Saturday, February 19, 2011


Today you get photos and not much more. Above is my crepe myrtle which has bloomed gorgeously for the first time in I can't remember how many years. It's amazing what getting rain for a change does. It now obviously needs a hard prune but I was afriad to do that when it was barely hanging on with the drought. Of course, I am also drowning in weeds which I can't seriously attack, but you win some, you lose some.

To the right is the BFL I mentioned on Dec. 30, one bobbin full

and some of the unspun roving so you can see what
I started with. It's a delight to spin and I hope I get enough to do something nice with it. Lovely shades of green. The other spinning has been alpaca: I've spun and plied a hank of white, and I have a bobbin full of brown. There will always be alpaca. I have the last bag of white to sort through and it has had moths in it. I am throwing out more than I keep and have added moth balls to the bag. Fortunately all my stash but a little is in plastic tubs and safe from insects.


To the left is a close-up of the socks I just finished out of the hand-spiun merino & bamboo. The way the colours mix and flow is really gorgeous and completely derived from the spinning and knitting process. I have to say it's prettier than any store-bought (IMHO) but store-bought is more uniform in thickness and has extra stregthening in it (usually nylon). I didn't reinforce these and we'll see how they wear, but I haven't yet worn out any socks. That's the virtue (?) of having many pairs of socks: you don't wear any one pair too heavily and they stay "healthy" longer. I am patching a previously knit pair at the moment (botched the heel when they were knit) and then will start on a pair of store bought yarn socks. I do have a stash of sock yarn that's a bit intimidating. In some ways this is like when I used to make all my own clothes. I didn't have some of the little finishing details that commercially sold clothes had, but they were my choice of fabric and colour and design. I always knew I was wearing one of a kind, and it could have been a Vogue designer pattern and now what was on the racks in a department store. I had a white linen Mary Quant design in 1969 that was so cool.

I was hoping to post a picture of the cabled vest but it needs blocking and I just haven't gotten at it. It's finished, just not photogenic.

3 comments:

jekni said...

Hi there. I'm also a knitter and found your blog when I googled for Patons Miraggio. I have been given 13 balls of the dark blue mix colour no 11 and was wondering if you still had the lot that was given to you back in 2008 as you mentioned that was blue. I need to buy another 12 balls to make a wrap from a pattern in a magazine but haven't been able to find any yet. I'm also in Canberra and knit with a group at Erindale library every Thursday afternoon. Would love to chat - my email is

jekni said...

jacki@knightech.com.au

Swanknitter said...

Hi Jekni,

Sorry all the Mirraggio went into a child's jumper and nothing left.