flyhoof... adventures in yarn and fibre

Musician Gillian Welch supports traditional crafts...

2011-11-27T17:43:00.005Z

I recently had the huge pleasure of seeing one (well, two really) of my favourite musicians play at the Manchester Apollo. I always struggle to describe Gillian Welch and her partner David Rawlings to other people, because you really have to hear their music to appreciate what they're all about.

This is a 2004 video of the song that they ended the main set with in Manchester (introducing it by saying: 'we're going to end with a good killing song...')

Caleb Meyer is one of my favourite songs and gives you an idea of Gillian and David's amazing skills as singers, songwriters and performers. Dave's guitar playing is just incredible! :D

Although I love all the albums, listening to them at home is nothing compared to seeing and hearing the songs performed live. The sound Gillian and David produce is so rich and full, especially considering its just the two of them. Also, because they're so in tune with one another (to the extent that their performances merge into one on the albums), its nice to be able to clearly see who's playing/singing what.

Its definitely the best gig I've ever seen and it seems that lots of people feel the same way - there's a great review of the Manchester gig on the Guardian website here. The set-list from the Manchester show (accompanied by lots of great comments about the gig) is on Facebook here. I really hope that at least one of their shows from this tour has been recorded and will be released either as a CD or DVD! :)

The tour was to support the most recent Gillian Welch album, The Harrow & The Harvest, which was released this year (a whole eight years since the last album!) and its easily the best yet.

Gillian and David played a couple of tracks from the new album on Later with Jools Holland, including 'The Way it Goes' (although I think the version they did at Manchester was better!)...

But that's enough about the music, what I really wanted to talk about is craft-related! :D

When I bought my copy of The Harrow & The Harvest album, I was initially a bit flummoxed by the thick piece of printed card in the CD case where there is usually a little booklet (I'm a lyrics geek and love it when they're all in the booklet!) but a bit of research on the internet revealed it to be a hand-crafted letterpress printed piece of artwork.

And very impressive it is too...

I already had Gillian and David pegged as the kind of people who appreciate things being done in a traditional, non-digital style, so it didn't surprise me to discover they were keen on traditional, handmade crafts like small-scale letterpress printing.

I was really pleased to find this video about the process involved in printing 100,000 little pieces of art for an album cover...

And then I found that Gillian and David had made a little video about how to coffee-stain your CD insert to make it the 'antiqued' darker shade that they'd initially hoped the card they used would be!

I never thought I'd see a Gillian Welch and David Rawlings craft video! :D

Anyway, another craft-related discovery came when I got my hands on a signed copy of The Harrow & The Harvest poster at the Manchester gig (I only just nabbed one, they were sold out by the interval!).

The poster is another lovely letterpress print...

(The photo of it on my sofa doesn't really do it justice but I haven't had the chance to get it framed yet!).

This print was done at a different American company and I think I've tracked it down to one called Hatch Show Print in Nashville, which has been going since 1879.

This is a video about how they print these traditional-looking posters (Ade thinks they look like 'wanted' posters like you see in Westerns!) at Hatch Show Print...

I love the fact that cats are a big part of life at Hatch Show Print! :)

All the care and attention that went into the artwork for this wonderful album makes it worth waiting eight years for! :D

Feltmaking courses at Hesta Scene...

2011-09-07T18:21:00.010+01:00

I recently went on a couple of feltmaking courses with a lovely friend from work called Sue and we had a great time! The courses were held in the studio at Hesta Scene, a craft shop/gallery in Caldbeck, which is roughly north of the middle of Cumbria. 'Hesta' is a Cumbrian dialect word meaning 'have you', so 'Hesta Scene?' is a variation of 'have you seen?'.

The studio is a lovely space (I always love being in a studio surrounded by wool!) and the other ladies on the course were so friendly. My friend Sue (on the right) had that happy smile on her face for the whole two days!

:D

The first course was beginners feltmaking... making a felted picture and a scarf in a day. I'm not really a beginner feltmaker but I'd seen photos of this kind of thing on the website...

and knew I'd be able to learn a lot from a tutor who's able to make such lovely felted pictures!

I took along a postcard for inspiration that I bought at an exhibition of Maggi Hambling's amazing wave paintings at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge last year. I was blown away by the paintings (many of which are HUGE and full of incredible colour and texture) and wished that I could have spent some time spinning or felting in the gallery, taking inspiration from the pictures. As it was, I just bought all the books and postcards that were for sale at the exhibition and felt slightly sad that none of them came close to reproducing the experience of seeing the paintings in real life :(

Anyway, enough moaning, this is the postcard that I took to the felt course...

Its an oil painting called 'Rising wave'.

I laid out my fibres, mostly dyed Merino wool but with the odd bit of silk and a few Bluefaced Leicester fleece curls...

I loved how it looked at this point... it seemed a shame to get it wet!

But I carefully sprinkled it with hot soapy water and rubbed it through a net curtain so that the design didn't shift about. And then rolled and rolled and rolled it some more in the bamboo blind until I had this...

Its still quite wet in the picture above and I haven't got a decent dry photo of it yet. I'd like to get it framed so I'll get a picture of it then.

What I have got is a picture of it winning second prize at Lowick Show last Saturday in the 'item in any other craft not already specified' class!

I was really impressed that it got placed because I thought the judges might not know what it was, let alone think it was any good! :D

Anyway, back to the feltmaking... when we'd finished for the morning, me and Sue went to the Watermill Cafe just up the road for a delicious lunch and then came back to work on some felted lattice scarves.

Here's mine all laid out ready to cover with a net and sprinkle with hot soapy water...

And here's Sue doing the fun bit that comes after the rolling...

The flinging! Very therapeutic! :D

Here's my finished scarf...

(Scarves are so hard to photograph well on a flat surface!)

All four of us on the course had such a great day that we wanted to do some more feltmaking as soon as possible, so we pestered Julie, our tutor, into putting on an extra nuno felting course especially for us! She was very obliging and organised one to take place just a few weeks later :)

In the morning we did some nuno samples on cotton muslin and silk chiffon so that we got an idea of how the wool bonded to the fabric and what the effect looked like.

Here's my cotton muslin sample...

I experimented with circles and lines made with some of my handspun yarn and areas of fleecy curls.

My silk chiffon sample was similar. Here are both finished samples (the silk one on top)...

The crinkled textures in nuno felting are lovely. The wool fibres work their way through the weave of the fabric and then the fabric crinkles up as the wool shrinks during the felting process.

After another delicious lunch with Sue at the Watermill Cafe, it was time to make scarves. I must have been concentrating too much to take photos at this point because I only have one of my finished scarf, being modelled by one of the dress forms in the studio...

I took another photo of it when I got home but it doesn't look as exciting flat...

Maybe scarf-making is a good excuse to invest in a dress form?! :)

Woad balls!

2011-09-05T21:53:00.006+01:00

I've been meaning to blog about our visit to the woad centre in Norfolk. I'd read about Woad-inc in Selvedge magazine a long time ago (and wanted to check it out) but had forgotten about it until I saw it mentioned in one of the leaflets I picked up during our Norfolk holiday. Once I realised that we could take a little detour on the way home to call in, there was no stopping me!

Whoo! That's my kind of sign! :D

Woad is a natural dye plant that produces a lovely blue colour. There were some large self-seeded plants in seed outside the buildings (a good clue that we were in the right place!)...

Inside the exhibition area were some beautiful woad-dyed yarns and fabrics and examples of finished articles of clothing dyed with woad (which I tried not to photograph closely because they are specially commissioned designs)...

There were lots of lovely shibori dyed silk scarves...

The silk seems to take the dye really well... each scarf was different but they were all stunning.

The people who run Woad-inc grow their own woad and make it into a dye powder using their own special method. They also make woad balls, which are intriguing looking things, a bit bigger than a tennis ball...

Woad balls were created as a way of preserving the woad leaf harvest for use when fresh leaves weren't available or just to store the woad conveniently until it was time to use it. In order to use them, the dried balls must be broken up (they're quite hard), dampened with water and then left in a heap to ferment for a fortnight. Apparently you only get the blue colour if the leaves are dried in a ball shape. Loose-dried leaves don't produce the colour. It must have been a real breakthrough when the woad-growers of the past found that out!

I was fascinated by a display of old photographs showing the stages in traditional woad ball production...

Apparently the photos were taken in Lincolnshire, as quite a lot of woad was grown there.

This handsome horse with a cart-load of woad leaves is standing outside a thatched roller house, where the leaves were crushed using kind of rolling chopping machine, which was powered by another horse...

The balls were formed by hand from the crushed leaves and then stacked on racks, where they fermented slightly and then dried out...

There's nothing like a bit of Lincolnshire-based textile-related history to get me enthused, so I bought some woad balls in the shop and was given a basic instruction leaflet and a website to check out for more information.

The website is Jenny Dean's Wild Colour, which is a great resource for natural plant dyeing. A quick search for 'woad balls' on the website pulls up several posts about Jenny's experiments dyeing with woad balls... I just need to have a read and then I'll (hopefully) be ready to carry out my own woad ball dyeing! I'll keep you posted on my progress! :D

Windmills and wildlife in, er... Norfolk!

2011-08-01T16:34:00.004+01:00

I've already done a blog post called windmills and wildlife in Lincolnshire, from our recent holiday to Norfolk, via Lincolnshire... but it must have been a theme for the holiday because we had a day of windmills and wildlife once we were in Norfolk too!

This time the windmill was a wind powered water pump rather than a flour grinding mill like the one we saw in Lincolnshire.

Horsey Windpump is a National Trust property overlooking Horsey Mere in the Norfolk Broads national park...

Sadly (in my opinion) it seems to be pronounced 'Hor-zee' rather than 'Horse-ee'. Its a nice enough place though and you can walk right up to the top to take in the views across the broads.

Inside the windpump there were some great old photographs of local people from the past, such as this reed cutter...

Apparently there's currently a drive to get people cutting reeds in the traditional way again, and apprentices are being sought to learn the trade on the Norfolk Broads. It'll be a nice new career for someone, although the job sounds like very hard work and you probably spend most of the day with wet feet.

I got myself a nice Horsey Windpump tea towel (my second windmill-related souvenir tea towel!)...

Once we'd checked out the windpump, we went for a wander around Horsey Mere and saw several amazing Swallowtail butterflies! They were huge! Flapping around the reeds and going about their business. I'd only ever seen one passing by briefly last time we were in Norfolk so it was a treat to be able to watch them for longer and really appreciate them. No photos unfortunately... they were a bit too far away and didn't stay still for long!

Next stop was Hickling Broad national nature reserve, which is managed by the Norfolk Wildlife Trust. Most of it looks like this...

Mmm... reed-beds! :)

There was an interesting selection of thatched bird hides...

And the Wildlife Trust runs guided boat trips around the reserve, so we booked ourselves on one of those and had an educational ride in a lovely boat...

We saw some other people out on the water, enjoying the sun in their impressive yacht...

But I bet they weren't learning all about Egyptian geese like we were!

:)

The people inside The Book of Forgotten Crafts Part 3...

2011-07-15T17:09:00.005+01:00

This is the last of my posts about a book I bought called The Book of Forgotten Crafts. When I bought the book, I realised that I knew some of the people inside it (which was a new experience for me!) so I decided to blog about each of them.

Part 1 was all about local oak swill basket maker Owen Jones and part 2 was about wooden bowl maker Robin Wood. This third instalment is about Jane Meredith, who is a multi-talented fibre artist living in Herefordshire.

Here are some of Jane's pages from the book...

Jane runs plant dyed wool courses from her home by the river Wye and also teaches feltmaking, hand spinning and weaving using a peg loom or a Brinkley loom. I was lucky enough to go on one of Jane's three day workshops with my Mum in July 2007 and we had a great time playing with rainbows of lovely naturally dyed wool!

On the first day we dyed up mountains of fleece in an array of bubbling dyepots, many of which were full of plants from Jane's amazing dye garden (I'd love to have my own dye garden one day!)...

We labelled each piece of fleece with a peg, which was marked with the mordant used and the name of the dye plant...

This helped us to identify which combinations produced which results and we each put together a sample card to take home.

The dyed fleece looked lovely hung out to dry...

Jane also prepared an indigo dyebath for us to try, which resulted in a lovely washing line of blues and greens...

On the second day we used some of the fleece we'd dyed to weave a woolly mat on a peg loom. Peg looms are very simple, but can produce lovely results, especially if you're weaving with beautifully textured, curly fleece...

Mmm... curls! :)

The third day was spent doing a variety of things. We could have a go at feltmaking in Jane's kitchen...

Or weaving with a Brinkley loom, which is another simple-but-effective kind of loom. The main element of this loom is the ingenious heddle, which is turned over after each row of weaving to raise and lower each set of warp threads so that the weft threads can pass between them...

Putting the warp onto the Brinkley loom is great fun... it's fast, energetic and involves the use of a broom handle! I love the results you can get from this kind of loom. You can go for a full-on, fleecy texture sensation, like my friend Liz did with hers...

Or use yarn for the weft, which results in a more sedate, lighter and smoother fabric...

A few people also had a go on a drop spindle and I think it was through watching Jane spinning alpaca fibre on her spinning wheel in the evenings that I became interested in learning how to spin :)

The venue for Jane's courses is so lovely, right next to the river Wye...

It was a fantastic few days! :D

If you'd like to see some more photos from the workshop I went on, the full set is on Flickr here.

If you're interested in trying a plant dyed wool course, check out the workshops page on Jane's website. Or if you're at a fibre festival of some kind, keep an eye out for Jane's colourful stand, where you're likely to find her demonstrating how to use a Brinkley loom, like she was at Woolfest this year...

(Jane's got a handy list of diary dates for shows and talks on her website here).

Royal Norfolk Show 2011...

2011-07-13T10:10:00.003+01:00

I love a good agricultural show, so when I realised that the Royal Norfolk Show was on during the week we were on holiday in Norfolk, I didn't want to miss it! We'd been once before, about five years ago (although we can't remember why we were in Norfolk at the time...) so we knew it was a good show and the 2011 event didn't disappoint! :)

We entered the showground right next to the sheep area, where some Norfolk Horn sheep were being judged by a smart looking man in a bowler hat...

Some of the competitors had smart headgear too (the handlers, not the sheep - although the sheep's horns are pretty smart-looking!)...

I really like Norfolk Horn sheep and they're a very rare breed, so it was great to see so many of them on show in their native county...

While we're on the subject of sheep, I'll share some pictures of the various different breeds that were on display (you knew there were going to be lots of sheep photos, didn't you?!). I always seem to gravitate towards certain breeds... such as longwools, primitive breeds, naturally coloured and rare breeds. Texels, Beltex and other more commercial breeds don't usually get much of a look in from me!

I tried to photograph some breeds that I'd never seen before, such as these Shropshire sheep in the Rare Breeds Survival Trust tent...

And this cuddly-looking Hampshire Down sheep wearing a rug...

There were also Oxford Down sheep, which were very friendly...

Lots of coloured Ryelands...

And the friendliest Greyface Dartmoor, who came over for a tickle from Ade and stood there being stroked for ages with the happiest look on it's face!

What a sweetie - we didn't want to leave it! I think Greyface Dartmoors always have a friendly and/or slightly comical look about them :)

My disorganised photography means that I can't remember if these sheep are Castlemilk Moorit or Soay...

I'm ashamed to say that I can't tell the difference even after looking in all my sheep books! I'm going to say these are Soay though, because I don't think Castlemilk Moorits come in such a dark colour. Let me know if you can shed some light on the differences between the two breeds!

This one's definitely a Wenseydale...

But I'm struggling to tell apart my photos of Leicester and Lincoln Longwools. These two could be either... or both!

I'm very interested in Lincoln Longwools (since I'm from Lincolnshire and I like sheep, especially ones with long curls!), so I enjoyed seeing the display of woolly produce that had been put together using fleece from the Risby flock of Lincoln Longwools...

There was a basket full of colourful balls of yarn, some bunting knitted from the yarn, felted flowers made from dyed fleece, an impressive felted union jack flag, a lovely sheepskin and bags of raw fleece and processed fibre.

The people who own the Risby flock seem very inventive in the ways that they use their sheepy products and promote the breed. You may have seen the amazing Lincoln Longwool wedding dress that they made using fleece and wool from their flock in the news a couple of years ago. Maybe we'll get over to visit them sometime when we're in Lincolnshire... I'd like to have a play with a Lincoln Longwool fleece! :)

Anyway, there was life outside the sheep tent, so I dragged myself away to check out the rest of the show. We saw rabbits...

