Birthday Baking and Some Special Socks

It was my birthday on Saturday, and I was astounded to find that my wonderful boyfriend Andrew had gifted me with a camera - exactly what I need in order to make this blog the type of blog I want it to be. I was also fortunate enough to be given a wonderful recipe book by my friends Sam, Alex and Kate - The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook by Tarek Malouf.


As we had the dreaded viva (a kind of oral exam) for our Masters on Tuesday, I decided to make some cakes for the group. I made the Black Bottomed cakes;

and the Peaches and Cream cakes;


For the Peaches and Cream cakes, I made the minor substitution of fresh plums for peaches, and the added sourness was wonderful. The Black Bottomed cakes were supposed to have a lump of baked cheesecake in them, which didn't really happen, but never mind. Considering that both recipes called for plain flour, they rose well and tasted moist and delicious. I think they went down quite well.


In knitting news, I've been meaning to post about my new pair of socks, made from the handspun yarn I blogged about here. I did make them into the Tatami pattern I discussed, and I have to say I love them. As with when I've knitted socks before from this book (Judy Sumner's Knitted Socks East and West) the heel fits perfectly. I was very pleasantly surprised to find that the handspun was slightly self striping. Isn't it great when little surprises like that happen?

Dyeing Experiments

After finishing off my yellow socks yesterday I decided the time had come to finally get round to the dyeing I had been putting off. I ultimately had 3 aims. 1) To speckle some rather bland looking Rowan Milk Cotton I had bought in the sale. 2) To do something with a skein of undyed sock yarn I had bought from Tall Yarns way back in March at the Stitch and Craft Fair. 3) To make a bit more progress experimenting and playing with the monster fleece I washed earlier in the summer. The dye I chose was a simple, in theory boring, Dylon handwash in colour Tropical, which had an excited looking Macaw on the packet to indicate the colour. As I knew that both the Milk Cotton and the undyed sock yarn had a high cotton content I was expecting the colour to take quite well.

The milk cotton was laid out on plastic sheeting and concentrated dye was spooned over it. Then any excess was "mopped up" using the yarn (which I had skeined, instead of the centre pull ball it came in). This created a mottled effect.

Sorry for the blurry picture, I must have been excited.

The fleece and the sock yarn were tossed in the dyepot as per the instructions, with a bit less stirring to reduce the felting risk.

After an hour it was time to wash out the dye. First I washed the fleece,
Which has actually taken up a lot more dye than it looks like on this picture (sorry about my finger, again I can only blame my excitement!) but which is bizarrely patchy. At first I thought it might be that the brightly coloured bits were leftover yuck from when I got the fleece (and it was minging), but on closer inspection it seems possible that it's the very base of the fibre that has dyed better. Perhaps this part of the fibre lost more of it's lanolin when scoured, as the whole fleece is still pretty greasy. It looks like a felted mess, but I can promise it isn't nearly as bad as it looks, I've been spinning some of this fleece Andrew dyed black a while back, which is in fact purple, and it's coming out nice and fine.

Next I washed all the yarns individually and hung them to dry in the bathroom;
As is immediately obvious in this picture the sock yarn is not happy macaw green, but a rather putrid lime. Andrew of course found this hilarious. Part of me is excited, I've never seen commercial yarn this colour before. Of course most of me understands that there is a very good reason for that. One upside is that any socks I do make from the yarn will be great for the MODO show, as they'll certainly stand out!!

The milk cotton, despite being a little limier than I would have liked, is pretty much as I wanted it. So a successful day all round!

Yellow Socks

Just a quick post today about some lovely ankle socks I've just finished.


The pattern is Diagonal Rib by Anne Budd, which was published as part of a free e-book by Knitting Daily. I've been meaning to make these for a while, as although the pattern is fairly plain and simple, I think the overall effect is rather classic and fun. The heel flap is fairly short, which I prefer, and the only modification I made was to shorten the toe, making 6 sets of decreases with a rest round between them, then 5 rounds of decreases without rest rounds, then grafting the last 20 stitches. I think I perhaps don't have as pointy feet as the average person, as I always find shorter toes fit and look better.

