Friends, Fibre and Fun

Well we have been very busy doing lots of stuff and as usual I have been soooo busy doing it that:

1. I haven’t taken pictures of most of it; and
   
2. I haven’t got round to telling you all about it yet!

So what have I been up to?
Well first off we have some sad news. Miranda got sick, just like her sisters did. She became very quiet and just stopped being happy and perky and got all puffed up under her chest. We took her to the vet thinking the worst; the vet was very kind and said that there was nothing that could be done to make her better so we let the vet put her to sleep.

Obviously this meant that Amy was all on her own and we couldn’t have that so yesterday we went back to where we got Amy from last year and got Rebecca. She is a Rhode Rock which is a hybrid cross of a Rhode Island Red and a Barred Plymouth Rock (I think). She’s a bit shy still but is quite friendly when meal worms are in the offing.

Happily Amy seems to be ok with the whole “new friend” thing and really hasn’t made too much of a fuss. She has been a bit vocal but hasn’t been pecking or chasing Rebecca so fingers crossed that all will continue to be well.

In spinning and fibery news, well quite a bit has been happening.
I am now the new Treasurer of the Somerset Guild of Spinners, Weavers & Dyers ( I get a proper metal badge) and we are having our annual fleece fair on Saturday the 18th of June. However, I probably won’t be able to make it as I am having my three wisdom teeth out and will be sedated for the procedure. This means that I will not be allowed to drive for 48 hours afterwards and as the procedure is on the Thursday afternoon I won’t be able to drive until Saturday afternoon……so I won’t be able to go – pants!

Wisdom teeth aside (and frankly I am not looking forwards to it one little bit!) my friend Liz and I have been rather busy with the spinning. We had a spinning afternoon together which was really cool. We both managed to score a bunch of free fleece on freecycle so we have done a bit of swapping between us.


We spun this – Liz did the brown, which is Zwartbles (fab word!) and the white/grey is the Romney that I’ve been working on (since forever).


Ah, what a cute puppy dog.


Liz and I also did a spinning gig at the Bath & West Show for which we managed to get free tickets for the Saturday in exchange for us sitting at the Somerset Life Magazine stand and spinning for a few hours. The weather was lovely all day; sunny with a bit of a breeze. We had a few weird questions from the public and met a few interesting textile people. We also checked out the food halls (yummy coffee and super ice-cream) and the sheep (cute Shetlands and North Ronaldsays) and watch a crazy man on the top of a very tall thin pole do a balancing act with NO safety harness!

Another Fibery Friend and our Knit Club Organiser, Lesley, organised a bit of a workshop afternoon at her mums house. There’s more space there as her mum has a conservatory and Lesley left the kiddie winks at home so it was just us grownups and a load of tea and yummy cake! We did Navajo plying and dyeing which proved to be a right laugh. Kim and Megan did a double act with their Navajo plying.


While Lesley and I did some dyeing. Here’s Lesley dyeing some of her hand spun yarn.

We steamed it in her mums electric steamer.

So, that’s it really. I’m hoping that I’ll be back to update the blog before we all go to Woolfest but if not then there will be a big update of Woolfestiness! We are going up on the Thursday and staying over until the Sunday, not long to go now!

Excited (10,00000000)

Germination!

We have germination – yay! and only a week after planting seeds, look:

These are tomato seedlings on our bedroom windowsill, they emerged this morning. The courgettes and beans are still under the surface but I am hopeful that maybe by next weekend we will see some seedlings, especially as we have had some rain at long last. The garden is looking better for the rain with flowers coming out all over.


I’ve also been having another go a spinning long-draw. This is where you card fleece into rolags and then spin them from the end into a floofy woollen type yarn.

Longdrawjames has recently put up a vid on You Tube, here it is.

Longdrawjames shows how to hand card and spin long draw from rolags

Suitably inspired I got stuck in with the Romney and a couple of rolags later I had this:

I kept on going until I had about half a jumbo bobbin full and then Navajo plied it. Here it is soaking in the sink:

and drying out on the line; a bit breezy!

Here’s a closer pic. It’s about double knitting weight and is quite floofy, I like it


This is the time of year for new fleece and although I am saving myself for Woolfest (not long now!) I could not resist a bargain; so I have some Jacobs fleece coming in the post from a Raveler. She bought a whole bunch of fleece off of EBay and has divided it up for about ten of us. We are sharing the cost of the fleece and then just have to pay for postage so I will be getting about 1.5kg of well skirted fleece for £1 plus postage! brill. It should be here some time next week so fingers crossed that we get some sunny weather next weekend so that I can wash and dry it all.

