Hi Sean, as you know Chris, Stella and I just got back from a weeks vacation at my cottage in beautiful Nova Scotia. Despite the clouds and the rain, we still had a wonderful time. Though it was pretty dreary most days, we did manage to get one sunny afternoon!
Because of the weather we didn't spend much time on the beach unfortunately. We had a couple nice walks and Chris was a real trooper and went swimming everyday (sometimes even in the rain.) Most of our time was spent indoors reading, playing cards and board games (some of my favorite things about my cottage, after the beach.) And of course knitting. Stella got along really well with my parents dogs, it was so cute to see her cuddling with them!
This close-up of the foot shows how the textured pattern really shows off the yarns subtle variations in tones. I think that this once again proves that lace patterns and texture are really well suited for my tonal yarns. I think that my dad will love these socks.
While in Nova Scotia, I visited London Wul Fiber Arts in neighbouring New Brunswick, and I thought that it was really cool. The people there are so nice and they make such beautiful yarns! I was lucky enough to be offered a drop spindle lesson while I was there and since I've been dying to learn how to spin I was super keen. With a little bit of instruction, I managed to convince myself that I could maybe produce some knittable yarn some day and bought a drop spindle kit and three days later this is what I had:
Despite all of the available knitting time due to the weather, I surprisingly only got one completed sock out of the whole week! Here's a dreadful photo of it. It's knit in Tanis Fiber Arts Moss colourway, using the Retro Ribbed Sock pattern from my Favorite Socks: 25 Timeless Designs from Interweave book, and I'm very pleased with it! It's a new colour and it's always exciting to see how new colours look when knitted up into completed objects.
This close-up of the foot shows how the textured pattern really shows off the yarns subtle variations in tones. I think that this once again proves that lace patterns and texture are really well suited for my tonal yarns. I think that my dad will love these socks.While in Nova Scotia, I visited London Wul Fiber Arts in neighbouring New Brunswick, and I thought that it was really cool. The people there are so nice and they make such beautiful yarns! I was lucky enough to be offered a drop spindle lesson while I was there and since I've been dying to learn how to spin I was super keen. With a little bit of instruction, I managed to convince myself that I could maybe produce some knittable yarn some day and bought a drop spindle kit and three days later this is what I had:
50g of thick-thin, artsy wool yarn (I'm calling it "artsy" because that makes it seem like maybe it was intentional or something.) The kit included 100g of three different colours of wool fibre. I spun half the brown first, because it's my least favorite colour of the bunch and I figured I'd try and work out some of the kinks on it. All in all, it's not as bad as I thought it would be. I also bought 200g of some lovely blue/mauve/grey roving dyed by the folks at London Wul and once I'm all good and practiced on my roving from my kit, I'll move onto the really pretty stuff. I'm hooked. I'm definitely going to buy a spinning wheel this fall! Hopefully more spinning news to come!