The O-Zone

Now that winter has well and truly arrived, we’re thinking about gardening next year. Dan went down to the garden yesterday and sat under the arbor in the dry chairs. He said it was weird being surrounded by snow. Everything looked good, though, no broken canes on the raspberry plants.

I dyed a small skein of yarn I plied over the weekend, using Black Cherry unsweeted Kool Aid.

This started out as a variegated pink single that I plied with a white silk single to make a two-ply yarn.

There isn’t much yardage so I’m going to knit a lace border which will be perfect for something like a child’s dress or a doll dress.  I’m not entirely sure how colorfast the kool aid is, but it’s a much better use for that stuff than drinking it!

The reason I plied this yarn was to empty a bobbin on my spinning wheel, so I could start a new spinning project.  Ultimately I want to make a super-fine lace yarn with Qiviut plied with a silk single, but it’s been so long since I did any spinning, I started with something a little simpler.

This is 100% Angora from rabbit fur, slippery to spin so it's challenging but is good practice for spinning Qiviut which is not only extremely fine, very short fibers, and not much crimp which makes it also slippery to some degree.

I’ve ordered some silk from Treenway Silks which they are custom dying for me in Walnut, so it will be a complimentary color for plying with the Qiviut which is a natural soft chocolate brown.

A palatine shawl I just finished last week, which got me back into spinning and knitting again. I had started this a couple of years ago and just got around to completing it.

My goal is to knit a full-size Orenburg lace shawl from handspun Qiviut.  I may knit another palatine shawl from the Angora lace yarn I’m just starting to spin.  The dyed lace yarn won’t be here for four to six weeks, and that gives me plenty of time to get a lot of Angora lace yarn created.