Easter Hols

Well I hope you all had a good Easter and enjoyed the Royal Wedding last Friday. I’ve been busy in the garden and I also finished spindling the first of the Romney fleece.

The fleece first:
After I finished spindle spinning the two spindles of Romney I plied them together into a two ply yarn on the larger of the two Kevin Rhodes spindles that I recently bought from a fellow Raveler. As there was some singles left over on the smaller Kevin Rhodes spindle I had a go at Navajo plying and it worked out really well, actually it was easier than doing the two ply as the singles were easier to control. When I’d been doing the two ply I got in a bit of a tangle with the singles as they came up from my box Kate (made from a cardboard box, drinking straws and knitting needles). DH got roped in as my tensioning device but I will need to think about rigging something up with elastic bands for future plying efforts as there is only so much tension the poor man can cope with! luckily it was only a small amount of yarn; or I could just cheat and use my wheel, but where’s the fun in that?

Here are the results; the ball on the left is the two singles plied together while the ball on the right is the Navajo plied yarn.





The ball at the back of the Jacob that I spun long draw at Guild in January.
Here’s a better pic of the Jacob.


All the yarns have come out quite soft and squidgy so carding and rolags are definitely cool :-) I haven't weighed it so I’m not sure how much each ball weighs.

On the gardening front, it’s been so sunny and with no rain for ages I’ve been able to get lots and lots of gardening done.


I’ve cleared all the weeds (well most of them) which included the meanest nettles in the known universe; for those I wore DHs biker gloves which are made of leather and have Kevlar in them. Kevlar is the material that bullet proof vests are made of!!

I managed to get forty petunias for six pounds – bargain! I filled all my pots and tubs with them. They are really small at the moment but they should fill out and grow pretty quickly as long as Amy stops eating them!! naughty chicken!

I’ve planted tomato seeds and courgette seeds in little pots and put them on our bedroom window sill to germinate and I’ve planted French beans and runner beans out in the garden by the front wall. I emptied the compost bins out onto the bean plot first and then left Miranda and Amy to spread the compost about, which they obligingly did.


DH also mowed the lawn so that everything is neat and tidy.

I also sanded the round garden table and oiled it with Danish oil. Now I just need to find a beach umbrella for it and it will be all sorted for a summer of tea and cake in the garden with a spot of knitting.

We have our first crop from the garden already – rhubarb. The rhubarb plant is really pumping out loads of stalks this year and we have become completely hooked on Greek yoghurt and rhubarb; it’s yummy, yum, yum.

I’ll leave you with a couple of pictures of our pretty flowers and our river.

Summer spinnin'

Hi there,

This week I have mainly been doing spinning!
Last Thursday I took my spinning wheel to the pub with me for knitting club and we all had a go at spinning. We were going to sit out in the pub garden but it started to spit spot with rain so we asked if we could spin indoors. The landlord was a little concerned that the spinning wheel would be loud and asked how much noise it would make, ha, ha
He need not have worried cos:

1 - it's not noisy
2 - we laughed so much no one could hear any spinning noises!

Some art yarn was created and we had fun:-) and there may be two more spinners in the making!

We have decided that knit club will be going up to Woolfest next year and Lesley, our Queen of organisation, has offered to find us a B&B in Keswick; it's going to be a hoot. Hopefully I willl have room for my spinning wheel in the car as they have a spin in on the Friday evening with over one hundred spinnners - cool!
In the mean time I went over to another friends on Saturday she spun alpaca and I spun this

It's "wool waste" from Coldharbour Mill. I bought a 250g bag when we went down there on our Knit Club Grand Day Out. I've kept it as singles and have set the twist by felting it slightly so that it won't drift apart. I dunked each skein first in really hot water and then into cold water and repeated that twice more - hot, cold, hot cold. Here it is round into balls

Its about 13wpi which is the equivalent of 4 ply or sock wool. Lesley said that she would get me some more cos she goes down to Exeter quite regularly. Another bag and I will have enough for a sweater.

I've also been knitting on my Old Shell Shawl and have started on the old shell pattern. No pictures, sorry, but there will be some in the next post I promise. Ooo and by then my blog will be a year old!
More soon:-)

Ooops! It's been a while:-)

Hi Everyone,

First of all, sorry it's been soooo long. Lots has been happening here, mostly good but some not so good.

