and the sun came out

 After days and weeks of dull wet weather we suddenly had a sunny day, cold but so, so good to be out in.

I was up early, jumped on the bus on our road and decided to take advantage of the capped fare that allows use of the bus outside the city limits on a couple of the routes. It ws still below freezing and the car had some interesting ice patterns.

                                       

First stop was Nottingham where I resisted the temptation to grab a coffee.

I love the quality of the light in winter especially early in the morning. However I headed off to the next bus to Burton Joyce so I could have a walk down by the river..

This track proved to be a bit problematical. Although most of the flooding is receding it became obvious very quickly that this was not the way to go.

The main walkway had reopened so I had a happy hour walking followed by a quick visit to the craft fair and a cup of tea.

Since I now had my bus ticket, I jumped on the next one out to Southwell in hunt of a proper sweet shop.

and i found the sweet shop!! we are big fans of Dutch salted liquorice but its not easy to find locally. I may have bought a big mixed bag :-)

and the cost of five bus journeys ? just £8.00, bargain.

Soed Idee Jubileum week six

Week six complete however I feel that it may need a little more adding to it, I'm having a think and a search round both google and my own files and books. Maybe some Blackwork motifs ?

just a rambling post

 Will it ever stop raining ? I'm longing for some sun, blue skies, regardless of the temperature. Today I've stayed in and tried to get some sort of order in the workroom as I was faced with this earlier.

and I needed to make a start on prepping some brown Jacob ready to spin on my next trip.

slight improvement ! I did also empty a couple of containers out from the cupboards.

Back to the Jacob, it was already washed so I just combed it through, beautiful colour that will be very useful in my next bout of colour work knitting.

my current project on the needles is knitting up some early hand spun that I discovered in one of the bottomless pits, I think that it may be merino, I'm not sure who dyed it but I don't think that its one of mine. Correction, Its Polworth, dyed by babylonglegs and spun in 2010. No wonder I couldn't remember the details but here is a link to the blog post.

and the mittens finished 16 years later....

which colour's next ? Fox and Rabbit Mystery Sal 2026 January

Another stitch a long, this time Fox and Rabbit AI 1664. It is not AI, these are the initials of the girl who stitched the original sampler in 1664.

I would love to see the original that this is based on as apparently its around 3 feet long. Hopefully the full chart may be produced at some point in the future but for now we have an individual band to stitch each month.

I'm still mulling over my colour choices but we will see how this develops and fits together.

wait for it ....... Jacob and the Argonaut

 I've been waiting to use that heading !!

Anyway, both bobbins of jacob are spun and replaced with an empty bobbin.

This meant that I could have another go at plying with the red beast but this time with a commercial yarn. The technique is, for me, definitely  a bit different to using the Ashford e-spinner.

It does work but I'm much more at home on the Ashford.

The end result id 105gm, 250 or so yards and waiting for a wash. I may buy a few more bobbins before my next long trip so I can avoid the ply as much as possible :-)

Soed Idee Jubileum week five

 Week five finished in time for week six to be released. This week it was half a band , to be completed with Saturdays release. Sneaky look at the heading photo shows a house and a further band below looks like an alphabet.

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 :-)