Peaceful weekend...

The day-course I was due to be teaching next weekend was cancelled due to lack of sign-ups; I was looking forward to doing it, but was very glad I wasn't going to be doing it next weekend! So instead of spending the time confecting more samples, I'm doing this:

Tea and the Hanging Garden Stole - 4 repeats done now of the 14. It's a 48-row repeat and I keep doing daft things. Have to get one of those lifelines in at the end of the next row which is the first of the repeat...! Haven't used them before, but this one's been pulled off the needles once, and I've gone wrong twice in the last repeat - pulling back to a thread would have been far more fun than running repairs...

Am also tidying up - once that's done I'll get the stash from last weekend out and take proper pictures...

This morning, got the competition entries and prizes from Textiles in Focus into the post, and picked up a packet from the Post Office - I was expecting my lopi tote from Gill - made it last year from two skeins of Fiesta Watermark, which I had from a very generous friend in Texas, but Gill now stocks, so she had it as a sample on her stand, and in the scramble to pack at the end I'd forgotten to collect it... I didn't however expect it to come with toys:

Lovely bits of English wools to play with... Gill suggests, generously, that the cats might like to play with them (they were very taken with her last weekend). Not a chance. None.

And a photo of an FO - I know I've shown this one before, but Dad took a photo of Mam in her Icarus shawl at a wedding last weekend, and the colours look so good (and so much better than they do in my Christmas pics)... Yarn is Angel Hair from HandMaiden in colour Vintage. I am now panicking - this is some of the nicest fine mohair I've ever used, and HandMaiden don't have it on their site at the moment!

Ahoy, SkipNorthers!

As promised, here are the skeining photos for the Friday afternoon workshop at SkipNorth. Apologies if I'm teaching any grandmothers to suck eggs here; if you've skeined yarn before, you'll know what you're doing and just do whatever you'd do normally - but I've always taught dyeing to embroiderers before and they don't, necessarily...

You can wind your skein round whatever you like. A pair of doorknobs, a couple of fenceposts... really doesn't matter. In this example, I've wound a skein round a couple of chairbacks.



The important thing is to tie it regularly, so you don't end up with an irretrievable mess of yarn. In this case, the skein is just under 2 metres (80")round, and I've tied it four times (every 50cm or 20"). If you're dealing with something really slippy like viscose ribbon, tie it more times than that (maybe every 30 cm or 12"). You can see on the photo above that I've made one tie with the main yarn (on the right), and then three extras with a contrast; this is an acrylic, because acrylic generally doesn't dye so you can find your ties easily.

The other thing to make sure of is not making the ties too tight. If you do that, you won't be able to get the dye under the ties and you'll end up with white patches. (If that's what you want, though, tie away, and you can do it deliberately!) This second pic shows you how I generally tie mine.



Edited to add - I obviously failed to follow my own advice when dyeing some sari silk on Monday night. I added a couple of extra ties for security, but didn't check what the original ties on the skein looked like! So here's a classic example of what happens if you tie it too tight...



Gah. Back to the dyepot!

Mardi Gras

Tilda; Colinette Firecracker; Mardi Gras colourway; from Winifred Cottage over the weekend. Happy Shrove Tuesday...

The weekend that was...

It was a good weekend. Completely knackering enough that I ended up taking today as emergency holiday when I couldn't lever myself out of bed; but worth doing. Here's the college bedecked in posters - I know modesty's all part of Growing Up and Being British - but every time I saw the poster I wanted to scream "Look, look; I did that"!



This is the view from my seat during the weekend. Gill had so much gorgeous stuff that I was very glad I'd made this weekend one of my Occasions for Sin. The CTH Alpine Baby, not something I'd been sold on by photos, is the most unbelievably luscious stuff when you get to fondle it...



This nylon is one of my hand-dyes; all but one skein was rehomed...



Most of this bouclé has gone to pastures new too...



And Jackie took some of this DK home for the baby kimono from the Mason Dixon book. Sorry, Jackie; the photo I took of you with your Woolly Workshop purchases was pretty awful...

A word from our sponsors...

A bit of an advert - Textiles in Focus next weekend at Cottenham Village College, High Street, Cottenham, Cambridge, CB24 8AU. 16th-18th February (Friday-Sunday) 10 am-5 pm (4:30 on Sunday). Traders, exhibitions, demonstrations, refreshments and light lunches - and there are a few workshop places left. Admission is £4 for adults, £1 under 16s, free for under 5s. I'm there teaching (embroidery), and selling some knitted items and hand-dyed yarns. I'm also unreasonably smug that this poster is all over the place locally because the background's a piece of my stitching! I'm also really looking forward to catching up with Gill from Woolly Workshop...

