Spin on

I finally got a spinning project finished.  The other day when I spent the day demonstrating at the Historical Marbold Farm, I was determined to get this 4 oz of Polworth finished. 

I fell in love with the colors but I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do with it.  I knew I wanted to keep the colors pure so I Navajo-plied it.  I think I put a little too much twist in it - it's not as soft as I'd expected.  Now that I've started knitting it up, I think it will be okay. 

But, regardless, I love the colors and the hat I'm knitting will show it up nicely, I think.

Variations on a theme

I had certain things I wanted to accomplish this long holiday weekend. The biggest goal, finishing the warping of the loom, I didn't do. Demo-ing at the Historic Marbold Farm Ice Cream Social, I did. Tatting, I really did. I decided to do some samples of a project I'm going to do for a class. I thought it had a lot of scope for variations so I tried a few.

At the top was the original sample in a plain single color.  It has 4 simple, small motifs in the middle with an edging around.  I decided to play with more small motifs in the middle with the edging.  I found this variegated green so I thought maybe I could play with a garden theme.  I did the 2 motifs in the pinks.  I didn't have a plan, I just started making motifs and putting them together.  Once I'd come up with this configuration, I wished I'd planned it better and done the 4 middle motifs in the colors and surrounded them with the green motifs.  But I didn't and I couldn't cut the 2 green ones out of the middle because they were foundationals motifs and had others motifs connected to their picots.  So I went ahead and finished the edging on it.  Pretty but I think I'd like to do it again with the pinks in the middle and the greens surrounding.

I did another small version with just the variegated pinks.  With these last 2 versions, I did the tips in a different method than I did on the pink version.  This is the pattern that I didn't like the way the book had done the end so I've been playing with other combinations.  I think I like this version the best.  On the end, where I'm working between 2 picots on the same motif, I did 6 ds, small picot, 1 ds, large picot, 1ds, small picot, 6 ds.  This give a nice pointy end for the diamond.