Interesting looking chickens...

Traditional looking chickens....

Chickens with scary looking legs...

These were HUGE and had very intimidating looking spurs on!

There were some stunning Arab horses...

Some handsome heavy horses being shown in-hand...

And lots of heavy horses in harness...

Including the Co-operative Funeralcare team...

There was a fantastic vintage fairground with a carousel...

I love carousel horses...

I'd like one of my own if I had space! :)

In the woodland crafts area we saw Owen Jones, the oak swill basket maker who lives just down the road from us in Cumbria!

I blogged about Owen a few weeks ago and mentioned how I most often bump into him at shows and events, rather than in the area where we live. The Norfolk Show will take some beating for the furthest flung place we've seen Owen - I think it confused him for a moment when he saw us! :)

Also in the woodland crafts area were some people from nearby Holkham Forge, doing a demonstration of blacksmithing...

The things on display at their stall were very well designed and beautifully made, such as this metal railing...

And all the smaller items, like hooks, pokers and pieces of artwork...

I fell in love with the patterned hare at the top of the picture and had to bring it home with me!

It's really beautiful...

I just need to find a home for it on a wall somewhere now!

If you'd like to see all my photos from the 2011 Norfolk Show, check out the full set on my Flickr page here. :)

Lifeboat museums in Sheringham...

2011-07-12T19:55:00.003+01:00

When we were on holiday in Norfolk recently, I noticed that there are lots of places for lifeboat fanatics to visit... such as the RNLI lifeboat stations dotted along the coast, the RNLI Henry Blogg Museum at Cromer and various other private museums and visitors centres.

Ade's a bit of a lifeboat and fishing heritage fan, so when we were in Sheringham, we decided to check out The Mo, which bills itself as 'a place of people and boats' and has an impressive historic fleet of lifeboats.

It's quite a modern museum, with a glass frontage looking out over the sea and a viewing tower perched on top of the building...

We admired some of the old wooden lifeboats...

And then checked out the old photos in the 'social history' section upstairs, including this slightly random one of a woman with a goat-pulled cart...

Looks like a great way to travel! :)

On one floor was an area dedicated to the 'Sheringham Shoal', which is a wind farm currently being built off the Norfolk coast (due for completion in 2012). There was an interactive display where you could try generating some electricity by cranking a handle.

I managed what I thought was quite a respectable 84 watts (enough to power a light bulb)...

But Ade blew that out of the water by generating enough to power a TV using only one hand!

I think I need to find a way of hooking him up to the national grid... :)

We bought some lovely prints of old railway advertisement posters in the shop on the way out, which feature 'East Coast Types'...

There's the Lobsterman at the bottom, the Broads Wherryman (looking dapper in his cap) in the centre and my favourite, the Scottish Fisher Lass at the top. They're by artist Frank Newbould, who designed lots of railway posters in his bold, colourful trademark style. We haven't got room to put these prints up at the moment but couldn't resist buying them! We might live somewhere with more wall space one day...

When we came out of The Mo, the weather turned a bit bleak so we nipped into the Fishermen's Heritage Centre, just around the corner.

The building has lovely cobbled stone walls inside (a typical Norfolk building feature) and I liked the display of wooden fish hanging from large metal hooks against the wall...

I also liked the huge (about 3ft in diameter) ball of discarded fishing rope and nets that was stuffed into a cubby hole...

It looked like a giant ball of marine litter yarn!

One of the most entertaining things in the Fishermen's Heritage Centre was a photograph of one of the lifeboat crews, complete with a caption listing all their nicknames...

The Grice family seemed to have the most inventive monikers, with Butterballs Grice, King Kong Grice and TaRaRaBoomdeay Grice all getting a mention. We both felt a bit sorry for Dogless Farrow... :(

One the way back down the sea front, we noticed that the sea wall has been decorated with murals depicting what life was like for fishing families in the past.

I particularly liked the sections featuring the women's work, such as mending nets and knitting clothes for the family...

'When fishing boats came home, a mass of nets would be laid out on Beeston Hill, and afterwards, when they were dry, wives and daughters would mend them in their yards.'

'Sheringham's fishermen's wives were renowned for their gansey (jersey) knitting skills, knitting "in the round" with vertical patterns. If lost at sea, and the body found down the coast, a Sheringham fisherman could be identified by his gansey and bought home.'

We didn't have time to fit in any more lifeboat excitement on this holiday but there's plenty left for next time we visit! :)

Windmills and wildlife in Lincolnshire...

2011-07-05T19:31:00.006+01:00

We've been away to 'the flatlands' (Lincolnshire and Norfolk!) for a holiday and had a lovely time. I do like a dose of flat landscape, big sky and bright sunshine whenever I get the chance :)

We broke our journey on the way to Norfolk by staying a couple of nights with Ade's parents near Lincoln. We went for a fantastic meal at The Old Bakery and then checked out Lincoln's lovely windmill...

Ellis mill is a prominent landmark when you see Lincoln from far away (providing you're on the right side of the city) but when you're actually in the city, it's surprisingly tucked away and takes quite a bit of tracking down considering how big it is!

Although I've lived in Lincoln in the past (when I was at university there) and have been to Lincoln hundreds of times, I'd only ever seen the windmill from a long way away, so it was great to finally visit it properly.

We had a guided tour with one of the windmill volunteers and saw the huge mill stones inside the mill. The windmill is still operational and the sails were turning when we visited, although they weren't actually milling that day (they can disengage the cogs that turn the mill stones to grind the flour).

This is where the action happens - the mill stones are inside the wooden casing...

There were some photographs on display inside the mill of old windmills from around Lincolnshire, many of which aren't around any more...

In the bottom right hand corner was one labelled 'Cleethorpes', which is where I'm from...

I don't remember ever seeing or hearing about a windmill in Cleethorpes and wondered if it was actually Waltham windmill, which is about 3 miles outside Cleethorpes and is still operational. The windmill volunteers couldn't shed any light on the Cleethorpes windmill and it wasn't in any of their books.

But having looked at the photos of Waltham windmill on its website, I can see that it's got six sails, whereas the Cleethorpes one has only four and the windows on the Waltham mill are all in a row, rather than staggered, so it probably is a different mill. I'll have to investigate further! :)

Ade's Mum bought a bag of Ellis mill stoneground wholemeal flour, which I'm sure she'll use to make something very tasty...

And I bought a Lincolnshire windmills tea towel!

I'm getting worryingly into my souvenir tea towels... I seem to be building up quite a collection! Although they do get used so at least that's something :)

Other Lincolnshire adventures included several trips to Chambers Farm Wood, which is part of the Lincolnshire Limewoods and is excellent for butterflies (particularly Marsh Fritillary, which is quite scarce).

The woods are lovely to wander around...

We saw lots of beautiful Marbled White butterflies in one of the meadows and several day-flying Burnet moths, which looked very colourful feeding on the thistle flowers...

There is a lovely butterfly garden near the visitors centre...

Where we saw a Broad Bordered Bee Hawk-moth, which was very exciting, as I'd never seen one before - they look like humming birds! :)

I didn't get a photo of the bee hawk-moth but got one of a regular bee enjoying the flowers...

I'm looking forward to my next Lincolnshire trip! :D

Woolfest 2011...

2011-06-24T20:02:00.002+01:00

I've been at Woolfest all day today! Woolfest is a fantastic celebration of natural fibres, especially wool and all the crafts relating to wool (spinning, dyeing, weaving, knitting, crochet, feltmaking... to name but a few!). Its a fantastic festival and I've been lots of times (I blogged about the 2009 and 2010 events). I'm pretty sure that today was the busiest Friday at Woolfest that I've ever seen!

I didn't manage to get many photographs, due to being either weighed down with fleeces, wedged in by the crowds or too busy talking to lots of lovely people, so many of whom are passionate about some of the things I love the most! :)

You can always count on me for some pictures of sheep though! Here's a lovely Teeswater, slightly stressed that her friend had disappeared to take part in the rare breeds parade...

A handsome Ouessant ram, who was very friendly (and tiny... I wish there was something in this photo for scale as they really are the smallest breed of sheep in the world!)...

Some beautiful Gotlands...

I love the colour, softness and curl of Gotland fleece.

I got drawn into discussions about keeping Angora rabbits on the bunny stall... I'd really love a pet rabbit (especially one that grows spinnable fibre!) but they're not very compatible with hi-fi cables apparently :(

The rabbits on show were quite laid back (and massively fluffy). This is Jasmine, who's a Woolfest pro and takes it all in her stride...

This is Toblerone, who was experiencing his first year at Woolfest and wasn't sure he could face it head on...

(I think he's trying to pretend that it's not happening!).

I was quite taken by this knitted Angora bunny rabbit... a bunny made from bunny fibre!

On the subject of knitted things, I was very impressed by this knitted hanging basket on the Tall Yarns and Tales stand, complete with fuchsias!

Shopping-wise, I managed to snag three fleeces... a lovely brown/black coloured Bluefaced Leicester x Wensleydale, a white Leicester Longwool and a brown/black coloured Wensleydale. So lots of fleecy fun to come over the next few weeks! :)

The people inside The Book of Forgotten Crafts part 2...

2011-06-21T14:34:00.002+01:00

I'm writing a series of blog posts about The Book of Forgotten Crafts because when I bought the book recently, I realised that I knew several of the craftspeople featured inside and either had some items made by them or had been on one of their courses. Part 1 of my little series was about local oak swill basket maker, Owen Jones and can be found here.

Part 2 is all about bowl maker Robin Wood. Here are some of Robin's pages in the book...

Robin Wood isn't your run-of-the-mill bowl maker... he turns wooden bowls on a lathe but it's a foot-powered pole lathe rather than an electric one. I've had a quick go on a pole lathe in the past and can say from experience that it's good exercise... Robin must have a very powerful thigh muscle from all his bowl turning!

If you've never seen anyone turning wood using a pole lathe, check out this video of Robin making a bowl...

We're lucky enough to own some of Robin's beautiful handmade wooden bowls and plates...

We've had them for several years now and they're in use most days. In fact, I had to leave a note out for Ade this morning, asking him to use a different plate for breakfast so that I had the chance to photograph all four bowls and plates when they were clean!

You can see the marks made by Robin's carving tools on the finished items...

I think it's amazing that he gets such a lovely finish just by using his carving tools and an axe... no sandpaper to speak of!

Each item is finished with a 'W' makers mark carved into the back...

Robin has written an excellent book all about the history of the wooden bowl, called 'The Wooden Bowl'...

The introduction says: 'In Medieval times people had very few possessions but almost everyone owned the clothes they stood up in, a knife, a spoon and a wooden bowl.' Many of Robin's designs are based on historical bowl-shapes (ours are based on the design of bowls found in the wreck of the Mary Rose) so it's really interesting to see photographs of wooden bowls through the ages.

The book also highlights artwork featuring people using wooden bowls, including several scenes from the Bayeux Tapestry and the book concludes with a look at the last bowl turners and Robin's work today. There's lots of detail about the processes Robin uses at the back of the book. Its a very interesting read!

As well as turning bowls, Robin carves spoons (and runs spoon carving courses). You can see a gallery of Robin's spoons here. People who know me well will already know that I have a bit of a 'thing' for spoons and I'd really like one (or several) of Robin's... they're stunning! Mmm... spoons! :)

If you'd like to find out more about Robin and/or the bowls and spoons he makes, he has a website, as well as a gallery of his bowls (which are for sale - I'm sure you won't be able to resist buying one!) and a fantastic blog that is about all kinds of traditional crafts, because Robin has a keen interest in them all and is the chairman of the Heritage Crafts Association.

Keep an eye out for part 3 of 'the people inside The Book of Forgotten Crafts'... it's a woolly one! :D

A sheepy educational experience...

2011-06-08T11:18:00.003+01:00

I went on a sheep husbandry day recently, which was organised by the Cumbria branch of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust (RBST). It was a 'hands on' day, aimed at giving people the chance to practice routine sheep maintenance tasks (of which there are many), under the watchful eye of some experts.

The sheep we worked on were a mixture of Kerry Hills...

And mules, which are sheep cross-bred from various breeds...

We trimmed lots of hooves...

And experimented with a bit of machinery that I've christened 'the sheep tipping device' to trim hooves without having to manhandle the sheep so much...

Although our group generally felt that the 'traditional' method of grabbing the sheep and propping it against our legs was less stressful for the sheep, even if it was harder on our backs. After all, it doesn't look much fun inside the sheep tipping device...

And they're an expensive investment for someone with only a few sheep. I think I'd buy a galvanised sheep sofa if I found that I struggled to hold my sheep steady for foot trimming etc. Apparently you back the sheep into it and then they lay there quite happily and don't struggle :)

Once we'd finished with feet, the lambs were herded into the main pen...

And were then subjected to vaccination injections...

And dosed with wormer, a mineral drench and a spray to deter blow flies...

One particularly runty little lamb was rescued from the crush and given a bit of TLC...

After lunch we had a new group of sheep to practice on and this time we looked at condition scoring (checking the muscle on the sheep's back to see if it's too thin, too fat or just right) and we practised the art of dagging, which is the removal of manky poo-covered wool from the back end of the sheep to make it less appealing to blow flies.

Mmm... dagging...

The 'sheep day' was held at Askerton Castle, near Brampton in north Cumbria, which is an organic farm with a variety of rare and native breeds. I was amazed that organically farmed sheep are still subjected to so many routine injections, doses, sprays and drenches. There's certainly a lot to take into account when you keep your own sheep and I learnt a lot, especially from talking to the other people on the course, all of whom already seemed to own some sheep.

One of the best things I took away from the course was a copy of Val Stephenson's Shepherd's Calendar book...

Its only a thin publication but it was written by someone who started out as a novice sheep-keeper and its aimed at other novice sheep-keepers, with an emphasis on keeping a small number of sheep with very high welfare standards, which is exactly what I would like to do when I have some of my own sheep :)

I've learnt more from this little book than I did from reading some of my other, much thicker sheep books and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone else who hopes to keep their own sheep and wants a very thorough and readable introduction to what's involved.

Now all I need to do is find someone who would let me keep some sheep on their land and I might make my dream a reality! :)

Lovely goodies for the 'vintage' spin-along on Ravelry...

2011-06-03T16:20:00.002+01:00

I'm taking part in another 'spin-along' on Ravelry! The last one was 'woodland' themed (my blog post about the woodland spin-along is here and the yarns I made are here) and the theme this time is 'vintage'. Both spin-alongs were organised by the lovely Laila of laigrai, who has her own 'I love laigrai' group on Ravelry. Its a lovely group of friendly spinners from all over the world :)

As with the last spin-along, Laila carded up some beautiful fibre batts in her vintage-themed colourway and everyone who wanted to spin-along bought a batt from Laila's shop. The batts were sent out and now all the spin-along-ers are spinning (or felting) the fibre in their own way, sharing the result (and the work in progress as they go along) in the spin-along thread on Ravelry.

Here's the batt I was sent...

Unrolled, so you can see it a bit better...

Mmm... tiny little crimpy bit of fleece sticking up at the edge! :)

And then folded over a bit so you can see the underneath!

As well as the batt, we were each sent a treasure trove of lovely vintage bits and bobs that Laila had gathered for us all. I got buttons, beads, fabric scraps, bits of fleece and fibre and all sorts in my pack...

I love that curly turquoise fleece... my favourite colour!

But the bit I was most excited about was the cotton boll...

I've never spun cotton before and I've never seen cotton 'on the boll'. I really enjoyed playing with it and picking all the fibre from the leafy bits.

I ended up with a little pile of fluffy fibre, the stalk bit (which I'm keeping because I like the look of it) and the seeds...

When I mentioned picking out the seeds on Twitter and mulled over whether I could grow my own cotton, Laila replied to say that I could! How exciting! So now I just need to figure out whether I can plant the seeds whole or if you have to crack open the furry little cases first and I'll be on my way to growing some of my own fibre! Yay! :D

I'll keep you posted with my progress on the spin-along and the cotton growing, although I imagine I'll have my yarn spun before my first cotton is ready to pick :)

The people inside the Book of Forgotten Crafts part 1...

2011-05-31T12:12:00.003+01:00

I bought a lovely new book recently called The Book of Forgotten Crafts...

The book profiles traditional craftspeople and their crafts, many of which are in danger of dying out because there are so few people left with the specialist skills needed for these crafts. Happily, there has been a recent resurgence in interest in traditional crafts (perhaps boosted by TV programmes such as Mastercrafts and Victorian Farm and the formation of organisations like the Heritage Crafts Association) and this book is just the thing if your interest has been piqued and you want to find out more.

