The Legacy Lane Fibre Mill is owned by two sisters, Alyson Scott and Amy Tonning. They process all kinds of fibre, including their own alpaca, raised on their farm nearby.

I didn’t get a picture of the de-hairer, where coarse fibres and vegetable matter are removed. Some fibres, like buffalo, need to go through the process several times to get to the good stuff.

To spin yarn, the roving has to be drafted some more. This machine also measures the roving so equal lengths can be produced for spinning multiple plies.

Speaking of alpaca, we headed over to the farm for a bit. Unfortunately, it was raining and I din’t take my camera out, but here’s a couple of shots of the yearlings they had up at the mill.

pattern: Fancy Fullness by Birgit Freyer
yarn: KnitPick’s Shadow, Campfire Heather
needles: 3.25mm circular, Knitpick’s Harnomy
mods: Even though I crochet, I really didn’t want it on the edge of this shawl. I added an extra eyelet row to match the inner border and bound off with my new favorite bind-off for lace: k, k, k2togTBL, then k, k2tog TBL to the end.

If I had finished it as Birgit wrote it, I probably would have used only one skein of yarn, but since I wanted to add a row I did get into the second skein. I spit-spliced the joins so they’re pretty much invisible and no lumpy bits.

So, Mum finally has a knit shawl, I have a finished project I’m very happy with, and though she doesn’t know it yet, Kelly’s got some yarn. All 400+ yards of orange and green, which I never want to knit with again!

My birthday was last month, and my parents gave me a wonderful present — a Golding Ringspindle! It’s fabulous and beautiful. I fluffed up some wool and spun up some amazingly fine yarn. A little more practice and I’ll give that polwarth I got at London-Wul a go. I’ll post a photo as soon as I can find the basket I put it in…

The third Saturday of April (and of every month if you want to join us) was the second Anything Fibre gathering at the Sussx Artist’s Co-Op. I took a couple of bits to work on. My “Birds of a Feather” mat has reached the background filling stage and I’ve decided to embroider it instead of hooking.

I also took a lace knitting piece, but I won’t be doing that again — I had to reknit a row and then I found a stitch that had dropped several rows. It was a small group this week so we sat in the cafe and enjoyed the sunshine. I really enjoy this group since there are many different crafts going on and so many things to talk about. I would like to see it happen more often, even if it’s only a small group that gathers.

I go to rug hooking twice a week most weeks, and a good thing too because for a while that was the only time I spent hooking. This month, though, there were a couple of other opprtunites to get some work in on the mats.

First was the annual demo at the Saint John City Market. The Sussex Tea Toom Hookers and the Carnegie Hookers from Saint John go and spend a few days talking and demonstrationg and having lots of fun. I went on Thursday with D and L and we took Olive, our mascot with us. Olive is a wonderful carving my uncle Peter made of a hooker hard at work over her frame.
There were some Carnigie hookers with us and Sande Gunning brought in lots of lovely things from her shop in Glenwood. She got in another bolt of the lovely heathered green I missed last time around so I picked up some of that along with some other beautiful wool fabrics. Of course, I had to draw up a new piece to work on that required some actual hooking.

I also managed to fit in some shopping at Cricket Cove I picked up some Malabrigo laceweight, and now I really get what peoople are talking about when they say this stuff is soft. Knitting with kittens, indeed! I wish I’d picked up another skein though. The price was really good, and I’m a big girl, so what I have will only make a shoulder shawl for me. I also got a skein of Kreyon sock yarn. No plans for that yet, but I’m thinking some colourwork might be nice. And I got another bamboo circular, 3mm. I passed Coles bookstore on the way back and founda couple of items on the discount table, the
Little Box of Scarves, and Hip Knits. I know a couple of people who will love the patterns in these.

One Tuesday we went to the Trites family sugar camp for some hooking. My friend Joy arranges this each year with her husband’s family, and both times I’ve gone its been an absolutely gorgeous day. There were hookers from Moncton, Saint John, Sussex, Fredericton, and Dorchester.Quite a mix for there being only about 30 of us!

