Long ago, north of the border...

This is a blog post that I meant to write about three years ago but must have got distracted. Last time we were in Scotland we revisited the Isle of Skye which used to be a regular holiday destination for us. Every time we had visited in the past we had driven or ridden past the Skye Museum of Island Life but had ignored it and carried on. This time we decided to stop and explore..

It was a misty morning that was making everything damp and wet

The cottages were almost hidden from view and a little bit spooky

They contained the usual tourist artifacts and unlife like dummies

But they also contained there........I was a very newbie spinner..........I wanted to take it all home!!

Hubby had to tear me away, back into the misty landscape

Strange how I'd forgotten about many of these photos, will probably share more over the next few weeks xx

woolly wednesday

So, what have I been up to since last woolly Wednesday?

Jan 5/6 spun and plied two full bobbins of Oxford down!!

Jan 4 broke promise to self not to spend money..bought trindle spindle and a mountain of fibre

170grm natural and 56gm blue oxford on the way to Italy

3/4 Jacob fleece washed and part processed

50 gm merino/bamboo/soy mix spun

200 gm ish oxford dyed red and knitted into fingerless mittens

2k romney fleece ordered ...ooops          see here for more

another 100 gm oxford ready to spin....getting bored of this now, it may have to go back in the cupboard

oohh and blue/green fleece combed and purple merino blended......been busy :-)

Looking back, I'm really quite surprised how much I've managed to do inspite of having a full time day job and enjoying surfing the net etc. For February I hope to do some more dyeing, spin up a storm with the Romney as I live the sample spun up just a few hours ago and maybe even get to see some lambs. Will fill you all in on the next woolly Wednesday post x

Bucket list

Hi,
Outside one of my spinning haunts is a bucket list blackboard.

 which has set me thinking about what I want to do, have any of you ever made a list and acted on it?

This is Sooz Cafe, Long Row , Nottingham complete with brown paper tablecloths, bowl of crayons provided so you can create your own work of art whilst having a bowl of soup. Somewhere to sit and spin on cold Saturday afternoons.

knitting

First came these

Then these

Then these

and now these

and it got me wondering how many pairs of mitts you can get from one fleece :-) still, it means that several of us have very warm hands and a sheep in common !!

up to my elbows in Fleece

Hi Guys,



Post was written for Knit Nottingham and I thought I would share it here as well.

 Saturday mornings are usually my fleece washing times simply because I tend to have the hot water on for other things as well, also hubby is often out the way so reducing the chances of me soaking him with a bucket of water!

Talking about buckets....I use a large flexible builders type bucket as it is easier to carry over to the garden to empty out and I have smaller buckets to half fill it.

FIRSTLY CAN I SAY THAT THIS RAW FLEECE , WEAR GLOVES AND CHECK THAT YOUR ANTI TETANUS JAB IS UP TO DATE....health warning out of the way, here we go ( BTW a close friend of mine found barbed wire in one pack of fleece so warning is needed)

So first step is to buy some fleece, usually I'm able to pick some up at the local guild or fibre festivals. I've made a few mistakes over the years but now have a better idea what to look for. I also have a copy of the Fleece and Fibre Sourcebook  which is pretty much a fleece bible with around 200 breeds photos of the locks, spun yarn, knitted and woven yarn. I have a couple of etsy and ebay sellers that I use as well.

This mornings package comes from an ebay seller that I have not used before but the combination of excellent feedback from people buying multiple lots of fleece, the half price sale and a small amount of money in my paypal account from selling some hand spun made me take a gamble. This pack contains 2KG of raw Romney Fleece.

Its pretty much the cleanest fleece I've seen for a while and a whole new breed for me to play with,  the book says that its easy to spin,dyes well and fine fleece can be used for sweaters, mittens , hats, shawls though prob not next to the skin soft unless lambs wool.This is a shearling, the first ever shearing of a sheep so pretty soft. No a whole fleece but the nice bits !!

Here you can see the length of the individual lock. As I have so much to play with, I pulled out around 500 grams, checked it wasn't felted at all and divided it into to large mesh washing bags.

I use a good squirt of fairy washing up liquid and very hot water the hottest water from the heater plus a kettle full of boiling water as I want to melt the lanolin as well as remove the dirt. The bags are placed in the water and left to soak, no agitation as I really do not want anything to felt.

After one or two really hot washes, usually max 15 mins each in winter temperatures and several hot rinses I'm let with cleaner fleece and my heart in my mouth as wet fleece never shows whether its felted or not and always looks really dark at the tips. Now for the next stage I generally cheat, I have an old washing machine and the spin programme does not squirt water onto the clothes or spin in both directions to settle the load. This makes it ideal for spinning out the water from the fleece.

So I tie the bags tightly and chuck them in and spin them one at a time.

Result, clean, damp fleece ready to go out on the line ( in the bag) or in a warm room to dry out though not today as I will be dying it first..............more about that in a later post.

If you have any question etc about spinning and fibres, please feel free to contact me through the shop email address.

Now I've bored you senseless, I will let you get back to usual knitting blog posts :-)

Sue

Purple

So my goal is to try and blog everyday, take an inventory of my fibre stash and try and get some fibre prepped for spinning so that when I have the urge to spin I'm nit confronted by bags of unwashed fleece.Also I have fibres that I really couldn't deal with a year or so ago but now I have more experience and can work out how to deal with them. I suspect that I also have some that may just head out into the bin!!!