Although The Book of Forgotten Crafts is beautifully laid out and designed, it's definitely not a 'style over substance' book. It's well written and an interesting read, with lovely big photographs of all the craftspeople working on their crafts. I can never help myself around craft books, especially if they feature textile crafts (which this one does), so I snapped it up when it was published in March this year.

When I started to flick through the pages, I realised that I recognised several of the craftspeople featured in the book and that I'd even been on courses run by some of them. So, I thought I'd do a blog post about three of the craftspeople that appear in the book to share what I know about them and their work.

First up is a very talented basket maker who lives just down the road from me at Nibthwaite, on the east side of Coniston Water. Owen Jones isn't just any basket maker, he's an oak swill basket maker. Oak swills originate from this specific part of south Cumbria (known as 'High Furness') and were used in the local bobbin mills and in agriculture (as well as for storing logs, clothes, babies and various other things around the home).

Because of my job (which involves going to a lot of shows) I see Owen for a chat when he's weaving his baskets at shows up and down the county more often than I bump into him at our local shops in Ulverston :)

Here is Owen weaving away in a fetching hat at the 2009 Westmorland Show...

In 2008 me and Ade went on one of the many swill basket weaving courses that Owen runs throughout the year. This course was held at Owen's house, which meant we could bike over there each day :)

This is Owen's lovely workshop during the course (deserted while everyone has lunch)...

The main thing that we learnt over the course of the three days is that making oak swill baskets is surprisingly complex and very hard work! The baskets have a sleek and simple look to them but they're made from several different components (all with their own name), which have to be individually made to a specific shape.

Here's Ade, 'taw' in hand as he weaves a strip of oak back and forth over the basket...

The weaving has to be done while the strips of wood are wet, because they're easier to work that way. Here's my damp and partially woven basket...

As well as the weaving itself, there is also all the boiling up of the wood to consider, the riving (carefully splitting and tearing thin strips of wood along the grain) and the steaming and bending of the hazel bowl rim... not to mention the task of managing the woodland and coppicing the wood for the basket in the first place!

The end result is worth the effort though. I'm very proud of my completed basket...

And Ade was pleased with his too!

Even though we've done the course (which was lots of fun), neither of us would be able to make another swill basket unaided. The best way to really learn is to become an apprentice, working side-by-side with an experienced 'swiller' for several years, as Owen did when he learnt to make swill baskets.

If you'd like to meet Owen and see him weaving, check out the list of fairs and events on his website. He's not limited to Cumbrian shows and gets about all over the UK, so he might be visiting somewhere near you - track him down and have a natter, he's really friendly!

If you fancy trying your hand at swill basket making, or would like to buy one of Owen's finished baskets (which come in more than one design), have a look at Owen's website to find out more.

So that's part 1 of 'the people inside The Book of Forgotten Crafts'. Keep an eye out for parts 2 and 3, which will be coming soon! :)

Back in time at Auchindrain township...

2011-05-22T16:41:00.004+01:00

On our way back home from a recent holiday on Islay, we realised that we'd be driving right past Auchindrain township, so we made time to nip in for a look around.

I'd already had a folk museum fix while on Islay but I wasn't going to let that stop me from having another! Auchindrain isn't quite a folk museum though, it's the last remaining example of a Highland farm township, where a group of families worked the land in common. There are buildings from different eras, including houses, barns, cartsheds and stables and some of them are set up inside as they would have been in their heyday, with furniture from the appropriate period.

Many of the buildings were homes and barns all in one, with the animals living under the same roof as the humans. The MacCallum's longhouse, which was lived in until 1954, had the living area at one end of the building, a dairy in the middle and the cattle housed in a byre at the far end...

The byre seemed very well organised, with a special system of posts and pegs (thought to be unique to Auchindrain) to tether horned cattle...

I liked the patterns of the cobbled floors in the byres...

In one of the living areas I spotted a great wheel (as in 'great wheel' is the type of wheel it was, it's not just that I thought it was great...)

And a lovely treadle sewing machine all set up ready to sew...

There was also a handy trout bag hanging from the rafters...

Although the windows were quite small, the light that came in was lovely...

Some of the homes were much poorer, having only one room. The Cottar's house is built in a very rough and ready style compared to the other buildings and was lived in by landless labourers, who worked on the township's land in return for a home like this one...

The unusual thatched roof is made from bracken...

The inside structure is very rustic looking...

Another building for poorer members of the community is Bell Pol's house...

This house is named after the last resident, who was called Bell Pol (Gaelic for 'muddy Isabella'). She worked in the lead mines and returned to Auchindrain single and penniless in her old age. She was looked after and provided for until her death in 1913.

Inside Bell Pol's house...

Although she didn't have much, I was quite envious of Bell Pol's horn spoon collection...

So much so that I couldn't help myself when we got back to the visitors centre shop and I had to buy a lovely handmade natural horn spoon to take home with me...

If you'd like to see more pictures of Auchindrain, check out my full set of photos on Flickr here :)

Obscure leather items in the Museum of Islay Life...

2011-05-21T17:12:00.004+01:00

I love a good folk or rural history museum (Ryedale Folk Museum being the best I've visited so far), so I was pleased to discover that Islay had a museum when we visited the island recently.

In a rare moment of good timing, the Museum of Islay Life turned out to be open on the day we visited Port Charlotte...

It's only a small museum, but perfectly formed and there is a board outside advertising its various attractions...

Mmm... old photographs :)

Personally, I think they'd be better off listing some of their more random exhibits to draw in the crowds.

Who could resist the lure of 'equine carpet slippers'?

Or the quite grotesque but highly polished 'cow's hoof pin cushion'?!

By far the most intriguing object for me (bearing in mind that I have quite obscure interests) was the 'sheep's wellie'...

What is it?! What's it for? Which part of the sheep's anatomy does it get fastened to? There was only one, compared to the set of four equine carpet slippers. Does that mean that three have gone missing or is one the most you ever need? No amount of Googling is helping me to get to the bottom of the 'sheep's wellie' mystery...

More conventional exhibits included a rather flash Victorian child's toy cooker...

Some vintage Islay milk bottles...

And the promised illicit still...

Which Ade was keen to get a close look at...

One of the 'old photographs' showed what me and Ade could look like in several years time. Sitting either side of the fireplace, him with his tangled grey beard and hat, me busy at the spinning wheel with skeins of yarn hanging from the rafters to dry/lightly smoke...

All in all, well worth a look in if you're ever in Port Charlotte with an hour to spare and an urge to inspect mysterious sheep accessories! :)

Beaches and birds on Islay...

2011-05-20T21:09:00.006+01:00

Although I've already blogged about our whisky adventures on Islay, our main reasons for going were more to do with beaches and wildlife than alcohol.

Islay has some stunning beaches, like the Machir Bay in the north west corner of the island, near Kilchoman...

Which I can report has excellent sand for drawing flying stick horses...

:)

And was also wide enough for the first outing of Ade's Aerobie disc (which I am completely rubbish at throwing, resulting in lots of sand going in my face!)...

There are more beaches further round to the east at Sanaigmore Bay, where I was mesmerised by the waves for ages...

And we found an extra added cove nearby that we didn't have time to explore properly...

The Singing Sands near Port Ellen were lovely but not singing on the day we visited. We found a ruined church-like building at the end of this beach so Ade climbed in to practice his preaching gestures...

Down to the south of the island is the Mull of Oa, a bleak kind of place, particularly on the kind of drab day it was when we visited. It's still spectacular though. It's an RSPB nature reserve and there is a nice trail to follow along the edge of the cliffs...

We saw a golden eagle floating about up there, as well as chough, which are the rarest crows in Britain and very lovely when you get a good look at them. Their plumage is blue-black and they have bright red legs and a downward curving red beak. We call them the 'ladies crow' because they look so elegant. I don't think anyone else calls them that, we're just a bit strange... :)

There were lots of wild goats grazing the seaweed down on the beach too! We couldn't get down to look at them closely, which is probably just as well because I've heard that the locals say you can usually smell the goats before you see them!

There's a huge American monument on the Oa...

And a place to sit that feels like the very tip of the island, with nothing but ocean in front of you (it also feels a bit hairy when the wind is gusting!)...

We decided to go on a guided walk around the other large RSPB reserve at Loch Gruinart. Although a corncrake had been singing on the morning we went, it was all quiet by the time we got there. We didn't see much else but its a lovely reserve and it was just nice to wander around and learn about the wildlife you can see there.

We were really hoping to see an otter at some point on Islay but they eluded us again (as they always seem to). Oh well, at least it's an excuse to have another trip there! :)

Whisky-tastic times on Islay...

2011-05-20T16:53:00.002+01:00

We visited Islay recently (a really lovely island off the west coast of Scotland), which is home to eight different whisky distilleries. Although we went for the wildlife and the beaches more than the whisky, Ade was keen to sample some of the different malts on offer and got stuck straight into his first dram of Kilchoman on the ferry journey from the mainland...

We weren't bothered for trawling around all the distilleries but it seemed rude not to visit the one that was nearest to where we stayed, so we called in at Ardbeg one morning and went on a distillery tour.

We saw all the usual stuff like wooden wash backs (it smelt of delicious fruit cakes in the wash back room)...

And shiny copper stills...

And at the end of the tour we were invited into the bottle-lined chairman's study for a taste of Ardbeg whisky...

We tried a super-peaty expression (can't remember its name but it made my nose hurt when I tried some) and the less peaty, sweet tasting Blasda, which was really nice.

Then we were all left alone in the room while our guide went out to help in the cafe (which was very busy and served delicious looking food) and everyone took the opportunity to try a bit more whisky and discuss the possibility of cracking into some of the Ardbeg archive bottles on the shelves, some of which are the only remaining ones in existence! But then our guide came back and chased everyone back out into the distillery shop :)

In the shop there were shelves filled with the different expressions of Ardbeg whisky...

And a nice display of the bottles, including the Blasda we tried (a bottle of which came home with Ade)...

I know its not as important as the whisky itself, but I really liked the Celtic stylings of the Ardbeg 'brand'. The distillery colour is a lovely seaweed green called smoked kelp (seen on the chairman's study door above) and it crops up all around the distillery buildings and in some of the merchandise. like the shot glasses below...

The Ardbeg font is also really appealing, especially when its fashioned from metal, like on this stair rail...

Yup, I'm a bit of a colour and font geek :)

One other appealing thing about Ardbeg is the distillery dog, Shortie. He's a very handsome looking Jack Russel and although we didn't see him in person, there were Shortie-related things dotted around the distillery, such as this amazing (and huge) painting of him wearing a crown, which was hung in the cafe...

And the lovely open and closed signs on the door!

Although I'm not a huge whisky fan, I find the whole history of whisky and the differences between the distilleries really interesting. When we got home I started reading Peat Smoke and Spirit - A Portrait of Islay and its Whiskies, which is a really interesting book even if you're not into whisky. Its all about the history of Islay and I've learnt all kinds of random facts while I've been reading it.

In slightly more anoraky territory, I also got quite into the Malt Whisky Yearbook, to the point where we had to invest in the 2011 edition so I could geek out reading about 'the facts, the people, the news and the stories' in the world of malt whisky!

The yearbook is probably too nerdy for most people but I'd definitely recommend Peat Smoke and Spirit if you like a good read about history and/or islands. And a visit to Ardbeg is well worth it if you're ever on Islay :)

Wild garlic season...

2011-05-19T21:12:00.003+01:00

The brief window of opportunity for wild garlic foraging is closing but its been a bumper year and I thought I'd write a bit about this wild food and some of the ways you can make use of it while its around (so you'll be prepared for next spring!).

Wild garlic flower

Wild garlic (otherwise known as ramsons, buckrams, wood garlic and various other names) is related to chives and can be used in much the same way that you would use chives, but resulting in a garlicky rather than an oniony flavour.

One of the best places near us for wild garlic foraging is in the woodlands at the Manjushri Buddhist centre near Ulverston. I always feel a bit bad picking Buddhist wild garlic but the woodland is completely carpeted with the plants and we only take a few leaves, never the roots. I'm sure Buddha would understand...

A wild garlic woodland carpet

Wild garlic plants growing at the base of a tree

The leaves are quite prone to wilting once they've been picked but we've found that standing them with the cut ends in water in the fridge perks them up and makes them last for about a week. Make sure you change the water every so often though.

Reusing a yoghurt pot to keep wild garlic fresh in the fridge

As with chives, wild garlic is great with anything cheesy, eggy or potatoey. I'm not so keen on it in a salad though and we don't eat the flowers after over-enthusiastically adding far too many to a meal when we first discovered wild garlic and being completely garlicked out.

Ade livens up his packed lunches by adding wild garlic to cottage cheese...

Snipping wild garlic leaves into cottage cheese

Wild garlic cottage cheese

Its great with cheese on toast. You could grate the cheese and mix it with snipped up wild garlic leaves before putting it on the bread/toast but if that's too much of a hassle, you can just hide the snipped leaves under the slices of cheese before the toast goes under the grill (like we do).

Wild garlic is also lovely in scrambled eggs (just snip the leaves into the pan a moment or two before serving so that they wilt slightly but don't really cook). Notice how there aren't any photos of wild garlic cheese on toast or scrambled eggs... I can never wait to take a photo - too tasty! :)

It works really well in an omelette...

Wild garlic in a cheese, mushroom and smoked tofu omelette

Or mixed into some mash...

Potato and parsnip mash with wild garlic

And apparently it makes a fantastic pesto, which is something we'll have to try next year!

Sea kale is another locally-found wild food that we've been tempted by recently but it's not very abundant so we leave it alone and just admire the thick purple leaves and little yellow flowers.

Sea kale

Sea kale flowers

If you're interested in foraging, there are lots of great wild food books out there. Food for Free by Richard Mabey is a classic but I would also highly recommend the River Cottage Hedgerow and Edible Seashore books (which I've read from cover to cover, along with most of the other River Cottage handbooks). Happy foraging! :)

Recycling scraps of Liberty silk fabric into handspun yarn...

2011-04-17T14:43:00.003+01:00

I've been going to an evening sewing class in Ulverston for the past few months and some of the ladies there have been making clothes from gorgeous Liberty silk fabric.

There were lots of fabric scraps left over after cutting out the pattern pieces and I couldn't bear to see them go in the bin (I can't bear to see most things going in the bin, let alone lovely silk fabric!). So, I explained that I'd like to try and make something from the scraps and they were kindly saved up and given to me.

The one on the left is called Jacob Pop A and on the right is a variation of Liberty's Bourton paisley-type print (both 100% silk!)...

The obvious thing to do (obvious to me anyway...) was to cut the scraps into strips and try spinning a yarn from them. Here's some of the Bourton fabric cut into neat little strips...

I included the Bourton selvedge as it was a nice cream colour, like the background of the print, which I thought would make a nice bit of a stripe in the finished yarn. The Jacob Pop selvedge was white, which didn't lend itself to being incorporated with the rest of that yarn, so I've saved it for something else.

I spun the yarn by wrapping the fabric strips around a core yarn, overlapping each new strip and tucking the ends in as I went along. I was pleased with how the Bourton yarn spun up...

But the ends of some of the strips had a habit of coming unwound, so when I came to spin the Jacob Pop fabric, I decided to let a pink thread wrap around the outside of the yarn, which secured the fabric strips nicely...

Both yarns are knitting up well, although the Jacob Pop is slightly easier because there is no chance of the fabric strips unravelling (which is fiddly to sort out mid-knit!).

Liberty Bourton yarn knitted up...

Liberty Jacob Pop yarn knitted up...

There should be enough of each yarn to make a two nice little knitted bags to give back to the ladies who generously donated their scraps to me! :)

Wrapping gifts with handspun paper ribbon...

2011-02-24T20:53:00.004Z

I had some presents to wrap recently and decided to use my favourite wrapping standby - coloured tissue paper. I like the texture of tissue paper and the fact that it's easy to recycle or compost when its finished with, unlike some of the shiny foil papers you can buy.

Once I'd finished wrapping, I thought the gifts could do with a bit of extra decoration to finish them off. I didn't have any ribbon but I did have plenty more tissue paper and a spinning wheel to hand, plus the experience gained from a recent experiment in spinning newspaper...

which resulted in handspun tissue paper ribbon!

I think it came out quite well and it was easy enough to do. A quarter of a sheet of tissue paper, cut in a continuous strip and then spun was enough to tie around both presents.

