We're hosting a group spinning/knitting project in the Wildcraft Woollies group over on Ravelry at the moment.  It's been dubbed the Silk Hankie Along, and the idea is that you make something from silk hankies, aka mawata squares, simple eh?  A number of participants, like Chriss, are knitting directly with the unspun fibre.  I've not long finished an unspun silk project (Hanna's silk mittens), so I've chosen to spin mine this time.

I fancied a challenge, so I've decided to make an Elijah elephant with my silk.  I started out by dyeing 50 of silk squares, they were supposed to be elephant grey, but they turned out rather more blue than I originally intended.

I did think about knitting Elijah from an unspun single, like the mittens I did.  But he's a fiddly pattern, but I didn't relish the prospect of wrangling with dpn's and tiny little elephant limbs, whilst trying to join silk ends.  So I decided to spin a two ply yarn with them, low twist to keep the yarn soft and squishy, and somewhere between dk and aran weight.

So far, I've started pulling the silk into lengths, and winding them into a ball prior to spinning.  If you'd like to see an excellent tutorial on how do to this, do take a peek at Chriss' post (linked above), her photos make the process really easy to follow.

So my plan is to make two balls like this, spin each separately, and then ply them together.  I put a little on the wheel last night and it seems to be spinning up nicely, pics of that next time.

In other news, I have a new toy...

It's a little tablet computer (an HTC Flyer). With a 7" screen, it's between a smartphone and an iPad in size, and that suits me perfectly.  I got it a couple of weeks ago for a bargain price at Curry's (sorry, tried to link, but looks like they've all gone).  I've been using it to keep up with email, Ravelry and blog feeds, but it's also great for storing my knitting patterns. It came with a stylus, so I can mark up pdf's with notes etc., which is great for marking off lace charts row by row.

Here it is with my latest pattern purchase, Ysolda's Whimsical Little Knits 3.

I can't wait to knit something from it, I'm thinking I'll start with the Narwhal mittens, which are very cute.  Before then, however, I have Elijah to knit.  And I also have some commission knitting to do for one of my cousins, who's requested a handknitted cardi.  More about that in a later post!