The rhubarb fest continues and we are still loving rhubarb and Greek yoghurt. However in case of overload I think that I may have to experiment with some form of rhubarb cake thing so if anyone out there has a recipe for rhubarb cake please feel free to drop me a line with the recipe.In the meantime here’s some rhubarb!

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.

Spindling along

I’ve been getting well into spindling recently. Spindling is just so portable and the spindles are relatively inexpensive and very pretty. Here are mine. 
I have been spindling some Romney, which is the grey you can see on two of the spindles. At the last Guild meeting I crumbled and bought 700g of raw Romney fleece. It was only £3.50; can’t really go wrong with that! Plus it was all soft and crimpy; very clean and it smelt all warm and sheepy as it had been sat on the sale table right in a patch of sunshine, mmmm, lol! I washed it and it came out really well, really soft with lovely natural shading from white to dark grey. But having lent my hand cards to my friend Ann I was a bit stuck; what to do?

Well at Guild I’d had a go with Jenny's flat backed cards just to see what they are like as Jenny said she preferred them to the curved backed cards that people usually use and which are the ones I have lent to Ann. I liked them as it seemed to me that it was easier to brush all the fleece on the left hand card with all the surface of the right hand card; it just seemed to work better.

So I had a rummage on the net and got myself some flat backed cards from Wingham Wool Works. They duly arrived and I have had a lovely time carding all that Romney; well almost all, there is a little left to do. It’s come out really well as there are virtually no second cuts the only thing “wrong” with it was that a lot of the staple tips needed to be pulled off as they were dry, sun-bleached and crunchy but apparently  this is pretty normal with coloured fleece.

So now I have bags of Romney rolags all about the place! I’ve spindled one spindle full and am now onto the second spindle. The two will be plied together; it’s looking like it might be light aran/heavy dk weight….maybe….some mittens!

As yesterday was Guild Jenny and I tootled off down to Hatch Beauchamp for the day. I took my spindles, cards and the last bit of uncarded Romney and Jenny took a little loom she has been making scarves on. The loom is so small that it can sit on the fold up table that she also brought along. Liz was there too and she gave me this.

Isn’t it fab? It’s a case for my Notebook and she wove it herself out of wool that she has spun plus the coloured wool on the flap is from our dyeing day last year! a really beautiful gift from a very dear friend and my Notebook fits into it really well.

Also at Guild I met Shani who's blog, Dye Verse, I have been reading for a while now; she also reads my ramblings on here too. It was really cool to meet her in the flesh and to make a new friend. She had been to Wonderwool in Wales and told us all about it. As we are going to Woolfest in June this was very interesting although I think Woolfest might be better as Shani said there were lots of the same stands there this year as there were last year with not much in the way on new stands. I know that Woolfest is trying to make sure that they have a good mix of new people and established people although as we have never been it’s all going to be new to us.

Speaking of Woolfest I’ve booked us tickets to the Friday night Spin-In and Cumberland Sausage Supper so see you there! We are staying at a B&B on a farm in Mill Beck which is about two miles from Keswick and 13 miles from Woolfest. The lady who's farm it is has around 300 sheep and has told us that as it will be shearing time when we are there we can pick any fleece we like! and maybe have a go at shearing as well. Liz is rubbing her hands in glee as she wants ten at least!! I have been saving up paper sacks and have three I think but Liz will have to take a roll of bin liners the way she is thinking!

Happy spinning and knitting ,
Em

More mittens! and some yoghurt eating hens

Hello:-)

Since the last post I've been busy knitting more mittens.....but I haven't got much to show for it I'm afraid just this little bit of a mitt here

I'll explain; basically I've been knitting loads and then pulling it all out 'cos it's not working properly....grrrr!. I tried my Liz Inspired Mitts with some Noro Silk Garden which although lovely and colourful is a total pain in the bum when it comes to knots resulting in sudden colour changes and also the thick and thin nature of the yarn. After several attempts it just wasn't wanting to be those mitts so I tried Elizabeth Zimmerman's Mystery Mittens from her book Knitting Around several attempts resulted in a very large thumb and a too short hand and a very frustrated knitter...mmmm.

