Needles on the Move

My weekend down in Berkshire was loads of fun, I managed to find several new fibres to experiment with and played with some new spinning techniques as well. I managed to come home with only a small moderate pile of purchases - some Spin-Off back issues, Landscape dyes, a colour wheel, mini niddy-noddy, and a few hundred grams of fibre. More interestingly though - here is what I played with over the weekend…

The Camel fibre was very nice to spin. Fluffy and soft and not too short. I didn’t buy any of this as I’m not a huge fan of pale brown, and I already have a little bit of Camel in my stash.

Milk Protein was a new one. It is a bit like soy fibre to spin, a fairly long staple and luxurious without having the annoying fly-away quality you get with silk. I have no idea what I would do with it though!

The silk cocoons were lots of fun - they actually draft really easily: just hold the cocoon in the back hand and draw the fibres off with your forward hand. The yarn has a bit of texture, like you would get from silk hankies, and is quite fuzzy (although that might just be the low twist in this sample) I bought a load of these and have big plans for them!

I have been looking for some Possum fibre for a while - in Australia at Christmas I couldn’t even find any yarn - all the supplier had was made-up garments at that time. This is a blend which makes the extremely short fibre a bit easier to manage. It’s harder than spinning plain merino, but holds together ok and makes a lovely fuzzy yarn. I tried some pure Possum as well (see below), but need to get out my support spindle I think as it just wasn’t playing ball.

I bought a pile of this particular batt - falling in love with the colours and texture. It’s not at all my type of fibre usually - hence the trialling of new techniques. I tend to spin smooth, crisp and reasonably fine. This batt, however, begged me to use a long-draw method and make a thicker, textured yarn. The neppy silk makes lovely little slubs and textures and the colours blend into soft squidgy yumminess. You can’t really tell from the mini skein I know, but I have 200g of this so there is more to come.

Finally, the Yak fibre (de-haired according to the label on the bag). This was also very short but not as bad as the possum. I gave up on the wheel - I may be able to get it to work but I was using a borrowed wheel and couldn’t figure out how to fine-tune it the way I wanted. I switched to a very light spindle and managed the 2-ply with no problems. It’s a lovely soft yarn, a lot like the pink cashmere I spun a while back.

These four I grabbed handfulls of but quickly realised I would need to either blend with something (we forgot to take hand cards with us), have my own wheel, or use the support spinde. I like the feel of the cotton - it’s probably going to be quite easy to draft compared to the carded cotton I’ve tried in the past.

Yesterday, as Londoners will know, was butt-bitingly freezing and rainy and windy. I decided I desperately need a new hat even though the daffodils are trying to convince us that spring is coming. So as soon as I got home, I spun up 50g of some deep burgundy/red merino I bought - it’s squidgy and yummy! Once I have the other 50g done I’m going to make a Koolhaas for me. (sorry, red is terribly hard to photograph - I’ll keep trying).

Grab a hank of top. Admire the colours a bit. Split, pre-draft a bit. Feed it onto the bobbin at the grist it wants to be, not arguing with it to make it something it’s not. Pause a while to eat chocolate and admire the colours again.

Then find an empty bobbin, chain, chain, chain… Admire the colours. Skein off, dunk in water, whack a bit.

Admire.

Did I mention that I love this colourway? It’s the November club fibre from Spunky Eclectic and it’s called “Pie For Everyone.” It’s Falkland fibre and pretty soft, although not super-soft, and drafts like a dream. Get some!

Neil managed to read a whole book while I played in fibre with mum, but somehow we managed to have no time to get anything done - well that’s what it seemed like at the end of the week.

I showed you Latte’s scrummy fleece in the last post (oh, and I weighed the bag I brought back - it was 1kg :-D sadly, it’s being parceled out to a few friends, not all for me) and so I follow that up with a picture of the fleece from one of the sheep:

Here it is on the wool table in our ancient shearing shed, and below a closeup in the sunshine…

It’s a Border Leicester / Merino cross, staple length about 5″ and lovely and soft. Great crimp too - it’s very bouncy!

We spent much of the week playing around with our new Golding Ring Spindles (I bought one for mum for Christmas and got one for me as well to balance the parcel in the post) and digging through piles of mum’s fibres to find interesting stuff. Icame home with a bit of blended merino, some optim (it’s ick to spin but I’m determined to conquer it), australian cashmere, angora, and something else I forgot to label.

I also managed to talk mum into buying me my long-desired wool combs for Christmas and so we spent a fun afternoon playing with some dyed Finn she had. As it is my habit when visiting spinners to divest their shelves of any Spin-Offs I haven’t read, I also conveniently came across an article on combing in an old issue (Winter 1999?). Loads of fun!

The combs in this picture are small ones my brother made for mum some years back and they are beautiful to use. The Finn in the picture is unblended, but we also had play around putting it with some other fibres and practising colour blending on the combs.

Sadly, the whole week couldn’t be spent in playing in wool (and alpaca), I did talk to Neil a bit and hung out with my sister. I leave you with a family photo - enjoying Aussie fish and chips in the traditional way, straight out of the paper in the late evening sunshine by the river.

I’ll have to parcel it up a bit I’m afraid, my intention was to be blogging regularly the whole time we were away - but, you know. Don’t tell Neil that he carried my laptop all over Australia and Hong Kong for basically no reason!

It seems a loooong time ago now and all that’s happened since is filling up my mind, but I will start at the beginning which was our four days with my folks up in Bairnsdale - four hours by train from Melbourne.

The farm has been pretty much dedicated to pork for about the last 15 years but as my mum and stepdad are thinking about retirement and my sister is looking to take over, they’re gradually moving into other areas. Goats are a growing industry in Australia at the moment and Margie is really keen on them. They are rather hilarious!

