Friday 22 August 2014

Owl Punis from Fondant Fibre

As you know, I am quite partial to a spinning project that uses Fondant Fibre materials. Deb is an amazing artisan and the fibre she produces is second to none. I am particularly fond of her punis and rolags. Now I have a blending board I imagine I will buy rolags less often but I'm not sure my technique is good enough to make good punis yet. I think even if I could produce lovely punis I would still be buying them from Deb too, because I don't have her eye for blending colours and fibres.

The punis I'm going to talk about today are these, they were called Owl.

Owl Punis

Aren't they pretty? The name is very appropriate with the light airiness of the fibre and gorgeou soft colours. I really seem to be gaining a much greater appreciation for natural colours since starting to spin.  I made a very big mistake with these punis, I forgot to put them on Ravelry when I bought them, and they were a one off, rather than a repeatable set that I could go and look up on the shop site. I think there was BFL and alpaca in it, but I expect there was also some merino and possibly silk or bamboo. Despite not knowing what was in these punis I loved every minute of spinning them.

I used my Bocote Tibetan Spindle from Enid Ashcroft and decided to spin for a 2-ply style yarn.

Owl Punis 01

I thought it would make a beautiful shawl so thought a 2-ply yarn would be suitable as lace works well with a 2-ply. I really love this spindle, it's a nice weight and it is balanced perfectly. I cannot speak highly enough of Enid's support spindles and if you ever want to try this craft, her spindles are wonderful and quite reasonably priced for the skills and materials she uses to make these tools.

Fondant Fibres Owl 01

The punis spun up so quickly because they are spun using long draw, which is a fast technique. My skill in this particular field isn't vast, which means the singles tend to be a bit uneven, but I think with the airiness of this fibre, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. After I spun the singles I made my usual plying ball and plyed away.

Fondant Fibres Owl 02

This lofty and drapey yarn is gorgeous. It's soft and fluffy and the movement of the light and dark through the strand gives real interest and depth. I think when it's knit up it will be beautiful.

Fondant Fibres Owl 04

The yarn is full of bounce and warmth as well as drape. It's hard to explain how it can be both, but it is!

Fondant Fibres Owl 03

This yarn weighs 101g and it is approximately a light fingering/3ply gauge of yarn, but because of my uneven spinning it varies between lace weight and fingering/4ply, but it should be fine when it's knit up. I got 459m/500yds of length, which is more than enough for a decent sized shawlette. I've been trying to work out what to knit with this yarn and I'm thinking of something like Citron, or maybe making something like my Refraction Shawlette but adding an extra repeat into the body section to give a little extra coverage. As I want to knit this soon, do you have any other suggestions for patterns?

I have another 2 sets of punis from Fondant Fibre to get to, one set is Salsa and one set is Tusk which are coloured red and cream respectively. I really want to spin some of those soon!

Fondant Fibre Punis

Don't you think they would stripe nicely together? I will have to work at my consistency, in long draw, in order to make sure the skeins would be the same gauge, though!

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