Textile Thursday - have a peek at the fibre I'm using this week....
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| L. Hogan Batt |
Today's post is going to be a little different in that I want to share with you my experience with L. Hogan's No Rhyme No Reason Batt #5. I am fairly new to spinning and I have been encouraged by a large number of knitters and spinners here in Dublin to learn. Most of all during Laura's visits to the spinning groups and the shop, I was entranced by her colorways in her rovings, but lets start at the beginning.
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| Ashford Roving |
I knit a lot and was toying with the idea of rovings to learn how to spin. I started with the Ashford silk and merino roving which was smooth and the silk content allowed me to learn how to draft quite easily. You can read more about my experience here.
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| Corridale Homespun. |
I moved on to some Corridale I also got at This is Knit while I was suppose to be tidying skeins, the blue colours in the roving started to beg me to take them home. You know that kind of begging where it looks at you from its nestling place on the shelf and no matter where you go, you can feel it looking at you. By the time my shift was over it was almost screaming "I'll never find a good home if you don't take me...." So I said "fine in my bag you go then" (with more than a little encouragement form Lisa) and off I went. I got home and before I had dinner I was spinning this fibre, I spun all 50 grams in one night and I was hooked.
I started looking at some hand dyed roving on Etsy and I found some beautiful options like Waterlily and the Merino Roving as you can see here but I wanted to support Irish craft and on Etsy that leaves very little choice.
As soon as I clicked the option, I was kicking myself for not remembering the Spin in Sundays. I have seen jumpers / accessories knit out of Laura's spun roving and all of them have been mesmerising. I had a browse through her shop and found that she had some batts up for sale. This was great, I don't have a huge amount of experience and I didn't want to jump into buying a huge amount of roving so the batt was a good choice. I ordered it and it was in my hand the next day (which is amazing because it was Good Friday) so I was up to a great Easter start.
Laura's roving has some amazing colours and with some Angelina thrown in for an added sparkle. I thought I was going to have a challenge as these batts Laura carded herself are called No Rhyme No Reason for the sheer randomness of fiber and colour in each batt. As it was detailed on Etsy, each batt is unique and some batts could be very textural due to Wensleydale locks that she dyed and threw in. However spinning this batt was fun, I loved watching the colour ways form before my eyes and depending on how you separate the batt you could even get some colour repeats spun too. I loved working with this so much I even have some of Laura's Blue Faced Leicester in my stash now too (along with a huge amount of her sock yarn, yes I have a problem)
If you are interested, check out her shop on etsy here and I'm going to tempt you with some roving just because I can. :) Have a great weekend.
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