Fiber Week in Review: May 11-17

The work on the knitting for the shawl collection is almost done, so I hope next week to be able to have more to talk about than just that--definitely the week after for sure.

Knitting: Finished the fourth shawl, blocked it, and wove in ends.

Lancelot base in Lady of the Lake and Knight colorways

And I came very close to finishing the fifth and last shawl this week. Last night I was just 5 repeats away from the end and possibly could have pushed on and finished it, but my hands and eyes were getting tired to I decided to go to sleep and finish it later.

The Pubslush campaign has been doing well. We're almost to the halfway point on the time of the campaign and we are over the halfway point on the funding. Thank you so much to those of you who have contributed already and those who plan to contribute. Your support is very much appreciated.

Spinning: I did a little spinning this week! I got through more of the alpaca/bamboo blend that I've been working on. Probably only need 20-30 more minutes of spinning and the singles will be done. Then I just need to carve out some time for plying (I like to ply in one session rather than starting and stopping several times).

Although this fiber is beautiful to work with, I'm really craving some color, so I'm going to pick something next with lots of colors, maybe something from this box:

Designing: I had a new release this week: the Chauntecleer Cowl. I had fun picking out the colors for this one.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to be doing next. I have so many different ideas running through my head. I know I want to finish the baby blanket, but what comes after that? More cowls? A shawl? Hat? Maybe try some socks? I already have a name for a sock pattern but no actual pattern yet, so maybe I should try coming up with a sock to fit the name. I think that after working on the shawl collection non-stop and having to push other ideas to the back of my mind, it's going to be difficult to change gears and work on something else. Maybe it's good that I've got the baby blanket going. Working on that might give me a little more time to sit down and make some future plans.

I think I'm going to hold off on releasing any new patterns until the fall since summer is not a huge time for pattern sales. So if I can get a few patterns ready over the summer, I could have a steady stream of releases come fall, alongside the shawl collection. So I think that's going to be my overarching plan.

Dyeing: The dyepots weren't quite as active this week. I got a lot of Camelot up in the shop and I had planned to work on Avalon next, but I want to knit the Brynhild Cowl first and see if I can get it out of just one skein of Avalon or if I'll need two. That will help me figure out if I should dye the skeins of Avalon in pairs or if single colors in a wider range is an option.

I took stock of the undyed yarn I still have and, well, it's not very much at all. I'm not completely out of anything, but most bases have just 1-2 skeins remaining. So it looks like I'm going to need to be placing some orders soon. I need to sit down with my current inventory and see which bases to focus on although I'll be getting at least a little of each.

I am still working on the self-striping and have two new colorways that I tried this week. It's been super rainy here so hard to take good pictures, but as soon as I reskein the one and get good pictures of both colorways, I'll post them in the shop.

Hope you have a great week! I'm looking forward being finished with the shawl collection!

Fiber Week in Review: May 4-10

Once again, most of my crafting time has been taken up by the shawl collection as well as dyeing. But I do have a big announcement. I've started a Pubslush fund for the shawl collection as a way of allowing people to pre-order (in a way) the collection: Gawain's Shield: A Shawl Collection. I recorded a video in which I talk about the collection and share the three shawls that have been finished. Even if you're not interested in contributing to the fund, if you're at all interested in learning more about the collection, I hope you'll take a little time to watch the video. I'm almost to the halfway funded point (which is where I have to be for the funding to go through), so I am so grateful and thankful to those who have contributed so far--as well as though who will contribute.

Knitting: I'm almost finished with shawl #4. I did run into a snag--I ran out of yarn with less than one repeat of the border remaining! Argh. I'll be reworking the design so that it uses less yarn on the border (I don't want others to run out or have to use just a tiny amount of another skein), but for myself, I've thrown some more yarn into the dyepot so I can finish this one off as the sample. I'll work it again with the new numbers once I've finished the fifth shawl, but I want to be sure they are all completed in time for photography.

Teaser of Shawl #4

Spinning: I did a tiny bit of spinning on Sunday. I was doing some copy editing for PLY and got an itch for some spinning. So I spent about 20 blissful minutes working on the second single of the bamboo/alpaca I started a while back.

Dyeing: I've been working on adding the new colors to the shop and dyeing them on other bases. I've also been working on more self-striping sock yarn, but I've been frustrated at the transition between colors as they want to mingle a lot more than I intend and thus the transition is not "neat." I think I'm so worried about leaving white space that I'm instead making them way more overlapped than they should be. For my next batch, I'm going to worry less about white space since the color creeps up into the yarn anyway, and see if that helps. But I'm really happy with the way four of the new spring colors look together on one skein of self-striping, so I'll definitely be doing that one again.

More new colors as a result of playing around with the pink-red-orange spectrum

Way too much overlap in the pink/green created a dark grey section in between

Fiber Week in Review: April 27 - May 3

This week has been all about designing and dyeing, so no other knitting (or spinning) projects to talk about.

Designing: I'm knitting my fingers off on the five-shawl collection. This week I finished shawl #2 and started and finished shawl #3. Whew! I'm well underway on shawl #4. If I keep up this speed (which I don't think I can maintain for too much longer), I'll finish well in advance of the mid-June deadline. But with just one and a half shawls to go, I'm feeling like this project is actually doable. At first it seemed almost insane, so it's good to feel a little less pressure. Of course, I've been saving the hardest shawl for last, so we'll see how long that one takes when I get to it.

Sneak peek of the three finished shawls

Dyeing: I've also been dyeing up a storm. I wanted to experiment with some new colors and focused on spring colors. I got a good chunk done on the weekend; there are some new colorways coming to the shop as soon as I can get them dry (almost there), reskeined, photographed, and labeled. I'm having a lot of fun experimenting with mixing different colors together to get something new.

Names from left to right: Dindrane, Lunete, Sir Gromer Somer Joure, Orkney, Pelleas, and Dinas Emrys

So there's not a whole lot to say about this week, but I have been doing quite a bit!