After walking in to the camp (it’s a bit of a walk, but a lovely one), we spent the morning hooking and chatting and having an all around good time. The Trites boys served us up a delicious lunch of buckwheat pancakes, maple baked beans, sausages and, of course, maple syrup. I picked up some maple cream for my parents (which they seem to be enjoying despite the squashing it got on the way home!), too.

You can see all the photos from the Sugar Camp here

I’ve been working on some knitting as well, but that’ll have to wait for the next post

Mirasol Sulka. Divinely soft, unbelievably smooth, serenity in a skein. I could knit with this yarn forever.

Simple mistake rib scarf for my Aunty L, knit the first time on 6mm needles. It wasn’t as soft as it could be, plus it seemed a little short, so I frogged and reknit the whole thing on 7mm needles. In the usual run of things having to do something twice would bug the hell out of me and, in fact, I would have stopped and restarted at a much earlier stage. But I was very reluctant to stop knitting with that dreamy strip of cloud.

I really want to make something big out of this. Big Girl Knits advises that a person my size should not wear garments made of chunky yarn, but I don’t really care. I want a complete set of garments, including underwear, all made of Sulka.

I’m thinking everybody I know needs some of this stuff in their life.
And I’m the girl to knit it for them

I had another ball of Baby Bamboo and after reading about newborns needing hats for the first little while, I thought this yarn would be perfect. No sweaty little baby-pate with bamboo. A very simple hat was the thing, and one that Baby could continue to wear through the spring. My favorite hats are 2/2 rib because they’ll fit such a wide range of sizes, snug enough to stay on the littlest noggin, but not tight. I wanted it to fit from 10 to 14 or so inches, so after checking my gauge on the booties I made, I cast on 84 stitches. Six inches later I started decreasing. I had to do this twice, of course, miscalculting the first time and ending up with a wearable but very strangely shaped hat. I put the decreases in the purl sections as far as possible to maintain the rib. I could have bound off a couple of rows earlier, really, it still has a bit of a point on the top, but I’m really pretty happy with it.

pattern: improvised, simple 2/2 rib
yarn: Sirdar Snuggly Baby Bamboo, Willow
needles: 2.75mm circs (2)

The bamboo doesn’t close up as much as a 2/2 rib in wool, so it’s not quite as teeny as I expected, but it is unbelievably soft.

Snoop really wanted to help me with the photos today.

Then suddenly lost all interest.

Quimby was more interested in the rain.

As for me, I’m gonna go knit   

Once I had a new hat to put on my head I decided it was time to do something about the puckery top on my silver-grey beret (Ravelink).

After frogging back to the beginning of the decrease rounds, I tried a couple of things. The original decreases were 8 stitches every row. I tried 8 stitches every other row, but that wasn’t quite right either. I got good results in shaping with 6 stitches every row, but I still had those extremely crisp decrease lines that I just didn’t like anymore, so I finally went with a decrease of twelve stitches every other row.

One of the things that amazes me most with this yarn, Georga 100% wool, is the ways it blocks so beautifully. I had blocked the beret over a dinner plate the first time and it was gorgeous and smooth. You can see how uneven the centre portion is right after knitting, especially compared to the blocked bit.

I just laid it out flat this time around and it’s not quite as smooth as the previously blocked area, but there’s still a huge difference. Most of the unevenness has disappeared and a proper blocking would certainly take care of the rest.

I’m just too lazy for that.

Because it’s not as heavy as an aran-weight yarn I got slightly more stitches to the inch than the called-for gauge. I didn’t want to use a larger needle, though, as I really prefer a somewhat tightly knit fabric for most things (I used this same yarn with a 4mm needle for my silver beret). So I simply used one larger size instructions and that worked out very well for me.