The gifts were for a friend who's recently become a new Mum. The small present is a little baby gift from the Sedbergh Soap Company, who make lovely handmade natural soaps in nearby Sedbergh.

The larger present is Lotta Jansdotter's Simple Sewing for Baby book, which is full of great projects for babies and toddlers, all of which are quick and easy (just what you want if you're a new Mum who likes to sew but doesn't have much time to spare).

I bought a copy of the book for myself as well since so many people I know seem to be having babies lately. I fancy having a go at most of the projects in it.

Who could resist sewing something that could make a baby pull this expression?!

Rabbit Heart corespun yarn...

2011-01-22T19:41:00.002Z

We had a few days holiday in Scotland before Christmas and I took my spinning wheel along for the ride. I only got two yarns spun, one of which was my woodland spin-along yarn and the other was this yarn...

Rabbit Heart - merino wool, silk and bamboo, 117g and 125metres long

Mmm... yarn swirl!

The yarn was corespun (spun at an angle around a thin core yarn) from these batts that I carded up on my trusty drum carder several months ago...

I don't seem to have any time for spinning at the moment but I'm looking forward to the next chance I get to sit down at my wheel! :)

Handspun newspaper yarn...

2011-01-18T15:14:00.004Z

I've wanted to try spinning newspaper for ages so when I found an old copy of the Westmorland Gazette lurking in the recycling bin at work, right next to the industrial-sized paper cutter, I spent a few minutes cutting a load of 1cm wide strips and took my little stash of unlikely yarn material home with me...

And then I spun some yarn!

Newspaper yarn - 61g and 90metres long...

I love the crispy little strands of paper...

When you look at it very closely you can see some of the words and I liked the way I could read snippets of text as the paper moved through my fingers...

Citroen... Peugeot... Ford Fiesta... Touran... woodburning stove... Ulverston... Kendal... fell running (it seemed to be mainly car adverts, classifieds and the sports results!).

I first saw instructions for spinning newspaper yarn on Craftster here and I followed these directions, except I was armed with a paper cutter and a spinning wheel, rather than scissors and a spindle, which probably sped me up a fair bit. It's still a fairly time consuming process though!

Now I just have to wind it into a ball and see how it knits up...

Woodland themed spin-along on Ravelry... part 2!

2010-12-31T17:12:00.003Z

I've finally finished spinning my yarns for a Ravelry spin-along that I'm taking part in! The deadline for entries is the end of December, so I've left it till the very last minute to finish things off. Details of the spin-along and photos of the beautiful batt I was sent by Laigrai can be found on my blog here.

The theme of the spin-along was 'woodland' and all the spinners received a gorgeous batt to use as the basis for their yarn. Mine was called Poison 'shroom and had lovely red and orange tones in amongst some mushroomy browns.

Not long after getting my batt in the post, I stumbled across something very exciting in a shop called Tasty Vintage in Lincoln... little vintage ceramic toadstools! :D

They're tiny and very cute, plus they've got little wires on them so they're perfect to spin into a yarn! I decided that they would work best on a wire-core yarn (a yarn spun around a thin metal wire) and I wasn't planning that for my batt but I did have some lovely scraps of mossy green fleece, which came with my batt, so I carded them up with more mossy coloured fleece and fibre from my stash and then had my first ever go at wire-core spinning!

'Toadstool' wire core yarn...

Tiny little 'shrooms!

I spun up my batt as a regular core-spun yarn (spun around a thin thread) and unfortunately the photos I've got of the finished yarn are taken in a really bad light because the sun barely came up today and I needed to get the photos done to post on Ravelry :(

'Poison shroom' yarn (the colours of which are much lovelier in real life)...

And here are the two yarns together (I think they make a lovely pair)...

So that's it! I had a lot of fun spinning along with everyone else in the group and it inspired me to have a go wire-core spinning, which I've been wanting to try for ages. It has also been great to see how everyone decided to spin their batts and there have been some amazing yarns produced by the group. If you're on Ravelry, check out the spin along and all the gorgeous yarns here (Ravelry link).

:D

Sunshine and snow on Lowick Common...

2010-12-05T15:42:00.002Z

We're lucky enough to have a fantastic common to play about on behind our house. Lowick Common has got it all going on... it's criss-crossed with paths and tracks and there are tarns and trees as well as plenty of wildlife to see and even a hill to climb (Lowick Beacon)... well, its a hill by my standards since I'm originally from a very flat county :)

Lowick Common is particularly fun to explore when it's covered in snow, so we went out this morning while the sun was shining...

Ade next to Leech Tarn...

I'm usually too chicken to walk on frozen tarns but I gave it a go today...

:)

There were lots of beautiful frozen things to photograph and I played around with the polariser filter on our camera.

Frozen trees...

and frozen twigs...

Snow horse update: I'd hoped to get some more photos of the snow horse while the sun was out today (it was freezing fog all day yesterday while we were building him) but the end of his face has fallen off! I was going to repair him but our neighbours think he looks like their Jack Russell terrier now so I'll probably leave him in his new incarnation :D

Snow horse!

2010-12-04T14:31:00.003Z

We've had snow here for over a week and lots more fell all day yesterday. I couldn't get out to my sewing class today because the roads were bad so I thought I ought to make the most of the snow...

by building a snow horse!

He's very handsome...

With a proud looking head...

'Bbbrrrrpp!' That's a snorty horse noise in case you couldn't tell :)

Its almost exactly 20 years since I built my first ever snow horse at age 11. Me and a friend built one in my garden and one in her garden down the road in snowy Cleethorpes. Both those snow horses were quite a bit smaller than this one but then I was smaller too!

I couldn't resist getting on for a ride...

but the 30 year old me is quite a bit heavier than the 11 year old one was and it nearly ended in disaster...

I didn't completely squash him though :)

He just needed a bit of a repair work after I dismounted and he was as good as new. I hope he sticks around for a bit! :)

Woodland themed spin-along on Ravelry... part 1

2010-11-19T11:43:00.004Z

I love Ravelry, it's such a great site for anyone with an interest in any kind of fibre-related craft, whether its knitting and crochet, spinning (of every kind, from traditional to art yarn), feltmaking, weaving, dyeing, carding or even just the joys of washing and preparing raw fleece. You can find the groups that suit you and get stuck in, safe in the knowledge that everyone there is as obsessed with that particular fibre craft as you are :)

Anyway, one of my favourite Ravelry groups is 'i love lai grai', which was set up by the very talented fibre artist Laila Grainawi (you can check out her blog here). This group is so friendly and inspiring and there is always some kind of knit-along happening for everyone to join in with.

Laila recently came up with the idea of a spin-along, where everyone could spin a woodland themed batt that she had carded up and we'd get to see how everyone decided to spin it... after all, there is definitely more than one way to spin a batt! :D

I loved this idea so I joined the spin-along (the page on Ravelry is here) and ordered my batt. I was so excited when it arrived! It's called 'Poison 'shroom' and is full of all kinds of gorgeous fibres, including Merino, Coopworth and Bluefaced Leicester wool, tussah silk, tencel, flax and some lovely angelina and firestar sparkles... I love it!

Here it is in the bag...

Released from the bag...

Check out the little shroom and the textured uncarded fleece!

And a close up of the unrolled batt, showing all the lovely textures and colour...

I can't wait to spin it! Although I'll have to wait because I haven't decided how I'm going to spin it yet... :)

All the fun of the Greenwood Fair...

2010-10-31T16:52:00.004Z

We drove just over the border to Lancashire today to check out a Greenwood Fair at Leighton Hall. It was a free event, organised as part of the Cumbria Wood and Forestry Festival with the aim of promoting the use of wood as a fuel and demonstrating lots of woodland skills, from green woodworking and charcoal making to chainsawing and bushcraft.

I particularly liked the bushcraft stall, where there was a tasty looking wild fruit jam and some home made bread (in a Dutch oven) cooking away over the fire...

Plus some demonstrations of butchering wild meat, which was hanging in a rustic looking 'larder' at the back of the stall...

There were plenty of gorgeous hand carved spoons on various stalls...

And demonstrations of some of the ways charcoal can be made, such as on a small scale in an old oil drum...

Or in a traditional 'earth burn', where the logs are stacked up and covered with earth before being lit. This mini version gave an idea of how an earth burn is constructed...

There was a lot to see for such a small event and the whole local greenwood community seemed to be there, along with artists and craftspeople, some local food producers and organisations like the National Trust (who manage the Arniside and Silverdale AONB locally) and the RSPB, which has the Leighton Moss nature reserve nearby.

It was well worth the trip and made me want to have another go at carving some wooden spoons (something I haven't tried since my poor attempts a few years ago on the Woodland Pioneers course!). Watch out finger-ends! :)

A handspun scarf woven on a handmade loom...

2010-10-28T15:57:00.003+01:00

Much as I like spinning, I often wonder what to do with all the yarn I've made, especially very chunky, textured 'art' yarns. I've tried knitting them in various different ways but I've yet to come up with a knitted style that really makes the most of these kinds of yarn.

One of the most exciting things about a lovely handspun art yarn is the way it flows from one section to the next, through a series of colours and textures. I often feel that knitting a very textured yarn somehow interrupts this flow. You can just wear a lovely skein of yarn around your neck but I know I'd end up in a tangled mess doing that!

I had an idea recently that if I could weave a scarf using some handspun yarn as the warp (vertical strands) and create an almost invisible weft (horizontal strands) with some sewing thread, it would give the effect of wearing a skein but without the risk of tangles. It would show off every inch of the yarn in all it's glory!

The one thing that put me off using handspun yarn as a warp in the past is that you generally have to cut through each warp thread at the end of the weaving to release it from the loom. This might not seem like a big deal but I've got a strange aversion to cutting my handspun yarn! It always feels wrong somehow (I know, I'm a bit strange!) so I was keen to find a way of weaving using a continuous warp thread that didn't need to be cut to get the finished item off the loom.

A tall order perhaps but I'd heard about triangle looms and Weave-It looms, which are basically frames with rows of nails around them that you loop the weaving around and then lift off the loom (whole - no cutting!) at the end. So I cobbled together a loom from some scraps of wood and nails and then made a heddle from some cardboard with holes punched in it and some string. It was very heath robinson! :)

Anyway, enough waffle, this is the result of my first attempt...

I'm quite pleased with it!

As you can see (or rather, not see) the sewing thread that I used for the weft is hardly visible and the main thing you see is the handspun yarn.

Even close up it's hard to see the sewing thread...

I used a whole skein of this yarn...

Called 'Camels in the Forest', which is a light fluffy corespun yarn made with all kinds of soft fibres like merino, baby camel, silk and soya bean fibre.

This first attempt was very fiddly to do but I've got plans for how to make it easier. I just need to make some more bits of loom because the first one had more or less fallen apart by the end of the scarf!

This prototype scarf was a gift for my Mum, seen here bravely modelling the scarf while suffering from a cold...

She's going to provide regular scarf updates, so I'll get to see how well it holds up in day-to-day use. If the reports are good, I'll get on with making another one soon! :)

A sheep-tastic day out at Masham Sheep Fair...

2010-10-07T18:33:00.002+01:00

We recently trekked over to Yorkshire for the famous Masham Sheep Fair, a huge gathering of sheep and sheep-related activities in the town's market square. It was brilliant!

There's a great atmosphere because the pens of sheep are right in the market place, surrounded by shops and houses...

With the lovely church in the background...

2010 marked the 25th anniversary of the Masham Sheep Fair, which has been held in the town since 1986. September sheep fairs used to take place in town centres up and down the country but died out during the first world war. The Masham Sheep Fair was revived to raise money for the Sheep Aid for Africa cause and was so much fun that it became an annual event. Thousands of pounds are raised for charities each year.

Although the sheep that come to the fair are no longer sold at the event, its an important competition in the showing calendar and a different range of sheep breeds compete on each of the two days.

Its a good opportunity for sheep geeks like me to get to know the differences between similar-looking breeds because the pens are close together and clearly labelled with the breed names (which you don't always get at agricultural shows).

We went on the Saturday and saw the most local breed, the Masham...

Plenty of Dalesbred...

Including some rams with amazing curly horns...

Teeswater, with their long lustrous fleeces...

Shearing time was quite recently so the fleeces weren't as long as they can be, but the length of this one's fringe (which must have escaped the clippers) gives you an idea!

Jacob (this one was amazingly fluffy!)...

Oxford Down...

And one of Ade's favourites, the Suffolk...

Here's Ade checking out a springy Suffolk fleece...

Other breeds competing on Saturday included Wensleydale, Texel, Blue Faced Leicester and Swaledale. Sunday's breeds included several continental varieties and another great selection of British breeds such as Cheviot, Dorset Horn and Poll Dorset, Ryeland, Hampshire Down and mixed classes for primitive breeds and any other pure breed. I would have liked to visit on both days so that I could've seen the Lincoln Longwools, black Wensleydales and coloured Ryelands in the mixed classes on the Sunday. Oh well, maybe next year!

As well as the sheep classes, there was a craft market, sheepdog demonstrations, wool craft competitions, a Bishop Blaize procession (in honour of the patron saint of wool combers) and various other demonstrations (spinning, coopering, sheep shearing etc).

But behind the church, something highly random was going on...

Sheep racing!

Four sheep, racing over hurdles...

With a packed out crowd of public onlookers placing bets on the winner! I think the people that had to tempt them/chase them along the track were more worn out than the sheep themselves :)

After all that excitement, we had to have a walk to the Theakston brewery for a sit down (me) and a cheeky pint or two (Ade).

How's this for a nutritious-looking pint?

It went down a treat though...

After a rest, we went back to the fair and although I was tempted by the overflowing tables of fresh fleeces on the fleece sale stall...

I resisted the urge (amazingly!) and all we came home with was a fetching Masham Sheep Fair tea towel and a show programme...

It was a great day and I'd definitely go back another year! :)

Open day at a local Victorian Farm...

2010-10-07T15:11:00.003+01:00

When we were at Lowick Show, we were given a leaflet about an open day at a very local working Victorian farm (at Bouth, just over the hill from our house), which I was very excited about checking out, because I love a bit of old school farming and rural heritage... :)

So off we went to Old Hall Farm and we had a lovely few hours checking everything out. There were lots of heavy horses, which Ade was happy about.

Here he is posing with Ben and Troy the Shire horses...

We had a ride on their trailer and I think it might be the first time I've been in a horse-drawn cart! It was good fun anyway and there was another horse-drawn trailer doing the rounds too, pulled by the very handsome Colin...

Colin seems like a strange name for a horse in my opinion, although I did once know a black Labrador called Colin and I thought that was odd too, so maybe it's just me having a peculiar aversion to animals named Colin... :)

Anyway, he made a lovely sight coming up the road with his trailer...

Other horses working on the farm included these two lovely Clydesdales, who were ploughing a field in the old fashioned way...

It was very peaceful watching them work, much nicer than a tractor. But something less peaceful happened when they stopped for a break and the man operating the plough unwrapped his snack and casually pushed the plastic wrapper into the lovely clods of earth that he'd just ploughed! I hate seeing people drop litter at the best of times but this seemed even worse than usual. Do people think that plastic dissolves in the rain or something?! :(

So we left the ploughing team to it at that point and wandered back to the farm to hang out with the Jacob sheep...

And the gorgeous Hereford cow with her calf...

I love her fluffy ears and drooly cow nose and the strange square-shaped bit at the front of her body! :)

It was a vintage machinery anorak's paradise, with a steam powered sawmill, steam powered threshing and corn grinding and a selection of Victorian games and fairground rides.

The Prospector seemed to be the biggest traction engine there...

This is the wheat (or barley?) stacked up in a waggon, waiting to be threshed...

And there were lots of other bits and bobs about the place, like this little hut on wheels...

A shepherd's hut maybe?

And a funky old car...

All in all, looking round the farm was a good way to spend the afternoon and I'd recommend it if you're into that sort of thing. There is an Old Hall Farm website that you can check out if you're interested (its still in development at the moment though), or you can have a look at my full set of photos from the open day on Flickr here :)

Handspun knitted leaf scarf...

2010-10-07T14:47:00.006+01:00

I thought I'd do a quick post about the scarf that I entered into a competition at Lowick Show (which I've already blogged about).