Today the sun is shinning and I've been washing a bit of fleece-more about that later, I've also emptied another bag of odd this time commercially dyed merino that was passed onto me maybe two years ago. I've added some dyed BFL that was hanging around and separated the colours.

So I started with this

Separated the colours into this

Then attacked it with the drum carder!

!

Result 135 gm of soft batts ready to spin !

That s just about it for now, time to find my knitting and finish the mitts :-) Have a great weekend xx

day by day

So that's January out of the way, New Year Resolutions broken and forgotten, snow been and gone and due to come back. Hubby has finally gone back to work after almost beating the cold/flu virus and I'm slowly taking stock of the amount of fluff and fibre slowly spreading through the house.




 I will detail more about Januarys spinning/knitting in the Woolly Wednesday post in a few days time. For now I have a few bags of dyed fleece from the goody bag to play with, not a huge amount in any if them, just enough to have a spin and see how the colours merge.

 I'm not even sure what fleece this is although I strongly suspect that the first one, dyed green/blue is a Shetland X as I seem to remember the previous owner buying one at Wonderwool a couple of years ago.

So here is the first bag processed and ready for spinning, not sure of the weight and I think I may keep this as a single for the time being as I may have something in the cupboard to ply it with.

ikle inkle

Now people who know me will be aware of my fondness for coffee shops, somewhere to knit/spin/whatever and watch the world go by. This week it was somewhere to doodle on squared paper...

 much to the amusement of the regular staff who always take an interest in what the spinning lady is up to! I was trying to come up with a new pattern to use on the inkle loom but unfortunately I don't like the bit inside the diamonds.

I don't like the dashes that travel the centre of the weaving so tomorrow evening I will try and replace them with something else and see how that works out.

Bobbin lace #1

Hi
I hadn't realised just how rusty I was at the whole making lace thing. Firstly, the lace threads that I had chosen were far too thick ( there was no label so I took a gamble on it) since I reach the fan section the threads were all crowded and lying almost on top of each other.

So back to the drawing board or rather the thread box.

So I found this which was an unlabelled skein of thread in a bag with a full 50gm skein of Retors D'Alsace DMC No 80, all 4930  yards of it. I have no idea how old these thread are or whether they are still usable even just for sampling patterns. The thickness looks a little like brok 120 ish? My plan is to see whether it can survive being wound off on my swift onto my ancient ball winder without breaking!

In the end it broke a couple of times when the thread got stuck and I was too engrossed in what was in the computer at the time so I'm going to risk it for samples but prob not for a special project.

 The thread is may be too thin for the pattern,my working of it is very uneven, my placing of the pins inaccurate so more practise needed.

Never mind, onto the next pattern, not sure if it will be from this book or a quick torchon bookmark just to get the memory back in the fingers.

and I rediscovered a bobbin that is very appropriate since this is the museum I now spin at, I bought this at a lace exhibition there in 2006

back to bobbin lace basics

I said in a previous post that I wanted to play with bobbin lace again but felt that I needed to master the basics or at least remind myself of the basics.So I picked a book off the shelf...........

I've just realised that this book dates back to 1985!!! dread to think how old some of my other lace books are as I have a habit of buying them 2nd hand whenever I see one I haven't got. There are more lace patterns sat on the shelf than I will ever use in my lifetime!

I found some thread, I have quite a stash of lace threads from people who have given up or have relatives that used to make lace.

and a few bobbins from when I first started lace making. The problem is that I have forgotten little bits and techniques over the last few years as I have been concentrating on other things. Still here we go.....see you all on the other side of lesson one!!

Woolly Wednesday

And a Happy New Year to one and all.

Any woolly resolutions??  I have thought about trying to keep a record of how much I spin and how much fibre I buy !! have now realised just how scary that may be  :-)

Anyway, first up on my round up of things woolly since last time is this. Yes, I finished the fingerless mitts for my friend just before the really cold weather set in before Christmas.

I  bought about 120gm of sari waste from a friend at guild ( unwanted and unloved)

So I now have some sari yarn to play with on my small loom at some point.

The last of the Jacob singles..........this means I have spun my first whole fleece ! whoo whoo!! I've also managed a skein of Shetland and skein of what may be the last of the polworth, not sure until I do a stock take of my stash.

On the needles.....not a lot, on the wheel at the moment it is back to the oxford fleece and I'm on bobbin 3 since Christmas due to having treated myself to some wool combs two weeks ago and being desperate to play with them.

 After a major hunt around my workroom I've managed to most of my bobbins and empty off any scraps of spinning so I'm now all set for the next month.

 I hope you all had a great Christmas and have a wonderful New Year xx

crafty resolutions

So, 1st Jan, what do I want to do this year? Leaving aside all the lose weight,get fit type of thing, I want to vary what I do craft-wise.

 I really want to revisit Bobbin Lace although I think I may have to go back to basics with it, maybe pick a book off the shelf and work back through the first few lessons.

The inkle looms need some use, so I plan to work through the inkle weavers handbook some more then try designing my own bands.

The strange thing is that I have an urge to learn to play a musical instrument, in the previous post you may have read that we have swapped an electric guitar for something else, well the something else will probably not arrive until Easter time so I'll let you guess what it may be :-)