Project updates

The checky shawl is done. It is hanging to dry in this photo. It was 95 in x 24 in off the loom. I'd made it extra long, knowing that there was a lot of stretch in the yarn and it would shrink back once I was done. Well, after twisting the fringes, I let it sit overnight and tossed it in the washer on the handwash cycle this morning. It is now 84 in x 21 in. This is a good size for a shawl. I'm still not fond of twisting fringes, but it does make the ends look nice and finished. I've gotten 5 shawls when I expected 4 from this project and I'm happy about that. A blue one is already spoken for and one of the red ones will be a gift. I think I may actually keep one for myself as well.

I've also got the first bobbin of the black shetland off the wheel. I put it into a centre pull ball as I was going to ply it. However, there wasn't one break while winding it off and I wasn't horribly gentle with it. I'm thinking that this might be strong enough to weave with. I do have a small project in mind which the black shetland would work well for, but I'm not certain. Instead, I'm going to just spin it into singles and store in centre pull balls for a few weeks until I decide. The light coloured flecks are the bits of VM left in the roving that I wasn't able to get out when picking before I spun or during spinning.

Now, I'd like to introduce you to Star, a moorit shetland lamb fleece. I've started picking and washing it. It is a nice fleece, greasy but not overly so, although alot of it is a tad on the short side. It is part of the project I'm working on to make a shawl for Tammy of Kalwa Taure Shetlands. The moorit coloured sheep I've seen tend to be a lovely chocolate brown. This one is no exception, though I couldn't get the colour accurate in the photo, even with some playing around in GIMP. The difference is that this fleece has lovely sun faded tips. Some people don't like that and I've heard that people even cut them off. In this fleece though, it adds some lovely character to the fibre.

I checked the forgotten madder vat. It is lovely and dark red in colour. Leaving it in the garage for most of the winter seems to not have harmed it at all. Nothing sciencey project growing in ti either! Yay!