I've been wanting to use this yarn for ages, it was bought at a craft fair at the Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle on Easter Sunday when Andrew and I were visiting my parents. It was bought from Spinning a Yarn, a local indy dyer from the area. In fact, it was bought at the same time as the blue fibre I blogged about spinning last month. I'm 99% sure the yarn is her Walker Sock Yarn, and therefore should be superwash. As our washing machine is currently broken (I'm allowing Andrew the opportunity to stretch his testosterone before calling the landlord, it's only a clogged filter afterall) I won't be washing them just yet, but will let you know if any disasters arise!

Spinning for Socks

I'm very excited to be able to show you some newly completed spinning. My first project using my Knit Nation purchases! I've made 115g of 3-ply sock yarn that I'm very chuffed with. The fibre was Artist's Palette Yarns Superwash BFL, the colourway is not written on the label and is no longer available on the website, but is a gorgeous mix of creams, browns and blues.


The spinning was a dream, the combing of the tops was very open and drafting was very easy. This was by far the finest I have ever spun, and I now feel a lot more like I have control over the fibre I am spinning, rather than the fibre having control over me!

I still haven't learnt how to get 3 singles of even vaguely similar lengths, but fortunately I'd left a bit of fibre just in case, and so lengthened the various singles as they ran out. For this reason the 5 resulting skeins have lengths varying from 141m to 21m, but they seem to be pretty consistent in wpi. The total length of 362m means that the yardage is there for a nice pair of socks.

I'm thinking of making Tatami, from Judy Sumner's Knitted Socks East and West (Ravelry Link here), the pattern was posted on the Etsy How-Tuesday blog here. I've already made Ikebana from this book, a pair of knee high socks with a tree-like pattern. I really like the resulting sock, and the heel fits better than any other sock I've ever made. I'm really hoping that the Tatami socks come out as nice, it will be awesome to have some comfy handspun socks!

Skew Socks

After a frantic last few weeks rushing to finish my shawl in time for the wedding (it's still not perfect, pics once I'm happy with it!), followed by the rush to finish my summer project for my Masters, I've finally got a whole 4 weeks of pretty much holiday time before the start of my PhD! Yay!

I've spent some of the time since finishing on Friday doing some finishing touches to some nearly finished projects. I finally got round to blocking my Skew socks!


I started these in April and finished the knitting for the second sock a couple of weeks ago, but hadn't quite got round to blocking them. Mostly because I was afraid that they would end up different sizes. And I think this picture proves that this is unfortunately the case. I knitted the right sock first, and seemingly have been replaced by a different knitter with a wholly different tension before starting the second sock!

That being said (and I still have faith the fit issue will resolve itself) I do like this pattern.


The whole sock is knit on the bias, with the most amazing heel construction;


The pattern is perfect for self striping yarn (in this case, Lana Grossa Meilenweit 100 Merino) as the pattern of increases/decreases shows this wonderful kink.

And don't they look cute on?

Improving Spinning

Just a quick post today, as I'm elbow deep in finishing my epic Golden Wheat Shawl in time for Vicki & James' wedding next week.

I've been waiting for a skein of handspun to dry in order to take some good pictures, although my phone seems to be playing up so I apologise for the quality of the later ones. It's made from a batt I got from Jan at Spinning a Yarn, although as it was a teaching pack I pursuaded her to sell me I'm not sure of the fibre content, I think it's mostly BFL however.

It started out lookin like this;

Deep blue with white intermixed. Gorgeous. It was a dream to spin, and actually wanted to be finer than I'd done before (unlike the merino top I had to fight with to draft!)

