Third Year of Projects Week 20 to 22

I'm really not doing well at updating here!

If you remember last time I posted, I had been working on my Shetland fleece. I've now carded a good chunk more and also spun a full skein of yarn. It's 91g of DK weight, 169 yards, and has an identical grist to my sample, which I was really pleased with, as it means my spinning is consistent enough to spin a jumper's worth of yarn from this fleece. The only problem might be yardage, but I'm doing to see what I get when I've finished spinning it all, and hopefully it will be enough.

I also have an update to the yarn that I stripped of colour last week. As you can see, I tried to strip the colour from a few skeins, but only one worked.The others became slightly lighter, but not enough to be usable. Also, the yarn became quite rough and brittle, which will be fine for my quilt, but I wouldn't suggest doing this for yarn destined for clothing. I then overdyed the one that worked using Wilton's Icing Dyes. I did a bit of experimenting, first trying to paint stripes on in Royal Blue and Sky Blue, which just led to a large amount of blue dye water all over my kitchen, and I think I would need more of  paste to do this.

So after a bit of mopping so I didn't dye my entire kitchen blue, I rubbed the Royal Blue dye paste directly on to the yarn in a random fashion, wrapped it in cling film and microwaved it. This worked to an extent, but the yarn was still majoritively grey, and the blue dye had not been completely heat set, so I overdyed it in a pot on the stove with Sky Blue. I was hoping for a slightly lighter colour than I got, to show the colour variations better, but I'm happy with this yarn, and I can definitely use it now, which is a plus.

There's also been a few knitting finishes. I finished the minion hat that I was making last week. I ended up merging two patterns and modifying them both. I used the knitting pattern from one hat with the eye from a different hat which was entirely crochet

This was made for a friend, and a mutual friend and I threw her a full minion themed birthday, so this was made to match the cake we made (she baked, it's coffee and walnut, and I tasted, then we both decorated. Plus we made a cake for the minion cake, so we wouldn't have to cut into the minion straight away).

This project (the hat and the cake) involved transporting 4 bags of cake baking equipment and an entire bag of yarn to our rented flat, as we were on placement about 2 hours away during the week, baking and crafting like mad, and then transporting the cake, the hat and all the supplies back with us without breaking anything, so it was a real labour of love! I think it was appreciated though.

The other big finish was the design for my waterfall cowl, which I am so happy with. It's really soft and snuggly and I'm still in love with the stitch pattern

I think that it is the perfect length, because it wraps warmly around the neck, but also can be left to hang loose without being too long. It's also reversible:

In case you can't tell, I'm really proud of this pattern, which is currently being test knit, and should hopefully be released pretty soon. I also taught myself to photoshop because I could not get a colour correct picture of this greeny-blue, and I think the photos came out pretty well as well. It's definitely a useful skill to have.

And last but not least, what I'm actually working on at the moment. As this is the first update in December, I think I need a hexipuff update, I'm up to 74 puffs which is pretty good. I'm now frantically Christmas knitting, and as Connor has been bugging me for a pair of socks for ages, I'm making him some

Size 10 men's socks on 2.5mm needles! And only in stockinette too! I must really love him...