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.

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.

Thurs 8.01.26 and we have a snow warning

 I'm always a little excited by snow warnings as we don't normally get much where we live and over the last couple of years or so we've see more snow when visiting the coast or north of the border than we have here in Nottingham.

Still , I popped out for a walk and made it back whilst it's still light although the temperature has dropped to around freezing.

I have an appointment at 9.30 tomorrow which I may or may not be able to attend depending on the state of thing in the morning.

Today I've stitched a bit more of the hem and I'm working on one of the items on my craft list, knitting the hat using hand spun Jacob and ryeland.

later .......

it might be snowing, will update you tomorrow as to whether it hung around overnight.

The last spinning and knitting of 2025

 Hi,

I had a bit of a break from the knitting needles in September but since October I've slowly got back into the whole spin/knit thing.

The Nano still has a spin on it. This is hand dyed Polworth gifted to me by Petes Fiber Studion.

I had actually emptied the other wheels although the Argonaut now has a bobbin of Jacob on it. Did I mention that I now have another e-wheel?

Here she is.

border leics cross in progress.

So the last of 2025 spinning looks like this excepting the 2/3 skeins being knitted into hats.

plus this one fresh off the wheel

                                                                     not too shabby :-)

Knitting recommenced slowly, I have noticed that I seem to be developing a bit of arthritis in my thumb so I'm trying not to overdo things.

  

Next year may be more stitching than knitting, we will see how things go.

I've had it with knitting !!

 Just joking, I'm taking a break simply because I'm running out of yarn so the next couple of weeks will be focused on spinning.

My knitting tally for the last two months is seven hats, five pair of mitts and four head bands, I still have plenty of oddments for headbands and mitts but I'm running really short of skeins for hats.

        (Sorry, terrible photo, if I close the blind, it doesn't make much difference this time of year)

I also want to put some time into the big red thing and try and get it finished as I'm aching to start a new project.

I've had this on my wish list for ever but its really big, however I'm really (much to my surprise) enjoying stitching on 18 ct aida at the moment and when I spotted that it was half price recently, I grabbed a piece big enough. I just need to decide on the thread colour as it is charted in this magazine using a burnt umbre but traditionally it would be stitched in black. I suspect that this will be a 10-year project haha.

If you are unfamiliar with this magazine, it is no longer published but you can buy a cd containing all the published issues. It's a mixture of patterns and needlework history and the cd contains 80 issues.

I've made a start on the spinning, one skein of mixed breeds i.e. all the odds and ends from my spinning where I've prepped the fibre but there is a lot less than 100gm left to spin.

So, for now, I'll pop the kettle on, get some housework done, finish last weeks cross stitch square then get the fleece done.

Have a great week xx

back to the craft(yness)

Hi

Welcome back to the workroom for a quick crafty update 😀

Firstly some knitting. As you may expect, I took some knitting on our recent trip, especially for the long drive up which enabled me to get a good start on the first hat.

As usual, hand spun, hand-dyed and unfortunately I do not have a photo of the finished item as the hat stayed on the Isle of Skye.

On the journey back and over the last week I carried on with the knitting bug and now have items in my 'to be finished and washed' bag.

Yes, one of these patterns is now well and truly embedded in my memory, no more looking at the chart.

Currently I have another hat on the needles, managing a row or six between chores.

Whilst on Skye, I was gifted a knitting belt to help with my wrist problems and a trip round the charity shops in Callender supplied me with a variety of different length dps to practise with.

The spinning wheel also travelled with me but unfortunately, I only took two bobbins instead of the usual three, so I had to wind singles into balls to ply once home. I also found that the foot pedal was no long working so I now have a replacement which makes life much easier.

The Jacob was ready to ply.

One bobbin of Aberville was spun so I spun another one earlier today.

I was then left with a ball of Texel and the bobbin of Lleyn that I spun whilst minding the shop in the middle of the holiday ( Its always nice to spin on something different, in this case an Ashford Joy) is still sat on the wheel in the shop. I suspect that it will be plyed and used for something.

A small bag of fleece arrived during the week, extremely well picked and skirted and now washed awaiting combing. Another bag has just arrived as I'm typing so will be investigated tomorrow.

I've fallen back down the rabbit hole again after checking Facebook and learning about tow SAL (stitch a long) starting this weekend. One blackwork and one cross stitch, both running for 36 weeks.

I've kitted them up using mainly thread and material from my stash.

Good news on the creative front

 Hi,

My wrist is beginning to feel a lot better and I have spun a couple of skeins of lleyn as I suddenly realised that I am going to be short of yarn to knit with during our upcoming road trip.

I've started on the lace edging and made some small amount of progress on the cross stitch however on the very hot days I've not felt like doing anything really constructive.

On the cooler days I have picked up my needles and knitted a pair of mitts as I'm still aiming to use up as much of my hand spun oddments as possible.

 This weekend we've pitched up at Ferry Meadows camp site just outside Nene country park, one of our regular sites.

The main reason for this trip is to make sure that everything is ok with the van .It's been serviced, new timing chain in the engine and new gas pipes around the living area. Even the aircon has been regassed but since we've never used it we were completely unaware that it needed doing.

We emptied the van before the service, giving me chance to check through all the trash that had accumulated during the year and now I'm making sure that everything has gone back in. Nothing worse than setting off and forgetting the oven shelves or pillows.

We've been into Peterborough this morning on the Nene Valley Railway which was running diesel rather than steam today ( maybe because of the fire risk ?) and now we are back at the van. I'm thinking about doing some spinning until tea time..

Whilst in Peterborough we visited the Cathedral which turned out to be quite surreal as there was a visiting dinosaur exhibition so rather than quiet choral or organ music, we had the roar of dinosaurs!

We spent an hour or so wandering round the town before heading back for the train.

The rest of the afternoon was spent spinning with some cute visitors.

An early evening walk in the park followed, a look at the Roman ruins and the wild life spotting board.

We had seen an quick flash of green and the board confirmed a rather unusual visitor to the park.

Did you spot it? Ring Necked Parakeet, not usually amongst our regular birds here in Cambridgeshire.

We are now back home, looking at a pile of stuff to sort out, and a few things to order before the next trip. Next weekend is a Bank Holiday so I'm not sure where I will get to whilst Ian is away on his bike.

Speak soon x