And A Hat

 

I know I criticised the Cloudburst Pattern in my previous post, but the gloves have turned out really well. 

Sarah, my fellow market stall holder, put pictures of my socks and gloves on her mailing group on Saturday evening and I got an immediate response, which was gratifying! Some one wants the Leaves gloves and asked for a hat to go with them. I sent her photos of various patterns I found and she plumped for Fishtail Hat Pattern, by Gail Bable. 

I spun the wool on Sunday and should finish knitting today. I spent all yesterday morning in the kitchen, making jam and helping a small boy make biscuits, otherwise it would be done already. 

Longer Isn't Better

 

When it comes to patterns that is. This pattern is Cloudburst by Arienne Grey. It's six pages long and very garbled. There's no way I was going to print out six pages, much of which was unnecessary. I printed the page with the chart on it and, on the other side, the page with a picture of the finished gloves and then scribbled notes for myself. I made the gloves a bit shorter than the pattern, both before and after the thumb shaping. 

Nalu, on the other hand, was concise and clear. Hats off to Sparrowhawk. Leaves was somewhere inbetween. 

Leaves

 

This pattern is called Leaves and is by ValKnitting. I printed it out years ago, so I'm not sure where it came from. Ravelry? Probably. They're knitted on 5mm needles, which is a bit big for my handspun wool. Next time I might adjust the stitch count and use smaller needles. Of course I could spin thicker wool.... 

Another Batch

 

I finished spinning and plying another batch of wool yesterday and dyed it this morning. As usual, I poured the colours over and then put the wool in the oven to set the dyes:

My plan is to knit a pair of socks with half of it and sell the other half as yarn. It's not very drying weather today, but I have a couple of pairs of fingerless gloves to finish first, so that's not a problem. 

Nalu

 

Nalu is the name of the pattern. Apparently it's a Hawaian word meaning wave. The pattern is by Sparrowhawk and is a free download on Ravelry. Of course I used my own handspun wool instead of the recommended yarn. 

Socks And Mitts

 

I finished knitting the socks I showed in this post and spun and dyed the blue before last week's market. I even found some labels from my previous incarnation.  I didn't sell any socks or yarn at the market, but there was a lot of interest, which is a good start. Now I'm working on fingerless gloves. I started with undyed yarn so I can see exactly how much yarn they need. Half the yarn of a sock, so that's handy! 

Cushion Covers

 

When I was cleaning on Monday I came across the fabric left over from making curtains and remembered that I promised to make some cushion covers with it. Oops, better get on with it. My head boggled a bit and I couldn't work out how to fold the fabric to get the flap on the outside, as opposed to a pillowcase, where the flap is on the inside. Pinterest to the rescue, I looked it up and found this tutorial to help me. Easy when you know how!