It was knitted from the Eden pattern (found in the lovely Knitalong book), which I've been wanting to make with some handspun yarn for a while but my chunky spinning style meant that most of my yarns were a bit too hefty for this delicate pattern. In fact, I did have a go at it previously with some white and gold Merino and soysilk yarn that I'd spun but when I was knitting it at Ade's parents house, his Dad commented that it looked a bit like a string of lambs testicles! Not ideal for wearing around your neck... :D

So, when I managed to accidentally spin a skinny corespun yarn from some of my hand carded Sugar Plum batts, I was itching to knit it up into a leafy scarf.

Here's a progress shot...

Its really easy to cart about with you because the scarf, yarn and double pointed needles all squish into a little bag and its very quick to knit up a sneaky leaf or two when you've got a spare minute. I even managed to memorise the pattern after a bit so I didn't have to keep referring to the book (which shows that its very simple because I usually struggle to use knitting patterns at all, let along remember them!).

Here's the scarf all spread out...

A leafy detail...

And a picture of it draping (which it does very well)...

That's it! I quite fancy making another one with a thin turquoise yarn that I've spun, which I think might make a nice seaweedy scarf :)

Winning prizes at Lowick Show!

2010-09-04T19:56:00.004+01:00

We've been at Lowick Show (just down the road from us) all day, soaking up the sun and checking out everything the show had to offer. Oh, and I won some prizes!

I won first prize for class 74 in the handicrafts section: 'any knitted article using any wool not specified above' (i.e. not aran, double knitting or 3 or 4 ply) with my hand spun hand knitted leaf scarf...

I made the scarf using this yarn and the Eden knitting pattern from my Knitalong book. I must admit at this point that my scarf was the only entry into this class so I wasn't exactly up against any stiff opposition... I still feel proud though! :)

I also won third prize in the 'Show Day' themed photography class with my picture of a blue rosette at the Westmorland Show last year...

I've never entered anything into a competition at a show before so it was quite exciting. We had to keep walking past the home produce and handicrafts marquee all morning to check if the judging was finished so I could see whether I'd won anything!

I always find the home produce and handicrafts tent interesting anyway and this year was no exception. There are so many weird and wonderful classes to compete in (although I'm always envious of the children's classes and wish I could have a go at those too!).

Anyone for decorated cupcakes?

Snake themed ones perhaps?

Or maybe some with a veg patch theme?

The Lego class was very competitive but my favourite was this colourful windmill...

There were some cheery gingerbread men (I liked this one's sparkly trousers)...

And some impressive miniature gardens on 10" plates (this one had a tiny veg patch and washing line!)...

The fruit and vegetable animal or insect class is always worth a look. This fantastic snail was my favourite...

Grown-up classes included plenty of vegetables and some stunning flowers...

And of course there were tables groaning under the weight of delicious looking home made cakes, quiches, tray bakes and preserves...

There was plenty to see outdoors too, including all kinds of animals. Plenty of Herdwick sheep were on show...

Some of whom had just been shorn...

Gigantic Shorthorn bulls...

A selection of Shire horses...

Some Alpacas from Town End Alpacas...

Plus lots and lots of lovely horses and ponies competing in the in hand and ridden classes...

There was a stick show...

And an exciting tug o' war!

Heave!

By the end of the day I felt like this...

But it was great fun and I'll hopefully be back (with more handicrafts and home produce to show) next year! :)

PS You can see my full set of photos from Lowick show on Flickr here.

Greenwood yarn from start to finish...

2010-09-03T21:16:00.002+01:00

I've been working on a yarn in between other projects and it's finally finished! Greenwood is 82.5metres of coreless corespun squidgyness...

I took photos of all the processes involved in making this yarn, although there weren't too many since I used fibres that were already prepared and dyed. Hopefully I'll soon be documenting the transition from raw fleece to yarn via the many fibre prep tasks I've been learning about recently!

One of my favourite stages in creating a yarn is going through my stash to assemble all the lovely goodies it will be spun from...

Mmm... so many lovely silky soft shades of green!

As well as several (eight!) shades of dyed Merino wool, I picked out hand dyed silk from Fyberspates, hand dyed soya bean fibre (soysilk) and hand dyed uncarded bamboo fibre from FeltstudioUK, dyed banana threads and some gorgeous undyed naturally coloured fibres including baby camel (golden brown), soya bean (pale gold) and seaweed (also called seacell, a creamy gold colour). You can click on the picture above to see the notes on the photo and find out what's what.

Once all the ingredients are assembled, they get fed into my drum carder...

Lots of carding eventually results in a nice squishy pile of batts (with my trusty Louet drumcarder lurking in the background)...

I love batts...

Batt close up...

Next comes the spinning and I forgot to get pictures of how I tear the batts up into strips so I'll make sure I do that next time. All I got was a snap of the yarn on the bobbin part way through the spin...

This yarn was spun using the 'coreless corespun' technique, which sounds a bit self-contradictory but its just a different version of corespinning where you spin fibre onto a core thread at an angle and get a lovely light yet bulky yarn. When you corespin without a core, you're making the core as you go along by tearing a little of the batt with one hand, letting it spin and then feeding the rest of your fibre on at an angle... all at once! It's quite literally a handful (two hands full!) and takes a bit of practice to get the hang. Esther, the very talented spinner behind Jazzturtle Creations did a fantastic video on coreless corespinning here.

So here's the finished yarn...

I only used two of the batts so I've got plenty left to make some more if it's needed! I'm hoping it's going to a friend of mine to be made into a little baby-sized cardigan :)

Working horses and poines at Lakeland Country Fair...

2010-08-28T14:53:00.003+01:00

I went to a local show for fun rather than work recently (although going to shows always is fun, even when I'm working!). It was the first time I'd been to the Lakeland Country Fair, just down the road from me at Torver, near Coniston.

It was a gorgeous sunny day and although the show was small, there was a lot to see (particularly terriers, Cumberland and Westmorland wrestling and fell racing). But the main thing I wanted to see was a demonstration by the Cumbrian Working Horse and Pony Society because my friend was taking part with her gorgeous Clydesdale mare, Ruby. Me and my mum got to the edge of the show ring early to make sure we had a good view and the whole demo was really interesting.

First up was handsome Dales pony Gilly, demonstrating 'snigging', which is the art of timber extraction using horse power. Here's Gilly pulling two large logs around the arena...

He looked to be enjoying himself...

Then there were two very cute Shetland ponies demonstrating their pack carrying abilities...

This is Morag (the pony, not the lady)...

And this is Mickey (again, pony, not man!)...

Shetland ponies must have been incredibly useful for Scottish crofters in the days before quad bikes (and probably still are useful to modern day crofters and smallholders who prefer using pony-power).

Prince the Shire horse looked very glamorous...

But the star of the show was lovely Ruby the Clydesdale...

Here she is enjoying a well earned break after the demo...

I didn't get many other photographs and I wished I'd snapped some of the spinners because there were loads of them! Four in the craft tent and then a couple more outside on one of the other craft stalls. I did get pictures of a man shearing a sheep though (as if I didn't already have enough photos of men shearing sheep...).

An untrained eye might have wondered what he was up to at first glance...

Is he just hanging out with a fleece on a bench?

Ah, he's got some hand shears...

Oh, and there's a sheep's head poking over his leg, he is actually shearing after all!

I snapped some winning sticks in the stick show...

And to finish on a random note, a stuffed boar's head on the Sillfield Farm stall...

Something for everyone! :)

Felted curly Gotland rug...

2010-08-20T18:13:00.003+01:00

Fibre-related posts have been a bit thin on the ground lately so it's time for some felted rug action! I recently made a wet-felted rug from some gorgeous Gotland fleece that I added to my stash at Woolfest this year.

It's curly...

Very curly!

I made it with a thick layer of Shetland wool on the back for strength and squishyness (although it could be squishier... maybe I should have added a layer of Finn wool in there too).

Here it's folded over so you can see the back...

It was a complete mission to make it and I was totally knackered after a whole day of large-scale felting!

It was easy enough at the start, laying out the curls nice and evenly...

And then piling on layer after layer of lovely white Shetland...

But then it descended into a hard slog and ended up resulting in blood (those bamboo blinds are hard on the hands...), sweat (feltmaking is a full body workout!) and almost tears as I jumped up and down on it in the bath to try and rinse all the soap out!

I'm quite pleased with the results, although it didn't shrink as much as I was expecting (should have made a sample first!) and it's come out almost square at 90 x 100cm, rather than the rectangle I was aiming for. Oh well, I've got a nice curly rug for my troubles and nearly half the Gotland fleece still left to play with! :)

A blur of Cumbrian shows...

2010-08-19T16:55:00.004+01:00

It's an agricultural show time of year and I've been to lots in the past few weeks, either as part of my day job or just for fun! I thought I'd share some highlights from the last few shows that I attended for work.

First up was Skelton Show at the beginning of July. It was the first time we'd had a stall there to promote waste prevention in Cumbria and the sun shone on our brightly coloured stand...

We took our Cumbria Real Nappy Campaign display with us...

And a Womble as our stand mascot (at the request of the show organisers - we don't usually feel the need to take a mascot to shows with us!)...

In true waste prevention style, this is a reused Womble that we made for last year's Dalston Scarecrow Festival. He's not a very lucky Womble though because he didn't win the scarecrow competition or the stand mascot one. We still love him though!

Cockermouth Show at the end of July was much less sunny so we were glad to have our flags to brighten things up a bit...

The RSPB also made up for the lack of sunshine with their dazzling gazebo...

I was very envious of it!

North Lonsdale Show was also towards the end of July and the weather was still gloomy but the show made up for it. It's the first time I've been to this show and although it's a small one, it's got a bit of everything.

Sheep for instance (it was only a matter of time before there was a sheep photo!). These are the first Norfolk Horns I've ever seen...

They're quite a rare breed (listed as 'at risk' by the Rare Breeds Survival Trust on their watchlist).

This is a handsome North Ronaldsay ram...

And a North Ronaldsay ewe...

North Ronaldsays are even more at risk than Norfolk Horns, classified as 'endangered' on the RBST's watchlist.

Even lovely Wensleydales like this one (who is checking out the show) are classed as an 'at risk' breed...

All these sheep belong to a local man called David who I bumped into at the Ulverston Carnival last year when he was outside my Mum's house with one of his Wensleydale ewes and a North Ronaldsay ram on leads. I blogged about the fleeces I got from him and I've been having fun cleaning and sorting them all!

It was nice to say hello to the sheep that grew the lovely Wensleydale fleece I have at home :)

Speaking of fleeces, there were several impressive sheep shearing demos...

And some beautiful heavy horses being shown, like this Clydesdale (this breed is classified as 'vulnerable' by the RBST so it was good to see plenty of them at the show)...

Things took a turn for the bizarre in the floral marquee, with this clog-based flower arrangement...

When I got back outside I saw that the North West Evening Mail newspaper had managed to top last year's 'name that cow' competition with 'name that rabbit'!

The rabbit in question didn't look at all impressed to be the centre of so much attention.

I took this photo in the handicrafts marquee to tease Ade because currant slices are his favourite kind of tray bake (and these ones must be really good!)...

I was dashing around trying to see everything in a short space of time to make sure I wasn't away from my stand for too long so a whole marquee full of rabbits (and rabbit photo opportunities) resulted in just one photo of a rather lovely orange one...

We also had a stand at Cartmel Show, which is a lovely mid-week event at the beginning of August. It's quite a horsey show and I could have spent all day just watching all the different types of horses being shown and judged and going around the jumping ring (shame I had to work!).

I caught this lovely Shire mare and foal resting by their horsebox...

I'd started to think that all heavy horse foals naturally had that swirly textured hair all over their bodies but I realised it was all for effect when I saw about four people busily texturing one poor foal's coat at a show. I still don't know quite what the reason is though...

There were sheep at Cartmel Show too!

A friendly looking Bluefaced Leicester ewe...

And some more lovely Wensleydales...

That's it for now, more to come soon! :)

(Mostly) home grown garden salad...

2010-08-14T16:04:00.002+01:00

Even though the weather here has been bad for several weeks, our little garden struggles on and we've had a few lovely veggie crops from it, including some very tasty (if not very numerous) new potatoes.

Our most recent harvest was a delicious salad featuring home grown sugar snap peas, yellow cherry tomatoes and nasturtium flowers (plus some salad leaves from the organic veg box)...

Mmm... delicious! :D

We've got a lot of nasturtiums and have quite a few of the little brain-like seed pods on the plants, which we're going to use in a Piccalilli. The recipe we'll use is from the amazing River Cottage Preserves book, which I highly recommend if you're interested in jams, chutneys and pickles! :)

Fun at the folk museum...

2010-08-07T17:59:00.002+01:00

While we were on holiday in Yorkshire recently, we visited the Ryedale Folk Museum and it was great fun! The museum is set in three acres of land and there are all sorts of buildings from around the country and through the ages that have been dismantled and rebuilt on the site.

One of the first things you come to is a selection of old craft workshops and a fantastic old village shop (the kind that used to sell everything). Check out the shelves full of vintage packaging...

There were also some very cool old adverts and promotional items in the shop, like this giant packet of chewing gum hung from the ceiling...

And a very random McVitie's biscuit advert on the wall...

Did everyone have a parrot chained to the mantelpiece in days gone by?!

It also turned out that Vimto used to be a very pushy company...

There were some great examples of cruck framed houses, including one called 'Stang End'...

And an example of a crofter's cottage...

The interiors were very impressive, with fantastic exposed beams showing the structure of the buildings and the inside of the thatch...

The windows let in a lovely soft light...

And there were some 'artefacts' dotted about that made us feel at home, such as these baskets of dyed wool (there's a lot of that in my house!)...

And a wooden bowl very similar to the ones we've got that were made by Robin Wood...

I don't know why, but I got really excited about the wash house... Maybe all the threads that I've been reading on Ravelry about washing sheep fleeces have got me lusting after a wash house of my own to save bending over the bath? Very strange... I even bought a book called Laundry Bygones and I've already read it from cover to cover!

The dolly tubs were particularly appealing (I'd never seen one before but I know what some of the designs are called now thanks to an old advert in my Laundry Bygones book) and the museum had a good collection of them, all slightly different in design...

This one's got a wooden dolly peg in it!

This one has a special anti-splash rim!

I'm so sad... :D

I love old wooden boxes like these...

I spotted a lovely bull with curly hair on an old Colman's mustard box...

We had a great time in the Victorian photographer's studio that has been rebuilt on the site. I didn't get a photo of the studio itself because I was instantly distracted by the area that had been set up for people to take their own photos of each other dressed up in the selection of clothes that had been thoughtfully left on a rail next to a painted backdrop and wooden chair!

Ade got stuck in straight away and found an RAF jacket and hat...

And then changed into a slightly more disturbing ensemble of green hat, red dress and some kind of furry creature...

I liked the look of the hat myself...

Once we'd recovered from that, we went outside to meet Max the Clydesdale horse, who turned out to be at the museum on retirement after a lifetime of galloping about on beaches as one of the Cumbrian Heavy Horses team...

After chatting to Max, we wandered up to the Iron Age roundhouse that's been built from scratch using authentic materials and techniques. It was a very impressive structure with a very distinctive shape from the outside...

There was a rustic upright loom inside with some clay weights hanging on the warp...

On the way back from the roundhouse we passed some of the other farm animals that live at the museum, including some friendly hens...

And some rare Lincolnshire Curly Coated pigs that were either too far away to photograph or too near and too fast to get a non-blurry photo!

The vegetable gardens were inspiring but we were a bit confused by the rows of potato plants that seemed to have tomatoes growing off them...

What's that all about?!

There was so much to see, we'd definitely go back if we get the chance in the future. My full set of photos is on Flickr here if you're interested. I'd recommend a visit if you're in the area, especially if you like dolly tubs as much as I do! :)

Fossils, lifeboats and stuffed goats...

2010-08-07T16:17:00.005+01:00

Last month we escaped the wind and rain of Cumbria for a few days in sunny Yorkshire. We stayed on an organic farm near Pickering but went though to the coast nearly every day.

Mmm... blue sky and sea at Robin Hood's Bay...

The Yorkshire coast is great for finding fossils, here's one in a large rock that was far too big to take home...

There were lots of lifeboat-related things to see, which pleased a certain someone who is a big fan of lifeboats...

We visited the RNLI shop and museum at Whitby...

And bought home an educational tea towel, a shopping bag that saves lives and a dramatic fridge magnet...

The Old Coastguard Station at Robin Hood's Bay had a really old painted metal fish outside to raise funds for the RNLI...