So lets get the not so good over with first.
We are down to one little brown hen. Callie got sick again and we had her put to sleep, it was the kindest thing to do as she was not going to get better. Then Caroline got ill and died; that was pretty fast as I had made an appointment with the vet for her but she didn't make it. Miranda had a check up with the vet and has been pronounced fit and healthy.

I think that Carolines illness was related to the mystery puddle. It apeared in April but the water compay could not find out where it was coming from. They came out and dug a hole but said that the soil under the hole was dry!!!. They said that should the mystery puddle reappear that we were to ring them and they would come out tpo "catch it in the act". Anyway, it reappeared about mid May and the water company came out to take a look and do some tests which revealed that the mystery puddle was in fact sewage water! yuck!.

Hens had been confined to their pen as soon as the puddle was spotted, but in truth I think that they had probably drunk some of the puddle already and Caroline was just not strong enough to fight off the germs it contained. This was on the Sunday afternoon. By the time I got home on Monday evening there was a big hole in our front garden. They had dug down and found a broken sewage pipe and managed to fix it. They filled the hole in the next day and that was that.

The better news is that the Norton Knitters went on their first knit club outing to Coldharbour Mill down near Exeter. We went on the Whitsun Bank Holiday. The weather was lovely and we set off quite early. Everyone came and parked next door and then we all went down in my car. I had cleaned  out the car so that all the junk was gone and there was an empty boot for yarn and fiber....which we filled ....with yarn and fiber. lol! The boot was so full that we had to squish it all down so that I could see out of the rear view mirror.

The Mill was really interesting. We saw how the machinery spun the prepared fibre into worsted type yarn and then how the looms were set up and the yarn made into cloth. I loved the wooden bobbins, they were great. We had a spot of lunch with pudding which was very yummy. I had lemon meringue roulade, oh my, was it good, it was all home made as well. We all bought fibre and yarn. I got two skeins of Coldharbour Mills Organically Farmed Merino Wool 4 ply, one blue and one white to knit some Norwegian Mittens ala Elizabeth Zimmerman.

In other spinning and knitting news there have been a few developments
Firstly, I bought some alpaca fibre from a seller on eBay, 500g of white yummyness. So I spun up some singles yarn and dyed it a purple/lavender colour, here its is.

 I'm pretty pleased with it. It came out at 366m in 119g so about 4ply weight...just right:-)
 I've been knitting it up into an Ishbel scarf; the small version. Here it is about 3/4 of the way through.

It's almost completed now and all I need to do is cast it off and block it. The cast off needs to be really, really loose so that the point will block out properly so I think I will go up a few needle sizes and cast off using  Jeny's surprisingly stretchy bind off
Unfortunately the Noro Kureyon sock yarn that I ordered form Get Knitted hasn't arrived yet so I the Noro Pi Shawl has had to go into hibernation until it arrives. In the mean time I've been knitting my Ishbel but as that will be finished today I have also been looking about for something else. I got Weekend Country Knits out of the library recently because the knitting traditions of Shetland are really interesting to me and I fancied some traditional knitting and learning some new techniques, so, I'm going to knit the Old Shell Shetland Shawl which is a traditional hap shawl design in 4ply weight yarn. You start with the edges and knit in, so it should be a nice challenge, but with lots of garter stitch so not to difficult for in front of the telly/out in the garden knitting.

 
I ordered the same yarns as the book called for, some are from Jamieson's of Shetland and some are from Jamieson & Smith. Both types of yarn are what are known as jumper weight yarns and are used to knit traditional Fairisle and Shetland patterns.The colour ranges are wonderful and the yarn is lovely, I'm looking forward to getting going with it. While I was at it I also bought some skeins of grey Jamieson & Smith jumper weight yarn, 12 in all, so that I can knit myself a Pi Shawl of my own design. I have been looking for suitable lace patterns and there are a few that I have in mind....we will see.

