Shades of Grey

I'm still on the wristies project . . .

I'd made my peace with the mid-grey and was quite excited about the darker grey, but I had an irresistable feeling that there was a lighter grey just waiting to be discovered. There it is in a skein on the right of the pic. I spun up a natural white and put just a crumb of currawong dye in the pot. It's hardly there, but that's what I wanted. The other skein is a real black--commercially dyed--I just can't get a thoroughly black black in my stove-top dye pot.

Another Grey

After making my peace with the light grey ruffled wristies, I cast on one in a darker grey.

This is more to my taste.

I've left a strand of the lighter grey in the pic for comparison.

Deep Sea

I caught up with my friend M at a quiet cafe yesterday afternoon. Normally this street in Carlton is buzzing, but the Football Grand Final was on, and people evidently had other priorities. I arrived a little early, and was happy to have a few minutes to finish off this wrap for M before she arrived. The knitting was done, but there were the inevitable loose ends to weave in. This is a tencel-acrylic yarn. The tencel gives a nice sheen which adequately compensated me for the absence of natural fibres. There were a few balls left after my teal blanket project. I've had a few conversations about naming the colour. I thought it was somewhere between a grey and a blue, leaning towards the grey. My friend R, who loves grey, said it was definitely a blue! M settled it by calling it "deep sea".

More Tubes

I've continued to practise going round and round. This time with the grey silky wool which I bought at the Handknitters' Guild sale and spun up the next day.Just now I'd like to rename the silky wool and slinky wool--it's so slippery and I'm using metal needles. I don't normally fuss much about the needles that I use, but if you look carefully at the wristwarmer that I've finished, you might notice that there's about an inch of rib on the far right. To knit the rib I have to change the orientation of the working needle after every stitch. With slippery wool on metal needles, that feels like the proverbial can of worms. Oh well . . . overall I was pleased with how the knitting went ahead and I hope to have another completed project to check off my list soon.

Shades of Grey

I picked up this silky wool at the Handknitters' Guild Expo on the weekend--it was one of those weekends with an overwhelming number of craft events to visit. Silky wool is one of the few fibres that didn't make it into our Spinning Certificate requirements. It's a modified wool--sort of stretched--which behaves more like silk because the microspcopic scales that characterise the wool fibre in its natural state are pretty much inactivated by the process. I bought some tops, hand-dyed in grey. You can see the tops in the background of the pic above and the yarn I've spun in the foreground. Despite being grey, it was interesting spinning because of the lustre of the fibre and the constant variation in shades. Now I've allowed myself a bit of lee-way in the past few days, but I really must get back to knitting up some swatches so I can get that folio in--medium mohair today.

Value

I'm working on a quilt for a friend whose favourite colour is--would you believe--grey! Here are the fabrics I've put together so far: Working with just grey is quite a challenge, particularly for some-one who loves colour. I'm going to have to work with variations in value--light and dark--to create interest. I think I'll get away with putting in some deep red accents too. That should really warm things up. It's going to be a very simple quilt--large blocks, with some four-patch blocks to break it up. Don't ask me when I'm going to get this done, by the way. I have no idea where it will fit with all the other projects I have on the go, but at least I've pulled out fabrics and started thinking about it.