Down on the Beach

We live a short drive away from some rather good, deserted beaches. The dogs love the beach so we try to go down quite often. They must run miles chasing after balls, and there are so many good smells...



We also wanted to go down to the beach to collect some driftwood. Dad has been making "things" with it which he's been selling at local markets, and supplies were running low.



In the end we maybe got a little enthusiastic, carrying several bags of driftwood back to the car was rather hard work!

Next time, we'll check the tides as well, there's only so many times you can put up with a wave overflowing your wellies!

My first handspun

I appear to be enabling a few newbie spinners right now, so I thought it would be nice to put my first spinning attempts out there...



The brown at the front was my first ever skein, and suffers from that typical beginners problem of chronic under-plying, it's a bit lumpy bumpy, but actually most of the unevenness would be much improved by a good plying job.

The other skeins were originally white, but were attacked with some leftover dye from dyeing a sock blank a few years ago. They're far more even, but in comparison with my efforts now are maybe a little dense...

Spinning really is like riding a bike, at first you'll fall off, and it all seems a bit wobbly, and you have to concentrate, then muscle memory develops and becomes something you can do without thinking.

Making Monday- Trick or Treat

Thank heavens for Making Mondays, without them my poor blog would be completely abandoned.
On Friday a very large box arrived, out of it came my new wheel. She was a little dirty, but I put her together and she span. However the more I looked at her the more I realised that she'd been a little neglected in her past. So I spent Saturday cleaning her up, and giving her a good coat of Danish oil. She now glows.


She's an EasySpin, made in Devon by in the 80's by a man whose wife was in the Devon Guild of Weavers and Spinners and Dyers. They moved away from the area, and no one really knows a great deal more about them. There seem to be a few about in the UK, though not a great number.

I bought her because I want to get in to doing more yarns like this-


A ply of Black Welsh Mountain and Silk, with a coiled ply of Merino and Silk. It's super bulky and was great fun to spin (it went up in shop called Trick or Treat and disappeared off the shelf almost immediately). Though in the process of spinning it I did manage to trap my finger between the drive wheel and the upright, which still really hurts...

Not quite Making Monday

So it's a day late, but I got side tracked yesterday and before I knew it, it was too dark to take photos!
Following on from the successful fleece washing (it's now all dry and in pillow cases under my bed), here's an idea for non-successful fleece washing.

Back when I first started becoming interested in preparing my own fleece to spin, I lived in a small flat in Sheffield. Not very handy for fleece washing or drying. My fleece washing was limited to visits home, I'd bought 2 fleeces from Woolfest that year, one I managed to wash and dry during the summer holidays, the other I had to leave for Mum to finish off. When I next made it home in October it turned out Mum had got a bit enthusiastic with the washing and somehow managed to felt the fleece.
Rather than just chuck it on the compost heap we decided to salvage some of it, our floors are solid slate slabs that rest directly on the earth floor (our reward for a 200 year old house is permanently cold feet!). It's particularly bad in the kitchen as the cold seaps through whatever you have on your feet.

Which is where this comes in!




A peg loom woven rug from rescued felted fleece. As time goes on it will compact and squash down, but will be rather welcome to insulate our toes from the floor when we're standing cooking or washing up. When it gets too grubby it can go in the washing machine (and maybe felt a bit more!)

Fleeeece!

Despite spending all day every day working with fibre, I somehow can't seem to get enough of the stuff. Today was the first dry day we've had in this part of Wales for a while, and the next dry day had been ear marked as fleece washing day.
I've had a Speckle Face fleece from a local farmer in soak for longer than I care to remember. I cold water soak all my fleeces for at least a week before I wash them. It really helps to get the worst of the dirt out, and softens up any particularly crusty bits.
As well as the Speckle Face ( which I can get more of so was willing to be a bit rough with), I'd also got 250g of black gold! Some Bond that has been imported from Australia, while it wasn't particularly expensive, getting hold of it involved a 3 month wait for the fleeces to take the boat from Down Under.

The Speckle Face was hauled out of soak (I have a huge mesh bag that makes soaking fleeces much easier), and gently (you can still felt with cold water if you agitate enough) rinsed with the hosepipe, just enough for the dirty water to rinse out. We have some decking in front of the caravan which lets the dirty water drain off.



After that I pull off sections, and they go in to soak with a good glug of washing up liquid.



It stews for a while, and then I rinse in more hot water (about the same temperature as the original soapy water). This fleece wasn't particularly grubby (though does have lots of vegetation stuck in it) so I left it at that, by keeping the amount of fleece in the water low, I got away without doing further washes and rinses.

While the Speckle face got the rough treatment, the Bond was well and truly cosseted. I pulled off small chunks, and put about 5 or 6 in the sink in as hot water as I could get (a blend of hot water from the kettle, and very hot water from the tap) with a very big glug of washing up liquid, after about 5 minutes I pulled out the chunks, and rinsed them in a bowl of water of the same temperature. Again, this fleece wasn't very dirty, the sheep are kept coated which keeps the worst of the dirt off, so it was just to get some of the grease out.


The end result of a whole day of washing, beautiful soft piles of fluff that I plan on spinning just as they are



And this is why I buy commercially prepped stuff for the shop.... a whole day, to wash just over a kilo of fleece.

Clyd

The observant of you will notice that there is a new link in the side bar to the right. My new pattern for p/hop has actually been around for a while now, but life has been so busy I've not had the energy to go fiddling around with html coding to make it magically appear over there.
p/hop (for the uninitiated) stands for pennies per hour of pleasure, and is a fibre based fundraiser for MSF also known as Doctors without Borders. I've been involved in the project since the start, and have donated a number of patterns to them. The basic principle is that you donate based on the pleasure a pattern gives you, and the amount you can afford. MSF is one of the few charities that I trust to spend my money wisely, and the p/hop principle is fantastic (it won an award at the Just Giving awards a few months ago).

A little about the new pattern- Clyd (Definition: Clyd: 1. warm n.m. sheltered n.m. snug n.m. cosy n.m. pronounced kleed. Welsh) is a simple garter stitch headband. I think it would make a great first project for a beginner knitter (certainly better the endless garter stitch scarf). There's no purling, a few simple increases and decreases, and a yarn over button hole.
It also show cases hand spun yarn fantastically, you only need 60m of Aran weight for the whole pattern.

I wear a headband of a similar design lots when the weather gets colder, I have lots of hair, so hats never fit very well, and the shaping on the headband minimises bulk at the back of your head so the headband doesn't end up falling over your eyes every time you look up.

I think they'd make fab Christmas presents (I have a couple of the test knits saved up for just this), if you're a quick knitter you could make one in under 2 hours knitting time (my personal best is just over an hour). I hope you like it, and I hope it gives you pleasure!

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.