Tag: yarn

Cowl Neck Sweater

In December 2009 we moved from Toronto back to the UK. My brother and sister stayed over there, and it sucks that we live so far apart now. My sister visited the following summer, and when she left I bought some yarn to cheer myself up.

I bought 10 balls of Artesano Inca Cloud, a sport weight alpaca yarn that is lovely and soft. It came with a free pattern, and I selected the Nico sweater by Jean Moss. I had only knit one sweater before, a chunky acrylic man’s cardigan, so this would be the biggest project I’d started for myself, and the second sweater. Read more

Sock Knitting

I’m not sure where I heard the idea that real knitters knit socks, but I’d been knitting for probably over a decade and had never tried to make a pair of socks before. I was curious, were they really so difficult? It was time to find out.

My friend bought me some lovely alpaca sock yarn for my birthday back in 2012 and I started knitting. I chose a toe up pattern as that meant no seaming on the toes, and a short row heel as I thought they looked the nicest. I went with Elfine’s Socks, a free pattern with a pretty lace design, with both a chart and written pattern. I prefer to knit from a written pattern, but many lace patterns only provide charts which I find frustrating. Read more

Hand Spinning

This afternoon I picked up my long neglected spindle to have another go at spinning yarn.

I have tried spinning before without much success. I used poor quality wool and didn’t really know what I was doing. It came out very uneven, lumpy and quite ugly.

I thought I would give it another go, you don’t get better without trying right? So I grabbed some welsh mountain wool that’s been on my shelf forever, and my spindle.

Today’s effort was a little bit better than my previous attempts. I managed to get a relatively smooth yarn, although it was still a bit uneven. I struggle to get the spindle to actually spin for more than a second at a time, so it spends most of it’s time clamped between my knees while I try and get the wool to do what I want it to. Read more