Catching up...

It seems like an awful long time since I posted, and lots of things have happened!

Towards the end of April I had a birthday, which stretched over three weekends, one in Cambridge, one in Chester-le-Street and one in Hove. The Actual Weekend started with a trip to the V&A Quilts exhibition (highly recommended) with Yvonne (ditto, of course!), a showing of The Ghost and a visit to GBK with Sue, and finally some knitting over an extremely nice Sunday lunch in the pub, with Cath and Avril (both knitting lace, you can tell by the expressions...)

Jackie

Lorna (with mystery test knit which I'd just dyed and blocked the day before...)

and Lucinda.

Rosie was also there - you can see her elbow in the top picture but the photo I took of her was so comically, heroically bad that it seemed safest not to include it...

Many of the knitting-related gifts, oddly enough, were purple...

We had Dissolution, and the election, and then a very strange and extremely busy post-election period.

Summer has wondered, repeatedly, whether to arrive. Yesterday morning was absolutely beautiful; last weekend was really cold and miserable; and today can't work out what it wants to do, but Test Match Special is on the radio, cricket is happening and it's pretty exciting this afternoon as England demolishes Bangladesh's batsmen (could do with less Geoffrey Boycott and more everyone else, but you can't have everything - at least Blowers, Aggers and Tuffers are all on...) I've potted up my chili seedlings today and put them in the greenhouse as hostages to fortune, so I can get rid of the heated propagator I've been falling over in the kitchen for the last couple of months.

I've had three shifts at the village library, which is where I started this post; the morning was notable for a lovely ten-year-old boy who's only had his library card for a week; when I told him he could have up to 12 items out he beamed so widely you'd swear it was Christmas morning...

Knitting has been done. The main project I worked on between then and now was a wedding blanket for Katie and Neil, assembling squares produced by members of the Archers board on Ravely, from all over the UK and from Canada - Katie blogs about it here and it's great to know she loved it. I now have absolutely no fear of picking up stitches from edges, having picked up 24 from each edge of each square! It was lovely seeing everyone's squares and good wishes, and people were wickedly inventive with the Archers-themed blocks.

I also knitted a shawl (as yet unblocked) and a cardigan (can't decide whether I like it or not now it's finished!) which I'll blog another time.

Not much progress on the spinning, but thanks very much to Isabella for her comment on my April 12 post, which has narrowly averted disaster; in future I'll either dye the fleece or the finished yarn rather than trying to dye singles before plying. I really need to sit down and read the spinning book I bought last year to get these technical details right!

Big red wolf

Well, Monday turned out to be more interesting than planned; despite my forgetting my travel pass and having to go back for it, when I got to the station, the 0804 was still there in the platform. And stayed there, for the next hour... At 0930, when I realised there was no way if we even set off at that second I'd be able to make it in for the 11am meeting, I phoned my boss and arranged to work from home for the day. And it was all extremely productive.

I'm not the best worker-from-home, to be honest; I get distracted; the PC's in the middle of the living room, and there's just way too much yarny stuff about and things I'd rather be doing. So today, to focus my mind, I decided to work for an hour and then do something else for half an hour. Mostly, that was spinning - the work stuff was absorbing enough that after an hour, taking half an hour off for the sort of mechanical activity which leaves big bits of your brain free to think creatively, was perfect, and I got loads done (and still finished an hour earlier than I'd have got home on a normal day, due to only having spent 1 hour travelling rather than nearly 4). Wish I could have a wheel in the office!


I'm spinning Jacob, still; this is likely to go on for quite a while as I have at least another couple of carrier bags of it. It's proving surprisingly good fun, despite the amount of vegetation there still is in it - I'd say that I'd be pickier with my picking another time, but these sheep were pets from the next village, rather than animals raised for yarn, and the amount of straw and moss in the fleece was pretty extreme - this is not going to be a yarn for garments. Having said that, a fleece for £5 including delivery is not something you sniff at (previous years' shearings had been burnt or used for mulch). This is the second bobbin; I wound the first one off yesterday:

I think I'll wind the spun bobbins into cakes for the moment (unless anyone who actually knows what they're doing has a better suggestion, of course! please post in the comments), and then skein, wash, dye and ply them all at once, at which point I'll work out how much there is, and what it wants to be. I ordered a WPI tool along with an impulse sock-club purchase (the club is getting to the end of its life so they were allowing you to buy one month at a time); the package won't arrive until sometime next month, but that's OK - I spin glacially slowly.

