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.

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...

Mini eggs

The  Chickens have been performing very well, they seem to have settled in nicely, and are becoming rather friendly. They've also started producing eggs, I suspect it's only one or two of them laying, a couple of the hens have more prominent, redder combs so are probably a bit more mature than the other girls. So far we've had an egg a day, but it's not looking like we'll get one today.

Being bantams of course the eggs are tiny, we're used to little eggs, we get the smallest ones from our local farmer anyway (we have his littlest eggs in exchange for a cheaper price!), but these eggs really are tiny, smaller than a Cadbury's creme egg, that's one of the eggs in my hand in the picture, and I don't have large hands!


PS- Fibre Club subscriptions opened on Thursday, there's only 4 spaces left so if you were thinking about joining, best get your skates on!

Additions to the menagerie

Meet the girls (and one boy). There are 6 of them altogether, 5 hens and 1 cockerel. We didn't really want a cockerel at first as we don't have any plans to let them breed, but he came with the girls, and now he's here I'm glad we got him because he is a fine fellow, and very protective of his little harem.

They needed a little encouragement to brave the outside world this morning, but once they were rudely shoved out of the house have spent a lovely day scratching around in their run on what is going to become our asparagus bed.

How time flies

My new workspace is serving me well, lots of yummy things have been coming out of the workshop recently, and it's so nice to have space to spread things out. The stockpile for Wonderwool is also increasing nicely, one of the jobs for next week is to go and work out exactly how much has been made, and how much more I need to make!

The builders were back in yesterday to lay the oak flooring downstairs. Now all I need is the kitchen finishing, and the shower installed, and a few other snags fixed, and I'll be able to move in (oh I also need to get a toilet seat, definitely not moving in until there's one of those!) Once everything is finished I'll take a few more pictures to share with you.

In further exciting news I'll be getting some chickens. Their house arrived on Wednesday, and I spent a very enjoyable Thursday morning putting it together. I'm going to go and collect 6 bantams from my friend Katherine on Thursday!

Today was the first warm sunny day in ages, and it feels like spring might be coming to our normally wet and windy valley!

New spaces

This is where all the fibres in the shop are now going to be coming from. Not a great picture, and not quite everything is in the right place. The downstairs is still waiting for the floor to be laid so still looks like a building site. A few things that are up here will be finding space downstairs. The silver pipe in the corner is the chimney from the wood burning stove, and even though it's double walled it still gets nice and toasty!

 This is my new stock storage, good old Ikea provided a shelving unit that fitted in perfectly, though we had to take off the towel rail to get it in, and take a chunk out of the oak beam that stuck out further than the wall. 

This is my favourite part of the whole place, above the stairs is a huge panel of windows, they let in a huge amount of light. I've spent the past few days varnishing and oiling all the wood on the stairs, but the end result is lovely

Now I just need to wait for the builders to come back, fix all the snags, install the shower, and lay the floor....

Making space

Progress with the barn has no reached the point where moving in and starting to use the upstairs as a work place is becoming a reality. For months I've known that I will be moving in, but it's only now that it actually seems real!
The work space and storage has been tentatively planned, I'm not sure about the actual logistics until I try to move everything in, and actually use the space.
However, one thing has become apparent, there are certain things that need to go!

When I blend fibres on my hackle I'm left with a small section of fluff on the tines. These are the shorter lengths of fibre, they're still lovely and soft, and just fine to use. I've mostly been using them to create my hand spun yarns, and some of them go in various felting kits. However, as I've stepped up production in preparation for Wonderwool, the amount of fluff has been piling up faster than I can use it.

I've listed it in 100g lots, priced at £3. The actual fibres are of the same quality as the rest of the things in the shop, it just doesn't look as neat and pretty!

I spin straight from the cloud of fibre when I create corespun yarns, but you can also card this fibre really successfully. If you wanted a larger quantity, I probably have more....