Snowday

This weekend we travelled over to Glossop in Derbyshire on the edge of the Peak District to see a band who regularly play in Nottingham. We decided to make it a weekend away and booked a room in a new Travel lodge ( budget hotel chain) that had been opened just six months ago in a converted mill in the centre of Glossop.

Very friendly customer service and a great budget price for our one night. Getting to Glossop from where we live means either taking the boring main roads or heading off into the dales and over the higher roads that are often closed by snow although on Saturday they were open with just a little snow left from earlier in the week.

Once there we shopped, had a lovely Chinese meal then headed off to see the band. John, a very talented banjo/accordion/whistle/mandolin etc player, came over to sit with us before their set and handed me his new  banjo. I was amazed at how heavy it was !!! Now I don't know anything about banjos but used to play guitar so I had a quick strum and still fancy learning to play one.

The band were good, tight , probably one of the best gigs we've been to and we have known them for over 20 years!!

I sat to the side with my little camera for most of the night a grabbed a couple of shots

 

then a few more.

 

 

 

 

The band are called Seven Little Sisters and you can here tracks from their new CD here. The next morning we awoke to rain which rapidly became snow giving a beautiful drive back, even got to stop at our favourite book shop !

Hope you all had as good a weekend as we did ! xx

RomneyTest knit/spin

Yes, blended together I got this spring green, soft 4 ply weight yarn, just need to finish combing, weigh it and possible sort the shades out into some sort of order before spinning.

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.