To whit - this is the rest of this year's production. Not Jacob. Merino, and Blue-Faced Leicester, and much, much prettier.

The roving for the skein in the middle was a very kind gift from Franklin when he was here in the autumn. The colourway is Rufus lupus (which translates as Red Wolf, hence the title of this post); the dyer is Sakina Needles, who doesn't seem to be in business at the moment. Oddly enough, when I was trying to track down the name of the dyer (I couldn't find the card attached to the skein but could remember the colour name), I found this Etsy listing - the spinner is SO much more competent than I am, but her skein seems more pastel. Mine reminds me of the colours of Venice and the mosaics in San Marco, so the Latin name is even nicer.

I'd spun this by Textiles in Focus in February, and took it with me, hoping for something to match it. And needed to go no further than the lovely Alison at Yarnscape (she has links to her shops at Folksy and Etsy, but I think most of her production is going into shows at the moment; and Ely Yarn Shop has some of her batts and dyed yarns) for a couple of plaits of BFL which would absolutely do the job. On the left, Rosewood, and on the right, Denim. It was definitely one of those squee moments - the pinkybrown-ness was just perfect, and the blue was exactly the right colour, too. It was also one of those weird and serendipitous things where yarn given by a friend from Chicago, and yarn dyed by a friend from Cambridgeshire, worked together so perfectly.

So, I have 450m/200g of DK-ish weight yarn; pondering what to make... I might do something geometric-y to reflect the San Marco mosaics...

Big box of tricks

My new toy arrived last weekend; the lady at the post office (who stitches) was very intrigued... I took an hour off last Friday afternoon because I couldn't bear to wait till Saturday...

They do things differently in New Zealand - can't imagine a piece of UK equipment for textiles being advertised by two blokes!

Fabulous minimal packaging - you just slide out the little bit of plywood at the left-hand side and take a wooden block out at the other...

Some (but not much), assembly required...

All sorted...

I know you can make lovely fancy batts with Angelina fibre and so on, and blend different fibres together, and I'll be trying some of that later, but for now, I'm very, very happy to be able to turn this (Jacob fleece from sheep which were reared in the next village)

into these lovely floofy cushions of fibre ready for spinning; all these were done in less than an hour, with a minimum of pre-carding on a hand-carder...

I'm going to be spinning up a lot of grey for the next little while, but I'm so glad to be able to card much faster than I can spin, rather than the other way round - and there are several fleeces around the place (as well as this Jacob, which is the only washed fleece, there are 2 Shetland fleeces, 1 Ryeland (thanks, AnnaT!), 1 Manx Loaghtan and one I bought when I first learned to spin... Unfortunately, the weather isn't really conducive to washing any of the others this weekend so far! The forecast isn't too bad for Sunday and Monday, and I can always finish the drying process in the greenhouse...

I've spun a bit each day over the last week and needed to card another basketful of fleece this afternoon; it's not going to be the finest or most even yarn in the world, but I'm going to try something different by dyeing the singles before plying...

Warning... blueness ahead.

Last later night until the middle of October for me; the working week becomes a little shorter and we're able to breathe a bit. Well, that's the theory. In fact, the next couple of weeks are even busier than usual...

However - quick quiz - what sort of dangerous item do you think this belongs to? Obviously a bit of a hazard...

Yes, that's right - a pair of jeans.

I can't really identify the precise moment at which we became so stupid (or perhaps afraid of litigation) that we forgot that denim = indigo = fading = dye loss...

But in more blueness: the first skein of what I'm calling Blue Meanie.... This is 100% merino superwash from Wingham, for the Tour de Fleece, dyed by me in a couple of different intensities of ultramarine. Because of my lack of spinning skillz (and speed), this is the first week and a half's production at a whopping 167 grammes (try not to be too impressed, people who spin...); 422 metres though, which is the finest I've managed.

It turns out that when you put a skein of yarn onto a patio table at 5:30am, you get an audience...

... even if that audience is utterly unimpressed and really just wants breakfast.

I think I'll probably be knitting Sherbert/Sherbet from the last Yarn Forward (who knows, the magazine index says one thing, the pattern another, 'twas ever thus with YF), if I can get the tension to come out right.

Meanwhile Decimal is about 40 rows from cast-off, and then pick-up of the edging - but it's still just a big heap of cream stuff - it will not be cream when I start wearing it though... Next week I'm teaching at Cottenham Summer School which will be fun and exhausting at the same time...

