New pattern

The observant of you will notice that there is something new over to to the right. I've been working on a few things in the background for a while now, and the first of them is finally ready.

Meet Rhwyd (pronounced Rrrud), whihc is Welsh for net.



It's designed to work well with handspun yarns, and heavily variegated commercial yarns. It's reversible, and won't curl, and features stitch patterns that aim to break up pooling.



The pattern features charts, and written directions, and has been test knitted by the wonderful Julie from Button Button.
It's available to buy now from Ravelry, and I'll also be doing kits for the HilltopCloud Etsy shop with fibre only options (the blue version was made using some of handblended roving), or handspun yarn options.

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...

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.

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.

Wool Week

This week is National Wool Week.... though you may be forgiven for not knowing about it, the publicity so far has been somewhat limited.
As you might have gathered, I love Wool, I love it in all it's forms from raw fleece to finished item, I love scratchy Herdwick to superfine Bond.
I like it dyed, and I love it in its huge variety of natural shades. I value it for it's warmth, breathability,and waterproofness. Wool really is a fantastic resource, and thankful we're starting to realise it, and use more of it. Raw fleece prices have increased this year, which is great, but it's actually starting to make fleece profitable for the farmers local to me. For the first time in many years the farmers round here will get a wool cheque that pays for the cost of the shearing, and that's got to be a good thing!

Tal-y-Bont show

My friend Jane and I met up today at Tal-y-Bont show, I love local shows, I love the livestock the crafts, the cake, the giant veg...
I entered some of my knitting in a local show last year, but my new local show only had classes for a knitted cushion or a bag (and I make neither of those), and Tal-y-Bont technically isn't local to me so I didn't bother entering. I may get organised and do it next year though as some of the hand crafts classes were of an amazingly high standard, but unfortunately the knitting wasn't one of those classes, and it would be nice to show people some of the lovely designs and ideas that are now about.

This show had a lovely selection of local sheep, none of them are the super soft fleece breeds that we commonly know in knitting, but the climate around here doesn't suit that sort of sheep.
There were some Black Welsh Mountain though, which is definitely a breed that's worth trying, unlike the white version it's fleece is much softer, and with much less kemp (thicker hairs). I have a few different blends with this fibre in the shop, it's particularly nice blended with silk.


There were also a few of the classic handspinners sheep, Jacobs. I have a washed Jacob fleece under my bed that I really must do something with!


Plenty more photos to have a look at on my Flickr stream if you like that sort of thing.
There was also a handcraft tent, and in there was an old man who was hand plaiting headcollars for sheep and cattle out of cord and twine, beautiful work.




They also held a shearing competition, though disappointingly it seemed to be about the way the sheep looked at the end, rather than the quality of the fleece as an end product, the sheared fleeces would be useless to a handspinner, and as they were only from Welsh Mountain sheep I didn't even bother to try and scrounge a freebie.
There was blade shearing, which left the sheep with rather more dignity than the electric clipper shearing!



This sheep didn't seem to appreciate it's haircut, can't say I blamed it, 12degrees centigrade is not a pleasant temperature for an August day!

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.

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.

I can spin a Rainbow

I fell in love with the colours in this lovely Baby Camel/Silk blend from FeltstudioUK. It's spinning like a dream, I've split it up to try fractal spinning, not sure if it's going to work or not, but I'd love to keep these colours sparkly and not turn it to sludge...

Iridescent green

I'm not normally a fan of bright things, but I saw this fibre when I visited the Wonderwool Wales festival yesterday and had to have it.



Now I bet you're thinking "that's not bright", and the dark bits of Shetland aren't, but it's blended with silk, and the Shetland is a very very dark green, and the silk is the same shades but lighter. There were more versions in different colours, and I had to be restrained from buying all of them! The fibre is from Freyalyn's Fibre, her shop is empty right now as she's still at the festival, but it will be updated when she get's back.

When we sat in the sunshine enjoying lunch, this little guy came to say hello. His colours (why are beetles always boys in my mind?) remind me of the fibre I'd just bought. I can't wait to spin it up.

Spin spider spin...

Or actually, maybe not... if I was a spider I'd make very few webs.
This latest yarn has taken me ages to spin, it's a blend of merino, silk, nylon and real silver strands in a luminous blue.





So blue, it's nearly impossible to photograph, throw in the silver reflecting all the light and this was the best I could manage.




As a finished yarn though I love it, nearly 2 years after I started spinning I feel like I'm getting to the point where I can make the finished yarn I could see in my head. Good job really, as there might be more spinning in my future....

A sign of things to come

There might be chance to do rather more of this in the future...
Earlier this week I handed in my notice to leave teaching, it was starting to make me unhappy again, and no job is worth that.
I'm heading to WAles to live with Mum and Dad for a bit... I'm trying to work out if I can turn the things I love in to a living.
The future is sounding exciting!

