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.

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.

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.

New website

While the carder has sat unused for the last few days I've still been tinkering away on new ideas. A few emails have been sent sorting out new things for the New Year, but most excitingly HilltopCloud now has it's very own website.

For now it's a self designed job, so is very, very bare bones, however, it will give me a permanent base. There's a mini version of the Etsy shop on there (I'll still be using Etsy to sell most things), along with all my patterns, and some info about things I don't sell on Etsy. It's also going to be the new base for the fibre club.

Because I want to offer a variety of options for the club Etsy isn't really a very good home for it, the sidebar of the blog worked ok, but this way, it has it's very own home, and it's much easier for me to run.

I'm enjoying my last few days off, I'm going back to Sheffield to visit friends over the New Year, and plan on coming back to work refreshed and ready to go! First on the list is the fibre club parcels, the fibre has arrived and is sat looking at me waiting to be magicked in to something yummy!

Happy New Year to all of you, and thank you for making this year the best I've had in quite a while.

Fibre Clubs

Just in time for the holidays I'm launching my first fibre club. Perfect as a christmas present!
You'll get the parcel in mid-January (providing I'm not buried under 6 foot of snow in our little Welsh valley!), so perfect for shaking off those mid-winter blues.
You can either buy it through the Etsy shop, or if a listing is out of stock over there you can buy it directly by clicking on the links on the sidebar.

It comes in 100g, and 200g options, for a single month, or 3 month subscription. For the 3 month subscription you'll get further parcels in February and March.
Places are limited, in each 3 month period you'll get a variety of different fibre prep, in a variety of colour palettes, and no more than 1 month out of the 3 will be something with sparkle.

At the start of January I'll make the single month places for February's parcel available, the 3 month memberships won't re-open until March.

If you're struggling on Christmas ideas, there might be a few other things in the shop you might like as well....
You could maybe enable a new spinner, Learn to Spin Kits are £15

Or some Stocking Filler buttons, handmade from Welsh wood, these would post really well to somebody you might not see between now and the big day.

Or, just in case we don't get any snow this year, how about Felt Snowman craft kit, along with a few others, these are kiddie friendly, though they'll need some adult help with threading the balls together. Could be perfect for occupying small hands during the holidays.



All fibre club members will be added to a mailing list so I can send you info about the club, and the occasional newsletter, if this is a problem please let me know.

Bad blogger...

I'm a bad blogger right now, I know it, I keep meaning to do something about it, and before I know it, it's bed time!

Lot's of work is going on behind the scenes getting ready for my fibre club, places open later this week, the first place I'll announce the subscriptions are on sale is via the mailing list, you can sign up over on the left. We've also been at lots of Christmas fairs and markets, the stock I take to these events is slightly different to what's in the Etsy shop, but it all takes time to prepare and put together!

Added to that, on Saturday I managed to reverse my car in to a telegraph pole, I have no idea how I didn't see it, I can live with a few dents on my car, but I've managed to smash the rear windscreen, so today is going to be spent ringing people to sort out that little mess! Time I don't really have right now, but never mind.

Hopefully today there will be some new british breeds and blends, but no fresh batts or hackle blends for the next couple of days while I get everything organised here! However if you ever have anything specific in mind, and there;s nothing you like in the shop you're more than welcome to send me a message about a custom blend.

My christmas knitting is now moving on a-pace (after the disaster of my brother's slippers shrinking so much they're now elf sized), and speaking of Christmas, Royal Mail has put out these dates for when items need to be sent to reach places in time for Christmas-
Mon 5th December- South & Central America, Caribbean, Africa, Middle East, Asia, Far East (including Japan), Australia and New Zealand
Fri 9th December- Eastern Europe, USA and Canada
Mon 12th December- Western Europe
Tue 20th December- UK
I never make any guarantees about things arriving in time, and the sooner you order the better the chance that something will make it in time!

More spinning

Not from me this time, but from one of my lovely customers. I love seeing pictures of what people make with my fibre, particularly because my own spinning time has become somewhat limited!

The lovely mono (whose stuff is beautiful, go take a look), bought some of this-

40% British Shetland, 40% Merino, 20% Tussah Silk, and turned it in to this.

By the way, exciting things are happening at HilltopCloud, the best way to keep abreast of fresh things is either by following my on twitter (hilltopkatie), or by signing up to my newsletter, there's a link over on the right.

Coedlan

Christmas is coming up on us rather quickly, if like me you make most of your presents, the diminishing number of weeks tends to sharpen the mind and speed up the needles rather....

If you're still not sure what to make for your nearest and dearest then I have a solution, meet Coedlan.

It's a short, textured scarf held closed by a single large button, it won't curl, and works well with handspun yarn, the green version above was spun by my Mum using some batts I carded for her.

Here's a slightly less arty shot.

If I still had the sort of job where I was required to look presentable here's how I'd probably wear it, I have a huge collection of these jackets, but they definitely need a scarf in winter, but because they're close fitting it needs to be short.

It uses 140m of bulky weight yarn so it's a quick knit. If you would like to make one you can download the pattern- buy now from Ravelry.

Or, I'll be putting together some more kits for the shop in the next few days, some with batts to spin, others with handspun yarn. The kits will also come with a handmade wooden button.