The first part of the hat whipped right along. I love the petal shaping. I had one false start on the band, casting on too loosely. The linen stitch really snugs up the fabric and makes a nice dense band and that left me with a sloppy end. I restarted and joined it to the hat stitches. This part took a little longer to knit, being a slip-stitch pattern, but well worth it. Picking out the button was almost as much fun as knitting the hat! After digging through 3 generations of buttons, I found a lovely mother of pearl flat button, lovely in itself, but it doesn’t overtake the hat.

I’ve received many compliments on it, and I may just have to make another in some different yarn

pattern: Verity, by Ysolda Teague
yarn: Geoga 100% wool, Aran
needles: 4.5 mm 16″ KnitPick’s nickel circ, Aero circ, Bryspun dpns
Simple and ingenious shaping, the main portion in stockinette, fast and fun to work. As an aside, the yarn changed colour after washing. It had a definite pinkish cast to it in the ball, but that’s not visible at all now.

I have a propensity to dive into patterns without fully reading them, and this time was no different. I managed the Turkish cast-on just fine. In fact, it’s easier than Judy’s Magic Cast-on since there are no twisted stitches. But, somehow, whenever I came to an increase or decrease I chose to knit the wrong type. Not just on one bootie, but two!. Finally I set the yarn and needles aside and really read the pattern. By this time I had picked up on a couple of other things that needed tweaking as I knit — I kept getting a gap where I cast on the new stitches for the straps, so I tightened that up, and finally got a nice little crocheted button hole (I discovered that I’m an even lazier knitter than I thought; I put off the button holes for two days before I finally went and dug out a crochet hook :P). So the third little bootie came out very well, and the mate knit up in no time.

Then came the button selection (yay! I love buttons!). I was warned away from the gumdrop looking ones — experinced mothers told me never to use something that looks edible :). The pink buttons were too pink and the purple buttons were too purple, except for one set that was the perfect colour, but too small (can you say Goldilocks?). I found some that looked okay, but they really aren’t what I wanted, which was little round pearl puttons. The ones I finally went with are flat. They’re cute enough, though, so on they went.

Yesterday they got a little wash and tomorrow they go in the mail. C’est tout fini!

Of course, baby booties are like potato chips so I had to try a few other patterns.

The green one is Bev’s Stay On Knit Bootie. Super easy. I used a 3-needle bind off for the front of the ankle to eliminate one seam, You could use a turkish cast-on, purling the first row and working back and forth after that to make a truly seamless bootie, but I don’t mind that single 2-1/2″ seam.

The little variegated slipper is SockPixie’s Magic Slipper. These ones are seamless, with a sole knit flat and stitches picked up and worked in the round. Cute and easy and a nice way to use up leftover sock yarn.

The light blue one is a variation of the magical bootie-from-3-squares (Susan B. Anderson has a free pattern for those on her blog). I wanted to see if I could avoid some of the seaming on these, so I made one square, then, leaving the stiches live, picked up the stitches from another edge of the square and worked a mitred triangle. It functions, and creates some interesting directional patterns too. I think I might play with the form a little more.

As for mates for these little fellas, who knows? I kinda just like them hanging on my bulletin board.

Bam-Booties for Jenna
pattern: Sartje’s Booties, Fleegleized. (Ravelry links)
yarn: Sirdar Snuggly Baby Bamboo, Babe
needles: 2 KnitPick’s 2.5mm circ’s

I really have to say I love this yarn. It is so soft and knits up like a dream. The stitches seem to even themselves out before you even get near to blocking. I used a much smaller than recommended-needle-size. I wanted a fairly close-knit fabric for booties, but I imagine working with a 4mm needle would give you something incedibly drapey. I found myself wanting to knit a bathrobe with it! Not likely to happen. I’m a big girl and that would take way more patience that I have. Since it is so reasonbly priced, about $6 Canadian, I expect I will knit a lot more little baby things with it and maybe even a summer top or two for me.