Learning

You would think that being surrounded by learning all day would mean that I have had enough of learning in my spare time. However I can't seem to get enough of it. The more I read and discover about fibre crafts the more I want to know.
It started with learning to knit, then I decided to learn to spin, then I wanted to learn to crochet, then I wanted to learn how to prepare my own fibres for spinning, then I wanted to weave.... who knows what I'll do next, maybe if I had a bigger kitchen I'd try my hand at dying...

Yet again I am off to Wonderwool Wales this April, Mum and I used to make a weekend of it but she now lives close enough that we can go as a day trip. Previous years I've simply made a good job of spending my hard earned cash but this year I decided I fancied learning something.
Everything I know about fibre preparation I've picked up from the internet, I've never really been shown what to do, or what to look for in good raw fibre. Hopefully by the end of April I'll have learnt a little bit more.

For now, I am getting on with my knitting, I have been freed from gift knitting and have enjoyed casting on things that are just for me! I'm sat on the sofa listening to the wind, with a pot of sparkly beads beside me. I reckon if I bash on I can get this shawl finished this weekend!

Things to love

I am desperately trying to work out wether I am brave enough to do this project with my Rainbows....



She took a load of roving, got the kids to dye it and then span it up to make a beautiful blanket. I've yet to work out how to do the dying without trashing the church hall though. Maybe if I wait until the summer we can do it outside...



The roving looks like it should spin up to be clown yarn, but somehow because the same colours appear over and over the project works.

An experiment

Mum and I bought some fleeces at Woolfest, we both spin, and I've experimented with carders before but this is the first time we've ventured in to doing things with a whole fleece. Now a small 1 bedroom flat in Sheffield is not the place to be doing things with a whole fleece so out of necessity all of the prep work is going to happen at my parents cottage in WAles.
However they are not on mains water so in the summer water can be a bit of a problem, when we had a very dry spell a few weeks back they did actually run their storage tank empty with the help of a hidden leaking pipe so washing 3 fleeces takes up rather more of the water supply than is ideal.
The hot water is also only heated by an immersion heater, so again producing large amounts of hot water to wash fleeces in is not economical.
This is where the Fermented Suint Method comes in. Basically you lob your fleece in to a barrel of rain water, the dissolved salts in the water make an alkali solution which reacts with the lanolin (fat) in the fleece and you make your own soap in the barrel the fleece is soaking in. The idea being it cleans out any dirt and also breaks down all the greece so at the end of a week you have a nice clean fleece. You can then use the same fluid to keep cleaning any other fleeces you have in a smaller amount of time. Good for the environment, and low work load!

Anyway, here's day 1.



Lots of dirt already has come out, but it is still greasy. No photo today (day 2) because it's pouring down, and I'm heading home after that but Mum has promised to take photos.

Fate

Sometimes your life just seems to take on a certain colour theme. Two days after I finished tinkering with the colours on here, this arrived through the door.


The latest fibre club instalment from Natalie at the Yarn Yard, lets hope I get to see more blue over the next week as I'm off on holiday camping in Pembrokeshire.

Until next year

The tour de france has just finished which means that it's time to look back on what I managed to knit and spin. This year got interupted by a trip to Scotland, and this time last year I hadn't learnt to spin yet so there was no repeat of last years mammoth effort!


I have however knitted a pair of socks from my own handspun, and a few squares for a p/hop afghan which is going to be auctioned in September.


On the spinning front I've managed 3 skeins in total.

98m of laceweight silk, just enough to work out I don't like spinning silk, and too little to actually be useful! It is pretty though.

Some sparkly fingering weight which is my first spindle spun yarn.

And some laceweight Teesdale wool.



Just so you don't start getting the wrong idea about me I also finished these over th last few days... the least said the better, they're going to the frog pond I've now knitted 5 individual legwarmers in an effort to make 2 complete pairs and suffered to get the sizing right on all of them. I declare defeat, the yarn is lovely soft alpaca, it can be something else!

Some spinning

Here's the latest thing off the wheel. Some Handspun Teesdale from Freyalyn's Fibres a few people have commented on Ravelry that they'd not encountered Teesdale before. It's lovely to spin, not super soft and quite grabby, but saying that it wasn't horrendous to draft. The finished yarn is quite coarse, with pretty good definition, but also a bit of a halo if that makes sense. It has made a really nice laceweight though the yardage is a little disappointing, only 250m from 100g. It will make a nice small lace shawl though.

Endings

I just finished my last day at my present school I will confess to shedding a tear over one delightful class who have been a delight all year. Others I could dance with joy at the thought of never seeing them again!
This is only a quickie as I have to leave the house in 20 minutes to go to my leaving do, and I am still wearing what I wore to school. I am however all organised for the last week of term. I'm taking our Year 12 pupils up to scotland for their Duke of Edinburgh Gold expedition, the packing has mostly consisted of me taking everything and the kitchen sink as I have no idea what I actually need, however most importantly the spindle that Natalie from the Yarn Yard posted for me has arrived so I can continue my effort for the Tour de Fleece.
I'm off to try and make myself look beautiful, see you in a week, check the twitter feed for updates on lost children!