I decided to combine some of the fibre from the Peter Pan and Dumbo boxes from Siobhan’s Crafts to make a knitted shawl for my Mother :o)  I saw the pattern on Ravelry and it just felt like a perfect match for the fibre sitting in my cupboard!  With her Birthday fast approaching I set about to spinning and knitting it at high speed :o)

The Peter Pan box had these 4 lovely mini braids.  All merino blend, some with sparkles :o)  They spun up beautifully into a pretty consistent DK weight yarn :o)

The finished four yarns back in their fibre bands so I didn’t muddle them all up ;o)

In the Dumbo box was this wonderfully soft braid with 50% merino, 30% baby alpaca and 20% mulberry silk, so lovely!  I split the fibre in half lengthways to maintain the gradual gradient along it when I spun my singles.

My split wasn’t weighed so I wasn’t too surprised by needing some Andean plying at the end, but this was the most I’ve ever had to wrap around my hand! :o)

All five colours balled up and ready to start some knitting :o)

The pattern is Swoop by Rosemary Hill.  Obviously I’m not capable of actually following a pattern, as I had the wrong number of colours, and not quite enough yarn, but I certainly followed it to start with ;o)  I just had to change it at the end a bit :o)

The only photo I took of the finished shawl was on a bright red towel whilst it was blocking!  Thankfully Angela sent me some more photos :o)

The finished shawl was wonderfully soft thanks to the alpaca and silk, and the slight sparkle in the coloured sections really catches the light :o)  I managed to finish it with just hours to spare, it might have still been a little damp from blocking when I wrapped it up! ;o)

Ravelry Project Link

When Angela gave me my spinning wheel she also gave me some fibre to use including this lovely braid from Yummy Yarns for after I’d had some practise ;o)

It’s a beautiful soft mix of merino and tencel which has been hand painted. So pretty!

I laid it out to find the colour repeats and then split the braid into 4 matching pieces. I figured if I spun each of the 4 and plied pairs together I could probably get the colours to all line up :o)

2 pieces all pre-drafted and ready to spin :o) My hands never move as fast as my feet once I’m in front of the wheel and I find a thorough pre-draft really helps me make consistent yarn :o)  I dealt with both pieces I intended to ply together at the same time to try and ensure a similar thickness after drafting.

This is certainly my finest spinning to date and I really love the shimmer from the tencel :o)  It was absolutely beautiful to spin :o)

Plied together you can see the colour repeats aren’t quite lining up, but it’s pretty close ;o)

All finished! :o)  Washed, snapped and ready to knit with :o)

It seems I forgot to actually take any measurements of this yarn… so I can’t tell you how many yards I made, but I can tell you that it’s my first DK weight yarn! Woo! :o)

Shortly after finishing my spinning, Nikki complained about cold hands and liked the colours so I made her a pair of gloves :o)  The colour sections are more subtle now it’s spun and knit than it appeared in the braid, but they’re definitely there :o)  These only used about half of the yarn so I might have to make another pair with the rest :o)

I ordered these beautiful rainbow rolags from Barn2Yarn which were quickly dubbed “rainbow snails” by my husband :o)  There were 11 in total, not just 4!

I like to pre-draft quite enthusiastically before I spin. This means my hands don’t have to do so much whilst I’m treadling and helps me achieve more consistent results :o)

It was really enjoyable watching the bobbin fill up with each rainbow :o) There were 11 snails in total so I put 6 on one bobbin and 5 on the other. It soon became apparent that there was more yellow than anything else in these rainbows and that getting the colours to line up wasn’t going to work!

Plying proved my suspicion and there is yellow throughout most of the yarn. I managed a fairly consistent Aran weight turning 97g into 140m.

I decided a pair of fingerless gloves would use up the yarn nicely and chose a fairly simple pattern so as not to detract from the yarn. The Eureka Valley Mitts seemed to fit the bill :o)

The pattern worked up quickly and it was lovely to see the rainbow stripes appearing as I knitted :o)

The finished gloves are super warm and snuggly :o) A little longer than I really needed, but I really like the faux cables :o)

I turned the leftover yarn into little squares using my pin loom and I was amazed by how different the yarn looks like this! :o)