Oh, also - no 3:15 update this week. I did do some work in the garden, but either I was out, or entertaining, or it rained, so most of what was done was after the photos. They look so alarmingly similar to last week's that I'm not going to bother... The rain did mean that I could sit in my kitchen on Sunday morning, spinning and listening to the cricket at Lords on the radio (and yay for Freddie who was magnificent throughout and thoroughly deserved Man of the Match), and watching the rain beat down on the roof above me, 60 miles north of the action... never a bad thing...

More spinning, and a plan...

I did more spinning last weekend - this time using a plait of merino from Limegreenjelly (currently at Woolfest along with the rest of the UK knitting population...), bought at the Brighton Knit Safari last year. I called this Agincourt, because of the colours in the pennants and sky of the Olivier film of Henry V; but I gather it's all been remixed and brightened up recently, so the lovely bright pastels I remember weren't actually in the original film...

In its unplaited state...

Split up for spinning...

Singles...


And all plied up...

It goes surprisingly well with the yarns I showed you last time - probably something to do with my purple fixation.


And a rare shot - the Bug and the wheel in any sort of proximity. She dislikes the wheel intensely. It could be because of Stackhouse, the Folkmanis lamb-puppet I won in a random KAL draw, which sits on the flier when the wheel's not in use, or it could just be because it's Something Demanding Attention When I Am Here...


The Plan... I've worked out what to do with these yarns and a couple of others. More tomorrow...

Sunday spinning

Last Sunday it was rainy, and dark, and I was tired after the Feast and spending the evening sawing up branches. I had a good audiobook (John Connolly's The Reapers) read by the wonderful Jeff Harding, and 72 grammes of merino/silk roving from Wingham, a souvenir of the Bradford Trip five years ago (which turned into SkipNorth the following year)

I stripped it down in accordance with SamuraiKnitter's instructions, which makes it much easier to spin something finer.

Turned it into singles...

And plied it. Pretty yarn...

There's about 100m of it, and it's sort of a DK weight. I have other things which will match it - top to bottom, some Cherry Tree Hill merino/silk DK which was a present from Gill when she came to stay in February, the new handspun, and some Artist's Palette Buttersoft DK bought at Stash...

Not sure what it's going to be yet, but it'll tell me at some point... I have signed up for the Tour de Fleece this year on the strength of it, anyway... I want to spend half an hour a day spinning, just to get some kind of momentum going...

A purple patch

After all that talk about how my basic colour choices are changing; I've reverted to type...

I finished these on my week off at the end of August; on the way back from hunting elephants in Norwich with Rosie, actually. And I still haven't blogged that. But I finished these socks just before the train got into Ely, and had half an hour to wait, so I dug the other one out of the bag, put them on, photographed them, took them off again, put my shoes back on... and the woman on the bench next to me didn't turn a hair. The Yarn Harlot talked about this phenomenon on Saturday, but my most extreme experience with it is represented by this photo and this post. Two women and a small child lying on a blanket on the Backs, waving their sock-clad feet at King's College Chapel and being photographed; and not one single person of the many who passed asked what we were doing. OK, Cambridge is quite a strange place at the best of times, but you'd think basic curiosity would have motivated someone... Follow the link to the post for Anne's free pattern. (Actually, Anne, I've just realised that your socks were rightfully mine - they match the sweater I was wearing there terrifically well...)

Back to these socks though.

Pattern is Firestarter, from Yarnissima (a free pattern, worked toe-up like Yarnissima's others).

Yarn is Socks that Rock lightweight, May's club yarn from the Rockin' Sock Club

Needles 2.25mm

On Sunday, I intended to spend the whole day writing my management assignment - I've been doing a course at work which has been 12 full-day courses over the last 7 months, and finishes off with a 3,200 word assessment; which is due in on the 19th. I sat there, and sat there, and couldn't think of a thing to write for hours. So I thought maybe some theta brainwaves were called for (you had to be there on Saturday, you really did), and I couldn't even concentrate to knit, which was just weird, frankly; so I got the spinning wheel out, and picked up some purple roving I dyed in August with the odds and ends from Jan's birthday present, and followed Samuraiknitter's brilliant instructions for dealing with roving, and made something which looks more like actual yarn than anything I've made on this wheel so far. Pics follow:

Not perfect, as you can see... about chunky weight, 133g and 100m; but I'm ridiculously proud of it. So proud that it deserves a tryout on the Tranquil Face, despite his current marjoram haircut.