Singles:

Then spun together into a 2 ply;


I don't have a WPI gauge but I'm pretty sure it's about a standard 4-ply weight (US sportweight) and is by far the finest thing I've ever spun. I seem to be getting progressively better at this spinning malarkey!

And as proof of that (taking my scientist hat off with that statement) I've started spinning up some fibre I got from Artist's Palette Yarns that I'm suspicious might be perfect, it is superwash afterall, to make some yummy sock yarn with!

Knit Nation Saturday!!

Ok, so I know 3 blog posts in one day is truely shocking blogging practice, but by the time I have time to post again (Summer Project deadline looming...) we both may have forgotten all about it!

Saturday started with a leisurely morning recovering from all the festivaling of the day before. I wandered over to Knit Nation at about half past one in time for the raffle draw, Congrats to all the winners (and boy, weren't there lots of lovely prizes!) but no joy for me.

I then went to Anne Hanson's Advanced Lace Knitting class. Anne works for/is Knitspot (I'm not sure exactly), a blog/website I sometimes frequent, and interestingly for me has many years experience working as a pattern cutter, which is what Andrew does (sometimes!) I decided to take this class as being a left-hander in a right hander's world I was hoping for some special hints and tips to take my stitching to the next level. Anne was a very interesting teacher, and her discussion of lace forms and the importance of swatching was excellent, I never realised quite how different yarns of the same WPI can look with the same stitch pattern can look! Lessen well and truly learnt there. I don't know if it was a time issue or if it was because it was the 6th class she taught at Knit Nation, but not all the techniques mentioned on the website were covered, and I think it was just my bad luck I'd done most of the one's that were, so I probably didn't learn all that much about actually knitting lace! However, that's beside the point when you consider how much fun I had chatting to other knitters.

After the class I went for dinner with a girl I met in the class and then we ventured to the Ravelry party. As many have said this was a real highlight of Knit Nation and I met some wonderfully interesting people. Not least Jen, the tech editor of The Knitter, my very favourite magazine, and who's shawl I am knitting at the moment (see Shawl's Galore for more on this).

She was totally awesome and incredibly happy to see my shawl, which of course made me incredibly happy! I dropped a hint that the magazine should publish a photo of the finished object (when it actually is finished!) and have me win the letter prize - which was not met with as much resistance as I'd expected (although no definite on the prize yet!)

I then went on to meet two of the knitting world's biggest celebrities. One of the things I find about getting older (if you can say approaching 23 is getting older) is I am increasingly shameless. Such as that is I achieved this (sorry about the double chin);

and this;


Which was totally awesome! For those of you not in the Ravelry know (and really, why not??) these two kind and jetlagged people are Casey and Jess, two of the 4 wonderful people behind Ravelry.com, the website that links all us knitters together so that amazing events like Knit Nation can even take place. I love this website, and in a final desperate leap of shamelessness such that I may have become so uncool I've been through the being almost cool again stage and come right out on the other side of stinking, pointed and laughed at, L on my forehead, uncool, loserdom, I got Jess and Casey to autograph my Knit Nation bag for forever. Yay.


Bob is the dog mascot of Ravelry. Who is great.

Following the party's frivolities I went home, looked at all my purchases,


and went to bed happy. :)

Knit Nation Friday!!

So it was Knit Nation last weekend, and my first experience of a festival for serious knitters. I was desperately looking forward to it and have been mentally stashing away money for weeks, maybe even months! I'd initially planned on only going to the marketplace on Saturday, but as the day grew near and the excitement began to build I decided to go to a class too so I could shop on both days.

The occaision was held in the lovely Sherfield Building at Imperial College London;


I arrived well before opening on Friday expecting a ton of people to be elbowing for first spot but I must say it was all very restrained until about 5 minutes before opening time, when there was a huge rush to join the queue! I headed straight over to Wollmeise at the back of the marketplace and broke my Wollmeise virginity (as is apparently the phrase) grabbing some stunning Golden Pear laceweight and 2 skeins of sock (which is far too nice for socks!) The rush was mainly due to some ultimately unnecessary fears about the provision/non-provision of "top-ups" to the stall and the great fear of all the good stuff selling out early! I'd googled before arrival and had a mental list of about 10 colours I wanted to see in person and as the Golden Pear was at the top of the list I left pleased as punch!


