Changing colours of Skye

 Some random photos of the landscape

Our home for the week, we have stayed here before and it has a wonderful view to enjoy as you  drink your morning coffee .

                    The view from the back, a little frosty but the weather have been glorious

and the neighbours are a little inquisitive,

Its been a wonderful week, catching up with friends and recharging our batteries,

Sea, Skye and seals

 A lazy day after the drive up, we managed a trip down to Staffin slipway maybe a couple of miles from where we are staying. I had seen a few posts about seals being around on facebook and wanted to have a look at them and the new slipway works,

We have walked along here many times over the years, sat eating sandwiches or just watching the sea,  There are dinosaur footprints on the beach usually people walking round in circles trying to find them but not today as the tided was in and tide island is quiet as most places are still shut for winter.

One of the original boat huts still stands and I noticed some cute characters attached to the door,

The sheep were unimpressed.

Glimpses from the roadside

 On Thursday we loaded the car, charged up my camera and headed north. The weather was cold, damp and a little miserable as we headed through Glencoe, over the bridge and on to Fort William.

Overnighted in Fort William, excellent be, lousy breakfast but delighted to sea the sun shinning and fresh snow on the tops.

After a slow drive up the twisty roads we spied our destination, or at least the bridge leading to it.

Return to Coleshill

 Last month we made a return visit to Coleshill to attend the Round Britain Rally Dinner. The Round Britain Rally ( RBR) involves visiting around 80 places of interest around Britain on your motorcycle and submitting proof in the form of photographs of your bike at each location.

As Ian has been taking part for around 20 years, this is a regular part of his summer riding ( you have from the beginning of April to the end of September to complete this) and the dinner gives people chance to get together and chat about the years riding,

Anyway, back to Coleshill, a small town with a few shops on the high street.

This building give away the fact that this is a very old town which actually dates back to the Iron Age and probably deserves more investigating.

It did give us a beautiful rainbow,

sight of a fascinating book which I didn't buy but spent a while browsing. Excellent second hand bookshop,

and a set of stocks !

winter knitting and spinning round up

 Hi, I've been washing and blocking most of my winter knits and labelling up the spinning. Most of this is heading for pastures new and my project this year is to spin and clear the fleece backlog,

Hats ranging from aran to fine spun saxon merino.

Mitts with a bit of texture. I particularly like the ones top left.

Headbands to use up the oddments.

And, of course, the yarn now weighed, measured and labelled. This has cleared the decks a bit ready for my attempt to spin down the stash.

BAL part five (bucks point lace)

 We are now on to a traditional pattern called plum pudding, you will have seen an old example of mine in the last post.

Every lace book shows slight variations in working these pasterns depending on where the writer learnt to make the lace. This time the difference is not huge but just a slight variation on the outer edge when comparing the two books.

So this is week five in progress

What am I up to now?

 I saw an idea on Pintrest, traced it back to a blog that gave some instructions , to do what ?

all will be revealed in due course :-)

BAL part four (bucks point lace)

 On Sunday afternoon I joined in the fourth zoom on Bucks point lace. As I have previously  mentioned, I am using this as a refresher and also to check for any bad habits along with and tips and hints that I may no know as I am mainly self taught.

We have now covered the basics for point ground, the background. Honeycomb stitch, the use of gimps and the first pattern called sheep head.

I am probabaly going to miss the next meeting but we will be starting a pattern that I have done in the past called plum pudding.

This is my version from about 30 years ago.  

as I never kept lace as a regular hobby, I still have a lot to learn or rather re-learn but I'm hoping that, with the encouragement of the group, I may do now.

The last of February spinning and knitting

 Today is sunny, cool but its also the beginning of March. Feels so much better than most of February when the country appeared to be trapped under a layer of cloud.

This is a quick round up of spinning and knitting from the end of February, I honestly cannot remember what else I've worked on but here we go.

This is the remains of some of the shetland fleece spun on the nano. I also have some light grey so may use this for something lace once I've checked the yardage.

These mitts are a Shetland / Dorset cross and feel really warm, I like the added texture in the body of the hand.

The hat is knit from oddments of fine spun Shetland held double.

200gm of Jacob, This will be car knitting on our next long trip, plain or textured hats, aran weight. around 135 yd in each ball.

I think that this just about rounds up the end of the month. We are busy this month with different adventures so possibly not too much in the way of spinning and knitting but there will be some lace and possibly embroidery to come. x

BAL part three ( Bucks Point Lace)

 I missed the on-line lesson due to being in Yorkshire so I've been playing catch up. Lesson three was a introduction to gimps ( thicker threads that outline part of the lace ) 

You can see that the thicker threads have been taken to the sides prior to cutting off.

I've started securing my bobbins with a ribbon when not working the lace.

weavings cards

 I'm due to do a fibre based workshop at the local memory cafe next week so I've been thinking about simple weaving. I have weaving sticks somewhere ( must dig them out ) but a pack of weaving cards and plastic needles were on hand.

Over the last day or so I've had a quick play with them and sorted out oddments of hand spun yarn from the depths of the cupboard. The upside of this is that I can see the improvement in my spinning from several years ago to now.

I'm aiming for simple mug rug,

cut it off the board, tied the ends together and viola, its still in one piece.

Seeing as this is completely made from hand spun, 100% wool , I introduced it to soap ( shampoo in this case ) and water and really rubbed it, screwed it up, etc so it would felt and left it on the radiator over night.

Its shrunk and thickened up nicely. This is a simple project that they can complete and felt at home if they wish to.

Another sample to compare before felting was made. I'm hoping that this will appeal to the carers as well, if not then its at least something to chat over.

I also started the Spears weaving loom off and will take it along.