A Little Bit of Yarn, A Little Bit of Twist

I have been given credit for getting Artist's Palette Yarns in as Yarn of the Month for Stash Yarns, but really, the fault's all Chantelle's. I can't remember how long ago it was, but she rang me to tell me she'd found a lovely knitting shop up in Malvern called The Knitting Parlour. Which was great because that meant that Mummy Irish would now have a nice knitting shop to go to that is close to her.

I asked her what she bought, and she said she bought some lovely sock yarn that was kept in a basket towards the back of the shop, called Sweet Feet, by the aforementioned Artist's Palette. "They're based in Worcestershire and I think they've got a website," she said, always happy to buy yarn that is made locally. We went to look for the website and found that it was still under construction.

Fast forward to a couple of months ago and we needed a Yarn of the Month. I loaded up the now complete website and showed Michelle and Nathalie. "How about them?" I'd even managed to get Chantelle to show them how the sock yarn knitted up when we ran into them at I Knit Day.

Last Friday, a mighty box arrived with some of the most incredible colours, textures and samples. And twelve of these babies for the yarn tasting evening:

Everyone who attended the yarn tasting got one of these. You can't see it, but near the label there is also a handmade stitch marker. Juliet makes such effort you can't help but love her. She came along to the yarn tasting, too, so it was great to meet the person behind the madness.

And this was what was inside:

One wee ball each - complete with label - of all her yarns.

Let it be known that thanks to her, my stash - already shamefully large - has increased a little bit more.

Cut to this morning, where a small group of us gathered at Alice's for Diane's Single Spun class. Diane had taught me to spin low-twist singles before, resulting in this yarn here, but when I asked her about the Single Spun class, she taunted me with the words, "Well, I haven't taught you everything about spinning singles, you know..."

Talk about a woman after my own heart.

We started with some lovely oatmeal BFL that drafted and spun like a dream, and this was the result:

The technique we were using was different from when I first learned to spin low-twist singles; the fibre hand stays back as usual, but the forward hand doesn't pinch off twist - it sort of just guides it a bit by rolling it around, almost more like flicking the yarn. The twist is also allowed to go behind the forward hand, which I found a little counter-intuitive, but this is so that the twist that is built up draws the fibres from the fibre hand, keeping a lot of the air in, therefore making a soft, lofty single.You can see how puffy the single is in the skein.

We were also given laminated twist angle cards, so that we can keep track of our twist angle in order to get the yarn we want.

The photo above was taken before we set the twist. For singles we gave it a hot bath with Eucalan, then a cold bath, then a hot bath again, then a cold bath again. This is to shock the fibres into felting ever so slightly, enough so that it doesn't come apart from the lower twist. Then we whacked our skeins against... well, just about everything in the kitchen, to encourage the yarn to bloom.

After a break, we finally got to spin the fibre we were given as part of the class:

Spindlefrog's Falkland in Giddy.

I have spun half of this; I'm going to spin the rest tonight and hopefully set the twist tomorrow. Expect to see photos of the finished yarn in the next couple of days! I can tell you now that the first bobbin is so super squishy I can't believe I made the singles myself!

And as an extra feature, someone is still knitting:

This photo was taken a couple of weeks ago when we were hanging out at Alice's on a nice quiet Sunday. Nick is a shockingly quick knitter, considering he's doing 1x1 ribbing. What I find hysterical is that he has quite a few of my knitting habits, and whenever he makes a mistake and I fix the row for him, you can't tell where his knitting ends and my knitting begins.

Between taking up knitting and going back to painting models again, he's found that he's more relaxed and less stressed, to such a point that he's actually started losing a little bit of weight, which was unexpected but something he's very pleased about. If ever I'm sitting on the sofa knitting in front of the TV, every so often he would sit himself down with me, grab the bag he keeps his knitting in, and work away. One evening he churned out two inches, and recently he's nearly got the hang of knitting while watching TV.

Well, until he dropped a stitch, but that was no bother.

I just like the fact that even if he has no real ambition past scarves, he is really enjoying knitting and finding it beneficial to his well-being. Though he has professed to becoming rather smitten with the idea of being the one to knit a future baby blanket... but that is a long way off.

Comments

[Ruth]

And you had to post a link. Don't you know I'm supposed to be de-stashing? I'm lost in the pop sox section, someone please hide my card....