Gently pootling around the house.

 Since I'm now confined to the four walls of our house, I've been slowly doing small jobs that have been hanging around in the craft room.

I have several boxes of craft materials and magazines, these are now all destined for the local scrap store where I know they can make good use of them

Yes, three vacuum bags full of yarn, all acrylic from several years ago.

I've had a sort through my books shelves and destashed some more books even though there are many more to be checked through in other cupboards.

I finished the latest headband, sewed in the ends and even washed and blocked it.

oops, photo before washing and shows the jogs at the back haha

I did some more spinning, still working on the Jacob so will photo once finished.

During a sleepless night I cast on some mitts for myself as I can't find my thin Shetland yern mitts that I usually wear indoors.

and discovered a lace pillow that I bought second hand some time ago but haven't used.... up till now.

I hadn't used this one mainly due to the fact that its a funny height on my desk however I have found that I can now sit with it on my knees quite comfortably so I've decided to try it out.

Another job that I had been meaning to do was re - skein about eight skeins of hand spun and measure to see exactly what I have.

Other than that , I've been stitching which will be in a future post and prepping some dark brown fleece that I was gifted at the weekend. 

Once I've finished with the Jacob on the Argonaut, I'm going to have another go at plying as last time it was a disaster. This time I will use commercial yarn to see where I was going wrong!! I prefer to ply on the Ashford but when we are travelling that will not be an option.

Its only a cough...

 said several people to me last week , assuring me that they were not contagious. Well, I suspect that one of them was as I've been full of cold since Sunday.

However, before any symptom's showed, I was at our local guild meeting where we had a stash sale and a very good lunch of homemade soup and bread.

This beautiful wheel was in the silent auction, I didn't bid as I simply do not have room for another one.

Also there were several other tables full of goodies. I was very restrained and came home with a small (ish)bag of washed fleece.

Most people bought projects to work on, spinning , weaving, knitting, there was some patchwork in progress as well

We even had a yarn winding session in progress using an antique squirrel cage swift.

We all had a good day catching up with the fibre talk. Whether I will make the next few meetings is in question as our diary is rapidly filling up with trips and events.

Soed Idee Jubileum week four

 I meant to post this earlier in the week as week four wasn't quite so dense on the stitching.

knitting wash day and a dash of spinning

 Sometimes the day is so cold and dreary that the lights and the heating are on pretty much all day. It was like that recently so I took advantage of the warm house ( and having a dehumidifier) and washed all  hat and headband knits.

These have been fun to knit over the last few months and any scraps go into knitting headbands. I have made a few fingerless mitts but they are still in the wash bag

The spinning wheel has had an outing or two as I had 140gm of bfl/texel to spin, it will need an overdye I think but at least its now spun and washed.

I still have quite a bit of yarn to skein up neatly, measure and label so I can see exactly where I am plus a fair amount to spin up still. The Ashford e-spinner is still my wheel of choice and I continue to ply on that even when I have spun the singles on the Argonaut.

Nottinghamshire Bobbin Lace Society lace day

 On Saturday I made my way down to Nottingham High School, This was previously Nottingham Boys High School and I had not been inside the building for around 50 years ! not since I was sneaked into the boys sixth form common room as a teenager as I attended the Girls High School across the road and this sort of behaviour was frowned upon.

Whenever it got foggy in the afternoon we would pray that the headmaster could no longer see the statue from his room as that would the signal to call the school buses in early to take us home.

Anyway, back to the lace.

The bookmark banner was on display, this was made for the anniversary last year and I believe that this is one of the longest running lace societies in the UK

Around 60 members attended throughout the day, spent there pennies with the bobbin maker ( I may have also spent some) and enjoyed the birthday cake.

I was very impressed with how light and airy the room was. Wandering round I spotted a friend who always uses bone bobbins and she was sat with another lady who also uses bone bobbins, these are beautiful. I have a few myself but I'm a little too clumsy and found out that I'm safer with wooden ones.

I did make some progress on my lace edging but spent a lot of time chatting :-)

My anniversary bobbin arrived last week, I originally was told that since I'd re-joined (after a few years) after the anniversary date that I wouldn't have one but this arrived in the post much to my delight.

My purchases were a few bobbins to go in my black and silver collection, a lace day bobbin ( the red one) and some second hand patterns and threads from the society sales table.

I probably have more threads than I will ever use but at least I have them to hand if I ever fancy starting a new project :-)

Soed Idee Jubileum week three

 I'm at a lace meeting tomorrow so I'm posting this on Friday 23 Jan, week three completed so I'm now caught up and ready for week four to be released tomorrow.

Although I am tempted to add some small butterflies !! I have been knitting and spinning this week so will update you on those as well over the next few days.

Soed Idee Jubileum SAL, A quick update

 I've caught up with week two so I'm nearly on track, the latest part was released on Saturday so fingers crossed that I will be caught up by the end of the week.

The needles are out.

 Last year I started to try and knit up the oddments of yarn that I have handing around, I had a bag full of odd balls left over from hat and mitt knitting, some of these have gone into more hats and I'm now knitting headbands with the ones that are left. I think I started off with between 1-2kg but I'm not sure where I am now.

This last week I've finished one band and started on another, I'm planning on a few of these to take up to Scotland so it's keeping the fingers busy.

this one is a bit subtle Jacob and Ryeland

This one is Ryeland and an unknown possiby lincoln cross? it has a shine to it.

and a slight accident last week means that I have had to replace the plastic box that I've used as a yarn bowl for many years so I now have an actual bowl ( I think that it may have been my grandmothers)

The reason for all the hemming

 Over the years I have often seen very long Dutch band samplers similar to this on Pinterest and other places.

unfortunately there wasn't a credit on this photo, however it seemed that there were a few places releasing the designs as a SAL but tracking down the Dutch sites was proving difficult until just after Christmas when someone kindly sent me a link to one of the shops that does a weekly stitch along every year.

The next challenge was trying to find the fabric wide enough to take 99 stitches across the width. Most places are currently sold out or they have fabric that isn't wide enough.

My options were to wait several weeks or stash dive! As I need 2 couple of metres or so the stash dive option was obviously the heaper option. My fabric is around 57 inch wide so at some point I will need to attach more but I'll sort that out at some point in the future.

So I now introduce you to Jubileum SAL 2026 by Atelier Soed Idee  I'm nearly at the end of week one and playing catch up at the moment as week three will be released today.

Interestingly, this anniversary sampler is made up of patterns sent in by people that have participated in the past so I'm curious as to what designs are included.

Why Bridlington ?

People often ask why we travel to Bridlington so often during the year, there are many reasons but one of them is the Coble Boats. These traditional boats can still be found up and down the coast and as far away as Cornwall and we are developing more of an interest in them.

In October Ian went over to help them lift one of the boats out of the harbour for annual maintenance and has sent me his photos to share. These photos were taken at sunrise back in last October.

The cradle that the boat sits in moves across the harbour on wheels, If you look at the send photo above you will spot the man with the remote control.

We returned again in December as this boat, The Three Brothers was back in the harbour and work had started on Gratitude in the other boat shed.

There was another boat awaiting restoration, I didn't realise at the time that I would be speaking to the previous owner the next day.

You may ask what I do whilst this is all going on, well I explore coffee shops and craft or hop on a bus and visit nearby places. More about this soon.

If you are interested in seeing these historic boats, the Bridlington preservation society details are here along with a list of sailing dates ( weather permitting)

finished stitching the hem, now working on the trim.

 As the post heading suggests, I've finished the hemming of the fabric and I'm working on an edging which will also be used to hide any joins that may be necessary.