New pattern

The observant of you will notice that there is something new over to to the right. I've been working on a few things in the background for a while now, and the first of them is finally ready.

Meet Rhwyd (pronounced Rrrud), whihc is Welsh for net.



It's designed to work well with handspun yarns, and heavily variegated commercial yarns. It's reversible, and won't curl, and features stitch patterns that aim to break up pooling.



The pattern features charts, and written directions, and has been test knitted by the wonderful Julie from Button Button.
It's available to buy now from Ravelry, and I'll also be doing kits for the HilltopCloud Etsy shop with fibre only options (the blue version was made using some of handblended roving), or handspun yarn options.

Making Monday 7- Laceweight

This is the finest I have ever spun..
Proper, proper laceweight, not very thin fingering weight, but proper laceweight. It's been a rocky road making it this far, I somehow managed to ply the wrong way without realising (I have no idea how I didn't notice...), which meant I needed to reply the entire skein.
I still haven't worked out how many metres I had to ply twice, but the original braid of fibre was 100g, so I feel confident in saying there's a lot of yarn there!

The fibre was superwash merino I dyed at the start of my forays in to natural dyeing.


I'm already thinking about knitting Rock Island with it..

You can find all the other Making Monday posts at The Yarn Yard.

Hidden Treasures

One of the bad good things about selling on Etsy is the inspiration you get, and the amount of fantastic stuff, by ver clever people that's out there is unbelievable.
Every now and again I put together treasuries (collections of items based on a theme), sometimes these finds lead me further to to a persons shop, and the inspiration I find is unbelievable.



This bunting is just fantastic, and such a clever idea. If I had a wedding or special occasion I was looking for decorations for I'd buy it in an instant.

I've been busy with local fairs and markets for the last couple of days, and the inspiration there has been equally fantastic. If you have a craft fair local to you, it's well worth a visit.
(If you are ever in my bit of Wales, I'm at Builth Wells on the first Saturday of every month, come and say hello)

Testing, testing 1,2,3

Testing fibres is important to me, I sample lots of my blends, this picture is of some of my pick n mix batts spun and knitted.
Each ply is made of one of the different colour batts, when you knit with it you get a tweedy type fabric.
All the colours above were made with variations of just 6 batts, each is a blend of Merino, Shetland and nylon for strength. If you knit it up at the sort of tension I have then you would get great socks, but you could do lot's more than that as it's still a relatively soft blend.

If you can't decide what colours you like I've put some ideas as the last photos of the listings, or I'm more than happy to take photos of 3 colours you have in mind.
You can buy pick n mix batts by clicking on the link to the right.

A little bit of custom spinning

A friend on Ravelry doesn't spin, but she fell in love with the Slytherin colourway (sorry it's out of stock until I do a fresh fibre order), so asked if I would spin it up for her. It span up surprisingly quickly, and reminded me how much I love spinning with hackled roving.
She's planning on knitting Maja with it, which I think will look fabulous.

I can custom spin anything in the shop if you really want something but don't spin, just get in touch for prices and an idea on timescale. I also sell a Learn to Spin Kit, the main fibre in those is some gorgeous North Ronaldsay, an ancient breed of sheep from the Orkney Islands, that mainly has a diet of seaweed. How cool is that!
The link to take you to the fluffy goodness is just over to the right.

Summer

Summer means green for me, August is when the plants really seem to take off. We had a hot April, and a damp May and June, it's taken the plants a while to work out that this really is summer!
There's lots of inspiration for colour at this time of year. I love Sweet Peas, not just for their delicate colours but also for their beautiful scent.



The colours in these beauties, inspired this roving, unfortunately while I can capture colour, I can't work the same magic on scent!


For today, how about some Honeysuckle?



Or some Nasturtiums (which also taste rather nice in salads)?



Or a Sunflower?


Of course all this growth also means plenty of dye material, there's a few fresh braids of fibre that just need to dry so I can upload them in to the shop.

Some more spinning

But not by me, it's some more yarn from one of my customers, and it's so gorgeous that I had to share.

This is one of the batts I made for the Tour de France this year called Maillot Vert, it's not available right now, but might make a re-appearance for next year's tour. It's a blend of Merino, Gotland Wool, Tussah Silk and Yak down, Elin, who spun it said that it was softer than she expected with a lovely halo (which will be from the Yak down).

Thank Elin for permission to use the photos, your spinning is wonderful. Elin blogs here if you would like to see more photos of her beautiful spinning- http://theknittingseaman.blogspot.com/

Finished Objects

Now that my shop has been open for a while it's been really nice to see some finished things made with my fibre. My friend Jane was one of the first people to hear about my plans for my shop after I decided to leave teaching, she was also one of my first customers.

She bought this fibre



Some Merino, Alpaca and Silk, and spun it in to this yarn.


This is typical of how my fibres spin up, random patches of different fibres, to create something that's quite tweedy looking. I was amazed about how quickly she spun it up, I was even more amazed 2 days ago when she posted a picture of the finished shawl on Ravelry!


The pattern is Holden, and as ever with Jane's knitting is really beautiful. Go and have a look at her Blog, you won't regret it!