..Yes. an amazing FIVE WEEKS later, this Airmailled box of delights appeared with no noticeable damage except that they've obvoiusly been held in customs over in Australia and the cute chocolate bars had got a bit melty. I could have shown you the pretty box...but you really want to see what was inside, don't you? Well, I did!
Penni had put a little note with every little thing she'd packed. all wrapped in pretty tissue paper. She'd themed the box of goodies to her home, Australia. There was a pattern book crammed with designs that I desperately want to knit NOW, from Patons Australia so now I have pattern books from Canadian Patons, U.K. patons and now Australia! Excellent choice! There's also a great magazine called "Yarn" which has fab articles including spindle spinning and Ravelry (she says it's the best Auzzie knitting mag.) and a novel called "Cloudstreet" which I plan to devour in the near future. Penni says it's her favourite book so I'm interested to try it for myself.
There was a lovely knitted hat which has already had its first outing, it's been so wet over here that I'm getting used to regular soakings so it was nice to try it out on a dryer day! All the goodies were packed in this lovely Australia bag and inside were four balls of the softest commercial sock yarn I've come across, Patons Patonyle- Lovely! There was also a cute Aussie tape measure, I think I'm collecting unusual tape measures now; she said it was cheezy but hey, I LOVE CHEEZE! Plus there was a useful little tin of lip balm which Penni had recommended as a fave of hers.
But that's not all, the piece-de-resistance of the whole box was this wonderful laceweight yarn, hand-dyed from the fab named "Live to Knit", how true! It's a lovely shade of spring greens and named "Spring". Unfortunately, due to the lacksadasical postal service, it arrived too late for the Spring Surprise Shawl however I have found a wonderful pattern perfect for this lovely merino yarn..Beefields Shawl! It's an Anne Hanson cracker and the yardage is perfect. Once I'm a little less crowded with lace knitalongs, I will give it my full attention, and the much-maligned Adamas Shawl that I've been putting off picking up for a while now, so seduced by quick-and-dirty knitting patterns.
So, thank you SO much for your generous package, Penni, it was much appreciated on a dull and depressing day!
On another matter, speaking of my 2008 post, I can see that. no matter how I try to convince myself, 2008 will be mostly dominated by lace...and other things (more of that later...).
Anyway, I DO hope you haven't been waiting for the results of my dyeing experiments too closely, I just haven't had a second to post the pics before now. Still, no excuses now, here they are...
..This is the hand-dyed tops that I experimented with, sprinkling dye powder directly onto wetted tops. The top left ball in blue is the twisted Merino, the top right (which reminds me of roses, flowers and stems) is the knotted and twisted BFL whilst the bottom ball is the knotted BFL. I was quite pleased at how they turned out, particularly once I had let them dry and fluffed them out again but the dye did not penetrate evenly so they will spin paler than the outer colour. As to when I'll get to spinning them, don't hold your breath!
Oh yes and in my mad dash to collect materials together for College this weekend, I found the lovely tops from Charity's fabbo package (from SP10) which will HAVE to be slotted into my spinning schedule again shortly.
Back to dyeing, and here are two skeins that were steamed, the top one was wet dye poured whilst the lower one had dry dye sprinkled on. I quite like the "sprayed" look!
And these are the 4 skeins from Stroud Yarns. They were all kettle dyed together in the stock pot and may have already been found a project, the new shawl knitalong from Anna (of Mystic Waters Shawl fame), it's called the Mystic Light Knitalong and you can join here. Then again, I might change my mind...I'm like that!
And here's the Shetland fleece that helped shed the pounds that Sunday, racing up and down the stairs dividing my attention between it and the dyepot.
It still has plenty of lanolin in it but it IS a lot cleaner, it has gone a shade or two lighter ridding itself of the filth, it was originally a deep chocolate brown but has gone more milky now. On the one hand I can't wait to spin it, on the other, I have two fleeces ahead of it in the queue and multiple projects vying for my attention right now so it may be on the backburner for a while.
So why have I been quite so busy this week?
This is part of it, a course booked at Burton Manor a while ago which due to a number of other comittments I hadn't been able to attend for around two years. Hence the materials were somewhat scattered to the four winds and took some unearthing. I lost my precious notebook with instructions on finishing this piece so a degree of time was spent using detective skills to work out what I needed to do next! Still it ocurred to me that you've never seen any of my Embroidery (or bears for that matter) so watch this space. I hope to show you a few luscious piccies from this weekend in the next post.
Looking ahead slightly, it will be my Blogiversary on the 27th, which just happens to be a Sunday (although a somewhat more busy one than normal). I'll keep my fingers crossed that you get something good then (or close to then!). And as if life wasn't busy enough, I've signed up for the UK Swap too so the questionnaire will have to get posted too, phew!
See ya all soon
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