SSS&W Winter Wool Fair

Today was the annual Winter Wool Fair hosted by the Sutherland Shire Spinners and Weavers at Sutherland Uniting Church. I'm not a member, however, I'm a huge fan of the fair. Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos of the fair itself. I personally think the Winter Wool Fair is better than the Sydney Craft and Quilt Show at Darling Harbour for yarnies.

There was amazing work done by the members in the form of woven scarves, crocheted items, knitted items and handspun. Quite a few of the works on display had won ribbons in various shows. Then there's the yummy supplies like commercial yarn, handspun yarn, fibre, various spinning based shops like Glenora Weaving and Virginia Woolworks. There were books, KnitPro accessories, hand dyed yarn. A yarn & fibre lover's paradise really.

I also saw a new exhibitor, Frank Williams who sells spindles on Etsy. He is a retired carpenter who just started making spindles in January this year. He said he'd had customers all over the world buying from him. I played with some of the spindles and fell in love with a Tibetan. It wasn't as pretty as the others in terms of not having a big whorl with a decorative design on it. However, It was simple and made beautifully and it felt like a dream when spun.

So here it is along with the rest of my haul:

The pinky is handdyed 4ply merino yarn from Glenora Weaving. The middle is a 3ply silk from Virginia Woolworks, The right is what I believe is First Edition Fibre roving "Magic Merino" from Glenora Weaving. And the Tibetan spindle in the middle. Below is my first spin to test it out. Ooh pretty!

I haven't done much long draw spinning before. I have only one other attempt on my Ashford Traditional wheel. It hadn't fully clicked yet. I think I'm getting the hang of it now.

So the other half of the reason why I go to the fair, is the yummy Devonshire Tea home made by the ladies there. The scones were delicious. Can't wait to go again next year.

Twin Moretons

My dear little twin second cousins Clarice and Cassandra turned one this weekend. For their birthday I crocheted two little tunic dresses. The pattern is Moreton. It is crocheted with Bendigo Woollen Mills Cotton. I had the buttons custom made by the talented Jess at AppleSpice. Jess turned her creativity loose to come up with these:

Which turned into these:

I love the final result. They were gifted along with white long sleeve tees and leggings. You can see more photos on my project pages: Sky Moreton and Blush Moreton.

Jess also sells lip balms and baby bum balms. I tried out a lip balm and it's really yummy. I also bought the baby bum balm and another lip balm for my visit tomorrow to a friend with a new baby. Hope she likes them too.

Epic Viajante

For those who've browsed Ravelry patterns recently, you may have noticed that Martina Behm's Viajante Shawl has featured quite heavily. I had the opportunity to knit this shawl recently as a Will-Work-for-Yarn job for the lovely jenigma. Jenigma provided the yarn which was Wollmeise Lacegarn in the colourway "Verhext und verratzt". It's a beautiful colour. I love purples. Link to the Ravelry project page. It came out like this:

As you can see, it's a pretty huge shawl. I used up almost the entire 300g skein with only 3.5g leftover. It took about a month of speedy knitting to finish. My knitting friend, Lorna, describes this shawl as a giant sleeve! My payment yarn was Wollmeise lacegarn in Schwarz (i.e. black).

I am planning to use this as a highlight for a Veera Välimäki's Plain and Simple Pullover with another skein of Wollmeise Lacegarn in a Nobody's Perfect skein of Poison Nr 5. I bought this skein while on holiday in Germany, at the Wollmeise shop!

Swirl Hat for Zeffy

I completed this hat a while ago in June for little second cousin Zef. It is knitted in Moda Vera Sombre which is a soft cotton yarn, perfect for sensitive baby skin. I knitted this one up quickly before I went on holiday since by the time I got back, winter would've been two thirds of the way through.

What a cutie!

I think it may be a bit big but all the better to grow into.

I'm Engaged!!!

Interrupting the knitting chatter to announce that I'm Engaged! Woohooo!

Here's the bling - Pink Argyle Diamond in the centre, uniquely Australian from the Argyle Pink Diamond mines located in the Kimberly Plateau in Western Australia:

For those who don't know, Tim and I have been a couple for a bit more than ten years now. We went on holiday and as Tim cannot keep secrets from me, I knew he was going to propose during the trip. At the end of the trip when we were in Vietnam (Nha Trang) he asked me to marry him although somewhat informally. Of course I said yes and when we got back to Sydney we went ring shopping. I also said he needed to take me to a nice restaurant to celebrate since we didn't do that on the proposal so we'll be doing that on Friday :)

Purple Handspun

So recently, I learnt how to spin and the lovely Adriana (Kaaktus on Ravelry) gave me her old spinning wheel. It is a vintage Ashford Traditional and isn't branded since supposedly it was made before Ashford started branding. The next related exciting thing is, I went to the Sutherland Spinners and Weavers Guild's Winter Wool Festival. That was quite impressive to say the least. The quality of items for sale and showcased works were fantastic. I visited Glenora Weaving's stand and bought some First Edition Fibre. I've always been meaning to try some of this. I got a purplish silk-merino blend. The colourway is actually made up of strips of purple-blue, dark pink-red and white. It spun up beautifully! I love it.

The picture is only of 70g. I had a total of 250g so I still have heaps to spin up. I spun this worsted as a 2ply. It's about 13-14wpi which makes it approximately a fingering-sport weight yarn (i.e. 4-5ply). I haven't yet washed it so it might bloom after washing.

The photo was also taken from my new camera which I absolutely LOVE. It's the Canon Powershot S100. I highly recommend this camera to anyone who wants decent photos. It's amazing the quality of the photos from a point and shoot compact camera.

Question for Knitters/Crocheters

So here's a list of questions I saw posted on the CanaryKnits group discussion board on Ravelry which I thought were interesting to see responses too. Feel free to contribute here with your answers to the questions.

1. Are you always happy with your FO’s?
Mostly yes. Sometimes I might be disappointed but when I wear the FO, I realise that it wasn’t so bad after all! Sometimes I realise that the style of the FO is not for me so I won’t be as happy and I don’t know what to do with them.

2. Are you sometimes so disappointed that you frog everything and start a new project?
I never frog FOs or ones close to completion.

3. Do you wear your knits or do they end up at the bottom of a cupboard? If so, why?
I wear the ones I like and I don’t wear the ones that didn’t turn out as I hoped. Most knits that I give away tend to be things I intended to give away right from the beginning (before I start the knit) so things which I am disappointed in just languish rather than get given away after they are completed.

4. Do you always make a swatch?
Depends what I am knitting and for who. If it is a shawl, I don’t bother so much, especially if it’s a garter tab start since, if I don’t like the fabric, I can just rip it out and restart and it would be about the same effort as a swatch. If it is for someone else, I tend to be a bit more fussy with the swatching and making sure the fabric is ok for the yarn. I tend to swatch for fitted garments but I don’t wash the swatch or cast off, I just rip it out and knit with it when I’m happy.

5. Would you rather work with some yarns you know well rather than others to avoid bad surprises?
No, I knit with all different yarn.