The last bit of news is that yesterday my neighbour and I went over to wildest Wales to pick up her spinning wheel from the Woodland Turnery over near Abergaveny. They had been restoring it for her and it was all ready to be collected and I wanted to see how spinning wheels are made so it was a good excuse. Clive and Joan were lovely and we had tea, chatted and had a look at all the lovely spinning wheels they had. They make Timbertops wheels which are beautiful (my neighbour has a Timbertops Leicester also) and there was a Leicester and a Sherwood in the workshop while we were there. The Sherwood was just waiting to be carefully packed so that it could  be shipped to a lady who lives in Shetland. It's a big wheel so I couldn't fit it in my house, but it was gorgeous :-)


Really, that's probably it for now.

I'll try and post more regularly in future.
Take care,
Em

It's been a while so ......Big Update

Hello Friends:-)
It's been a while since the last instalment and there is quite a lot of news to tell.

First of all Callie, one of our hens, was not very well. In fact she was very sick and we were very worried about her so I rang the vet in our nearest town and we took her in for a check up on the Saturday morning.

The vet was very nice and kind and sent us away with some anitbiotic liquid which I put in the drinking water for two consecutive days. Callie looked very poorly and we were fearing the worst but by the Wednesday she was perking up and eating better and had her voice back. By Thursday morning when we took her back to the vet she had improved enough for the vet to think that she would make it. We were so relieved!!.

The vet was still worried though as she'd lost a lot of weight so we made another apointment, for this Saturday morning. When we took Callie along the vet weighted her and was very pleased as she had put on 200 grammes which is alot if you only weighted 2kg to start with. So Callie is on the mend, yay:-)

Here she is (on the left) with Caroline.

And here are all the girls out and about (Callie is at the back while Miranda is front right and Caroline is front left)

I have been knitting my squares for the knitty squares blanket and have so far made these. I've been knitting them on the bus as well.  It's going to be a very colourful blanket.

To keep me from getting knitty square fever I have also started  and got quite a long way into another Elizabeth Zimmerman knit; her Pi Circular Shawl which I am knitting in Noro Kureyon sock yarn in colour 150 (lot F). I bought two balls of the yarn from Get Knitted last Saturday and got cracking as soon as I got home....instant gratification! So far I have done all the increase rounds and am 18 rounds into the last bit. I have't decided on the edging yet, will have to have a think about that. Here it is.

It looks a bit, well alot actually, like a bag. Which is quite handy because I can stuff the yarn and needles into the "bag" and stuff the whole thing into my work bag and the whole thing is so compact that it's good bus knitting which means that I'm motoring along with it. I am thinking that I will make another one in a solid colour and make that one in lace patterns.I've decided that for the solid colour version I'll use Jamiesons Shetland Spindrift which is also a 4ply weight and comes in 220 beautiful colours all the way from the Shetland Isles. I ordered the colour card and it arrived the other day. Now all I have to do is pick a colour!!

1. Jamiesons Spindrift Colour Card, 2. Jamiesons Ultra lace weight colours #2, 3. Jamiesons Ultra lace weight colours #1, 4. Spindrift colours #1, 5. Spindrift colours #2, 6. Spindrift colours #3

I've also bought Whimsical Little Knits 1 and 2 from Ysolda Teague. The designs are very cute and the books are small so they are very portable. I'm planning on knitting Veyla with one of these two skeins of Natural Dye Studio "Darling" sock yarn. It's made from alpaca and merino so it's lovely and soft. I think I will use the pale blue for Veyla and use the grey/blue for one of Ysoldas one skein shawls.

The last bit of news is that I am now a member of a knit club :-) We meet each week in a local pub, drink diet cola, chat and do a bit of knitting or crochet. There were five of us at last Thursdays meeting. We are all ages and it's fun; we're going on a stash enhancement outing on the 31st of May to Coldharbour woollen mill in Devon to see fleece spun into yarn, drink tea, eat cake and buy some yarn.

Guess thats all for now, take care, see you all soon :-)

Spring is springing

For the past couple of weeks the weather has been getting warmer, Spring is springing!.
This was the view from the field behind our house early one bright spring morning. The tree is an oak and he's in the middle of the field; you can just see the back of our house over the river if you look really really hard.

There are no leaves yet just tiny little buds which are just about to pop.

