Dip My Head in Rainbow Juice!

Finished Object! Hurrah!!


Well dip my head in rainbow juice and call me a hippy! I am thrilled with this lovely, soft, warm beanie - knit up from a combination of rainbow handspun striped with Katia black.



I simply started at the pointy red elfin knob and worked down to the necessary circumference (isn't it the easiest thing, knitting garments for yourself - you can try them on as you go!). Then I cast off over the front and back leaving live stitches for the ear flaps. The back and forth knitting on the ear flaps was a little more fiddley as I had to carry the yarn along like in fair isle work. But that makes for very snuggley warm ear flaps!



The ear flaps are finished off with some icord and then a little tassle at each tip - I'm becoming quite fond of tassles!

Unfortunately, the weather up here has turned decided warm and muggy the last few days - it seems that our quota of one cold week for winter is up! But when the cool weather returns, my rainbow juice hat and I will be ready!

Thick fluffy stripes

I have been knitting up a lacey blanket (more on that later) but found I wasn't getting enough knitting love mainly as the lace was difficult to knit in the bus on the way in to work since it's completely dark here at 5am and these roads have few street lights to knit by.

Clearly a nice simple, stockinette in the round project was required...

I had brought back the black yarn from R&R to use with the rainbow handspun for the super-fun-pointy-topped-ear-flap-with-tassles-beanie, and it didn't take long to get stuck in!



I'm now up to the stage of binding off the beanie edging and knitting the ear flaps down. The yarn looks like it will make the distance and still have some left for the tassles - hurrah!! :)

These yarns are working so well together - the textured vibrant handspun and the soft fluffy ultra thick Katia yarn I picked up when we were holidaying in Canberra - don't you love knitting with souvenir yarn?!

Pie in the Sky 68-10

Enter a skein of yarn spun in my VERY early days as a knitter. I used fibre from Spunky Eclectic's Club - the Pie in the Sky colourway, and had plied it with a silver thread - my first out-of-the-ordinary yarn and I remember having such fun with it! It's a little uneven, but that's ok - it was all part of the spinning journey and it's nice to look back to where I first started!

I decided for my first 68-10 Drops headband (yes, I know I've already posted about the one knit in cotton, which I actually knit SECOND!) I would use this handspun held together with another yarn, to get the correct gauge. So I used some heirloom wool in a chocolatey brown, which offset the handspun nicely.

I knit this with my dreads in mind, and actually began knitting it in the dreadlocks hot seat!! it didn't take very long to knit up and I'm stoked with the result :D Now I just need the weather cool enough to wear it!!

Full Spectrum Handspun

Over the last few months I've been spinning up some rainbow fibre - which I actually started years ago! This past R&R I managed to pull it all together and finish off two skeins - one plied with some fluffy white merino and one navajo plied on to itself.

When I spun the rainbow I broke up the fibre in to colour sections and spun them in long colour blocks. So each skein runs through the rainbow gradually with no repeats. I'm very interested to see how they knit up and what they become!

Hat for Harri

A ha!!


I have knit a hat for a far-off friend Harriet from some handspun and... it's in time for her birthday! What a rare accomplishment! :)



This has been knit out of the yarn I spun a few months ago from the Treetops Colour Harmony merino in Madras colourway - truly delicious in texture and vibrancy! I almost gave the yarn away to a fellow knitter as a gift, but have knit what feels like so little from my own handspun that I couldn't go through with it! And now I am giving away the finished knit! Ah well, I'm slowly getting closer to keeping some of my handspun and handknits, step by step! And this one is heading out to a very fabulous recipient.



Harriet is a friend I haven't seen for a very long time - years in fact! - so for her birthday a little bit of crazy fun happy happy love joy needs to be sent her way :) The colour scheme of Australian-Sunset-On-Acid is an added bonus ;D

I had envisaged something a bit larger, perhaps a Capucine, but realised I wouldn't have enough yarn. A quick change of plans and knitting from the top down allowed me to eke out juuuust enough yarn to add the ear warming flaps and bind off - phew!



We've had some fabulous fun and silly times together and she's such a treasured friend, I hope this keeps her nogging nice and toasty in the London winters!