyes for ages, I always use gaywool, and although thay are fantastic I needed something a little cheaper and flexible in colour. So I have dyed three hands of mohair the most beautiful purples, pinks and oranges, I know it sounds odd but it's fabulous, the only downfall is that the presoak stinks! But its a small price to pay for yarns to dye for, (hehe). 

Hopefully I will get my freind to take some photo's. But you know me and my promises about photo's, still no shrug pictures and no purple summer tweed jumper, I could be  making the whole lot up for all you know.

Ok so here the attempt 'yn Cymreag'.

Dw i wedi lliwio edafedd penwythnos diwetha. Dwi'n eisher mynd'r siopa penwythnos nesa a prynu i'r edafedd.

Any welsh readers, I'm happy for any feedback on this!

Look who won!

Congratulations to Vera on winning the yarn, sorry to others that entered, I would have loved to have sent some to you all, but you will have another chance soon, i'll do another one! it's really good fun.

On the knitting front, I finished the pink summer tweed jumper and although a little on the large side, it will make a lovely cool summer sweater. Spin off arrived yesterday, and its fab, its definately my favourite craft magazine. I have a secret project on the go which is very exciting, but more of that later!

Happy knitting and spinning.

Competition drawing to a close.

I will draw lots for the competition this afternoon and notify the lucky winner later this afternoon, so entries posted B4 2pm british time will be included.

Competition time!

Firstly a lesson, never buy cheap digital camera's to photograph your yarn with. My new camera is great for holiday snaps but not so good for yarn closeups. So I must appologise for the dissapointing pictures of my lovely handspun yarn which is the focus of the competition this week.

So here goes: this is 94 grams of my own handspun self striping rather lively wendsleydale singles yarn, which is fabulous for socks, and knits up about 7 - 8 stitches per inch on 2.75mm needles.  The colours in real life are actually much brighter than in the photo. When knit up it gives a lovely soft fuzzy glow.

How do you enter the competition?

Leave a comment telling me what your favourite sock yarn is and why. I will draw a comment number from this post randomly and contact the winner by email and I am happy to send this to anywhere in the world. I am currently knitting socks in this yarn so if I am un able to quite make a pair of socks from two skeins, I will send three skeins of it!

A really nice day today!

I've had a lovely day in work with my great bosses, and got loads done. Anth and I have aggreed to get broadband at home so I can finally start on my proper website. On the downside Stitch n' Bitch has been cancelled because Marie isn't too well (those hats on her recent post are fab, I even got to try them on!) At least it means I get to spoil my stressed husband with a nice dinner and some more epsiodes of 24 series 1, I am so hooked on that show.

Spring Knitty is up Hooray!!

I have decided on the competition! There will be a couple of categories to win different things; a spinning one, to guess the weight of a pile of cashmere, and a yarn one, where you have to guess the length of the Yarn. So the prize for the spinning competition will be some have carded bats which will include cashmere among other scrumptious fibres and some hand spun yarn for guessing the length, which I will probably spin at the weekend. I'll aim to set it up monday morning.

What have I been knitting? well I have just finished a summer tweed jumper, and here it is blocking on my art room floor:

I know it doesn't look very even but I hadn't finished stretching it out at the time of the photo. I never block like this, I normally steam iron things but the yarn smells so strong it needed to be thouroughly washed, I was however rather vigorous and it has stretched rather alot, I am hoping it's going to shrink when it dries, hmm, I should have swatched and washed it first.

Secondly here is a picture of some laceweight mohair I got from Undy yarns, which I painted pink using silk dyes, the result is really pretty however it takes up way to much paint and is not meant for yarns, I'll stick to gaywool dyes in the future.

A competition.

So a picture: Some badly photographed pencil roving, sod's law that it is actually too light in my art room today, still you get the idea. The stuff is lovely.

Ok, So my stats are nearly at 10,000, I'm sure about 5000 of those are me, but still.....to celebrate I am going to do a competition. It is likely to be some handspun and/or something scrummy like some hand carded bats etc.

More tomorrow.

** aDDED LATER** I completely missed my blog birthday so there definately has to be a competition. Whoo hoo!

My holiday was fantastic, we didn't do hardly anything at all and I got so much needed sleep. Anyway I managed to knit and sew and dye rather alot of lovely things so I'll spread them out throughout the week for fun. But firstly I went to a felting exhibition and being that felted shoes are a passion of mine, I managed to take some photo's. Here is my favourite if the exhibition, I would have brought them if i could have afforded it:

There were also some lovely bags and cushions, very inspirational.

Where are the pictures of the shrug, well it seems as if they are having a little trouble appearing.

All  for now. Happy, knitting/felting/dying.