A challenge from a friend.........

Ok so here is how it started. Yesterday I got a call from a friend.

"Can I come round and show you my new swift and ball winder."

"Oh yes" I said. I have only ever seen them on blogs and ebay never in flesh so to speak.

So there we are setting them up on my coffee table for a first run. Swift at one end, ball winder at the other, and two cats thinking christmas had come early and they had been bought a new entertainment centre. (Who needs a Nintendo Wii anyway!)

So my friend starts to try it out on a rather nice, but regular skein of plum cashmere and it works well. A few little hiccups to start with but other wise fine, keeping the little metal guide thing at the right height so it doesn't wind up the yarn underneath being one and sorting out any little knots in the skein being the other, otherwise what I would call sucess.

It is at this point that she suggests that I get out the skein of rather lovely sea colours in novelty lace weight silk that I have been stashing away as I have been undecided what to knit with it to have a go at using the ball winder. So we do and here are the results.

I really love the colours. I actually had two skeins of this yarn so one is wound into a lovely little yarn cake (centre pull ball) and the other shows the original skein. I then spent the next few hours deciding what to knit with it. Also what stitch and what size needles. After much discussion about the pros and cons of novelty yarn we both thought that it would be good to keep the knitting as plain as possible and let all the interest come from the yarn itself.

So I went for casting on 80 sts on 10mm Brittany needles and garter stitch and this is how far I have got...........

So the challenge you might ask what was that........ well mainly I suppose to get off my backside and start knitting this yarn ( I've had it sitting around since March) but secondly I have my knitting group on Sunday evening at 7.30pm and I would like to finish it by then. Quite a challenge with 30 reports that also need writing and visitors on Sunday. We will see. Knitting with big needles isn't as easy as I thought it would be as I have quite small hands. I will show photographic evidence of progress on Sunday evening.