Legend has it that the fish flaps its tail when you put a coin in but the coin slot is so small that you never see it happen because you're too busy watching the coin as you drop it in! There was another slightly odd RNLI fund-raiser in Pickering, which was a pair of yellow RNLI wellies standing in a bucket of water. I didn't get a picture of that one though because it was next to the checkouts in the Co-op supermarket and I felt too shy :)

Speaking of slightly odd things in Pickering...

This is Geraldine, a stuffed Angora goat that we saw in an antiques shop in the town.

She's slightly sinister...

But she had a lovely curly coat! Now I'll know exactly where to go if I ever need a stuffed goat :)

Stash from Woolfest 2010!

2010-07-30T10:12:00.003+01:00

It's been a while since Woolfest but I've finally got round to photographing some of the stash I bought home from the show this year. It was mainly fleece-related (four of them!) but I did get some other bits and pieces too...

I can never walk past the Oliver Twist stand without their amazing dyed silk calling to me, so I came home with three lovely colour-ways...

I couldn't resist adding to my stash of gorgeously soft Angora bunny fibre and picked up three bags of fluff from their stand...

Ade spotted a feltmaking book on one stall and I was so amazed by the pictures that I didn't realise it was entirely written in German until I got home!

Never mind though, the pictures inside are so good that you can tell how things are being done even without understanding the text. I always wondered how those concertina felted pieces are made...

There was a lovely little stall selling vintage wool and textile-related things (can't remember the name unfortunately) and despite my best efforts to resist, I bought several bags of lovely beads.

Some wooden ones (the brown ones look like seed pods of some kind)...

And some beautiful glass ones...

I also picked up a calendar for next year from the Shetland Sheep Society stand for a bit of variety after having the Hebridean Sheep Society one in 2010...

On to the fleeces! Here is an unexciting shot of the three I picked up at the fleece sale...

From the left: grey Gotland, black Wensleydale and some white Blue Faced Leicester.

I've been gradually getting round to washing them (an outdoor activity that's on hold at the moment due to all the wind and rain). Here's the BFL on my washing line a few weeks ago...

I've already made something from most of the Gotland fleece, which I'll share in another post. I've sewn up some cotton muslin bags to store my clean fleeces in, as recommended by Alden Amos in his Big Book of Handspinning. Here's the rest of the Gotland fleece in it's new bag...

Towards the end of the show I wandered past the British Coloured Sheep Breeders Association stand and was completely bowled over by a gorgeous naturally coloured Merino fleece (it was almost as if I'd forgotten about the other three fleeces in my car boot and the rest I've still got at home...).

The label on the bag just said 'BIG Merino' and it turned out to be quite an accurate description! Check this out for a ball of fleece...

Never mind 'BIG', it's HUGE!

It's a really lovely fleece though, very clean and a beautiful colour...

I've got big plans for it, I just need a few days of sunshine so that I can get it washed! :)

Woolfest 2010...

2010-06-28T21:58:00.003+01:00

It was Woolfest at the weekend! A great event (as always) with lots of exciting things to see and buy. My hands must have been full of shopping most of the time because I don't seem to have many photos of general goings-on. Head over to the Woolfest website to see their gallery for a pictorial overview of the event.

I do of course have some pictures of sheep. Here are some lovely Portlands...

and some Teeswater sheep (mmm... juicy curls!)

A very cute coloured Ryeland lamb called Nutmeg...

(how do they see with those fluffy faces?!)

And finally, an impressive display of Manx Loaghtan horns...

I did get a few non-sheep photos too. Here's Ade with his favourite kind of spinning wheel, a Great Wheel...

Some natural dye plants on one of the stands, with a jar of lovely red madder roots in amongst the foliage...

We saw a fleece sorting demonstration by Sue from the Natural Fibre Company...

The things I learnt from the demo will hopefully come in useful as I work my way through the *cough*four*cough* raw fleeces that I bought! :D

More raw fleece and Woolfest stash news in my next post... :)

Woolfest is coming...

2010-06-07T21:44:00.004+01:00

Its not long now till Woolfest and I'm really excited already! I've been several times before (I think I've only missed one year since the event started) but that doesn't seem to make it any less exciting...

Last year was particularly good and resulted in me bringing home a huge stash of goodies! :)

When I was on Ravelry recently I noticed that one of the Woolfest organisers was offering people some car stickers to promote the event so I quickly got in touch to claim one and now have a reminder of the excitement to come later this month every time I open my car boot...

Aaargh! I can't wait! :D

Showman's Waggon and bottlefeeding lambs!

2010-05-17T15:57:00.008+01:00

I was going to do some gardening this afternoon but since my legs are aching too much for crouching down to pot up tomatoes (after the crazy late frost killed my other batch), I'll post part two of our weekend trip to Wales instead :)

We were going to stay in a B&B for a couple of nights while we were in Wales for the Smallholder Festival but then had a look on the Under the Thatch website and noticed something rather exciting was available on the dates we had in mind...

It's a Showman's Waggon, built in the 1940s as the home of a travelling showman from a circus! Happily, there were no traces of the circus left and I managed not to think about what it would have been like in there when the clowns and monkeys came round for a cup of tea... aargh!

I didn't get many pictures from inside but there are some on Under the Thatch's website here. It's an amazing little place, perched in a fantastic location on a 200 acre farm in mid-Wales.

This is the view you get from the kitchen while doing the washing up...

And this is the view you get if you walk around the back while Ade's peering out of the bedroom window...

The views across the valley are stunning and the area was teeming with wildlife. We saw several pairs of Pied Flycatchers, lots of Red Kites flying over, Redstarts, Nuthatches and many other birds. There are water voles and otters in the river Wye at the bottom of the valley (although we didn't have time to look for them this weekend) and there is a special tree-house hide to watch badgers from!

We went down to the tree-house at dusk on Friday night, armed with peanuts to put out for the badgers. After sitting quietly for half an hour or so, one or two badgers started appearing on the ground beneath the tree-house. Two of them spent ages snuffling around to get the peanuts we'd put out for them and we got fantastic views from right above them!

There are 400 sheep on the farm and the hard winter has meant a bumper crop of five orphaned lambs that need bottle feeding twice a day. I've always wanted to bottle feed a lamb so I was very excited when we got the chance to help out!

We didn't get many photos of the momentous event unfortunately. This is about the best one...

The lambs were lovely and once they'd drunk all the milk they hung around for a fuss, leaning on your leg or chewing a shoelace. I wanted to take them home! :)

It was a great place to stay and the badger watching and lamb-feeding made the weekend even more enjoyable. It was a shame to have to leave after just a couple of days and we'll definitely try to go back soon for longer so we can explore the area more.

Smallholder Festival 2010...

2010-05-17T12:16:00.006+01:00

We were in Wales at the weekend for the Smallholder and Garden Festival, which we went to last year and enjoyed so much that we had to come back! Its a great show, with lots to see and plenty of inspiration for would-be smallholders. I seem to have come away with a lot of animal photos so I'll start off with a few of those.

Goats first (mainly baby ones!). Here's a lovely Golden Guernsey kid...

An Angora goat with her kids...

Some Toggenburg goat kids posing in formation...

An adult Toggenburg having what looks like a very uncomfortable nap...

More Toggenburg kids (I think Toggenburgs might be my favourite type of goat)...

Two very large and impressive goats that are trained to pull a carriage...

And Ade chatting up a black Anglo Nubian goat whilst knocking back some farmhouse perry...

Sheep next, starting with an enormous Jacob ram with impressive horns...

To my shame, I can't tell (even after looking in my sheep books) whether these are Llanwenog or Clun Forest. There's a mean looking set of teeth on the front one though...

And a pretty Soay ewe, almost camouflaged in the straw...

There were plenty of other creatures at the show, including a noisy pavilion full of chickens...

A shed full of pigs, where I saw this sleepy family of Tamworths...

A pretty Welsh pony with a little foal...

And a reasonably cheery looking donkey...

As well as taking endless photographs of animals (the full set of which is on Flickr here, or you can check out last year's photos here), we ate A LOT of food. The farmers market at the show has some fantastic food on offer, including tasty Scotch eggs from the Handmade Scotch Egg Company, amazing cakes and tray-bakes from the Love Patisserie and delicious ice cream from Wild Fig. Cider and perry fans were spoilt for choice, with Ralph's and Gwynt y Ddraig getting plenty of visits from a certain someone over the course of the day...

Here's Ade tucking into a vegetarian Welsh Oggie and some farmhouse cider...

We watched some exciting scurry driving...

Saw some shiny tractors...

Admired the Welsh textiles on offer from Jane Beck but resisted the urge to buy something (which was tricky!)...

There were also several sheep shearing demonstrations over the course of the day and we managed to get a good view of an afternoon demo. The first part of the demo involved showing us how quickly an expert can shear a sheep with electric clippers...

Then he showed us how it's done with traditional hand shears, which took quite a bit longer and looked trickier but was much quieter and is obviously a much cheaper option for smallholders wanting to shear a small number of their own sheep...

The shearer was obviously an expert and the sheep kept very still, despite only having been handled once or twice in their lives before. I don't know how he manages to keep track of which bit he's shearing as he flips the sheep from one side to the other...

This is how a professional grips a sheep between his thighs!

Check out the size of those pointy blades!

The finished hand-shorn sheep only looks slightly less smooth than an electrically clipped one...

Mmm... big squishy rolled up fleece!

Rolled in the correct Wool Marketing Board-approved fashion, of course.

So that's it for the Smallholder Show 2010. I was going to include the story of the exciting place we stayed at in this post but since it's become such a whopper, I'll save that for another post! :)

Out and about during Compost Awareness Week 2010...

2010-05-09T16:47:00.012+01:00

It was the last day of Compost Awareness Week yesterday and we had a great time in the Ulverston sun, talking to people about all things compost-related (and some things that weren't compost related!). The Recycle for Cumbria team did several events around the county during the week, a list of which is on our website's event pages.

Here's Katharine on the stall again (there are other members of staff in the team, honest! In fact, there's photographic evidence here and here), ready to talk about the different properties of male and female urine and which is best to put on a compost heap (I blame the National Trust for that particular discussion)...

But we didn't just talk about wee all day... there were lots of discussions about good composting techniques, questions about what can be composted and plenty of interest in Cumbria's new county-wide subsidised compost bin offer.

Mmm... subsidised compost bins...

The theme for this year's Compost Awareness Week was 'give it a grow', with the aim of encouraging people to try something new. We wanted to persuade people who'd never made compost at home before to give it a try and we also hoped to encourage those that were already keen composters to put something extra into their compost bin.

Lots of people don't realise that you can compost such a wide range of things, so its great to surprise someone with a new composting suggestion. Human (or animal) hair and the contents of your vacuum bag? Shredded paper and cardboard toilet roll tubes? Tea bags, coffee grounds and egg shells? All good ingredients for a compost heap!

There's a great list of everything that can be composted (plus the things that shouldn't be, although that list is quite short) here. Its from the composting pages of the Recycle Now campaign website and the list is conveniently split into 'greens' and 'browns'. This is simple composting-speak for the wetter, nitrogen-rich things (greens) and the drier, carbon-rich things (browns) that can go in a compost bin. A happy heap has a 50/50 mixture of greens and browns.

Here's part of the display on our information stand...

We had lots of useful information to give people about making compost at home, plus some Love Food, Hate Waste leaflets and a selection of tempting (and useful) freebies, including pens and pencils made from recycled plastic, colourful compost-related fridge magnets and some brilliant promotional packets of lettuce seeds (spread out along the front edge of the table).

A company called Suttons provide a service where you can design your own 'custom' seed packet and fill it with a choice of several vegetable or flower seeds. We had some packets made with a composting design, following the 'give it a grow' theme and promoting the idea of making compost at home (as well as giving our website and helpline numbers) on the back of the pack.

We went for lettuce seeds because they're so easy to grow and can be grown in a pot or indoors if people don't have much space. I think they look really good...

And they were certainly popular 'giveaways'. We always like to try and choose promotional items that are useful and made from recycled materials where possible. It would be crazy to promote waste prevention with useless items that end up in the bin!

The lettuce seeds also linked well with the other aims of the Compost Awareness Week 'give it a grow' theme, which included encouraging people to try growing some of their own food (like lettuce!) and promoting the benefits of peat-free compost over the more traditional peat-based version, which can be very environmentally damaging. Peat-free compost is often made from the garden waste collections what many councils provide, so encouraging people to use that in their gardens is a nice way to close the recycling loop.

So that's it! Another week of roadshows over till next time (which will be Recycle Week at the end of June). I'll leave you with a picture of our leaflet holder, Billy the composting kid and his slightly disturbing blank stare...

Hitting the road for Real Nappy Week 2010...

2010-04-28T19:17:00.014+01:00

Its international Real Nappy Week this week, so me and the team from work have been out and about around Cumbria, spreading the word about how fantastic real nappies are!

Here's our stall in sunny Kendal today, with Katharine waiting to introduce people to our slightly scary model baby...

I'd better explain a bit about real nappies in case there's anyone reading who's never heard of them. They're washable, reusable alternatives to single use disposable nappies. Real nappies are made of fabric but if you're thinking 'squares of terry towelling and nappy pins' then think again! Modern real nappies come in a huge variety of different fabrics (organic cotton, bamboo, micro fibre, hemp...) and are available in a range of clever designs that are very easy to use.

They're very cute too! Here's our nappy table, with a range of different real nappies on display...

If you're still thinking about the terry squares and nappy pins of old then you're probably also thinking of boil washes and soaking nappies... but that's not the case with the new generation of real nappies! Washing machines and detergents are so effective these days that nappies can be washed at much lower temperatures and nappy liners catch the messy stuff so that it can be flushed down the loo - a much better place for it than in a landfill site!

Our 'washing line' of real nappies always looks cheerful at events...

As well as talking to people about how easy real nappies are to use, we like to promote the fact that using real nappies can save people a lot of money (at least £500 compared to the cost of disposable nappies) and saves huge amounts of waste from going to landfill.

Around 8 million disposable nappies are thrown away in the UK every day and each baby goes through an average of 5850 nappy changes in their lifetime. If every nappy change involves putting a disposable nappy in the bin, it comes to the same weight as two dairy cows! Eeek!

Here's another section of our display, on the middle board you might just be able to make out some little posters we were sent by Mooncup as part of their new 'love your vagina' advertising campaign (which has been a definite talking point!)...

Its great to be able to get out there with some real nappies, to show people what they're like and answer questions. We're lucky to have a great network of real nappy retailers in Cumbria, many of whom are very passionate about real nappies and come to our events to provide expert advice.

The Cumbria Real Nappy Campaign roadshows are rolling on for the rest of this week (there's a list of venues on our website here) and then it's all change for Compost Awareness Week straight after!

I'll leave you with a gratuitous bunting and table cloth photo, just because I'm proud of my sewing skillz...

Camp Pluckyfluff UK!

2010-04-21T21:10:00.009+01:00

Something very exciting happened in March... Lexi Boeger of Pluckyfluff fame came to the UK to teach an art yarn spinning workshop and I was there! Ack! I was so excited I thought I might burst!

You'd probably need to be a spinning anorak to have heard of Lexi but if you're at all interested in textile arts and crafts, it's worth checking out the Pluckyfluff website or even getting hold of Lexi's fantastic book, Intertwined, which is full of stunning photos of amazing yarn, as well as tips and techniques for spinning and using art yarns.

It was the Pluckyfluff website that inspired me to start spinning when I stumbled across it a few years ago. I wanted to try creating something as amazing and one-of-a-kind as the things I saw Lexi spin on her blog. She's my spinning hero so I was very excited when I heard she was coming to the UK to teach a workshop in Bristol. I never thought that one day I'd actually get to meet Lexi and have a discussion about harvesting men's belly button fluff for the purposes of spinning... ah, happy days!

Anyway, enough waffle, time for some pictures! First up, the obligatory 'room full of spinners' photo...

We had a lovely big room to spin in. Here's Lexi showing us the 'tail-spun' technique for spinning lots of lovely raw locks into a yarn...

People came from far and wide for this workshop... standing behind Lexi is a lady from France and her boyfriend, who had come along to keep her company and take lots of photos for her (what a nice man! Just as well that I don't know the French for 'can I have some of your belly button fluff please?').

Here's Lexi again, carding up a crazy batt on the drum carder...

I don't know if it was me shaking with the excitement of it all, or Lexi being in constant motion, but I hardly had any photos of her that weren't blurry! There was also the continuous 'make notes or take photos' dilemma because there was so much to take in every time Lexi showed us something. Several of us were wishing we had more arms for spinning the trickier yarns, but it would have been useful when watching the demos too!

