Going, Going, Gone...

This last week has been a little busy, lots of fibre going to people's homes all over the world. I'm also going to be meeting up with some fellow knitters/spinnner from one of my Ravelry groups in York this weekend, so I've been making sure I'm organised to go away for a few days.

Last weekend we got the tree surgeons in. We tend to do most small scale tree felling ourselves, but these trees were scarily close to the main road so it seemed wise to get the tree surgeons in. They did the whole thing in a roaring gale in just one morning. Definitely worth the cash!

Just as they were starting...



Nearly finished....


And finally the view down the valley is opened up. The trees were only sycamore and Ash from an overgrown hedge, they blocked this lovely view, and put the whole garden in shade in the afternoon.

Wonderwool

A few days ago I got some rather exciting news, I mentioned it on Twitter, and I mentioned it in my Ravelry group but I completely forgot to talk about it here.

I'm going to be a stall holder at Wonderwool, if you fancy making the trip to Wales at the end of April I'd love to say hello to some of you. It's on the 28th-29th April, and is at the Royal Welsh show ground in Builth Wells.
It will be my first big show as a stall holder, I've been a few times as a visitor, and it's a fantastic place to go and see the best of the British fibre industry. I'm already making plans for what the stall will look like, and I've started carding fibre and prepping roving. It's very much a little and often thing, too much in one day and my body starts to complain a little, there's only so long you can turn a carder handle for before your arm starts to feel like it's dropping off! The big dream is to end up with an electric carder, but for now it's muscle power only.

Barn progress

The barn is becoming less like a barn, and looking more and more like somewhere someone can live there. The walls are now insulated, and the upstairs is plastered. Things like the kitchen and bathroom fittings are all in storage, ready for installation. This last part seems to be taking forever, but it will all get done eventually!



I'm no starting to have to make decisions about things tiles, which is driving me a bit potty, I'd almost like to wave a magic wand and it be all decided, but this will be the last time I can make these decisions so they need to be right!





Apologies if this is a bit incoherent, everyone is trying to talk to me, and I need to go and make a decision about door handles...

Frosty Morning

It's been an unusually warm winter, hardly any frosts, and certainly no snow.
I was woken up this morning not by the sun rising, but by the moon setting. It had been a very clear night, which meant it actually got cold.
I didn't manage to venture out with the camera until around 9.30, but everywhere was still glittering.



I'd just lit the fire and there was a slight temperature inversion, the smoke was sinking in to the valley rather than floating away.


The melt was starting though. Before long this patch of moss in a wooden bench will be free of the ice.


Tonight is meant to be even colder, though we're still a long way off the temperatures of last year, the icicles from the guttering nearly reached the floor.

Clever Spinners

There have been some very clever spinners at work recently. Even better they're been sharing their pictures in my Ravelry group, I absolutely love seeing what people make with my fibre. In an idea world I'd keep and spin it all, but this is reality, and it going to new homes, and becoming yarn, and then finished items is the next best thing!

The lovely Handa bought some of my Light Rainbow roving.



This is 70% British Shetland, 30% Silk, I card it up on my drum carder to make a rainbow batt, but then I use a diz to pull it off as a strip of roving rather than a batt. This way you get a length of fibre that changes colour gradually, and it's super light, fluffy, and easy to draft.

When you spin it up you end up with a skein of yarn like this



Pretty, but nothing remarkable, what Helen did next is the breath taking part.




The pattern is Boneyard for those that need to know.

A whole week of taking a photo every day. So far I'm enjoying it, it's a bit of a challenge finding something new to photograph each day, but sometime I see something and think "I must photograph that", previously I probably wouldn't have bothered, deciding it was too much of a faff, but now I know I have to take a picture every day, so I make sure I bother!
Of course, being able to snap photos using my ageing iPhone helps, it means I can upload things straight from it, rather than having to bother connecting my camera to my computer.

www.flickr.com

Wild and Windy

The weather here has been wild recently. While we've not experienced the structural damage sustained by many, at times it has felt like the house will be swept away. We live in quite an exposed spot, and there's not much shelter as the wind whistles up the valley and hits the end of the house. I don't feel like I've had a good nights sleep in a few days, and the noise during the daytime has driven me batty. We're just inland from Aberystwyth where the roof was peeled off the National Library of Wales by the high winds.

Another downside of the wind is the rate at which the fire burns wood. Normally the fire glows away gently, but with gale force winds drawing it you end up with something similar to a raging inferno!



Tonight the wind has dyed down a lot, thank goodness, maybe I can get a good nights sleep, now would it be too much to ask for some properly cold winter weather?