Stash enhancement

On Friday, I went to the local wool shop, and bought an extra ball of Bluebell for the blue lacy socks, and two balls of a luscious, soft, alpaca yarn. I’m going to finish the blue lacy socks, even though the yarn/pattern combination isn’t perfect – they’ll be okay, just not my favourite pair! However, I’m also going to knit a pair in the alpaca. I’m not sure how well it well wear, though, but I guess I’ll find out. Worst case – well, I have a darning needle, and I know how to use it!

alpaca yarn

The wool shop also has some spinning supplies, and some silk caps came home with me, as well. I don’t actually really enjoy spinning silk caps (although I love spinning silk tops!), but I’d like to have some slightly slubby silk yarn for weaving, which is how my spinning of silk caps turns out.

Speaking of spinning, on Friday night and last night, the DH and I watched DVDs – rather than knit, I did some spinning. I’m spinning some merino very fine, for a lacy scarf. The trouble with spinning very fine – and we’re talking finer than cotton thread fine – is that it takes so long to get much done. After a 2-hour DVD, there still didn’t seem very much at all on the bobbin! I started this spinning about two months ago; since I only spin when watching DVDs, and I do very little of that these days as I spend most evenings writing, it’s taken me all this time to spin probably about 20 grams of yarn. There’s a lot of meters in that 20 grams, but it still doesn’t feel like a great achievement… and I need at least 50 grams to make a decent length scarf. The small triangular one I made last year took about 20 grams, and I want the next one to be rectangular and much larger. However, I don’t think, at this rate, that I’m going to get enough spun AND knit it up in time for this year’s Armidale Show – so last year’s achievements there has little chance of being equalled this year!

Lace scarf

2 thoughts on “Stash enhancement

  1. Ah, the Mi Inca Alpaca… I was fondling that when I was in there yesterday and Danielle mentioned you’d been there on Friday. That shawl you enetered in last year’s show was so beautiful. You don’t want to knit something for the show from a commercial yarn in the stash?

  2. I could have happily brought home several more balls of the alpaca – the jade green was calling my name loudly and asking to be fondled – however the budget argued against it.

    I did think about knitting a lace scarf using some fine commercial wool I have, but decided against it. With limited time available, I need to concentrate on projects I really want to do, not just do for the sake of it. So, I’ll probably aim for the 2008 Show instead for the handspun, wedding ring scarf ;-_

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