A Cardigan is born and celebrated.

Last March, Grace came into my life. She is an Ashford Traditional Spinning Wheel and I ADORE her. Thoughts of replacing her make me feel like a traitor. She has soothed me through many a bad day and has my family telling me to 'go and spin' when they see me getting stressed.

I had a few spinning lessons in April 2011 and spun a few plaits of tops and then Tour de Fleece was imminent so I decided to participate. My goal was to spin to knit myself a cardigan. I had been spinning on a wheel for 3 months so I did not have 'expectations' but decided to simply enjoy the process.

I ordered 1.1kg of light grey corriedale from Handspinner and the amount of tops that arrived scared me. This photo was of the the last little bit, as I had separated the rest into 50g bags.

I read Judith Mckenzie Mccuin's Intentional Spinner and set about spinning to sample. I made a 2ply, a 3ply and cable sample and knitted them up.

2 ply and knitted sample

 3ply and knitted sample

Cable yarn, 2 2plied strands plied together and knitted sample which I found defined the stitches beautifully but was hard to the touch so I settled on a 3ply yarn and set about to spin it. 

Tour de Fleece Day 1

TDF Day 6

TDF Day 10

By day 16 I had to ply yarn as I did not have enough bobbins left.

On the 23rd day I had spun and plied all the yarn.

All washed and skeined and ready to knit - Alas, no pattern. I trawled Ravelry for months to no avail and set it aside for other knitting adventures.

Then in December Chonnie Chang Chinchio's book Textured Stitches arrived on my doorstep and I fell deeply in love with Professoressa. I cast it on immediately.

When I completed it, I was pleased and it fitted my ample curves deliciously. It is a joy to wear.

I wore it to one of our guild meetings, Janet, one of the lovely guild members complimented me and suggested I submit it for the National Exhibition of the Association of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers. I was quite taken back as this was not anything that I would have considered doing. I prepared it and submitted it.

I heard last week it has been accepted for the exhibition. I am both honoured and delighted. I shall be going to visit it during the exhibition and I shall take photographs of the exhibits to share with you if it is allowed.