Spinning, Reading, Skein Queen Yarn & More Socks

Knitting was put on hold last weekend, because I was determined to finish spinning this lovely fluff.  It's a blend of Bluefaced Leicester, Cashmere & Silk from fondant fibre and, as usual, it was beautifully prepared.  I'm not sure what it'll knit up to be yet.  Theres a lovely transition from white to dark grey through it, so I think it'll have to be a nice shawl which shows it off!

That ludicrous orange is going to be a pair of coopknits socks; Saxifrage to be precise!  They had to be a ludicrous colour, because so far my socks have been pretty tame (I'll need to pop them all here and show them off!).  How did you do with your Socktober?  I managed 2.5 pairs.  Not bad?  I'm proud of myself, at least!

Saxifrage by Coopknits

And possibly the most enjoyable part (yes better even than new spinning and new socks) is that every Month, Debbie Orr of Skein Queen dyes up two colourways to match a chosen book.  This month, she chose 'Eeny Meeny' by M.J. Arlidge and, my-oh-my, were those yarns glorious.

The base is a merino/silk/yak blend - it's beautiful.  It's burning a hole in my stash shelf, and I really need to find something to knit with it soon!  Ideally, I'll find a gorgeous big shawl which requires two different colours of yarn so that I can use both the solid and variegated provided by the club together.  Any ideas?  If not I'll just have to spend yet more hours browsing Ravelry...

The club is a great motivator for me to pick books I wouldn't usually pick, encourages me to hurry up and finish them and leaves a lovely little bit of anticipation as I wait to see what colours Skein Queen will dream up.  I really do love reading, and since starting work it has been hard to wind down, to take time out just to read for a few hours, so I've been teaching myself to chill out again!  Y'know, in between the studying.

If you'd like a little book club with added yarn, there's a group here on Ravelry, and if you fancy joining the club it's over on the Skein Queen website.  

OH!  I almost forgot!  Since there now appears to be a growing number of Glasgow inspired shawls, there'll be a wee KAL over in the OwlPrintPanda ravelry group :D.  The Ashton Lane shawl won second place in the Glasgow School of Yarn competition a couple of weekends ago, which was lovely!  It's even more lovely to see people want to knit it together :)