One bag full...

I often feel guilty about packaging. However, buying from Wingham is great. You get the card through from the post office; you get to explain to Sue-at-the-post-office what's coming this time (because she orders from them too); you bring it home and attempt to find a sharp implement...

Then you snip the cable-tie and get out the contents; in this case a lovely clean white ball of pure merino for felting...

I've been dyeing more stuff for Textiles in Focus. How the people who dye things all year round survive, I have no idea, my back's killing me... But I've made some of last year's SkipNorth stash (pale yellow nylon) into pretty things...

and at work today I got an unexpected little treat - we've had a load of stuff cleared out of the cupboards, and in the 'take this if you'd like it' things was an old streeetmap of Washington D.C., which for a West Wing nut like me was lovely.

And to add to the joy, it's a Rand McNally map, which I only actually know from Seamus Heaney's stunning poem Westering (first read at the age of 14)... From that poem on, Rand McNally's had a mythical quality... I'm sort of sad they've got fuel-requirement-calculations on the back of the map...

Poetry for St Brigid's II

This is the one I wanted to post: with permission of the author...

Forsythia

Desperate with darkness, forsythia flames out.
Madness, this: frail leaves of light, whipped wild with wind,
thrust themselves into unwilling skies,
force themselves on days that do not want to give up winter.
Only the need to be known cuts deeper,
the hunger not to be invisible.

Love is like that sometimes, and living always.

M. A. Kurtz

Poetry for St Brigid's

I heard about this idea from Mary deB, who got it from Creating Text(iles) (a blog I shall be adding to my regular reading; anyone who can be that hilarious about Margery Kempe can't be A Bad Thing...); and as it's St Brigid, and Candlemas, and the midway point between the Solstice and the Equinox, so hope of spring isn't far away, it seemed like a lovely idea.

WHAT: A Bloggers' (Silent) Poetry Reading
WHEN: Anytime February 2, 2007
WHERE: Your blog
WHY: To celebrate the Feast of Bridgid, aka Groundhog Day
HOW: Select a poem you like - by a favorite poet or one of your own - to post February 2nd.
RSVP: If you plan to publish, feel free to leave a comment and link on this post. Last year Reya put out the call and there was more poetry in cyberspace than she could keep track of. So, link to whomever you hear about this from and a mighty web of poetry will be spun.

I've read a couple of pieces of excellent new poetry this year, but haven't asked either author for permission; so will fall back on this; it's impossibly romantic, and very well-known, but I feel as if I'm always trying to create these...

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven: W. B. Yeats

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Snug as a Bug...

It wasn't long after Amelia arrived in the house before she got the name 'Bug' - Amelia - Melia - Melie - Mealy-Bug - Bug... Sometimes it's very appropriate.

Snug as a bug on a pile of yarn...

Smug as a bug next to the wound yarn...

And what passes for an arty photo round here.

So far, so good...

It's been quiet round here for a while (well, work has been a bit mental, but that's Off Topic) - my cousin-in-law Kate came over at the weekend and we ate and watched Children of Men and a Firefly episode and generally wittered which was lovely... here's the cassoulet in preparation...

It snowed last Wednesday, but not very much; looked pretty, though...

That night I taught people to start making temari, and they brought ones they had made, or had been given - aren't they beautiful? The two at the front, and the crysanthemum one in the middle, are real Japanese ones made by a friend of one of the ladies in the group. The crysanthemum has a lovely heavy core made of rice.

I dyed some more yarn: this is some bouclé which is old enough that I bought it at the closing-down sale at Creativity in New Oxford Street

and this is some Velvet Touch from the bargain bin at the LYS last year, still in its clingfilm in the steamer...

I also had a stunningly unsuccessful nuno felting session yesterday at Fibrefusion- gave up and will start again once new merino arrives from Wingham Woolwork... They demonstrated their usual efficiency and lack of regard for normal working hours - I ordered at 6:30pm last night and they acknowledged the order, sent an invoice, took payment and acknowledged the payment over the next hour and a half or so... The next attempt will involve a length of cotton fabric made on the knitting machine last night and some merino I'll hand-dye...

So; the 'so far, so good...' - the tally for Knit from Your Stash for January:

Weight of yarn knitted from stash: 1,430 grammes

Weight of yarn purchased: 0 grammes

Weight of sock yarn knitted up (aka Sock Credit): 100 grammes

And I have one of my Sanctioned Occasions for Sin in February - Textiles in Focus, and Woolly Workshop's stand...