I have the impression that if he could talk, he'd be saying "Duuuuude"...

And I woke up at about 4am on Monday morning with three of the eight answers to the questions in draft in my head; which just proves this theta business works. (And has no sense of timing - today I finally managed to write these ones up...)

2 new uses for a swift

Over the years, I've found several uses for my swift other than winding yarn. It's great for

1. drying yarn off in a hurry - taking the ties out and spreading the skein a bit on the swift is really good, particularly if you can do this while clamping the swift to a table/chair/fence/whatever in the garden when it's sunny (for UK residents: no, not this summer. Obviously. This summer, recipe for a mouldy swift and wet yarn...)


2. measuring yarn (measure half-circumference of skein and double, place on swift, mark one leg of swift with something garish, wind slowly into a ball while counting rotations like mad)


3. drying light clothing... I don't have space for a clothes' horse, but when the rain comes down, I can put a blouse on the swift and it might dry quicker...


4. amusing small children (this is a ballwinder-and-swift-combo - they love winding the handle on the ballwinder and seeing what happens to the swift...)


5. amusing teenagers (no, really. Particularly male teenagers. They love the process of yarn-winding. I have no idea why, but a couple of years ago at Textiles in Focus at Cottenham the male teenagers working car-park duty used to bring their friends in to watch the swift work... It can't be the appeal of machines per se or they'd have been clustered round the sewing machines. The girls (other than the knitters, who saw the point) weren't that impressed; but then most teenage girls are Officially Not Impressed with Anything.)


6. amusing cats (cats are best for the amusement thing - their heads look as if they're going to fall off while they're watching, but for some reason they don't have the instincts small children and teenagers have to put their front paws into the moving machinery. I would say this makes them of superior intelligence, but my current cat would live on a diet of Sellotape, elastic bands and bubblewrap if I let her... It is good to live with another stationery fetishist though...)

However.

I have been doing lots of sorting out and tidying up over the last few weeks. I started so that I could physically fit 7 people, including myself, into the lower floor of my small house for a dyeing workshop without anyone having to stand or work outside (because, as everyone in the UK knows, doing either activity outside this summer means you will inevitably become extremely wet; and so it was on that particular day), and I just seemed to keep going...

Anyway; all the way through this process I've thought 'when I feel pleased with the downstairs I'll spin that really beautiful skein of fibre I bought from Fyberspates at Ally Pally last year'. And so it came to be that having reached a state this afternoon where I wasn't anxious about tidying up anything I could see at the time, I reached for the skein, dragged out my Louet S-10... and...

... at some point in the whole tidying-up thing, I think I must have dropped something on the wheel. That's my only explanation for the thing that we very-nearly-non-spinners call that bit of the flyer with the hooks on it being... loose. And, on closer examination, cracked, both sides of the circular plastic pin with the orifice (stop sniggering, you at the back) at the other end...

So I used needlework tools... one 12mm needle to prise the cracks more open still; some wood glue bought to glue ends back onto bamboo needles, a needle to push the wood glue into the cracks... and then I realised I needed a G-clamp. So, like a fool, I went off into my completely disorganised shed, in near darkness, to look for one. After a couple of minutes of ferreting around, sanity reasserted itself, and I suddenly realised that I had a perfectly good one sitting in the dining room, and it was called my swift... So I present you... Eduarda Hook-Arms...

So, by my accounting, that's non-yarn-winding use 7). Use 8), I think, is as an artists' model for zombie artists...

Which in turn reminds me of this, which made me laugh a lot when it came out.

Yes, I am still mainlining paracetamol and ibuprofen and blowing my nose every 10 minutes - why would you ask?

Hypoteneuse and medals tomorrow...

Drying out...

... briefly, before the next lot of forecast rain ...

About the only advantage of having Tuesdays off (it's a daft day, really) is when there's a Bank Holiday Monday - the extra day always feels very decadent. I've been sitting drinking tea, thinking about all the housework I ought to have been doing, but actually listening to a rather fabulous Georgette Heyer romance on CD, sewing in ends on the front of the sweater

and knitting sleeves (keeping them in step because some of the yarns are in short supply...)

and spinning up some of the Jacob fleece I washed at the beginning of the month.

Not expertly spun, I know, but it was fun to do, and practice makes perfect and all that... this is the first bobbin, and while it does still have some bits of straw and so on in it, a satisfying amount came out during carding and spinning...

But there's no pleasing some - Bug has sat around disconsolately waiting for the rain to stop...