Mum also has her sheep back after a long time without any (there’s no money in wool at the moment) and a few long-legged alpacas to keep them company.

This is Latte with the sheep, he looks a bit skinny due to recent shearing but he is rather cute still don’t you think?

And his fleece. You’d be surprised how much of this I managed to fit into my suitcase (it was a big suitcase).

These two are a new addition, coming from a friend’s farm which was downsizing. They’re not as tame as Latte but didn’t mind posing for the camera as long as I kept my distance.

Finally, a shot of the front flats. Some time back I showed you a similar view under a lot of water. Rainfall has been pretty good ever since and we were amazed to see the flats so green. There hasn’t been water down there during the summer for years.

Must go now, next post will be all about what mum and I got up to while Neil relaxed in the living room and read an entire book!

It’s hard to relax when you’re leaving the country in 12 days. You really don’t want to know how long my to-do list is! However, I made the attempt on the weekend and went down to visit Jan who I haven’t seen in a couple of months. Not my fault, she’s been galavanting all over North America, sending me envy-inducing emails from SOAR and visiting snowy Canadian peaks. She did bring me back a little present though:

I’m tearing the living room apart but can’t find the tag that was on it. Will update later about what it is. The little cap beside it is an ingenious invention - it sits over the hook, and the elastic secures it underneath. Safe to travel.  

ETA: I found the label - it was in the bedroom. This is one of the Queen’s Scepter range of spindles from Greensleeves Spindles, it’s called Anne of Cleves. It’s a combination of Paduk, Redwood and Mahogany. Did I mention that she’s just gorgeous!

I drank in all Jan’s descriptions of classes and workshops and browsed through the hundreds of photos. We made cookies, learnt how to cook baked gammon and wandered around the village streets in the crisp country air.

I played with drumcarder and made eight of these:

It’s the baby alpaca I bought back in May at Wonderwool. The eight rolags are less than half my bagful of fleece so the rest will have to be carded by hand - or I’ll leave it till I get back from Australia! I can’t wait to spin it up but I’d be seriously deluded if I thought there was going to be time this year.

I did come back feeling rested and energised. Having a nice long lie-in on Sunday helped as I was still catching up on a lot of missed sleep from when I was ill. Now I’m plugging away at the list and fully expect hope to have everything done before we fly out!

Some of you know that I signed up for an Open University photography course. Mostly so I can take better pictures of Yarn in a Bowl.

So as not to bore uninterested knit-blog readers I will document my thoughts on the course over here: http://yarninabowl.blogspot.com/  :-D

Although not a knit-blog, YiaB will almost certainly feature quite a lot of yarn ;-)

Lots of people jog. It’s a great way to keep fit, it builds muscle strength and bone density which is said to decrease risks of osteoperosis and general decreptitude later in life. It releases endorphines too and many people swear by jogging as a means of stress-busting.

So what do severely effort-challenged people like me do then? Well, I spin. Most of the time, and if I don’t I get all cranky and grotty like last week. Please, if you see me start to snarl then throw a spindle at me.

Here’s what I spun up for the public on Saturday:

It’s BFL from Lisa Souza (yes, again - what can I say? Her stuff rocks!) in the ‘Emerald City’ colourway. I spun it at my standard automatic 2-ply gauge which was easiest when I was having to look up and talk to people a lot. It’s about a light DK and I’m guessing there’s around 200yds. The bowl was a gift to self from the woodturners across the way. Bought specifically for taking pictures of Yarn in a Bowl.

On Sunday I did a bit of fleece preparation and also finished the 5g of cashmere that was on my little Bosworth. It’s all ready to ply from the NP now but Bossie is nekkid! Any suggestions? I have some more cashmere but it’s plain white (yawn), maybe some pure silk?

I have no idea how much there will be, it took a looooong time to wind it onto the NP and it’s very fine so I’m guessing in the region of 30-40 yds. Enough to do an edging on something.

Oh, and the bone density/fitness thing? Well I’m still working on that…

What must he be thinking? This came in a box the size of a small cupboard.

Check out that crimp!

I’m sure my postman must think I’m carrying on some sort of underground business the way parcels keep arriving lately - little does he know, it’s just that I’m a sucker for every swap that comes along :-D

Here’s the first parcel I received in the Fiber Frenzy Swap over at Spindle and Wheel:

Heidi sent me two lovely skeins of handspun yarn, both merino; Norwegian chocolate (see how it looks unopened - that’s a trick of the camera :P); and the most beautiful stitch marker and dangly sheep thing which I will now put back on my Go Knit pouch where such things reside.

And in knitting:

Mittens-to-be.

I like Sundays. The whole day stretches out with no interruptions and there seems to be no end to the small tasks you can tick off one by one. So far today I have:

• Spun the last two bobbins of ‘Deep Sea’
• Washed my very awesome Wensleydale fleece
• Dyed some grey Polwarth to test out oven dyeing
• Eaten lunch
• Chatted to family
• Caught up on Cast-On

Some of these things, I admit were done at the same time. But hey, it’s not even half past two!

This is the ‘Deep Sea’ so far:

Once I’ve plied the last lot, I’ll finish it all together and it will packed up for a special someone with a birthday. For those of you who are equally in love, or just curious, it’s BFL dyed by Lisa Souza. Brilliant, quality fibre. Gorgeous colours. Go get some.

Propped up beside me on the bookshelf, where I can peek at it often, is this:

I’ve been in love for a while, but it wasn’t until I remembered I had this in my stash:

… that a very cool idea started to germinate. More on that when the current deadlines are met.

This afternoon? Visit to Wholefoods (aaah the joy of living within walking distance of the best supermarket in the UK); Finish (maybe) the second Sockapalooza sock; An inch or so of green ribbing in front of a movie; Who knows …

What does your perfect Sunday involve?