Spinning

I finally got round to washing and taking pictures of my hand-spun. Here they are drying - so lovely:


Here is what I have been spinning:

First up is some Babylonglegs BFL in Mirasol - the most gorgeous colourway - oranges, browns and yellows:

(Picture taken from the Babylonglegs Folksy Site)

I was going to ply it with a pale cream undyed BFL but it was lying next to some dark brown Ronaldsay - and they just talked to each other. So I plied them together and got this yummy yarn:

Top Skein: Next up is some blue/green roving I bought from Natalie at The Yarn Yard. This was rolled into a ball and was aptly names gobstoppers and there is one shown on her blog. I plied this back onto itself and it is so soft and squish and was a dream to spin.

Botton Skein: I emptied the bobbins of all the yarn I had been using as training yarn and got a skein of mixed colours that looks a little like ice-cream. It's a bit slubby but I couldn't throw it out.

Top: The top skein is a small skein made from plain dyed merino bought from shunlikes.

Middle: I still had some of the Mirasol left and plied it with some pale grey Ronaldsay.

Bottom: I hadn't split the gobstopper exactly in half so had some left over so for fun I plied it with some of the remaining Mirasol from Babylonglegs. I really like this combination.

I was really surprised with some of these combinations and am very proud of my bundle of skeins. Do you like them?

Stuffed and Sent

Thought I'd show you pictures of the stocking I made for my swap. I based it on the Mason Dixon Christmas Stocking.

Here it is just before I sent it - all stuffed and ready to go.

Close up of the name (and yes that is how you spell her name) and I chose to do the corrugated rib as I love the effect.

Do you like the snowflake? You can see my tension is much tighter here and the stocking pulls in. Maybe next time I will go up a needle size for the fair-isle.

I put the year on the back - I like that idea. The foot just kept going though - and that toe is super-pointy!!!

Christmas Stocking Swap

I've been having a really bad, stressful time recently - won't bore you with the details here. But in the middle of all the doom and gloom something lovely arrived.

My Christmas Stocking *grin*

My lovely knitter made me this stocking:

It came full of goodies too:

There was a book, two balls of sock yarn, some Christmas pencils (which my son will love) and some fun Chinese-looking straws. The stocking is *huge* - does that mean I'll get more presents at Christmas?

Thank you so much - it really cheered me up!