Spinning Against The Tide

These few days between Christmas and New Year, are not necessarily good days for me, the weather has been dull, grey and dismal, and I feel a bit agitated and stir crazy.

I have finished spinning all the Finn Sheep and it has had a wash I am now leaving it to dry 'setting the twist'. Here's hoping for a let up in the dullness, so I can finish the month in style with photos, although the colour of this stuff is fiendishly difficult, maybe I could try scanning it!

I sorted through all of my ordinary knitting needles today, you know the straight ones with nobs on the end. The thing is due to one thing and another I have inherited old knitting needles from several sources over the years and I've never actually sorted through them all. I was working with the intention of making a knitting needle roll but ran out of steam when I realised the fabric I wanted was in the roof.

I discovered the only knitting needle size I don't have is 7 1/2 mm! Not that I have anything at all in mind that needs this size.

I then decided it's about time I knitted the gauge swatch for Durrow so I proceeded to winding my hank of yarn on my trusty ball winder..... ok so I thought I could do it on my own, and it did start to go ok until suddenly from out of nowhere it just tangled, and several deep breaths later I did get my first hank wound. After dinner when I decided that if I was going to commence both sleeves simultaneously I would need a 2nd hank, I commandeered Neo to wind the ball winder slowly, what was I thinking? Well actually I had better results than first time round, although getting Neo to wind in just one direction took a bit of doing.

Here is where I got the beautiful charcoal Blue Faced Leicester, (if you're on a yarn diet look away now!). It really is the softest wool ever, there's bound to be more up soon, but E-bay seems to be in a post Christmas lull. He's got Blue Faced Leicester sliver at rock bottom prices, so I will probably buy, dye and spin some of this, when I've worked through some more of the fibre in my stash, although spinning fibre doesn't count anyway!