The garden is properly coming to life and full of green - and my latest spinning project matches! I'm so close to finishing an ongoing knitting project in handspun yarn, and there's a look at some of the hand-dyed spinning fibre I have available at the moment.
A new spinning project, spring greens and limited edition hand-dyed spinning fibre.
If you’re a regular to the blog, or my podcast, then you’ll be familiar with most, if not all of the craft projects I’ve been working on lately. During this season I seem to be juggling a few different craft projects at once; a mixture of knitting, spinning and weaving, so progress on each has been incremental. Also, time is just flying by, don’t you think? Now that the sun has come out, I’m spending a lot more time in the, garden planting, sowing, and just enjoying the springtime sunshine - and consequently, less time indoors. Nevertheless, here’s a little look into my crafting life lately.
Let's talk knitting projects
I'm wearing my Galdor Cardigan
The knitted colourwork cardigan I’m wearing in my podcast video is Galdor; a knit design that I haven’t actually shown you in a while. It’s a v-neck, open cardigan with really pretty stranded colourwork bands around the front edge and sleeve cuffs. The sleeves are half-length, sitting just below the elbow, and I love the silhouette it creates. The colourwork, combined with the fact that I added a facing to the colourwork (to make it neater as it’s an open cardigan), gives it a lovely structure.
This was my first sample knit up using limited edition 4-ply yarn from Woolly Mammoth Fibre Company. I used three natural sheepy colours: Blue Texel blended with Cheviot for the main colour, and Dorset Horn and Jacobs for the two contrasting shades.
Find the Galdor knitting pattern on my website
Find the Galdor knitting pattern on Ravelry
I’m re-knitting older pattern designs
I think Galdor would be super fun to remake using my own hand-dyed Mendip 4-ply. Recently been revisiting older knit designs and making newer versions of the samples - something I recently did with my Opula Sweater which you can see finished in my previous podcast blog. As a general rule, I don’t tend to like knitting the same thing twice as I just find it boring, but I think it’s been long enough that I’m sorely tempted to make another Galdor.
I’ve almost finished my handspun project, the Mistland Cardigan
I genuinely believed that I was going to have this one finished to show you! I’ve been knitting a Mistland Cardigan using a handspun yarn I spun a couple of years ago. It’s a very fuzzy mishmash of undyed fibres. We’ve got a bit of Bluefaced Leicester, some Shetland Teeswater from Fernhill Farm, a little angora and alpaca, and undoubtedly other things that I don’t remember because it was such a long spinning project. Regardless, it's such a joy to knit with.
I sat down to finish it off after I put the boy to bed, thinking I just had the cuffs to go. Cuffs I can do in an evening, so I thought I’d get it finished easy peasy. Nope. It doesn’t have a button band, guys. Oops! So, that’s a job for this evening, because I want to be wearing it already. It’s another grey cardigan for my handmade wardrobe, but the longer sleeves and buttons will make it more perfect for transitioning through the seasons.
This is another one of my knit designs that I have revisited. I designed this one for a knitting magazine and the original was baby pink, not exactly a ‘Marina’ colour. I’m also looking forward to redoing the photography as the original shoot was not under the best conditions and I want to show off how nice it is.
If I’m not wearing this handspun knitted cardigan in the next podcast episode, something’s gone wrong…
Find the Mistland Cardigan knitting pattern on my website
Find the Mistland Cardigan knitting pattern on Ravelry
My recent spinning project
In the last podcast blog, I had just finished The Big Spin - a marathon hand-spinning project consisting of 300g of my signature skua fibre blend, hand-dyed in a colourway called Highland. I ended up with roughly 1700m of 2-ply handspun yarn ready for a weaving project.
Originally I intended on using it as warp yarn for my fabric, but you might remember that the fragility of the yarn had me hesitating. So instead, I dyed up a pleasant peridot on my Feather blend to use as the warp. The green is so springy, it’s almost the exact colour as when I look out the window.
The focus here was on making a stronger yarn. Feather has a longer staple length, meaning the fibres overlap for longer, making it naturally stronger and more resilient. It’s much less likely to run away from me and break when I’m spinning.
I’m really enjoying working with it. It’s such a sleek, lustrous fibre, drafting out nicely for a fine lightweight yarn - exactly what I wanted to match my skua hand-spun.