Mmm... yarn table!

We all put our yarns out on display after we tried each technique. This photo is from quite early on... there was a yarn mountain by the end of the weekend! Not sure what the sheep was doing there, but it seemed happy enough.

Lexi spinning an 'aura' yarn...

Check out the blurry arms, she's never still! I didn't get round to having a go at an 'aura' yarn but its something I'm hoping to get around to soon. Its several techniques at once, all at the same time, so I'll have to be feeling calm and collected when I do give it a go!

We had to be careful not to let any detailed photos of Lexi's wheel get onto the internet as its a top secret prototype of a new wheel that she's been working on with Majacraft (purveyors of fine spinning wheels from New Zealand). Its going to be the ultimate wheel for spinning art yarn and it's infinitely adjustable so that you can spin lace-weight yarn one minute and something as thick as your thumb the next. I think it's going to be called aura, after Lexi's yarn technique. There's already a page for it on the Majacraft website here but nothing on there as yet...

We were allowed to have a go on Lexi's wheel over the weekend and although it takes a lot of getting used to, it certainly seems capable of a lot. The best thing I liked about it was the new flyer, which is a reeeally clever design. So simple but so effective... I want one! I'll definitely upgrade the wild flyer on my Suzie Pro if Majacraft make the new one available to buy separately.

Time for some yarn photos! This is Parma Violet, a yarn plied with invisible thread to make lots of wiggles and coils...

Next is a slightly random yarn called Jazzercise, which has sequin strips and shredded black stockings added in...

This unassuming yarn is my first ever attempt at core-less core-spinnning, called Swamp Music...

I've wanted to try this technique for ages so it was great to finally give it a go. Its a bit of a faff but probably gets easier the more you do it and the results are fantastic. There's a brilliant video tutorial of this technique by Esther of Jazzturtle Creations on her blog.

Mohairy yarn, made by spinning clouds of carded mohair around a core thread (a sparkly turquoise eyelash yarn in this case)...

Here's an extreme tailspun yarn, made with lots of naturally coloured Wensleydale locks (it is actually yarn and not just a pile of fleece, honest!)...

Close-up curly bits!

And this last yarn is called Oracular Spectacular due to the way it makes my eyes hurt with its intense purple-ness...

It's a fabric yarn, made by spinning strips of torn fabric around a core thread (hot pink mohair in this case).

I did spin several other yarns during the workshop, but I gave most of them to Lexi for her giant skein project. She's completed the enormo-skein now and its apparently over ten miles long. That's a lot of handspun! The last I heard, it was stranded somewhere unknown on its way to Norway because of the volcanic ash cloud. There are several videos of the whole painful skein-winding process on Youtube here.

I can't think of anyone else who would attempt a project like that. Lexi really is an inspiration! :)

Easter treats...

2010-04-05T19:12:00.001+01:00

We've been having a lazy kind of Easter weekend... a few nice walks (with some wild food foraging thrown in), a couple of films (Moon and Million Dollar Baby were good) and plenty of tasty things to eat.

Oh, and chocolate of course!

Mmm... home made chocolate crispy nests with Cadbury's Mini Eggs...

There were more than three but we scoffed most of them before I managed to get my camera out! They're all gone now :)

Mum got me some gorgeous little daffodils as an Easter treat...

They're tiny! Very cute though and they smell lovely too...

Hope everyone's had a good Easter!

A loooong yarn...

2010-03-28T18:03:00.001+01:00

I surprised myself recently by spinning an extremely long thin yarn. My default setting ranges from fairly chunky to extreme chunkiness, so I'm not quite sure how I managed this...

345 metres of corespun skinniness!

It was spun from two of these Sugar Plum batts that I carded a few months ago...

Mmm... sugary pink!

Its a mixture of hand dyed soysilk from FeltstudioUK, a hand dyed merino/tencel blend from Fyberspates and a nef (cashmere, baby alpaca and silk) blend from Fyberspates, commercially dyed merino and some hand dyed angora kid locks.

Because the yarn is corespun, its very light and fuzzy. I don't know why it wanted to be so thin, maybe to teach me how time consuming skinny spinning is! It might already have a new home to go to, I need to get in touch with its potential owner to see if she wanted something so thin... :)

Handmade wooden comb...

2010-03-23T21:06:00.002Z

I had a very clear idea of what I wanted to get Ade for his Birthday this year. He's been after a comb for his beard, to replace his flimsy plastic one (complete with sad broken teeth) and he was keen on getting a wooden comb.

I thought it would be great to find something a bit special for him... something hand-crafted... ideally made in the UK by someone with an environmentally friendly way of working.

It was a tall order but then I remembered reading about Geoff King of Woodland Treasures in a couple of the magazines I subscribe to. I first read about Geoff in issue 38 of Reforesting Scotland and then again in issue 60 of Permaculture Magazine (both fantastic publications that I've learnt a lot from, check them out!).

I hunted out the magazines and re-read the articles, which were all about Geoff's stunning hand carved wooden jewellery and combs, plus lots of detail about the way Geoff works (using salvaged, recycled, storm-felled and local British hardwoods), his love of nature and the beautiful part of the world he lives in on a smallholding in northern Scotland. He sounded like the perfect man to make a special beard comb!

I checked out Geoff's website and got in touch to ask if he'd fancy working on a comb commission. He wrote back to say that he did and we went from there, discussing comb sizes and designs, types of beard and suitable woods for the comb. It was great fun!

Here's the finished article, a walnut wood Birthday beard comb...

It really is a work of art and feels so smooth to touch. It even smells amazing because Geoff treats his finished pieces with a mixture of plant oils. When it arrived in the post I couldn't stop sniffing it! Its beautifully made and finished and Ade says it's good to use too. Hurrah!

The comb arrived in a lovely presentation box but I thought it would be good to make some kind of pouch to keep it in and for travelling purposes so it didn't get damaged.

I thought about pouch designs and possible materials but then decided it'd be easiest to let Ade decide what he wanted, so I made him a gift voucher and gave it to him with the comb...

He fancies something made from felt so I'm looking forward to coming up with a design and doing a bit of feltmaking!

The whole process of having something specially made was really enjoyable and I'd definitely do it again. I'm hoping for an excuse to get something from Geoff for myself in the future too... I've never seen anything quite like his work. There's a raven brooch design he's done that I particularly like... maybe I'll drop some hints at Christmas! :)

Coastal Birthday weekend...

2010-03-21T20:06:00.002Z

It's Ade's Birthday today and we've just got back from a long weekend away in Dumfries and Galloway. We didn't do too much, just had a relaxing few days by the sea.

We wandered around the rocky shoreline and sat on the beach...

Collected shells and admired the seaweed, especially this lovely red variety...

There is so much fantastic seaweed on this coast, with a wide range of colours and textures. I started cooking up plans to spin a seaweed yarn but it could be a bit slippery and smelly... :)

I did spin some regular yarn while I was there though. How's about this for a spinning venue?!

Spinning by the sea! The weather was so nice that I was able to take my wheel out on the deck for the ultimate spinning view...

And I had a beautiful bag of Hobbledehoy's Frosty Plum batts to spin. Perfect!

We had to head home today but since it's Ade's Birthday, we took a detour to check out a stone circle near Dumfries...

And a rare bird at Caerlaverock WWT nature reserve. I didn't get any pictures of the American Wigeon we went to see but there were plenty of Whooper Swans to photograph...

We had a great time. I think Ade likes the present I got him... I was certainly excited by it! I think it deserves its own blog post so once I get some photos of it, I'll show it off to everyone! :)

Sushi!

2010-03-07T19:16:00.002Z

We got a fantastic sushi making kit from friends as a Christmas present. It contained all the hard to find ingredients, essential equipment (rolling mat!) and a lovely set of special Japanese-style serving dishes with wooden chopsticks.

Our first go at making maki sushi resulted in this...

Slightly lumpy and uneven but delicious!

Excuse the blurry photo, I was in a bit of a rush to take it because we were so hungry by the time we'd made the sushi! Its asparagus in the centre of the maki and we had it set out on the special dishes with little bowls of miso soup. There was slightly too much wasabi in it for my liking but having the soup on hand helped!

According to the brilliant Yo Sushi book that we got as part of the present, maki is quite an adventurous thing for beginners to make, so we didn't feel too bad about it being a bit rough around the edges. I can imagine that the whole process is very zen-like once you get the hang of it. I'm looking forward to making some more! :)

The Chief comes to stay...

2010-01-07T17:06:00.001Z

Say hello to The Chief...

He arrived at Christmas, carefully wrapped up, with a little air hole cut in the paper so that he could breathe. I had my suspicions that he'd been hiding in Ade's sock drawer for some time in the run up to Christmas but everyone denies it...

The Chief was handmade in the UK by Donna Wilson and lived at The Edge Gallery in Lancaster before he decided to come and live with us. He's officially a 'mitten kitten' but The Chief isn't remotely kitten-ish, he's a fully grown knitted cat. Ade named him and he seems pleased with his new title.

He particularly likes to lean up against our Welsh blanket and cushions, surveying the room with a superior air. Although he never seems to know quite what to do with his very long tail...

New Year...

2010-01-01T18:28:00.002Z

Its 2010! Sounds very futuristic to me...

It was a full moon last night and the combination of that and the snow meant it was bright enough to go out without a torch. There aren't any street lights near us and normally you walk out of the front door into complete darkness, so it was exciting to be out in the moonlight!

I'd stocked up on sparklers so we walked up onto the common after midnight and had a play with those. Ade's a very confident sparkler-wielder...

But I seemed to pull a variety of strange faces with mine. I am enjoying myself, honest!

The sky last night also featured a partial lunar eclipse at about half past 7, which I found impossible to photograph, but was interesting to see. It was also a blue moon, so a very exciting evening for moon fans everywhere...

Happy New Year! :)

Birthday...

2010-01-01T18:02:00.002Z

Hot on the heels of Christmas comes my Birthday! It's the day after Boxing Day and this year it was particularly momentous and/or traumatic because I turned 30...

Mum marked the occasion with a spectacular lemon cake decorated with fondant buttons...

Mmm... cake!

There are only about two slices left and they'll probably be polished off later this evening. It's delicious! :)

The day after my Birthday we went up onto the common behind our house to inspect the snow, which has stuck around for ages because it's so cold.

You can just about see the snowy Coniston mountain range in the background behind our rosy faces...

All the tarns were frozen solid too. This is Ade standing on Leech Tarn...

He made it safely back to the edge. I was too chicken to walk on the ice, must be down to my advanced age! :D

Christmas...

2010-01-01T17:20:00.001Z

Its been a while since I last blogged! Christmas wasn't too long ago though so I thought I'd post some pictures of what we got up to on holiday by the sea in Dumfries and Galloway.

This was the early(ish) morning view from where we stayed...

It was very cold and frosty, which meant pretty frosted shells on the beaches...

Frozen seaweed...

A frozen boat...

And such a thick frost on the car that it looked like white fur on the roof...

We watched some beautiful sunsets...

The sun shone on Christmas Day so we spent the morning on the beach (and learnt how to use the timer on our camera!)...

We loved being so close to the sea and just pottering about for a few days. Its a lovely part of the world. Hope we can go back soon! :)

I've moved!

2009-11-25T18:47:00.000Z

Finally got round to moving my blog so that I'm 'flyhoof' instead of 'skeffto'. I've been a lazy blogger of late, partly because I've been plotting some changes, but I'll be putting some nice new exciting things on here very soon to make up for it! :)

Sunshine at the Westmorland Show...

2009-09-10T21:09:00.001+01:00

It was amazingly sunny for the Westmorland County Show today! There is always a huge amount to see and do at this show. I had a good wander around with my camera and saw all kinds of weird and wonderful things.

This cow scrubbing machine looked fun (for cows anyway, maybe too bristly for me!)

I had a good old grope of the fleeces in the fleece show...

Owen Jones, a swill basket maker who lives just a couple of miles up the road from me, was plying his trade over by the Traditional Crafts tent (his lovely woven rush hat was attracting admiring comments from everyone!)...

This amazing wallhanging was inside the Traditional Crafts tent...

Its a kind of free-form hooky-proddy/proggy rag-rug style hanging made by the Lunesdale Rugmakers and the details in it were stunning. Sparkly silver fabric in the wording at the top, dangly bits in the river at the bottom and stuffed tights as cobbles! It was about 6ft long and must have taken ages to make.

Over in the WI tent I encountered some knitted creatures (sheep, camel and dragon!)...

The vintage tractors were sparkling in the sun...

Of course there were plenty of animals, hundreds of them! There were lots of lovely sheep...

Some handsome heavy horses...

And some gorgeous goats...

All hoping to go home with one of these...

I'm looking forward to next year's show already! :)

Are you knitting another bowl?!

2009-09-08T16:42:00.001+01:00

Errr... I might be! :)

I've had a bowl knitting obsession recently that has resulted in over 10 small knitted bowls of varying size and success. They're knitted in the round on double pointed needles to a pattern I made up as I went along...

There's not much point to them but I've enjoyed tweaking the pattern to improve the shape and it's been a good introduction to using DPNs. I'm going to felt one or two of the bowls too, just to see what happens (hopefully they'll get sturdier and fuzzier!).

I also had a go at crocheting a bowl after a quick crochet lesson from the multi-talented Carolyn when she was visiting a few weeks ago. Once I'd got the hang of the basic technique, I thought that crochet would make an even better bowl than knitting but I've run into a problem that I can't seem to solve...

I start out crocheting a round flat base and then decrease by a few stitches to create the sides. Then I keep going for a few rounds to try and get some height to the sides but the bowl just seems to get wider and floppier, curving in on itself. It turns into a low, flat beret type of shape. Maybe a cat beret... If any crocheters out there have got some bowl-making tips, let me know!

In other crochet news, I won a lovely wrist-warmer pattern in this give-away on Rebecca's fantastic blog! The wrist-warmers look great and I'm looking forward to learning some new crochet skills when I give them a whirl. You can buy Rebecca's crochet designs at her Etsy and Folksy shops :)

Roadtrip part II...

2009-09-01T14:24:00.001+01:00

While we were staying with my Dad on stage two of last week's roadtrip, we spent a day at the National Trust's Wimpole Hall and Home Farm property in Cambridgeshire. We got in free thanks to Ade being NT staff and had a good nosey around the walled garden and farm (which took all day, looking in the hall will have to wait till next time!).

The walled garden was very impressive, with neat gravel paths and tidy hedges...

There were some big vegetable plots...

and a display of squash and chilli plants in the greenhouse (check out the purple upwards-pointing chillies!)...

The home farm was the most exciting bit though. It's one of the Rare Breed Survival Trust's approved conservation centres and there were lots of interesting animals to see.

This White Park calf was very sweet and had amazing eyelashes!

There was an Exmoor pony...

Some Leicester Longwool sheep...

and lots of cheeky Bagot goats lounging around and getting up to mischief...

There were also Dartmoor and Shetland ponies, Shire horses, Longhorn, Gloucester, Irish Moiled and Shetland cattle, Norfolk Horn, Hebridean Whitefaced Woodland, Manx Loghtan and Portland sheep and a wide variety of chickens and ducks. It was a rare breeds bonanza! There were pigs too, but we didn't get to see them because they were being kept away from the public for their own safety (swine flu precautions I suppose).

As well as visits to Gib and Wimpole, we went to Lincoln, Cambridge and Leamington Spa and played a round of disc golf (which my shoulder is still aching from, I'm such a lightweight!). And I caught up on some knitting, more of which next time... :)

Roadtrip part I...

2009-08-31T20:49:00.001+01:00

I suppose it's a bit over the top to call it a roadtrip but we've just got back from a week away visiting friends and family in a variety of locations. We trekked across to Lincolnshire, then down to Cambridgeshire and back home via the West Midlands. It was a few hundred miles but worth it to catch up with lovely people, visit some nice places (old and new), eat lots of tasty food and enjoy the tropical southern sunshine while it was cold, wet and windy back home in Cumbria.

On the way from Lincolnshire to Cambridgeshire we dropped in on one of my favourite places, Gibraltar Point National Nature Reserve...

I love that big sky and huge sandy beach!

Gib is a really special place that I've loved since the first time I went there on a field trip during my A-Levels. Its a fantastic haven for wildlife, with all kinds of habitats from salt marshes and sand dunes to freshwater marsh and woodland. Gib is home to all kinds of wildlife (including rare Natterjack Toads) and is an important stopping off point for migrating birds.

