Boozy Refreshment for the Pregnant

I always thought that if I had to choose a season of the year in which to be free from all the charming eating and drinking restrictions of modern day pregnancy it would be Christmas; Christmas with the port, and the sherry and the cool glass of Christmas day fizz, and the stilton, oh the stilton.

Now I think I've changed my mind - you can recreate some cocktails sans kick, but if anyone knows of a way to make virgin Pimms (that's more than a glass of lemonade with a few strawberries in it), please let me know; it's definitely Pimms season and I'd love a glass, almost as much as I want a large slice of brie on fresh crusty bread.

Still, enough complaining, I wouldn't swap the little bear for the world, let alone a brie sandwich with Pimms on the side, however often he or she decides that I really really need to hear the dawn chorus. At 5am.  And I have found a summer tipple substitute - summer tipple yarn:

The latest Tour de Fleece offering, another Purldrop Studios mini batt in Blue Martini.

Ice blue to Midnight blue with plenty of sparkle and all the colours of hazy summer sky in between.

I spun it up from light to dark working in strips down the batt at something a smidgen thicker than I spin a sock yarn, and when that was done I navajo plied the bobbin to preserve the colour changes.

It's the first time I've used navajo plying for a whole skein, rather than just using up the ends of bobbins and I think it's very effective on colour changes, I just need to remember to relax and let my fingers do their work without over thinking the process.

The one thing I haven't worked out is quite how to pause mid plying but happily I didn't have to move and got the whole thing finished in one fell swoop.

Finished result: 162 yards of sock weight ish merino/firestar that has a calling to be a hat.

In the meantime, well it wouldn't be me if I didn't go for the obvious cheesy shot would it?

It's the nearest I've got to a Martini glass!

Le Tour - again

I'm really going to have to think up some new and alternative blogpost headings! Anyway, I'm still riding, and by the happy virtue of the weekend removing the requirement for me to go to work (yippee), and I've finished the baby's blanket (double yippee), I've spent a good deal more time at the wheel.

Day 7 concluded with the first of what will be three bobbins of sock yarn:


Pure sunshine in fibre!

And with Day 8 dawning bright and early (thanks baby), I decided to tackle another tour aim - a singles yarn.

With hindsight I might have been better choosing a beautiful smooth pre-drafted batt as my first attempt but on the basis that if no one tells you it's meant to be hard you'll never know, I went right ahead with this:

A 50g Rockpool Candy batt called Marble Bag, a mix of merino, silk, corridale and banana.  In real terns that's some lovely soft fibre and a whole heap of slubby bits in various colours - think of those old fashioned glass marbles with twists in the middle and you get where we're going with this one.

the general instructions for a singles yarn is low twist, high take up, and go slowly so I set the Sonata up with the drive band on the biggest wheel on the flyer and the scotch tension on nice and firmly and tried to treadle really slowly.  I think next time I try this I might find some really laid back music to put on the Ipod as a metronome because I had to keep reminding myself to slow down.
One bobbin's worth of very slow treadling later, it looked a bit like this:

It was with some trepidation that I skeined it up on the niddy-noddy - I was fairly certain that we had more than enough twist that it wasn't going to come apart in my hands, but I was a bit worried about being overtwisted, even though I know you can just run it through the wheel in the other direction to take out anything too vicious.




Straight off the wheel you can see it still has a fair amount of energy to it - although not as much as I was expecting at one stage. I finished it off following some instructions from Spunky Eclectic by filling my little yarn washing bowl with hot water with a smidge of Eucalan and the sink with blissfully cold water.  The skein went into the hot then cold, then hot then cold again with a good bit of swirling in each followed by my favourite snap and thwack against the kitchen cupboards.  With the heat we had yesterday the mist of tiny raindrops that flew out of the snapping yarn was pure heaven I promise!

The strands of yarn were just starting to try to stick to each other when I hung it up - now hanging nice and straight.

A few hours drying on the line, and I have yarn:

Gorgeous, soft, and remarkably consistent yarn.

This is 156 yards, and I think on the lighter end of DK weight.  I asked H whether he thought it would suit me as as hat but he thinks it's more his colours so I think I may have already lost this one - I know he wants a pair of full mittens for the winter so perhaps eeked out with a little contrast yarn I might just have enough.


Next up - more sock yarn spinning - I'm alternating for variety!