Fit for a Queen

Meet Brenhines, my new pattern, designed for handspun, in the latest edition of Yarnmaker magazine. Brenhines means Queen in Welsh.

It's a short cape, designed to keep the chill off your shoulders. I designed it with tailspun art yarn in mind, I'm always being told "these look pretty but how do you use them?", and now I have an example of how you can. 

It's worked in alternate rows with a plain grey Shetland, so it's not overwhelmingly full of locks. 

Here's a close up of the back so you can see what I mean. The locks themselves will stay pretty much intact as you wash and wear the cape, they come off the sheep like that, and sheep aren't know for being gentle with their hair do. 

Of course, if art yarns aren't your thing it also works in a plain yarn. This was worked using some Shetland fleece. 

If you want to spin your own tailspun I can recommend Spin Art by Jacey Boggs, or if you don't fancy spinning your own there are plenty of spinners out there on Etsy. 

If you would like to knit this, for now the pattern is only available in Edition 13 of Yarnmaker. I have 1 copy left in the shop, but have more on their way to me, or it will be available as a download when the rights revert to me. The Ravelry pattern page is here if you want to favourite it, or add it to your queue. 

Meanwhile, I'm giving away my contributors copy, just leave me a comment below, and I'll pick a winner on the 20th February. 

Long Draw

I spent Saturday learning how to do English style long draw at my spinning guild. I'd already taught myself to do American long draw, and until Saturday had presumed the difference would be pretty minimal and I'd just be able to swap between the 2 styles. Half an hour of muttering and swearing later, it quickly became apparent that the 2 styles have rather different nuances of technique, but by the afternoon I'd got there.

The middle skein is from my first attempt, the fleece I was using wasn;t idea, it was a bit too long, and a bit too sticky from some lanolin that had been left in from the washing process. I switched to baby camel (the back skein) which was a bit easier while I taught my hands what to do, and the front skein is the original fleece, but spun once I'd grasped the technique. 

The resulting skeins are beautifully bouncy, really plump and well rounded, they'd be perfect for colour work, and anything where you want warmth. 

Amanda Hannaford ran our workshop, and it was a really excellent day, thoroughly recommended if you get the chance to do one of her workshops.

If you don't live close enough to do a workshop then this video by Amanda is excellent.

A find!

Earlier this week I had a trip to Ikea, we live far enough away that it's a full on day out, usually we're out for 12 hours, so it's pretty exhausting.
While we were looking at fabrics I spotted a cushion, I'd ben looking at cushions all day, but I have a plan that involves weaving some of my own, so hadn't quite seen anything that was "just right".
This one however was perfect!

My very own sheepy cushion, and it was the very last one!

It's not made of wool, but when we got it home and gave it a quick iron it was discovered that it was made of Ramie. Ramie is one of my favourite things for adding to blends at the moment. It's made in the same way as linen, but from nettle stems. It gives a really similar effect to linen, the same drape, with shine, and feel. Works great in wool blends as well. 

As for the sheep they're mostly a mystery. I can definitely spot a Merino, and a Texel,

A Badger Faced

 and a Swaledale

The rest though, are a bit more of a challenge!

Any suggestions, leave them in the comments!

Estuary part 2

Back in December I shared the transformation from batts to yarn in this post. 
The batts in question were a muted brown with flecks of blue, inspired by the colours of the Mawddach estuary. When you spun them, the blue became a little more obvious, creating a subtle, shimmery yarn.

I've since turned the skein of yarn in to a sample shawl for using on the stall at shows, it's also part of my talk that I dod for guilds and spinning groups about combining colours. 

From a distance the subtleness of the blend is apparent

Get a bit closer, and the flecks you saw in the yarn become more obvious. The white bits are partly some of the seacell, partly snow, I photographed this last week trying to do it today would lead to me chasing the shawl half way to England, it's a bit windy out there!

The pattern is Pipers Journey by Paula Emmons-Fuessle,  I think it's great for handspun, I love how garter stitch looks using handspun yarn. This took a smidge over 100g, but I know other people have done it using 100g of fibre, you could always use handspun for the garter stitch, and then do the border in a complementary colour. I love this shape of shawl as well, I end to wear shawls backwards, with the  point at the front, and then the 2 ends wrapped round my neck, and that works best if you have a crescent shape rather than a pure triangle. 

Before The Thaw

The thaw is starting, a warm front in coming in, and rain has started to fall, the snow will all be gone by the morning.
There was still time for one last trip out in the snow though, this time up to some local quarries to look at the icicles. We headed out just as the band of rain was coming in, and it was still just cold enough to be falling as snow.

A ice prison, formed across the entrance to one of the mines.

Snow sticking to the tiny ledges on the rock face

An ice tree in front of a wall of ice

And a last chance to roll in the snow, tomorrow it's back to splashing around in the mud.

Sledging

Final snowy post for a while, the weather is warming up at the end of this week. However, we're making the most of it while it lasts and enjoying the snow.  Apologies for the video quality, it has a certain 1970's cine camera feel to it for some unknown reason!

This is in the field behind our house, the dogs are in long leads because there are sheep in the field, and being rescue dogs they are not to be trusted when it comes to sheep. What you don't see at the end of the video is that Meg had run down the field and managed to pole axe me with her lead!

Who knows what Gwen did in the past when it snowed, but as soon as the sledge came out she immediately wanted to play with it, going in a straight line is rather hard when you have a dog trying to claim the sledge for herself.

Cross Country

Two years ago my Mum bought a cheap set of cross country skis second hand on Ebay, of course, last winter we had no snow, so they didn't get used at all, but today they were great fun in one of our local forests.

The snow was really deep round here, nearly a foot in some places, which was pretty hard work because you just sank in. Of course the dogs came with us, and had a great time. 

Gwen is part German Shepherd and loves the snow, lots of good smells, and it keeps you lovely and cool!

Of course, there are also little creatures hiding under the snow, and it's fun to try and find them!

The sun might not be out, but with views like this, it's hard to mind. 

I ache in places I didn't know had muscles (which is probably part of the problem!), so this afternoon is a leisurely one with my spinning wheel in front of the fire.