  Here's the tree from furthur up the field, its such a groovy tree and must be very old.

 At the top of the field a stile takes you through a little patch of woodland before popping you out on to a lane which follows the side of the hill. On the way through the woodland I came across these little violets which are, suprisingly, white not violet. There was quite a big patch of them and they were all white.

The lovely weather has continued into the weekend which has been lovely and sunny. In order not to waste the lovely sunshine I bought a washing line spinney thingy. You see we lost our washing line when we had the house fixed up last December. The original line was along the path at the side of the house; fixed between the telegraph pole at the back of the house and the cast iron rain water down pipe at the front of the house. When the cast iron rain water down pipe was replaced with a modern plastic one (the builder tried his best to save it but it was beyond hope) we couldn't tie the washing line to it as we didn't want to break the pipe.....so, no washing line:-(. I have looked and looked and no one seems to stock washing line poles, the ones that you sling a washing line between. All new washing lines are the worrly spinney sort, so I have relented (for now) and we have a worrly, spinney washing line. Here it is in action! I do like putting out washing:-)

The garden is looking pretty with lots of spring flowers blooming. Down the side of the house I have daffodils, hellebores, spurge and the flowering currant.

And the Victoria Plum tree has lots of blossoms on it so hopefully we should have lots of plums again this year

The hens have been chilling in the sunshine. DH said that Caroline looked like a teacosy, he he:-)
 She wasn't laying an egg just chillin' out and at one time during the afternoon I reckon she was acctually snoozing, very cute.

 

In spinning and knitting news I did a spot of dyeing followed by a spot of spinning. This was the last of the BFL fibre that I purchased from the Spinning Wheal

I have also been trundling on with the Knitty Squares blanket. I've found that the squares are really very portable which means that I have been knitting them on the bus in the morning on the way to work. Our bus has a couple of single seats one on each of the wheel arches of the front wheels and they are perfect for knitting so I have been sitting there recently. The squares knit up pretty fast and as of today I have these completed.

They are all the same size with 34 stitches on each side. The plan at the moment is to make lots of them and then pick a "joining colour", do a few rounds in the "joining colour" and then graft the whole lot together.

I hope that you have all also been having good weather wherever you are:-)

Easter Knittyness

Hello Everyone and Happy Easter!
The sun is finally shining here although it is very blowy indeed and a bit chilly.

So, what have I been up to? 

Well, I recieved a lovely package from Patsie over at French Letters. Thank you Patsie.

Patsies package contained two skeins of her hand dyed and hand spun singles yarn and a skein of fussah silk which she spun from fibre from Tree Top Harmonies. The wool singles are at the back of the picture while the silk is at the front. With the yarns came a lovely letter which containes a pattern for basket cables. I'm not sure what I will make with the yarn yet but I think I will probably go for a shawl and edge it with the silk? not sure...mmmmm.

I have also be doing as spot of dyeing. This time with red, brown and green which produced this.....

The colours came out a bit paler than I thought they would but I do like them so I'll keep it like it is. The fibre (BFL) was dyed using the "roasting tin baking method" which seems to work well in the simmering oven of my AGA. It's a lot simpler and easier for me than steaming the fibre in a pan on the hob so I think I'll stick with baking it!  I haven't spun it up yet, but when I do there will be pictures I promise.

Carrying on the dyeing and fibery theme DH and I went to the Spinning Wheal where he got to see what I spend my money on! and I got to spend some, ha ha :-) I bought some more dyes - scarlet, rust and green; they are Ashford Wool Dyes for Protein Fibres I also got a couple of bobbins and some more BFL combed top. I have also been getting to grips with some of the Jacobs fleece that my neighbour donated to me. I washed a load of it by teasing it out and submerging it in hot water with a dose of Fairy Liquid added. I then put it on the hob and heated it up to 90 degrees C and held it at that temperature, with the help of my jam thermometer, for about ten minutes before rinsing it carefully. I managed not to felt it and it is definatley cleaner than it was. I just need to card it and it'll be good to go:-) Here it is after being washed. It's drying out on a towel placed on the top of the simering plate lid of the AGA.