Then I did my usual walk-round-the-room-four-times-before-deciding-what-you-want walk, which as the room was only average size, and not all that busy at this point, gained me some rather strange looks! Eventually the copious spending began and within an hour I ended up with this:

At which point I felt a little like a cow trying to force it's way through the ever increasing crowd. So I went home briefly before RUSHING off to Knebworth to attend Sonisphere, which Andrew and I were very kindly gifted guest passes to by my best-friend-from-school Kieran. His band, You and What Army, were playing as part of some competition with RedBull, and I can quite honestly say were totally awesome! Anyone who knows me will tell you I rarely talk about music because I don't exactly have the best of tastes (as Sue Sylvester says; "Liking show tunes doesn't make you gay, it just makes you awful") but in this case you really should believe me, even Andrew really liked them, and he is a far from easy man to please! Their sound is kind of rap-emo-fun, and I can totally see it being really popular, as it sounds current and slides in nicely alongside several chart bands of the moment. They've also played/are playing Download, T in the Park, Underage, Hevy Festival, so it's a very good time for them.

After that shameless promotion here's a picture of 4 handsome gents;

Andrew, Kieran, Kieran's friend Dave, Kieran's friend Dave's friend (oops, can't remember his name!)

After this we headed home very tired for a good night's sleep before a busy Knit Nation Saturday!

Spin, Knit, Wear

I bought this 100% merino top at the Stitch and Craft Show in March;

I spindle spun the purple and wheel spun the teal, then plied to make a barberpole;

And then I knitted it into a hat;

(Another Slouchy Hat by SleepyCat)

And then I put it on my head!

Fleece, fleece, fleece

I've been really getting into spinning lately (always one for a new challenge) and so, as a treat to myself following payday, I took the liberty of purchasing a spinning wheel. On ebay. From Yorkshire. As this has turned out to be a somewhat protracted delivery, I have currently received this much of my wheel.



I should stress, that in no way is this the fault of the lovely seller, or Royal Mail, but the courier should be quaking in his boots.

You may notice that amongst the pieces of wheel lies a lazy kate with 3 very nice looking bobbins and a book. These were generously given to me by the seller as part of a spinning clear out of her house. I have no idea what she was thinking but I'm very grateful! Additionally, I received 2 whole, raw fleeces. Having only been spinning for a few months, and spinning combed tops almost exclusively, this amounted to something of a challenge.

Remember what I said about challenges?

Here is the fleece, fresh from the bag.



It looks massive because it was. Following a whole bunch of scouring the net and reading my spinning books I realised

1) Life would be a lot easier if I was American and had a top loading washing machine (similar issue with felting)

2) I was best off making it up as I went along.

As every source I consulted said to use as hot water as I could stand I purchased some washing up gloves to help me. Sources seemed to disagree about detergents, some suggesting washing-up liquid, some baby shampoo. I plumped for what seemed like the middle ground suggestion and went for greasy hair shampoo. I filled the bath half full with hot water, added a whole lot of shampoo (afterwards, apparently suds are bad) and then in went the fleece.



Which then came out as I drained the water and washed the bath, and then went back in;




and repeat;



and repeat;



At which point I ran out of shampoo. Which was fine, because it is pretty much clean. I'm hoping that any last bits of muck will come out in the carding process. It's now drying flat in the kitchen on a sheet as we don't have any outside space. Seems to be drying well. This picture doesn't really do it justice, it's a lot whiter than it looks.



So just to check that it's all running smoothly, I gave a little bit a card and finger spun a bit. To be honest, I feel like this is a pretty awesome moment.



xxxx