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broadwalk hat

a good pattern to use my handspun alpaca. it was one of my early handspun yarns (never posted photos of it before) and is quite irregular with chunky and thin/overtwisted bits. but even tough the hat looks a little rough i like the look.

i modified the pattern a little, knit less ribbing rows and also knit only 3 repeats of section A – was going for a normal hat and not a slouchy look. it fits quite nicely 🙂

the hat was finished in only one evening yesterday (watching „the blind side“) and i already wore it when we were geocaching today. my ears stayed nice and toasty 😉

pattern: broadwalk by elizabeth pedersen

yarn: grey handspun alpaca with a yardage about 200m and 91g

needles: 3.5mm and 4mm dpns

cup of yarn anyone?! this is a shot of the alpaca yarn (rests). you can see the chunky and thin parts:

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reading mitts

wanted to knit these for some time and it was a great  possiblity to finally use the cool wool i had in my stash for ages. they are really comfy. i started off with size m but it was way too big. even tough i used thinner needles/yarn. no idea why the measurements didn’t work out at all, can’t be that i’m knitting that loosely, can it!?!

anyway, size s and needle size 3mm worked out great for me.

pattern: susies reading mitts by susie rogers and janelle masters

yarn: lana grossa cool wool 2000. it’s 100% merino wool. just a little more than one skein

needles: 3mm dpns

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theory on how to dye

so far i just threw some colours on my fibers and skeins of yarn, but all that’s about to change 🙂

i found this great book on amazon, or to be more exact i read on a blog somewhere that it is highly recommendable. so i gave it a go and at the first glance i knew: great book! exactly what i need.

gabriele breuer – 1000 Farben auf Wolle und Seide (1000 colours on wool and silk). the book is in german unfortunately, but i highly recommend it to all the german dyers!

it tells you everything about dyeing with acid dyes and fixation in the microwave (plus infos about other techniques) which i haven’t done yet, but always wanted to try. it’s so much easier, faster and less of an energy waste than boiling the fibers.

the book even starts off with explanations about chemical backgrounds, colour theory… the best thing is that the author also works with ashford dyes like me. so if i do exactly as she tells, i’m quite sure to have similar results! in the end you’ll be able to mix any possible colour just using the 3 base colours (in ashford terms that’s blue, yellow and hot pink in comparison to the general base colours cyan, yellow and magenta) and black.

the book also tells you how to apply the colours, how to achieve specific effects etc….

i definitely have a huge shopping list now. i need 1l glas containers now to prepare and store my basic colour-mixes, a large flat bowl (can’t find the correct word) to spread my rovings in for dyeing, some extra spoons etc, and a big pot (does anybody have an old one they don’t need anymore?!?)… so far i dyed using our normal cooking equipment but i don’t feel too good about dying and eating from the same pots…

so my todo list is:

  • read book
  • buy equipment
  • start dying like a madwoman 😛
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damson on fire

i knit a damson before and it’s really an easy pattern, but looks so good nevertheless! so here comes another one. i’m not sure if i’m going to keep it for myself or if i want to give it away as a present at a good occasion… time will tell…

pattern: damson by ysolda teague

yarn: handspun yarn. i just realised i never even took a photo of the finished yarn! it’s a carded mix of 60% merino, 20% mulberry silk and 20% tussah silk that i bought at das rad der zeit. it was spun into a 2ply yarn with a weight of 102 g and a yardage of 549 m.

the fiber wasn’t too great to spin. maybe i’m just not the biggest fan of hand carded fibers? 😉 but the result is quite nice because the mulberry silk appears almost everywhere in the yarn which makes it very shiny!

needles: 4mm circular

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dani’s cranberry sauce in blue

this strange post title isn’t about a cooking experiment that went wrong, it’s about a hat my friend dani knit using my handspun „winter day“ yarn…

i love the result and i hope it’s as comfy as it looks 🙂 i like the pattern as well and am very tempted to knit a hat like that for myself too!

knit by: dani (knit-maux at ravelry)

pattern: cranberry sauce by brittany tyler

yarn: „winter day“, handdyed and handspun by me

needles: 5.0mm

photos by dani with her permission to use them on my blog 😉

that was the handspun yarn:

and that was the handdyed roving before spinning: