Thursday 15 March 2012

Dark Rainbow

I promised a spinning post, it's taken me a while longer than I anticipated, however, it's not ready to be released in to the wild.
Part of the preparations for Wonderwool involve getting fibres spun up, and knitted. My Mum has helped with a couple of samples, but this one is my handiwork. It's not got further than the spinning stage yet, but the knitting shouldn't take to long. This is Dark Rainbow, which is my Black Welsh Mountain silk blend. It's carded, and then dizzed off in to roving so that it slowly changes colour through the rainbow.
I've actually spun one of these skeins twice, I took them with to York back in January, and only came back with one...



Their next incarnation is to become a pair of flap top mittens, I'm going to use the black yarn (also black welsh mountain and silk) as the cuffs, and then we'll see how far through the rainbow I'll get.

Sunday 11 March 2012

Chicken herding

Warning, this is yet another chicken based post (I promise I've got a spinning based post in the pipeline)

Now the chickens have got used to their surroundings we've let them out of their run for a peck around the garden. We've had a wet couple of days here so almost the first thing they did when I let them out was go and sun themselves in the dry on top of their house.


We've only got little legs, so a quick wing flap assistance is required! 



Once we're up there it was time to make sure we were looking pretty.


And then pose for the camera


After that it's time to go in search of breakfast


Final gratuitous shot of our very handsome cockerel, Mum has decided he's called Boyo, pronounced in your best Welsh accent for full effect! We're still working on names for the girls, not helped by the fact that 3 of them are impossible to tell apart, the black one is of course easy, and the one who's laying the eggs is a bit more mature, but the others will soon catch her up.

We put them in a run on one of the raised beds after dinner, and then made the mistake of trying to herd them back to their run this afternoon....
Mum and I chased them round the garden for a good half hour, they particularly liked hiding under the car, and had to be poked out with a handy bit of wood. Boyo didn't look quite so dignified when I rugby tackled him...