I’ve just started spinning the first bobbin and, as I said, the plan is to pair it with my moodier, more rustic Skua yarn. To keep the weaving process smooth, I’ll use the Feather for the warp (the yarn that goes along the length of the fabric, and takes more tension and abrasion) and the Skua for the weft (the yarn that goes back and forth and needs less strength). Fixing a broken warp thread is a faff and faff is something i’m keen to avoid.
The goal is to spin my feather yarn as fast as I can into a 2-ply, aiming for a similar weight to the skua. I’m judging this by feel and vibes alone which is my usual method even though it can cause potential problems later down the line - that’s something for future Marina to worry about. These two hand-spun yarns will then hopefully be woven as a herringbone, to become fabric that I’ll make into… something.
Find my natural skua blend British wool top on the website
Find my natural feather blend British wool top on the website
New drop of limited edition British wool spinning fibre
When I dye fibre, I usually work in 600g batches which meant I had 300g of this spring green leftover to join my latest spinning fibre drop. These were added to the shop last week and surprisingly, there’s still some left - including another green I was considering for my hand-spun warp.
If you want a closer look, I explained all the British wool bases and each remaining limited edition colour on the podcast. It was also especially fun to talk about colour names - I’ve been dyeing yarn and fibre for almost 10 years now and make a concerted effort to not repeat a name, but with 6 to 10 new colours each month, sometimes they get a little weird. I can’t just call every bluey greeny purplely blend ‘Mermaid’ - I used that back in 2016, that’s enough! Admittedly some names are a bit strange, like ‘If Trees Had Shells’... you might want to watch the video if you’re curious to hear the story behind that one.
Since the spinning fibre has become increasingly popular, I’ve been trying to dye bigger batches because, funnily enough, I want there to be spinning fibre available when I talk about it. However, if you’d like a guaranteed look at future hand-dyed wool top, my Patreon subscribers get 24-hour early access to shop updates (plus access to exclusive content like monthly videos, Zoom calls, and discount codes, too). It only costs from £2 a month and your support helps keep my podcast and creative work going. If you’re interested in, you can find all the details here.
I’ll be at The Big Flock, a new yarn festival coming to Bristol
In the meantime, I’ve been busy dyeing up loads of fibre and yarn to take with me to The Big Flock, a brand new yarn festival coming to Bristol. It’s hosted by Jon and Clare of Birdstreet Yarn at the UWE Conference Centre on 17th-18th May.
If you’re local to Bristol, or you live in the South West of England, I’d love for you to come along. I think it’s going to be a super fun weekend, and it’s lovely to be at a yarn show that’s reasonably local to me here in the West Country. I’ll be bringing along a selection of printed knitting patterns, all the spinning fibre, and as much of my hand-dyed Mendip yarn as I can squeeze into the car. Please do come and say hello!
I'd love your opinion on guest yarns...
On that note, I’m beginning to run low on a few colours of Mendip yarn which means I’ll be arranging getting more wool from Fernhill Farm to be sent off to the mill very soon.
Because Mendip is fully commissioned directly for me, the lead times are a little longer. So, while I’m waiting for new batches of wool to come back, I’ve been thinking about introducing some guest yarns. These would use undyed yarn bases made by other people, which I’d dye myself and offer for a few months before retiring them.
It’s not a big expansion (my Mendip collection is already big enough with 32 colours across two weights), but more of a cool project for me. I could maybe do a collection of some semi sold, some more tonal colours and some more fun variegated ones. It sounds super fun to me becuase I love dyeing limited edition colours, and honestly, any excuse to create yet another Pinterest board to capture a mood... But what do you think? Would you be interested in limited edition hand-dyed skeins like these? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Oh, speaking Pinterest mood boards and hand-dyed yarn, I still have a few Spring Mystery Boxes left in Mendip DK! If you’re remotely interested in 200g of fun surprise yarn, you can find them here.
Find my Mendip DK Spring Mystery Box here
Stay connected with all things Marina Skua.
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I’ve also recently added an events page to the website, where you can see all the upcoming places I’ll be. Whether it’s events I’m attending, talks I’m giving, or markets where you can come and squish some hand-dyed British wool yarns or just have a chat in person.
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See you next time.
