Labels

In this game, labels are important, everything needs a label. When I'm at shows those labels are important because some people are after certain fibre combinations, or need to avoid certain fibres.
Even in the online shop, labels are important, if stuff isn't clearly labelled it's all too easy for someone to be sent the wrong thing. (Yes it has happened, but it all gets put right, with huge apologies, we're human, and my lovely customers are very understanding about mistakes)

For ages I've used full size business cards as labels on everything. They work, they're not expensive, but I didn't like the company I was getting them from (I won't name names, but I bet you can work it out). They didn't print the cards in the UK, which is important to me. Hole punching and threading tags on to plaits of fibre is also an absolute pain, if you have 50 to label, it's one of those fiddly annoying jobs that leaves you muttering and swearing at the end of it!

I decided there had to be a better solution. There was a post on the Knitty blog a while ago about labelling skeins of handspun using tyvek wristbands, and I had a lightbulb moment. What would work for skeins of handspun, would work for braids of fibre. They come with a sticky strip so no more hold punching and threading, and I can get them custom printed by a UK based small business. There's also no danger of them ripping off. It you want to use them as a tag for your finished skein you still can, you can either slide it off as a loop, or cut and hole punch like a regular tag.

That just left the rest of the fibre, all the things that you really can't put tag like this on...

I've ummed and ahhhed for a few weeks trying to decide what to do, and I've decided to switch to a smaller, full colour, British printed, using trees from sustainable sources, card. They're more expensive than my old cards, but so are the wristbands, and I feel so much happier about using them, and the new company.

So look out for the new cards, and labels, I hope you like them. 

Fibre East

For the first time this year I got to go to a fibre festival as just me! No stall, no stock, just me with money in my pocket, and a whole day of freedom.

First job of the day was to drop off my Woolsack cushion so I had room in the shopping bag for purchases.



This is me with the lovely Jane who runs the whole Woolsack project. In summary it's part of the cultural Olympiad and aims to give all the Athletes coming to London for the Olympic and Paralympic Games a cushion made of British wool.  The response from Athletes has been fantastic so they would love to have more cushions, details of how to join in are on their website.  (I'm currently churning out another one, as is Mum)

After that the day all passed in a bit of a blur, it's a 4 hour drive for me so I didn't get to spend as long as  I would have liked, but I did get to catch up with lots of friends, and the fleece collection in the caravan has been added to!

I also got to meet the fantastic Sheer Sheep and his collection of sheep, I was very good and resisted having one of them shorn to order however.

The weather on the Sunday was beautiful, though the weather on Friday night had unfortunately meant that the site became rather muddy, particularly for the Saturday visitors. However,I've been to shows where the conditions underfoot were far worse, and as you can see from this picture, by Sunday the sun had come out.

Was it worth the 8 hour round trip, definitely, will I be back next year, yes, though I've yet to decide if I'll keep it as my festival off, or if I'll apply for a stall.

Bees

In keeping with life here becoming increasingly Good Life-esque, Mum got some bees about a month ago. Until recently I've had to watch from a distance because we only have one bee suit, but we just got another which means I can give Mum a hand if she needs it.

Warning, photo heavy post...

This is part of the hive lid, you can see the bees busy eating, when you smoke them, instinct kicks in, they think there's a forest fire so franticly eat their stores so they can fly to safety and re-establish the colony. 

 Our hive is brand new, and you can see the difference between the frames we got the colony on, and our new frames.

This is a brand new frame, with the wax foundation, the bees are just starting to make the comb ready to fill. 

This frame has already got the comb, but there isn't much honey there yet, the weather has been so bad that it's really slowed them down. 

This comb is starting to fill with capped honey.

These cells have been filled with pollen, there's huge variation in pollen colours, even some that's green.

The bee in the centre has obviously just got back from collecting some of that green pollen, she's got huge clumps of it on her legs. 

This is one of the main brood frames, encouragingly we have lots of capped brood cells.

If you look closely you can just see some of the grubs in the bottom of these cells, eventually they'll be capped, and the pupae will develop in to an adult bee.

We might not get much honey this summer if things carry on like they are at the moment, but hopefully the colony will stay healthy through the winter and we can have a good year next year!

Godis Skum

Earlier this week I ventured out of Wales and made for the mecca of all things home ware that is Ikea. An awful lot of my furniture has come from Ikea, for a combination of style and price reasons. This trip has been planned for a while, but Woolfest and work have meant it's been put off for several weeks.

However, I now have a comfy chair for spinning, most important given I'm spinning for the tour de fleece. I've also got on top of the storage I needed for the business.

I also found some Godis Skum.... aka marshmallow sheep!

Very tasty they are too. I've spent today surrounded by sheep as I helped our local farmer roll fleeces as they were shorn. They're only Welsh Mountains so not really any use for the sort of things I spin, but it was interesting day, and I got to have a go at shearing a couple of sheep myself at the end. No pictures because it was rather wet and mucky even though we were in a barn, so you'll have to make do with a Godis Skum picture!

Hideaway

Look what has decided to nest in our log pile!
The bird in question is a wagtail, 2 years ago they nested in a pile of breeze blocks, this year they've found a gap in between some logs and nested in it. Mum had noticed it flying about in this area for the last couple of days and managed to spot the nest this morning. We're not sure if the first nest failed (remember the dreadful weather we had a couple of weeks ago?), or if they normally raise 2 broods in a summer.
Either way, we'll be keeping our distance (though they seem pretty used to us coming and going), and we hope to have some wagtails hatching soon.

It's spinning, but not as we know it...

I am not a naturally fine spinner, I have a default spinning style that produces a heavy fingering weight yarn. I'm pretty happy with this, you get lots of yardage from 100g, and you can do quite a lot with 300m of fingering weight. This yarn however, is rather thinner than this, I think you could safely call it frog hair. The lumps and bumps are because I'm spinning silk noil. 

I'm spinning frog hair because I was given one of these for my birthday. 

It's a Charkha, it's used commonly in India for spinning cotton. Ghandi used to spin on one for an hour each day. I'm not using it for spinning cotton, it's not a fibre or yarn I use very much. However it's great for spinning anything with a short staple, so far I've tried out camel and yak down. I'm off to FibreEast in a couple of weeks and plan on getting some cashmere to try as well. 

It's rather addictive, and is a very different style of spinning, the first attempts were very lumpy, but as I'm working out how to get the best out of it the results are getting more even. The silk noil is also helping, definitely hides any imperfections! 

Woolfest

I seem to be a bit jinxed with fibre festivals this year. Wonderwool was cold beyond belief, and I'm just back from Woolfest where it rained beyond belief.

I'm very lucky in that we have a camper van, the poor people in tents really suffered this weekend, either facing long drives the next morning due to having to go home, or having to sleep in the backs of vans. 

However, inside was dry (once I put a bucket in the corner to catch the drips), and filled with fluffy goodness of every variety. I got to speak to lots of existing customers, and enable lots of new spinners. 

This was my petite stall, filled with lots of fibre at the start of the show. I'm pleased to say that it was considerably emptier by the end of Saturday, as I'd bought 6 fleeces and was getting a bit worried about fitting them in the van.

I also needed space to bring home this lovely. I sold my Traveller at Wonderwool and this is her replacement, single treadle which suits me much better. This model of Traditional dates to around 1975 so is 10 years older than me, and spins beautifully still. 

Of course Woolfest wouldn't be Woolfest without saying hello to Bruno the Manx Loaghtan ram. Got any food?

I'm home now and busy unpacking, and updating the shop. It will take me a while to get everything done, but I'll get there eventually!