wips and stash

the melbourne knitters guild is putting together a wildflowers afghan rug, with each square knitted by its members. here's ours:

we tried doing the picture knitting thing of having multiple colours on the go, and got tangled and confused pretty quickly. in the name of getting the thing done sanity relatively intact by the first sunday in may, we've elected to knit the whole back, then embroider the knitting stitches in different colours over the top (just like that charmingly dodgy header above). almost there.

about halfway there - the mighty felted fuzzy feet:

the yarn is bendigo woollen mills wool/mohair mix - we choose this for the felted result. it's quite positively the most luscious felty goodness we've had the pleasure of working with. it's meant to be a present, however the receiver's birthday (rosie, who lent, then donated her old washing machine to us) was quite some time ago - by the time they're done, it'll be her birthday this year. shame, shame, shame.

after a lace knitting workshop, we went gung ho into a pi shawl, but kinda lost interest. in the name of using all that white wool that we purchased at last years mini wool festival, we reckon we'd better at least have the shawl done before this years fest on the 1st june. a little lost at the moment with where we're up to:

it's probably a case of rip it back a few rows, find our bearings, and get cracking.
another one to play with:

it was an experiment with the roving (clean fleece ready for spinning) that we'd bought from bendigo sheep and wool show last year. those needles are huge 20mm or so babies that we thrifted, with the end result being one enormously thick chunk of knitting. it feels and looks lush, but it's a little over the top. time to frog that one back and have another lighter shot at it.

the lincraft ramie stash:

it's not that we need this stuff right now, but it was so cheap, and it'll keep until the warmer months.

the colinette shadecards and test yarn for debbie new's dress turned up from the incredibly helpful sarah durrant:

it's a tough call choosing shades from the cards, because each yarn takes the colour differently, and without seeing and playing with a ball, it's hard to tell what the finished project will be like. if it was simply a matter of choosing a colinette pattern where you see how the yarn knits up, and taking a punt on the colourway, maybe it wouldn't be so tough. something we noticed - sarah has a special orders service where it's possible to order a small amount, so we might just do that, and try out the castania colourway in athene. then again, those tape yarns like giotto and tagliatelli are so callin' our name...