fairy yarnmothers

Ok, so I'm a little behind on documenting my yarny adventures, so here's a slightly compressed and rather picture-heavy catchup post. About a month ago, I was invited to a destash party with the lovely Kate from Green Eyed Monsters and Kath from Six Swans. As they are both uberawesome yarn producers, this is the kind of event you would literally drop everything and pelt towards immediately. So I did! Leaving Mr. Rubbishknitter to sweep up the shards of crockery.


And here is the extremely lovely handspun that I managed to swap for some strawberry laces. The multicoloured skein is from Green eyed monsters, the white is from Six swans, and the brown is from an alpaca called Jemima at Black Mountain Alpacas. Good old Jemima. All so very pretty and squishy, and I had the cunning idea of combining all the mini-skeins together into a hat. Just a basic beanie, cast on 108 stitches in the round on 3mm needles, with a stripe pattern reflecting the relative amounts that I had of each colour (I had to double-strand the white, it was a bit thinner than the other two). It's a lot lighter in weight than most of my winter hats, and is probably what the posh knitting mags would call 'trans-seasonal' and I would call, er, not dead thick. Still very comfortable and pleasantly earwarming though, I love it and have worn it a lot. Thanks ladies! Also, I kind of hoped that casting on for a hat in March would speed up the arrival of Spring, a bit like sparking up a cigarette when you are waiting for a train. And it seems to have worked! Almost, if you squint out of the window and pretend it isn't chucking it down today.


In other news, imagine, if you will, how much opening this unexpected parcel would make you grin like an idiot. The answer, if you are in any doubt, is rather a lot! If the impossibly cheerful bright pillar box red colour isn't enough after the sensory deprivation of winter, it is incredibly squishy merino laceweight that you have to stroke against your face immediately, and a 100g skein, which in laceweight is probably enough metreage to knit a jumper for the moon. It also wins the Pleasing Packaging Award for the big smiley face on the label. It's from the incredibly generous Kate B. Hmm, and here on my table is the Winter/Spring issue of Knitscene, with the rather lovely laceweight Geodesic cardigan... *ponders*

So a massive thankyou, to er, Kate, Kate, and Kath! (And Jemima). Your gifts of awesome are very muchly appreciated!

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a small treat

Well, after all those wool/acrylic squares for the Macmillan blanket, I really wanted to have a go on something soft and lovely. This hat came from a single skein of 100% alpaca handspun that I bought on UK Ravelry Day from Six Swans. It's so unbelievably soft, knitting with it was like jumping into a river of marshmallows. I was kind of gutted to finish the hat. It was originally intended to be for the baby, but soon after I cast on, I realised it was a little on the big side. Then the voice of Satan started whispering things in my ear like 'he'll only grow out of it' and 'babies wouldn't appreciate the fineness of this handspun anyway'. After a while, I started to agree with Satan. So it's mine! Unlucky, kiddo.

I didn't use a pattern, and kept it extremely simple, I think it's better to let the loveliness of the handspun speak for itself. It's just 80 stitches, knitted in the round, stocking stitch with a couple of rows of garter stitch at the start to stop the edge curling, and an 8 point type decrease at the crown. And now I have warm ears! Hooray.

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