Baaaaaaaa.....

We went sheep shearing today (my kids, my friend Barbora (she's not in the picture) and her girls).



The kids got to feed some lambs.




We watched some sheep get shorn, although this one didn't want to come.......



Eli wrote lots of notes so that he can do a power point presentation for his classroom (because he wants to).



and............ I might have bought some fleece (a South African Meat Merino named Victoria... pictured above as the stubborn sheep)........

even though I wasn't going to (I know, I know.... Even *I* didn't believe myself). Thankfully, Tamara agreed to split the fleece with me (she wasn't going to buy fleece either).

Spun to Done....

Last week I received some fiber from an un-club by JulieSpins (etsy link). I actually ordered 5 braids of a lovely family of browns and 1 braid of a colourway called Jungle.











Because I had just received my Woolie Winder the week before, I was completely motivated to sit down and start spinning. I decided to start with Jungle. I had thought that I would spin it thinly and then Navajo ply it to preserve the colour shifts, hopefully ending up with a fingering weight yarn. I would then use the resulting yarn to do some kind of fair isle mittens, knitting from each end of the same ball of yarn so that the colours would shift past each other.......... It sounded like a great plan.... but the execution was a little shaky.... I (this seems to be a consistent issue for me) under-spun the singles, so they kept drifting apart during the N-ply process. Plan B was then hastily constructed and implemented.

The resultant yarn: 2ply, between fingering and sport, 408m.


Once Chey saw the yarn... she HAD to have it ("It so soft and GREEN, Mommy!").... I decided to knit a pinwheel cardigan (you need a free membership to get the pattern, I believe) because I thought the circular design would highlight the colour changes in the yarn, but I didn't think I had enough for a sleeved version and decided on a vest. The pattern was written for worsted weight yarn, so to compensate for my lighter yarn, I kept increasing the spiral until it measured about 4 inches wider than Chey's back (at her underarms). I also decided to do a bit of a ruffled rib pattern for the edging. To accomplish that, I increased the stitch count by approximately 20% on the row before I actually started ribbing. I then increased again, halfway through the ribbing (making the 2x2 rib into a 3x2 rib). I think the vest is VERY nice..... and She loves it to.

and I have enough yarn left over for a hat... I'm thinking a spiral beret.....