Still Not Knitting

Well, September has been a long month.  My "no knitting"  month has certainly been enlightening.  I've had to adjust to finding new crafts to fill my evenings and I've enjoyed the challenge.

One thing I wanted to try this month was spinning with a drop spindle.  I have had a spindle and some wool waiting to be spun for years, but I've never got round to trying it.  I wasn't sure of the credentials of the spindle I already possessed, so I bought a beginner's spindle when I was at Yarndale.  The wool I have hasn't been carded and looks a bit like roadkill!

I thought that if I can work out how to spin this I'll be ready to tackle anything.  My first attempts were pitiful - the good bits are when Grace was having a go, my bits are the lumpy blobs.

So I re-read the instruction leaflet I'd been given and tried again.

And what do you know, something must have clicked into place and it all seemed to go much better.

So now instead of blobs of chunky wool, I'm managing something that could pass for 4 ply.  I still need to work on achieving consistent thickness, but I'm getting there.

What joy to learn a new skill.  I'll keep practising with this old stuff and then invest in something colourful to spin.  Who knows, I might one day be able to spin enough to make a pair of socks.  How about you?  Are any of you proficient spinners?

This month, I've also been working on my 54 squares embroidery project.  I have another three squares to share with you.

For the first one, the prompt was flower.  I didn't want to just embroider a basisc flower so I thought I would use some ribbon embroidery as an alternative.  So here is my ribbon rose.

The next topic was fish.  I thought about embroidering a colourful tropical fish, but then I remembered that my star sign is Pisces, so of course I should do this.

The third new square I've completed had the prompt sequins.  So a simple trail of floral sequins was what I came up with.

I'm so enjoying this project.  It's fun to pick each topic at random and the number of squares is growing quite quickly.

My English paper piecing quilt is also growing very nicely, I'll share some progress pictures of that tomorrow.

So plenty getting done, despite not knitting.  But Thursday can't come soon enough now.