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!

Gardens

I gave myself the day off today, partly because I needed a break (there's only so much fluff you can inhale in a week before you start to get high on the fibre fumes!), and partly because we needed to go food shopping.
Our nearest supermarket is 35 minutes drive away so we try not to go too often. We also call in the butchers in town. He wins lots of awards for his meat, and the service is fantastic, they always give us a bag of bones for the dogs too.
We also called in at the garden centre, the garden was a wilderness when we bough the house, and while there are some hidden gems, the brambles and nettles had taken over. Apparently our house used to be famous for the rhubarb it produced, and we did find a few very sorry looking plants hiding in the undergrowth, we're slowly nursing it back to health, but these things take time, as does filling 3/4 of an acre. We keep going back to the garden centre, and car boot full at a time it's filling out.

This was when we moved in, you can't see the giant conifer tree just out of shot, but a sense of the undergrowth is there just above the house. The drive was also a grassy, muddy mess, it took 18 tonnes of slate chippings to solve that problem!



Eighteen months later and the shrubs are becoming under control and the giant tree is gone.



Some of the few surviving plants were roses that were positively thriving despite years of neglect, after a good prune, they're growing really well.



This winter we dug a pond, the garden is full of springs, and has loads of land drains hidden away so we designed it to be filled with spring water, and have a natural overflow in to the other end of the land drain. The constant flow of water keeps the pond really clear, and the wildlife seem to love it.


In this picture you can see the gaps though, and gaps mean the weeds just keep growing, so the gaps have to go.
I think it will take a few more car loads though!

This time of year

I love this time of year, the days are at their longest, the garden is starting to grow, and it's time for the Tour de France. Now I don't really do physical exertion of the kid that involves riding a bike, but I love watching other people push their bodies to extremes. I've managed to watch most of the coverage for the past couple of years, one year I managed to contract something that was suspected to be Swine Flu so was kept off work so I didn't contaminate the whole school, and last year I was off sick.
This year of course I can pick my own working hours, and I can definitely sit and drum card while following the early stages of the race. If we get some sprints like last year though all activity requiring concentration is definitely off the cards!

I also love this time of year as I can sign up for some different kinds of challenges, while the cyclists are travelling around France, I'll be trying to spin something for every day that they're riding. I want to see just how much of this Shetland fleece I can spin up. I've already washed it, but I'll be carding it as I go along, so I don't expect to get the whole thing done. Sounds like fun, the Tour de FleeceGroup is on Ravelry.



If you feel like really getting in to the spirit of Le Tour then maybe you might fancy the Tour de France jersey's in batt form. The winners of various competitions with in the race get to wear jersey's of various colours, Maillot Jaune for the race leader, Maillot Vert for the best sprinter, and Maillot a Pois Rouges for the best mountain climber. If you buy the Tour de France batt set from the Shop then you get free postage.

I'm also doing the Tour de France knitalong again. I started knitting a lovely blanket pattern back in February, but since then progress has stalled so I'm using this as incentive to try and finish it off. I've done 2 of the 7 panels, so again I might not finish it.

Nothing much

That about sums it up really, nothing much happening here.
I've finally finished marking GCSE exam papers, which wasn't a pleasant task, but paid well enough over the couple of weeks to mean I can survive with to other income for a while longer. It did however provide some comedy answers, my favourite one being "stem cells are omnipotent"
Meg our bouncy collie has been spayed. So much of the last few days has been spent trying to stop her haring round the house like usual. 24 hours after the operation she thought nothing was wrong with her, and is most upset that she's not getting any walks or her tennis ball thrown. To placate her Mum and I drove over to Llanidloes to see the Wool and Willow Festival, we also snuck in a cup of coffee. As an added bonus Meg thought she's been out somewhere, where as in reality all she did was walk 20 m down by the river to stretch her legs before we dove back home!

I'm now busy stoking the shop back up again, as it got rather empty while I was on a deadline exam marking, hopefully we'll get some better weather soon as well, it seems to have done nothing but rain recently.

Whales and Churches

Not two words that you often read in the same sentence, but on the walk this morning to post the shop parcels (most parcels get delivered to the local post office 2 miles away as we walk the dogs), we called in at our local church where the two things are definitely linked!

When they were doing work on the Mallwyd village church in the 1700's they found some old whale bones. Some claim they're a tusk and a patella, but dragging up my memories form Biology degree they look more like a rib and some other joint, but definitely not a patella. Either way they're pretty unusual objects, who knows how they got 10 miles inland?



The rest of the church is pretty unusual as well, the wood at the top of the bell tower has holes in it which spell out a phrase in Latin, unfortunately my GCSE latin is far too rusty to make a bash at translating it. There's also a lovely old gravestone, with a fantastic example of olde english.



Interestingly the older gravestones are in English and it's not until the 1800's that they start to be written in Welsh. We live in a very welsh speaking area, though nearly 50% of the population are incomers from England (mostly the West Midlands), so English is pretty commonly spoken as well.

Riding in Wales

Mum and I just got back from a weeks riding. We started at Hay-On-Wye and ended up nearly back at home on the beach at Ynyslas. We only got very wet on one day, and on the others we had a few showers, but some fantastic sunshine and beautiful views.

This photo in particular makes me smile so much.


The weather was rather cold for June though, I only rode in a T-Shirt on the first day.


By the end of the holiday going along the beach I was well wrapped up in my waterproof!



We go from hotel/B&B to hotel/B&B carrying everything in the saddle bags, it's amazing how little you can get away with taking when you really try. You ride in one set of clothes, and have another set for the evening, add in a couple of books and some knitting and you're all set!
The horses we ride belong to the company who organise the holiday, and are really fantastic, they're very hard to spook, forward going, and will go for miles (the longest we did was 25 miles).
Now I'm back home I'm finishing off marking exam papers and then it's back to stocking up the shop.

Everything in the garden was lovely...

After the hot spell in April, most of the plants in the garden were really struggling, we've then had a wet May (though not everywhere in the country was so lucky), and now June is warming up again and everything is bursting in to bloom.

Mum and I go off horseriding for a week tomorrow, and when we come back the garden will be awash with colour. All these foxgloves will definitely be out...


The poppies are starting to appear, and the Honeysuckle is just teasing us.



We're fully expecting the hedgerows to be beautiful as we ride along the country lanes. Speaking of Hedgerows I'm leaving the shop up while I'm away, anything sold will be sent out when I get back. Once I'm back I need to spend a few more days marking exam papers, then I'll be settling down with the fluff to create some brand new colours.