Now the question of what to knit after the marathon that was the Snowflake Blankie has been rumbling about in my head for a while now. I did think that I would start on a crocheted Ripple Blankie and so have been gathering together lots of different colours of double knit, mainly Patons Diploma Gold, which comes in a range of lovely colours, is machine washable on the wool cycle and does contain a fair amount of wool. But I have also been contemplating a few other things as well one of which is another blanket but this time a knitted blanket.

This blanket is from the April chapter of Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitters Almanac. It is made up of squares knitted from the centre outwards and then grafted together to give the impression of a piece of knitting which has been knitted in many directions at once.....how interesting! So I have been experimenting with squares and have decided on a method that I like. My method is slightly different from EZ's April Mystery Blanket and should mean that my blankie is a little simpler than hers but just as good.

1. 1st Mystery blankie square, 2. Knitters Almanac, Elizabeth Zimmerman,
3. Mystery Blankie in progress, 4. Mystery blankie square - prototype

Instead of yarn overs eitherside of a single seam stitch I'm going with a double increase of M1, K2, M1 so that I can join the pieces together right to the corners before picking up stitches all round and knitting an edge. As this is a long term project I'll probably be knitting other things along the way as well as finishing off some items still to be completed.

And to finish off todays post here are some Easter pictures of some of the flowers in our garden. The dafodills, which are by the back door, where being very well buffeted by the rather blustery conditions this afternoon.

1. Forsythia, 2. Blustery daffs, 3. Flowering currant, 4. Primroses

Happy Easter:-)

Flickr Favorites

A few good things..................

1. My 1st hand dyed top, 2. Caroline, 3. My 1st hand spun, 4. Red onions

Fancy having a play with your flickr favorites? Pay Mitsy over at Artmind a visit to join in the fun :)

On the crochet home straight

Ok, so I had little bit of a "oops!" moment with the Snowflake Blankie since my last post.....I ran out of the blue yarn at 57 snowflakes!

I discovered that this particular blue has been discontinued in that particular yarn- fiddle! The very helpful lady in the LYS found a similar and suitable colour - Loom Blue - in Sirdar Click Chunky but she didn't have it in an Aran weight.
So I had a rummage about on the interweb and I ordered two balls of Loom Blue Click Aran from Knit and Sew in Swansea. I ordered the yarn on the Sunday evening and it arrived on the Tuesday; that is such good service plus the price was much cheaper than I was expecting - brill all round. Actually it's really nice yarn, comes in some lovely colours and is machine washable so I may try some out in the future for a sweater.

Anyway, all the snowflakes have now been completed - yay! and they have been sewn together into strips and I am now in the process of sewing the strips together after which I will do the edging.
Here is how far I have got as of this evening - three strips sewn together draped over the back of my chair. There are an awful lot of ends to sew in as well, but I'm getting there:-)

and a close up

Actually it is a bit odd but I don't mind sewing the blanket together, I'm quite getting into it which is strange because I usually really do not like sewing up my knitting projects; the sewing up part is usually where the project ends up being hibernated. In fact I don't like the sewing up part so much that I usually opt for seamless construction even if it means getting the calculator out and converting the pattern. Maybe this is a good sign, or maybe my head just works differently for crochet.

While I was at the LYS I could not resist the thought of the Ripple Blankie and so I bought some more yarn for it; more Patons Diploma Gold DK, here it is.....

 

Pretty colours:-) I now have quite a good collection of colours and I may even make a start this week (fingers crossed) but not before finishing the Snowflake Blankie, of course;-)

Crochet blankie update

Hello,
The Snowflake Blanket is coming along. I now have 46 hexagons completed so I need another 13 more before they all get joined together.
Here is a little preview.

and here is the "stack"

 

I have been steadily working on it each evening. This week though I haven't been too well, I had a cold and have been generally full of germs. I worked from home on one day as I think my collegues had got a bit fed up with the sneezing and tissues and general grumpyness that is me when I'm unwell.  I just don't do ill very well at all but I'm feeling much better now - yay:-)

So, to celebrate I went to Marmalade Yarns in Frome to get some yarns for my next crochet project.....a Ripple Blanket, and to see what the shop is like now that it has different ladies running it. 

