The sky is blue here today, but there is still plenty of cloud in these parts! Well, on my shelves  anyway.  It’s my NEW YARN!!!

It’s called Cloud, mainly because it is as soft a those lovely little fluffy white fair-weather cumulus clouds look!  It is 70% Baby Alpaca, 20% Silk and 10% Cashmere and has 400m to 100g.

It really is as soft as it looks. !  It made it’s first public appearance at Wonderwool 2 weeks ago, and ilicited many oooh’s and ahhh’s and even intakes of breath when stroked.

It will be really lovely for lightweight garments that need to drape, and wonderful for shawls and next to the skin items.  In fact, here is one I made earlier..

Old Shale Lace Triangle by Evelyn A. Clark from the summer 2008 edition of Spin-Off magazine.  With a little bit of careful weighing, I got 5 full repeats and had just 8g left from the 100g skein.

The photos are being uploaded this afternoon and, all being well, I should be able to press the button this evening to bring you the first selection of colours.  I hope you like them.

If you’re lurking around on the website later this evening (about 8 pm BST), you should see a whole bunch of Damsel plus appearing!  The first two test-skeins disappeared rapidly some time ago, so I am really pleased to at last get some more on the shelves.

It is a lofty and bouncy heavy laceweight 80% Extra Fine Merino and 20%  Silk, with 800m to 100g, and here is a taste of the colours from the cooler end of the spectrum…

I’m so very glad that I have discovered the wonders of handspinning.  I’m no expert, far from it, but I am getting the hang!  I’ve even managed to knit an FO of which I am quite proud.  It’s Daybreak, by Stephen West.

The medium brown that starts the shawl, mid-neck, is semi solid Smoothie Sock and the rest is a 2-ply spun from a large braid of superwash Blufaced Leicester, dyed by me.  I’m just blown away by the way the hanspun shows as really striping where it’s separated by the brown.  The closeup shows the last dozen or so rows of just handspun.

My success led me, of course, to the internet in search of more fibrey goodness.  I had a small accident at Daniela Kloppmann’s  FeltStudioUK etsy shop..

They came with a lovely mini batt, which caused another accident, this time a 3 month sub to Daniela’s 8oz batt club!  And then I got to meet Daniela and her fibres in real live person when we were setting up for Wonderwool on the Friday!  Her fibres and colours are truly mouthwatering, and I fell in love with a set of batts that actually kept me awake that night!  I think I may have been Daniela’s first sale before the doors opened on Saturday!  Here it is – I just love the way it looks like a complete landscape..

I can’t tell you just how gorgeous this fibre is.  I’m sure it would photograph better out of the bag, but I don’t want to mess it up trying to get it back in again! I have a plan to spin a single from each one, starting by pulling strips off from one end, and matching  it with the second single, to get a single colour shift from one end of the yarn to the other.

If you’re a spinner of felter, you seriously need to give her shop a visit.  If you’re not a spinner or felter, then you still seriously need to give her shop a visit, because she is also a hugely talented Art Yarn spinner.

Just in case you missed it, it’s FeltStudioUK !