baa humbug

we don't really do Christmas and since the incident at the out door skating rink I have tended to avoid the market square around Christmas time but this year I checked it out and found NO SKATING !! Instead, we have this.....

smile time :-)

Eden Project 2011

Confused

The tablet weaving must have been playing on my mind as I woke in the middle of the night and realised where I had gone wrong :-) yes, I managed to warp up the tablets upside down!!

confused!

A couple of years ago I bought some cards for tablet weaving, had two very unsuccessful attempts and gave up! Today, after seeing some in use at the guild and speaking to another fibre nut who uses them, I warped them up on my inkle loom.

 

 

So far, so good

So the problems are : I used wool and the card wears it away very quickly
                                 : I cannot keep track of where I am in the sequence if I have to leave it for any reason
                                  : The design I'm working shows on the reverse of the work, it that normal???

 

 


So back to the drawing board, I'm open to ideas, anyone ?

belated fire photos

Yes, so busy that some of these posts will be in a weird order!! So this was bonfire night :-)









An excellent example of why NOT to make your own fire works!!

Spin-Work-Shop-Fun

Recently( at Knit Nottingham) we held another of our occasional spinning workshops aimed at brand new spinners. During the day we looked at fibres and learnt how to use a basic drop spindle. There was great excitement when the students were allowed to investigate the contents of their project bags which contained fibres and the spindle together with some secret ingredients.

After grasping the basics and realising that dropping the spindle is really part of the learning process, they went on to create their own yarn using a drum carder to blend their own choice of colours into a batt ready for spinning.
 Their first yarns were beautiful, brightly coloured and textured and I am sure that they will be treasured.
Later everyone had chance to play on a spinning wheel although some thought that it was too much like patting your head and rubbing your tummy at the same time!!
We all had a great time, including Pete and myself and we thank everyone for coming ( and for bringing the biscuits!!!)

A few updates

Hi, Ok I got  a little lax about posting again, too much to do and too little time as usual. Also since the dark nights started I seem to be lacking in energy a bit BUT I am still creating even if on a slightly smaller scale.

I am still playing with the inkle loom, the first sami braid was great fun using acrylic yarns, I had a play with hearts and now have some cotton thread sitting ready to go on next...thinking maybe using yarn for the pattern threads and trying a Celtic pattern. ( simple one)





And I'm still playing with bobbin lace especially after buying more lace pillows, bobbins and threads from a fellow spinner a couple of weeks ago.Since I had all the new toys, I had to play and have found a good number of people who also want to have a go at lace making so I'm thinking that we will all have to get together real soon :-)

Must admit that I'm a little out of practise and have spotted the odd mistake but hopefully this will help get me up and running again :-)

Whilst on holiday recently in Cornwall we visited Flambards, a small theme park with a very good display about about war time Britain and I spotted this amongst the displays. The gloves and scarfs I could cope with but the knitted vest? no way, would never have the patience or the time.



I also spotted this in the wartime exhibition,really miss shops like these




somewhere to buy your knitting patterns along with the groceries




Until I saw this, I never realised that Sunny Jim was an advertising slogan! always thought it was just a saying/nickname.




Sunny Jim cloth doll, you would save the coupons and send away for him.

Knitted critters

I promised knitted critter so here they are :-)

As many of you know, I am a member of the Notts and District branch of the Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers. Which sounds very official but basically boils down to a good old chat and lots of fibre fun on the last Saturday of the month. Occasionally we get to meet other guilds and recently we mooched on up to Mansfield to take part in the Ashfield Guild Hospitality days and in amongst the usual lines of spinners and stalls were....... little knitted thingies!!

There was a farm.

complete with duck pond, fields and trees. The family were outside the house and the horses in the stables.

                                                                                                                                               And an ark complete with animals and family  . Sadly there was a bit of a blood bath later in the day when all the animals were found lying on their sides and the crocodiles had a decidedly evil look about them.look if you dare!!!            

and I loved the tortoise/turtles :-)

nudged into posting again

Hi, I've been busy and sort of ill ( tooth, extreme insect bite reaction both being treated) and hadn't realised how long it was since I last posted until my mum phoned up and asked what I was up to because I hadn't updated my blog!

So here I am with an update on the inkle loom which is proving a bit addictive. Progress so far....
first venture into pick up techniques.


next experiment with sami band patterns.



I'm really pleased with this and will be playing much more with this loom, plus it's portable and has already made an appearance in a certain coffee shop in town!
As for the spinning, spinnotts had an outing to Mansfield Museum where we spent the afternoon spinning and chatting ( yes there was cake as usual)




Which reminds me, I have a post to write about some knitted critters :-)

more soon x

Another hobby loomin?

I’m well known for going to our guild on the bus and the bus drivers are quite used to Wikkidknitter and myself carting our wheels around to various venues. In fact we have often joked about spinning on the tram here in Nottingham.

So knowing that I have to negotiate steps and door, why do I always come back from guild meeting with more than I take?? This happens so often that I tend to take an empty bag for the odd fleece that might come my way.

However, at the last meeting I turned up with two wheels fully expecting to leave empty handed as the herring wheel was going on to a new home. But I still managed to come home with a loom!! It was an old inkle loom, looking rather dirty and handmade with an abandoned piece of work on it where someone had tried to weave and failed.

After giving it a quick clean and disposing of the rough string heddles I gave it a go. Took a few experiments to get the hang of it and using an old plastic ruler as a beater didn’t really help but I think I am getting there now especially as I have found that an old heavy letter opener from my day job makes a fine beater.

My first few attempts were.. Er.. Interesting but I soon got the hang of it but I am finding the edges a bit of a challenge to keep neat.

Locating a pattern generator on the Internet helped in placing the colours but I really want to try the pickup method to give me more scope for pattern design.

Any advice on the best threads to use etc would be appreciated.thanks.

Ist Birthday party

I nearly missed the party, in fact we should have been in France but problems with the bike meant that I had an hour or so to spare on the first Saturday in September to help celebrate the shops first birthday.

For those of you that are not regular readers, I am one of the partners in a knitting shop called Knit Nottingham and we opened a year ago. The shop has grown over the last year and we are now on line with knitting yarn, hand spun yarn and accessories including drop spindles listed for sale. This is mainly due to the hard work of Eleanor, the shop manager. I have no idea where she gets the energy from to put in the hours that she does!!!

As I work full time elsewhere, my role has been very much one of giving what support I can from attending craft fairs,

teaching the occasional workshop

writing the odd blog post

taking part in charity fund raisers

and counting stock.

Maybe one day this will be my main job, but for the time being I'm loving being involved with this enterprise.








So due to the bike mishap I was able to deliver some chocolates to the shop and even have my photo taken with the other partners ( well nearly all of them) but was soon dragged away by a phone call to  say that things were OK and we were going to head south to catch a ferry.....more of that story in a later post.

Hi, I've been a bit busy but the bad news is that I'm BACK :-)

Hi,life sort of overtook everything for a bit so the next few posts are going to be a bit of a random mix of holiday and craft.
Do you remember me saying that I wanted a new camera a few months ago? well I ended up with a Canon powershot SX220 HS which I am just getting to grips with and having a bit of fun with. So this post is going to to be short on the writing but big on photos shot through glass at an aqaurium in Cornwall. I will explain why Cornwall and not France in the next few days.

So here we have pretty fish...............and the odd other water lovin creature.

I am liking this camera and it's nice and compact :-) what do you think ?