There is also a lot of this stuff...

Hippophae rhamnoides (or Sea Buckthorn to its friends!). This thorny shrub is native to the Lincolnshire coast and provides a crop of berries rich in vitamin C for birds and adventurous humans to scoff (don't pick the berries on a nature reserve though!).

I did my university dissertation on Sea Buckthorn and found out all kinds of interesting stuff about it. All the 'scientific' facts about the plant's ecological importance went into the essay but I enjoyed all the random facts and legends so much that I made a little leaflet to accompany my dissertation called 'not just a prickly bush'.

I know, I'm a bit sad but when you read that Hippophae rhamnoides means 'shiny horse' and that it was apparently the snack of choice for Pegasus, you can't ignore it can you?! Even my Dad felt inspired to get involved with my Sea Buckthorn project and collected all sorts of weird and wonderful Sea Buckthorn products from his travels in Germany. I've had alcoholic beverages, biscuits, face creams, soap and sweets made with Sea Buckthorn berries and I still get a regular supply of the Ricola Sea Buckthorn sweets today. Thanks Dad! :)

I spent a bit of time volunteering at Gib while I was at uni and then went to live there as a residential volunteer after I graduated. After only a few weeks I was lucky enough to land a paid job at Gib, working in the environmental education team. And I met Ade, who was the Shorebird Warden at the time, keeping an eye on the colony of Little Terns that nest at Gib, (he was living in a shed on the beach and getting sunburnt eyelids from falling asleep in the dunes!). I had a great time while I was there. I miss Gib!

So it was good to go back, even just for a few hours. It looked like it was going to rain but it didn't, it was windy though!

We were soon on our way again, heading to my Dad's via the Batemans Brewery (it seemed rude not to call in since we were passing!). More tales of roadtrip adventures tomorrow... :)

Sheep eyelids, holding owls and 'name that cow' at Cartmel Show

2009-08-06T09:18:00.001+01:00

I was at Cartmel Show yesterday, working on a stand for the day job. I managed to escape from the stand a few times to take some photos and eat a chocolate and banana crepe.

There was a good turn out of sheep and it was funny overhearing people who never usually get a good look at sheep discussing the different breeds...

'Ooh, that one's got a strange looking lumpy face'

A Bluefaced Leicester, hopefully oblivious to the insults.

'Look, these sheep are wearing masks!'

Kerry Hills, which are always going to remind me of comic-book bad guys from now on.

There were plenty of Herdwicks on show and I realised for the first time today what incredibly thick eyelids they seem to have. I can't fault them for it, since they live on the Cumbrian fells and it gets pretty bleak up there (I'd want all the natural adaptations I could get if I lived where they do!).

It does explain why they always look a bit sleepy and have a dreamy kind of expression, like this little lamb...

Gratuitous eyelid closeup...

That must be the thickest, furriest eyelid you've seen! Its a wonder they can even open their eyes at all!

Anyway, enough about eyelids. I held an owl!

I can't remember what kind it was. The owl looked a bit bored but I like to think that it was pleased to be out on a sunny day, standing on people's hands.

We had a good view from our stand of a lovely banner advertising the local newspaper's 'name that cow' competition...

The man on the stand wasn't sure if the animal on the poster was actually a cow and I couldn't see any udders on it but as long its friends don't see the poster and ridicule it for posing as a girl, it probably doesn't matter :)

Ceramic buttons!

2009-08-03T13:09:00.000+01:00

Two blog posts in one day?! I've been a very lazy blogger recently and although lots of things have been going on, I haven't got round to updating. Aim for August: more blogging! :)

I was very excited to finally get my hands on the ceramic buttons I made at a class a few weeks ago. I went to pick them up from the Brewery Arts Centre where the class was held and then they distracted me all the way home in the car! It was probably quite dangerous but I did manage to get back in one piece (me and the buttons!).

My favourites are the ones with a fibre-related theme (no surprises there!). I knitted some little pieces of fabric and also used some locks of fleece to create textures on the buttons. The full set of my button photos is on Flickr.

Here's a selection of the paler buttons...
These dark teal coloured buttons are the result of a happy oxide-related accident (I didn't really know what I was doing!)...
I'm not sure if I'd ever be able to re-create the dark teal buttons if I tried, which is a shame because they're my favourites. I'll be able to give it a go though because the course tutor (James Hake, who makes fantastic ceramic art) let me have the leftover porcelain after the class! I must get it out and have a play :)

Shetland fleeces in the sun...

2009-08-03T12:18:00.001+01:00

I finally got round to checking out my Shetland fleeces the other day. I've got three lovely naturally coloured ones from the same man that I got two Wensleydale fleeces from.

Here are the Shetlands, fresh out of the sack...

...and then rolled out in the sunshine, as though the owners have gone off for a swim...

I found these unexpected tiny little locks in the grey fleece...

They're small but perfectly formed and I'm hoping I can keep a few separate from the rest of the fleece to do something special with.

I thought there would be lots of nasty daggy bits to pull off the fleeces but they're not too bad, just greasy. When I'm feeling energetic I'll be having a monster fleece-washing session! :)

Flapjack recipe and changes afoot...

2009-07-22T10:47:00.001+01:00

I made a batch of date and molasses flapjack last night and thought I'd share my recipe. I know flapjack isn't one of the most complicated things to make but it took me a long time to get a result that wasn't rock hard or completely crumbly! The combination of Mum's recipe, good tins (Mermaid ones in our case, expensive but brilliant and made to last forever) and non-stick baking paper means great flapjack every time!

This is the flapjack (or 'flappy' as its known in our house) fresh out of the oven...

Date and molasses flapjack recipe
Ingredients:
- 4oz butter
- 3oz muscovado sugar
- 1oz chopped dates
- 1 tsp molasses
- 1 large tsp golden syrup
- 8.5oz porridge oats

I tend to use organic ingredients, except for the golden syrup as I can't find an organic one that's as nice as Tate & Lyle!

Directions:
Melt the butter, sugar, molasses and golden syrup in a pan over a medium heat. Chop up the dates into the mixture. Scissors is the easiest way to do it, chop them as fine or as chunky as you like.

Once the mixture has melted, turn off the heat, chuck in the oats and carefully stir them in. It'll look like too many oats but keep going and make sure the melted mixture is completely mixed in.

Line a baking tin with greaseproof/non-stick baking paper (or use that special reusable stuff if you've got it, I keep meaning to buy some!). My tin is about 6" x 10" and 1" deep but anything vaguely that size should work.

Tip the mixture into the lined tin and smooth it flat with the back of a metal spoon or something. Then put it in a medium oven for about 15-20mins. I put my electric fan-assisted oven to around 160 degrees C. Once you can smell the flapjack and see the surface bubbling slightly it's usually done.

Take it out of the oven and mark out the slices on the surface of the flapjack (I usually divide it into 10). Let it cool in the tin and then remove it and cut it up properly once it's gone a bit more solid. When it's totally cool, put it in an airtight container and it's usually good for a week but tends to be eaten before then!

Mmm... lovely date-y bits!

If you don't like the idea of date and molasses, leave them out, but put in an extra half oz of sugar and a bit of extra golden syrup instead of the molasses for a plain flapjack.

Other winning flappy combos... cherry and coconut, dried apricot and almond, chocolate pieces with chopped brazil or hazelnuts, three seed (pumpkin, sunflower and sesame), dried apple and cinnamon.

In non-flapjack news, I'm making progress with getting my head around the idea of selling some fibre-related things on Etsy (and maybe other places). I'm thinking batts, yarn, handmade buttons (more news on that once I get some photos!), finished knitted/woven/felted objects etc etc.

I've started to realise that 'skeffto' might not be the best name for a crafty venture. Although it means something to me and a few people who know me, the rest of the world seems to struggle with it. People always look a bit blank when I tell them it and often can't get the hang of spelling it (skefto? skeffko?)!

It doesn't seem like a good plan to have a business name that people can't get their head around! I've decided that I should have the same name for as many things as possible (blog, Etsy, Ravelry, email, Twitter, Craftster etc) so that people can find me easily. This means a bit of work to change my name and a move of blog so I need to get it right!

I've been thinking of 'skeffto' alternatives and have come up with 'flyhoof' and 'giddyhorse', which both relate to the logo that I'm thinking of using - a flying stickhorse. I know, that sounds weird but it doesn't look so bad, honest! I like the idea of flyhoof but don't feel as attached to it as I do giddyhorse. But then giddyhorse sounds a bit 'cute' and childlike to me, which is maybe not so good?

Any input on this would be much appreciated! :)

Local fleeces and... dog fibre?!

2009-07-12T12:10:00.002+01:00

The fleece man rang! I'd started to think that the man I met outside my Mum's house during the Ulverston carnival (with two of his sheep on leads) wasn't going to call me but he did and I went round to rummage around in his garage a couple of days ago.

He had all sorts in there, Greyface Dartmoor (which has a HUGE fleece!), Jacob, North Ronaldsay, Herdwick, Shetland and Wensleydale, plus a couple of random mixtures. I had intended just to get the two Wensleydale fleeces but when he shook three lovely Shetland fleeces out of a sack (one brown, one black and one grey), I had to have them too!

It was nice and sunny when I got home so I spread the Wensleydales out on the grass and had a go at skirting them. Here are the mounds of skirted fleece in the sun...

They're an interesting orangey-pink colour but unfortunately that's down to the fact that the sheep lived in a field where the soil is really rich in iron and the fleece is stained from the iron oxide.

This is the result of my first efforts washing some of the fleece...

I think it needs another dunking and a good old shake to get the bits of dirt out. Lovely curls though!

Before I got stuck into the fleece washing, I read up on cleaning raw fleece in the Alden Amos Big Book of Handspinning. This book was one of the first I ever bought on spinning and it blew my mind a bit at first because there's just far too much information for a newbie spinner to take in! Its more useful now that I've got a bit more of an idea about what I'm doing though and it had more information on cleaning raw fleece than any of my other books.

I particularly enjoyed 'wuzzing' the fleece to get out as much water as possible. Alden Amos suggests using a pair of old tights to 'wuzz' but I just bagged up some wet fleece in an old net curtain and then whirled it around my head in my Mum's back yard to spin out the water. Its good exercise!

No photos of the Shetland fleeces yet because I thought I should pace myself a bit with all the washing. I'm going to try and get everything cleaned this week though because I keep reading that raw fleece doesn't store well and should be washed asap!

My Mum received a sinister package from her friend this week and it turned out that it's actually for me...

I'm hoping the dog isn't completely bald, although there can't be much left when I've got all this...

Eeek!

I'm not sure what I'll make with it yet, or whether to spin or felt it. Its from a Schnauzer called Spencer and there have already been suggestions of a dog cape, or maybe a little dog tank top for him to wear in the winter. I'm thinking of weaving a little wallhanging of handspun Spencer yarn or knitting a glasses case, or a hat if there's enough (human hat or dog hat?). If I was feeling really adventurous I might have a go at needle-felting a tiny Schnauzer from one of the patterns in the Japanese Fleece Dog book that I'm sure I've seen in a local bookshop.

I'll keep you posted! :)

ETA: I've just discovered there's a Fleece Dog website!

New yarnz and some batt action...

2009-07-07T09:25:00.003+01:00

I've been spinning up my Solstice and Dirty Pretty Thing batts, with quite exciting results!

Solstice - Merino, silk and angelina sparkle. 120g and 110m long

Solstice is corespun and I worked across the batt from one side to the other, meaning that it starts out with lots of orange and gradually goes to purple. I like it! I'm pleased to get 110m from one batt too.

Dirty Pretty Thing - organic Wensleydale, hand dyed mystery wool and Merino. 174g and 39 metres in total

This yarn is also corespun and I added in some extra locks and curls, which I left sticking out all over the yarn. Its really chunky and full of texture. I left it hanging on a door in the house for ages to admire it :)

I've also been carding batts...

Neptune Grass - dyed merino wool in greeny turquoises and greys, hand dyed grey merino, black diamond (carbonized bamboo fibre), dyed silk and angelina sparkle. 134g in total

Modern Guilt - hand dyed merino wool, cashmere and silk blend called 'turquoise boy' from Limegreenjelly at Etsy, dyed merino in grey, two shades of turquoise and hot pink, mystery grey wool, carbonised bamboo fibre (Black Diamond) and angelina sparkle. 158g in total

I've already spun Modern Guilt (still got to set the twist) and I've got some new ideas for things to make with my handspun... pictures to follow (if it works!).

In other fibre-related news, I randomly met a man with some sheep whilst watching the Ulverston carnival outside my Mum's house at the weekend. Mum suddenly said 'there's some sheep coming up the road!' and sure enough, there was a man with a lovely Wensleydale ewe and a North Ronaldsay ram on leads. I intercepted him and had a chat about spinning. He's got a garage full of freshly shorn fleeces from his collection of sheep, including Shetlands and various other breeds! I gave him my number and hopefully he's going to get in touch so I can have a rummage in his garage! Whoo! :)

Woolfest goodies...

2009-06-30T09:17:00.002+01:00

I'm a bit embarrassed by the extent of my stash from Woolfest...

It took up most of the living room floor once I'd unloaded the car! Still, most of it was on my shopping list and I'm really looking forward to getting stuck into it!

The huge bag at the top is dyed Merino from Wingham Wool Work (where I also got the fetching jute bag for free with a voucher - join their subscribers list for regular offers like that), the batts and dyed soysilk are from Daniela at FeltstudioUK, the DPNs are from Linda at Tall Yarns 'n Tales, there's a Rare Breeds Survival Trust tea towel, some lovely sheep coasters from the British Wool Marketing Board stand, a big lump of naturally coloured brown Wensleydale combed top, a random selection of fibre, angelina sparkle, dyed silk and laceweight yarn on cones for corespinning. Phew!

Most of the bottom section of stash in the photo is dyed and undyed locks and curls from various places. This grey Gotland, white Bluefaced Leicester and brown-black Bluefaced Leicester was from the Highside Farm stand...

The coloured BFL locks remind me of Kellogs All-Bran cereal!

These lovely hand dyed Teeswater and Gotland locks were from the Eden Valley Guild of Spinners, Weavers and Dyers stand...

Three bags full of coloured Wensleydale from the Manor House Studio stand...

This is some fibre from Dusty the Angora rabbit...

I've never spun Angora before. Its so soft you can hardly feel it!

Here's a close up of the sheepy coasters, just because I really like them...

My favourite is the Lincoln Longwool posing in front of the Humber Bridge :)

I'm very excited about some new yarns I've been working on recently, I'll share pictures soon!

The excitement of Woolfest...

2009-06-28T13:50:00.002+01:00

I spent the whole of Friday at Woolfest! It was fantastic, as always (I've been to at least 3 out of the 5 Woolfests so far). Lots of lovely people, fantastic fibre and gorgeous wooly, fluffy and fleecy animals!

There was even cake! This is the special Woolfest 5th Birthday cake, very impressive...

I didn't take many photos as my hands were mostly full of shopping! I'd planned to nip round at the end and get some pictures but I was too worn out by then. I did find time for some animal snaps though...

Here's a sweet local Herdwick lamb...

A pretty Hebridean ewe stamping her foot...

(I've got a whole year of lovely Hebridean sheep photos coming up in 2010 with my new calendar from the Hebridean Sheep Society stand!)

Some very noisy Angora goat kids snacking on sticks...

A family of Manx Loghtan sheep next to the Rare Breeds Survival Trust stand...

We got a nice tea towel from the RBST stand, modelled here by Ade...

It was a hot day so the fluffy Angora rabbits looked a bit fed up. This is Dusty...

(I bought home a bag of Dusty-fluff to spin! It'll be my first go with Angora.)

Ade took some pictures of me while I was distracted by some plant-dyed fleece...

And while I was having a go on an Ashford Country Spinner!

(I'm saying 'try not to make me look like a freak!' - it didn't seem to work!)

There was a large demonstration area of all Ashford's products so I couldn't resist asking for a go on the Country Spinner. It's huge bobbin (spinning wildly in the photo) holds 1kg of yarn! I've had my eye on one for ages but haven't really got room for a second wheel. It was easier to get on with than I'd imagined. Maybe one day...

The people on the Ashford stand were really helpful and after a while we realised that they were the 'actual Ashfords', all the way from New Zealand! Spinning celebrities at Woolfest!

I came home with a huge amount of shopping (most of which was on the list I took with me, so I was relatively well behaved!). I've got a few pictures of the new 'stash' on the camera so I'll probably show it off tomorrow :)