Saturday 21 February 2009

Eyes

Eyes are such expressive things, they are how we know if someone os being genuine. The eyes betray your true emotions no matter what the rest of your face is doing. The also come in such a fascinating range of colours. Niobe has a post up currently asking us to post a photo of our eyes, so here are mine. Feel free to take a photo of your own eyes (it's harder than you think if like me you use a built in web cam, hence the crookedness!) and leave a comment so I can come and take a look in to your eyes.
Eye

Wednesday 18 February 2009

Tree Surgeons?

Maybe I should consider an alternative career?
This is the tree that Mum and I chopped down at the building site where my aunty is building a house. Eventually it will be her front garden. To give you an idea the branches are about 6 inches in diameter. She's going to have to get the tree surgeons in to finish the job off and deal with some larger trees but at least we've made a start!
Tree chopping at Aunty LindasTree chopping at Aunty Lindas

Tuesday 17 February 2009

Dying

The colour changing kind I mean. I bought Mum a sock blank dying kit for Christmas from Etsy. We got it out today and dyed it up. It was great fun, an almost magical thing, changing a white machine knitted blank, in to a colourful creation. Mum's turning it in to socks as I type and it's looking beautiful. Really gradual colour changes and subtle variation.
First you disolve the dye, this was a bit of guesswork as the pot dyes 2lbs of fibre, way more than we had so I just made it up!
Sock Blank dying
Then you just paint it on however you like
Sock Blank dying
This was the end result.
Dyed sock blank

On the spinning front, over the last couple of days I span this up.
Peacock BFL
300m of fingering weight BFL, occasionally under plied, but buttery soft, I'm really happy with it

Monday 16 February 2009

A shopping trip

No not for clothes sillies, though that is happening tomorrow, I am in desperate need of some new underwear after teaching has caused a not inconsiderable weight loss. The boob fairy came and visited but has decided not to stay!

This shopping trip was far more fun, I'm visiting my parents for the week and they live close to The Threshing Barn so we nipped over to get some fibre in preparation for a couple of people wanting to play on my wheel.
We bought this
Blended Shetland
Some blended Shetland, 100g for £3
BFLSome natural BFL 100g for £2
Threshing Barn Merino silk
Some blended merino silk, 100g for £5, I'm really looking forward to spinning this.
We also bought this to have a go with, 35g of White Faced Woodland for £2.
White faced woodland
This feels a little coarser than the Shetland and BFL so we will see what it's like spun up.


Coming up, a photo of the tree's we chopped down on Sunday, Dad is being dispatched with a camera tomorrow, and Mum and I attempt dying....