Knits for Rainy Weekends

Readers, in the last few years I have relocated from the UK back to my home country of Australia, and to a different part of Australia at that. Mostly, it is warm and humid here, with mild, wet winters which are occasionally cold (we had sleet  one weekend in the depths of winter last year).  Because cold weather is only occasional, the houses are not particularly well heated or insulated, and I have found I need warm sleepwear and warm sweaters for nights and weekends here.

To this end, I have started a relaxed weekend sweater collection, of which the One Night Coat is part:

I am wearing this today, over jeans and a long sleeved Breton tee shirt.

My latest FO in this collection is the Jo Sharp Women's Sweater, Version 2, from the Contemporary Knits book, and knitted in some Jo Sharp Rare Comfort Kid Mohair I'd had in stash for years:

It is more cropped than the original pattern, and has bracelet length sleeves, but works fine with jeans and a tee underneath.  I wore it that way yesterday, and it was super comfortable, breathable, and I got a compliment - always nice.

This collection is a great way to use up the stash - I'm planning to do something with some cream Aran tweed next....

A Return to Handspinning

Readers, a much overdue post. Full time work and part time study are taking a toll on my crafting time, and on all thing crafty in my life, like blogging about crafting.

At the start of the year I promised myself I would restrict my crafting to knitting only, until my thesis is done.  Well, I have had a minor slip on that, for a few reasons.

One is that this is a recent purchase:

It's an Ashford Traditional, and I picked it up for a very reasonable price from a local-ish member of the New South Wales Handspinners and Weavers Guild.  Now, I have been "good" in the sense that I haven't got the wheel going, but, partly to keep up my drafting skills, partly because my sister gave me a bag of fibre from her own, and others' animals to spin (I have since taught her to drop spindle, so there may be less of that in the future!), and partly because I had a twingey back for a couple of weeks and was more comfortable standing, I picked up my newest drop spindle and the bag of BFL (Blue Faced Leicester) I bought with it, and started to spin it:

The BFL is only labelled with the colourway (Licorice and Lime), but no maker/grower. I bought it at the Masham Sheep Fair a few years ago, before we left Yorkshire.

Before long I had enough to pop onto a bobbin on the Ashford's Lazy Kate (the orange is the leader yarn):

I had hoped for a finer yarn, but it was still slubby and coming out a heavy sport or light dk. However, I continued. I am sure I will spin finer, and more even, yarn in time.

I plied it on the drop spindle - a first for me, after a bit of Internet and YouTube research. I was surprised how easy it was to do, and it did even out the yarn although made it even thicker (heavy dk to worsted weight), and I lost overall yardage of course.

So what to do with a small amount of BFL? Again, a bit of Internet research came up with the Twinkletete hat by Alex Tinsley from Dull Roar, via a handy Craftsy link on what do with your handspun.

And here it is:

The brim is the 2 ply handspun, and the remainder knitted in some stashed dk with no label...

It took a couple of evenings, and I love it! My back is better now, so I am back to sitting at my desk at the weekends, but this little, and slightly forbidden, foray into spindling and making, was a tonic.