Ottawa!

This is a picture of my Orenburg Lace Shawl, more pics and details below.

I am making plans to go visit my friend in Canada in May. She will be participating in a doll conference and I get to go with her and do some sightseeing. She is a felting diva and does felted soft-scuplture dolls and things. It will be so much fun.

I am working on the socks still and yet another hat to send to Canada. She liked the first three, so I am pleased. I am almost done with one sock. The yarn turned out a bit firmer than I had hoped but we will see how it feels on the foot. I bought some nylon and have blended it and some angora into another batch of Polypay so I'm hoping that turns out a bit softer and maybe more durable. I have been doing a lot of carding and blending lately. I also have bought a number of fleeces on the internet lately. I'm getting some Icelandic wool which I am excited about because I have never worked with it. I'm also getting some more Polypay and Dorsett. It's tough to pass up all the goodies available right now because it is shearing season. My kids think I'm crazy, of course.

I was asked about my handspun Orenburg lace shawl. This was my very first handspinning project and my first lace knitting project. Before this, I only did scarves, LOL. I haven't put up pictures because it's hard to represent it with photos. But I have several and will post them so they can be seen. It is a beautiful shawl made with some fiber that my Canadian friend grabbed off of one of her carded Angora blended bats and gave to me. It is beautiful fiber and has a lot of Angora in it (and maybe alpaca?) which gives it that halo. But you can still see the pattern, so it works OK.

Now I am hooked on lace knitting and am planning a project with the dark brown llama that is so beautiful spun into lace weight yarn. But first, more hats!

It was a good effort for my first piece. Here it is all pinned out drying. I was amazed at how much better it looked after blocking. Wow!

And here is a closeup of the detail in the shawl. I used the Orenburg Lace Book by Carol R. Noble. I will put the title up when I find it. It's not the Gossamer Webs: The History and Techniques of Orenburg Lace Shawls, but another one by the same author. Can't remember it at the moment but they are both very good books for learning to lace knit.