13 September 2014

(non specific) Order Among Chaos

Happy Fibre Arts Friday! This is going to be my last FAF post for a while, next week I'm going to Beijing for three weeks to visit my family. Unfortunately blogger is blocked by the "Great Fire Wall" so I won't be able to post while I am there.

So there are four days left before my departure and I have not done any packing, and I am beginning to panic!!! Just to make things a little more complicated we are in the process of buying a house, the conveyancers are doing their work and the settlement date is set to be 16th October - precisely one week after my return. Good timing, what? We didn't plan it to happen this way, my trip was booked months ago and when we started looking for properties we didn't expect to find something so quickly, and naturally things just went from mad to being utterly chaotic.

Anyway, this post is about fibre arts so I should show you something made of fibre....

Elli asked me to make him some slipper socks a while back and he chose a pattern called Nola's Slippers - free from Ravelry. The pattern calls for worsted weight yarn, I used some sock yarn from my stash and held in doubled. I had to adjust the number of stitches to cast on as well as the decreasing stitches, luckily this pattern is very adaptable (read: easy to fudge) and I did as I went along.
I also finished a couple of woven scarves to add to my gift pile for China:

Oh yes, our Night's Watch SKAL kicked off this week. My plan is to spin the batt before my trip so I can bring the project with me. The Night's Watch shawl pattern is an easy one for the road, so I was assured by the designer Lara Smoot. Luckily Ravelry is not banned in China so I can still co-ordinate the SKAL.

I am sure there is order among all the chaos, I just need to find it.

Thanks for dropping by, please hop over to Andrea's at Wisdom Begins in Wonder for more fibre fun.

06 September 2014

Peacock Shawl finished

Happy Fibre Arts Friday! Today I have a finished project to show, yay!

This is a birthday present for my Ma who is turning 70 in October. I spun the yarn from some silver grey merino rovings from Bendigo Woollen Mills then dyed the yarn into mother's favourite colour. The whole project took a little over five months to complete, but I could have finished it much sooner if I'd worked on it consistently.
Pattern: Peacock's Tail by Rose Beck
Yarn: handspun merino and hand dyed, fingering weight, used 120g
Needle size: 5mm
My project page: here
Notes: I love the stitch patterns, they are very pretty and flow nicely from one into another. The construction is interesting where you increase at each end as well as fan out from the middle, creating a gentle crescent shape. The only thing I would change next time is to use a different cast off, the ones given by the pattern did not provide a stretchy enough border in my opinion as I had trouble blocking out the points. I might use EZ's sewn bind off if I were to make it again.

That's it from me, thanks for dropping by, please hop over to Andrea's at Wisdom Begins in Wonder for more fibre fun.