But not to worry:-) I've borrowed some books from Spinning Guild one being the EZ book Knitting Around and another being this one

The book basically gives a recipe for knitting a mitten and then you apply the cuff and colourwork pattern that you fancy. It gives an idea of how many stitches to cast on for the cuff and how many you will probably need for the hand part. So for my mittens I cast on 76 stitches on 2mm needles with Rowan 4ply and knitted 20 rounds in knit 2 purl 2 rib. Then I increased to 84 stitches by knit 9, make 1, knit 10, make1 for a total of four times. This adds the 8 extra stitches needed to bring the stitch count up to a number divisible by 14 ready to start the colourwork pattern.

 

The pattern is, allegedly, a four-leaf clover but at the moment it looks more like coffee beans! and it's taking a while - tiny, tiny needles and tiny, tiny wool, but it's coming along and I am enjoying it well much.

During February I also spent a lovely Saturday carding fleece with my friend Julie. We don't get to meet up very often as we are both so busy so it was good to catch up, drink tea and card interspersed with a spot of lunch and updates from the Six Nations via her husband and little boy. I managed to get through quite a bit of the Jacob fleece I have been working on and got quite a bit carded. I'd given Julie a wodge of the Jacob the last time we'd met up and she had spun it up and knit it into a hat, it looked very good and was very fetching on. For my bit of Jacob I think that I will probably start with some mittens (what a surprise! lol) and probably have a blue stripe on them somewhere using some of the teal spindle spun I did last December.

February's Spinning Guild meeting consisted of a skills day which was really very good indeed. Three Guild members took a workshop each in spinning longdraw, Navajo plying and using a warping mill. In the morning I learnt to spin longdraw which was fun as I seemed to need to take up loads of space with my right arm! p
Practise will hopefully enhance my rather inelegant technique - put it this way, it better!! Here is my progress so far. Carol, the tutor, described it as "art yarn", lol:-) it is a bit lumpy bumpy but I expect that it will even out when I ply it.

After our soup and bread lunch (I made tomato and lentil and everyone liked it very much) I swapped workshops and learnt to Navajo ply with Brenda. She showed us how it was done, a bit like crocheting a long chain, and then let us have a go at doing it ourselves on her wheel; a double treadle Louet; a very nice wheel. The first lady to have a go managed to get the technique off pat straight away; I managed to make a bit of a hash of it and was all fingers and thumbs until I'd got the gist, then it was actually very easy. Brenda explained that Navajo plying creates a three ply yarn, can be used to maintain colour repeats and creates a rounded profile in the finished yarn making it a warmer yarn. So, I'm planning on using this technique to ply my scrap swap singles (got to spin them yet!) so that I can maintain the colours and not get the barber-pole affect.

Recently we have been getting some nice sunny weather and this morning I've managed to get the washing out on the line. The daffodils are out by the back door and they look very cheery indeed. Things are beginning to stir out in the garden and I'm starting to think about what to grow in the veggie patch this year as it'll be time to start planting seeds indoors soon. I dug over half the veggie patch last Sunday, with the help of the chickens.

The chickens are doing well and both are now laying regularly. Miranda has got all her feathers back now after moulting during the coldest winter we have had for years! mad bird. Apparently it was down to minus 14 degrees celsius at it's coldest (Jenny's son measured it) and the river was frozen over on Christmas morning. Anyway here are the girls, Amy in the background as she is camera shy, Miranda at the front as she is a tart!

I gave them some yoghurt this morning, they really do enjoy their yoghurt and apparently it is very good for their little tummies. Here they are tucking in, it can get a bit messy!

 

 

Bye, bye, 'till next time:-)

This Winter I have Mostly been Knitting.......................................

Mittens!

These are my second pair of Cranfords

and these are my Snap-Dragon-Fliptops

here's a closeup of the snapdragon flowers.

Then I made these EZ Mitered Mittens from some of my handspun yarn

and then got all inspired and made up my own mitts pattern.

 I still have quite a bit of mitten mojo going on so I've started a second pair of my own mittens but this time I'm doing them in stripes of green aran and Noro Silk Garden in kind of pinky, purpley, greeny colours, with three rows of the aran and then three rows of the Noro. I'll get some pics of those up soon, promise.

Also, I'm hoping that my mitts pattern will be available for download. Some of my knitty pals are kindly test knitting my pattern for me at the moment. I'll put a link on here so that you can download it but as I've never done this kind of thing before, "publishing a knitting pattern", it may take me a while; although hopefully not as long as it's been since I last posted on here! ooops!

Off to knit more mitts:-)
Back soon.