I can report that it's still lovely there and now there is a sofa nook with magazines to read and a comfy chair by the window as well. The yarn selection is really good too and they have yarn from Coldharbour Mill in Devon; so local yarn store with local yarn yay!

I got a bunch of colours in Patons Diploma Gold DK because I am planning on making a blanket for our double bed and that will take a lot of yarn (and a lot of time) and I really can't afford Rowan or Debbie Bliss, gosh that would be expensive. Patons Diploma Gold DK comes in lots of pretty colours and is machine washable, soft and not likely to be discontinued any time soon. I do have some bits and bobs of other dk yarn in various colours that will also go into the blanket but it will mainly be Patons Diploma Gold DK

Here's what I got.

I am being strict with myself though and I will finish the Snowflake Blanket first before starting the Ripple.

Hen escapage! Retail Therapy and a spot of crochet

We had a bit of a mystery this week, a hen mystery!

Several times this week DH found at least one of the hens at large in the garden. He's not sure who it was because as soon as she spotted him coming around the corner of the house she came running up to him saying "help, I'm lost!" so he'd scooped her up and popped her back in the pen with the others without really taking note of who out  of the three she was.

One day we even had an egg on the path by the front door! Anyway, we checked the fencing and there were no holes so we could not begin to guess how she managed to get out......mmmm....mystery!

Anyway, yesterday I was having my breakfast here at my table and, looking out the window, I saw a hen teetering on top of the fence! She, that is Miranda, was attempting to get to the bird feeder that I had put up last Sunday for the little garden birds. I'd hung it from a branch of the Victoria Plum tree so that I would be able to see the little garden birds swinging on it while I am sat here at the table doing my thing. I'd filled it up with the mixed corn that we give to the hens, the same mixed corn the Miranda could have been pecking at right there and then if she cared to look down on the ground.

At that very moment my neighbour came around as we were going out for the morning so I grabbed my stuff and we went to investigate. By the time I'd got my boots and coat on and locked the back door Miranda was back down on the ground on the correct side of the fence as if nothing had happened! So I climbed up and took the bird feeder down and have hung it up round the back of the house. I reckon that she must have got out inadvertently as a consequence of her attempts at the bird feeder! anyway with the mystery solved my neighbour and I went off to Clevedon to The Spinning Weal for some retail therapy.

We each bought some white Blue Faced Leicester top, I also bought some bobbins and a sliding hook flyer for my wheel while my neighbour bought a really good selection of Corridale combed top which came in lots of fantastic colours, she got pink, plum and several blues. We had a really good time and the people who own and run the shop were both very friendly and helpful. As well as spinning stuff there was also a good selection of knitting yarns, fabrics and other fibre related crafty type items. I will definatley be going back:-)

My neighbour is so sweet; when we were driving back she produced this

from her bag as a present for me for driving us. Its BFL in lovely plums and pinks and I think I will knit a hat or maybe wristwarmers for myself with it as it is almost the same colours as the Fyberspates dk Scrumptious I bought with my gift voucher.

I've had a spin with some of the white BFL and it is lovely to spin with. I'm getting better at drafting evenly and more thinly and the plan at the moment is to spin two bobbins of 50g each and then ply them together and see what I get. My sliding hook flyer needed finishing so I have not used that yet but I have wiped it over with Danish Oil to protect the wood and it should be dry by now so I will assemble it to the wheel later and have a go with it.

Here it is just before I oiled it yesterday.

On the project front I completed my Garter Yoke Cardy #2; sewed on the lovely green buttons and wove in the ends.

Now I have completed it I have been toying with the idea of a Ripple Stitch Crochet Blanket. I haven't done any crochet for a long while but as I was doing some blog browsing recently I came accross Attic 24 where Lucy has the most marvelouss crochet. I just love her Ripple Blanket as do several other bloggers:-) and would love one for our bed........but......I have not completed the crochet blanket I started way back in 2006! It's a Snowflake Hexagon blanket hooked in Sirdar Aran with Wool and I have twenty-six of the required fifty-nine hexagons completed.

So, I dug out the blanket .......here we are.....

 and a little snowflake :-)

So for my New Years Resolution !

"I will complete this blanket"