Saturday 12 December 2009

Winter sunlight on my toes.




Time for a fibre update. The cold weather has made the knitting of bedsocks imperative and I used my beautiful Fyberspates green to make these chaps. I had thought of teaming the green up with some hand dyed purple yarn but the more I knitted the less the sock looked like a chic take on the urban goth look and more like the work of a knitter who was colourblind. Or completely lacking in taste. Thankfully I had an emergency supply of sensible white yarn which did the trick.

Our little weeping willow tree gets pruned every six months or so otherwise the branches get so thick that they deny light to the surrounding plant life. Last pruning I rescued the trimmings and soaked them in a bucket of water till they grew mouldy and fragrant. The resulting dye is a subtle warm peach, spun into a thick-ish single ply. Imagine my smugness, fibre spun on a Friday, yarn washed and dried over the weekend and a shawl knitted by Thursday night. Only the yarn was too thick for the pattern and there really wasn't enough of it. The teeny shawl that was the result of all that effort made me look like Jemima Puddleduck
This afternoon I will be listening to the football on Radio Scotland and turning a too small shawl into a just right scarf using only some 5mm needles and a strong sense of hubris.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love the idea of official "bedsocks"! I just use my everyday ones and I think a stack of bed-only socks is in order...
these green striped ones are beautiful ~

Karin said...

That is one ambitious willow tree!
Lovely yarn made into lovely warm socks. :)