The Lady's Sweater

It start just the same as the Men's Sweater, with raising that cute little lamb and all.

But this time I pulled out the lighter shades of gray of Carnie's fleece and blended it with some mohair I had been gifted during the Tour de Fleece a few years back.

It was all just another experiment gone right. The result is such a soft lofty yarn with just a touch of shimmer and halo that was a dream to spin and knit with.

The pattern is one I has admired for a while, Ann Hanson's Violet.  My own homegrown, handspun yarn seemed like a good choice to do it justice.

{How about those buttons?!}

Most of the this knitting took place during our every other week sessions at the infusion lab.

Fritz's nurses have tracked my progress on this one and I look forward to showing them the finished project. They are a wonderful group of people, 

who take such good care of us. 

Always Grateful, 

~Joan

Seeing Green

My big guy sheep Carnie produces and enormous fleece. His colors are beautiful ranging from a light silvery gray to dark gray to black with a big chunk of browns and tans just to keep it interesting. 

I do love natural colored wool, but after the dye workshop I went to, I was inspired to play around with some of the leftover 2017 fleece I still had sitting around. 

What I wanted to create was a dark green mossy colored yarn with lots of tonal variation. I wanted some of the natural colors to shine through.

So I choose a lighter brighter green acid dye ("avocado") and went to work. For fun I threw in a little bit of Mac's tan fleece and a couple of locks of white fleece from Leo for comparison. This was just an experiment after all.

What's more amazing than the colors I ended up with is that I managed not to felt any of this wool after cooking it for almost an hour!

I was thrilled with how it came out. But the real test was to spin up a bit and knit a swatch.

I get so tickled when a plan comes together just like I have in my mind. 

{wouldn't it be wonderful if I could make EVERYTHING in life work out that way?!}

I love the colors.

So much so,

This Happened:

It will be a while before I get all this spun.

I am seeing a lot of green outside now (finally) and the gardens need some love too. 

Hope your world is full of the colors you love,

~Joan