A Great End of Summer Offer

Stripes and Lace

Here’s a great opportunity to have what I think of as one of this summer’s “must have” knitting patterns for free from now through Sept. 7th! This tee showcases a mix of stripes and lace that can be either elegant or spirited depending on your color choices. Now’s your chance to get started on a wonderful End of Summer project and take a look at some of the other wonderful Jenjoyce Design patterns. Happy wool-working!

Jenjoyce Design’s Penny Candy Tee!

Free through September 7th

“Dear Knitters ~~ Do you love stripes? Do you love lace? Do you love to wear light-weight hand-knits in the sunshine? Would you like to put them all together in a cute sweater for you, for your daughter, or grand-daughter, niece, or friend? Great, because from now (officially Labor Day weekend) through the first week of September ~~ September 7th ~~ I am offering to gift this pattern to all who participate in the promotion.” – to find out how, click on the link below:

http://jenjoycedesign.com/2014/08/29/for-knitters-penny-candy-tee-end-of-summer-promotion/

Card(ing) Shark…well it does have ‘teeth’

Colors I carded by blending with my new Ashford Carders (and the help of my little girl :)!

That’s Carders not Kardashian (sorry Kim – blending wool is way more interesting!)

Who needs superstar gossip when we can talk about carding! I’ve been having loads of fun with my new Ashford carders, a gift from my lovely mother who is a very talented fiber artist and who always encourages my varied forays into fiber world.

Learning how to blend with carders

Here’s my sweet girl who loves to help with my wool projects wearing her ‘cloud sweater’ for which I designed and spun the wool.

I found a great blending tutorial at Knitty, opened my boxes of colored and natural fluff some ordered from The Wool Box and some from Tricotin (from where I had also ordered the carders). Then I got started and with a little help from my daughter we went ‘batty’! When I had them all spun up and plied, my girl came up with the color names and I wrote the tags. Then, we sent the package off to my mom as a thank you and a way for all three generations to work on the same project. Robin and I can’t wait to see what she’ll make with our RBK yarn!

Dyeing to get started!

Happy and blue!

It has been months since I’ve posted but I have a wonderful excuse: I’ve been working on projects, and better yet I’ve been learning new things :)! I finally did some dying with indigo like I learned in the first workshop:

My hand spun mohair dyed in the organic indigo vat – 100 g = 248 meters

Beautiful “Brogna” from The Wool Box came up this lovely ‘vintage’ indigo color.

Melissa LaBarre’s lovely pattern “Madigan” with a few modifications…

I also attended a second workshop on warm colors – using weld and madder –  taught by the inimitable Andie Luijk of Renaissance Dyeing. We also learned about using iron, ash water and copper modifiers.  Wow! It was too much fun 🙂

 ………………………………………..In the end, I had so many short yardage samples that I decided to splice them all into a single ball – something my mother did for me when I was a kid and learning how to crochet. Now I read that they’re calling it “magic ball”, a fun new name for a time-tested way to use up leftovers.

I decided to use my magic ball as one of the colors in a new iteration of Marylene Lynx’s “Camille” – I loved the first one that I made earlier this year and I’m having lots of fun with this new color combination!

My first go at “Camille” completed this spring.

I have been up to much more since April and will try to get some more of it posted in the coming days. Meanwhile, thanks for reading and Happy Woolworking!

Purl side of my newest “Camille” – still rumpled and with the lace to go but I’m sure it will all come out in the blocking :)!