Mad Chickens

The chickens have been absent from the blog for far too long.

They still spend most of their time marauding round the garden seeing what yummy things they can find to eat. I see an awful lot of their fluffy bottoms poking skywards!

The observant among you will notice that there are only 3 in the picture above, fear not, the others are still alive and well, just a little pre-occupied.

They have decided that they are brooding a clutch of eggs, except they're not, because all the eggs get taken out of the nest box.... This is why people who want lots of eggs don't have pretty, fluffy, posh chickens. 

One of them has become so broody that even when you evict her from the nest box she still refuses to accept that she's not sat on a clutch of eggs. She just sits there on the lawn in a trance, eventually she wakes up a little, but it takes her a while!

We've tried most of the methods that are supposed to get them to stop being broody and they're having none of it. I kick them off the nest box now and again to get some food, and once the other hens have laid their eggs they get shut out from the nest box, and go off as a little gang to see what adventures they can have.

Unfinished Business

I've been living in my barn for nearly 6 months now. I love it, and it suits me perfectly, it no longer looks as neat and tidy as it did when I first showed you the photos, but that's how it goes when you live in, and run a business from this small a space.
On any given day the bannisters are being used to finish drying fibre, or handspun, and most surfaces are covered with fibre, either in progress, or finished bags waiting to be photographed, put away, or posted out.

One thing though is in need of finishing. The top door of the barn used to be at the same level as the bank, the builders had to dig out the soil to get round the back to lay the drains, leaving me with this for the last 6 months!

That's roughly a 2m drop, not the best thing to be facing on the other side of the door!

The plan was to build a deck floating over that space, reaching out to the grass slope, meaning I can use the door to get in and out, and giving me an outdoor space to sit and work in. 

After a couple of hours work the base is in place, Dad and my younger brother will start on the bracing, and the deck tomorrow.

When it's done I'll be able to sit and admire this view whenever I want.

Something New...

The great thing about working from home is exactly that, you're working from home. If I want to take the afternoon off, then that's my choice. The bad thing about working from home is the same thing, trying to come up with the balance is tricky!

I'm not entirely sure where the last week has gone, there's been the usual round of new fibre, photographs, listing, spinning, etc but if you asked me exactly what I did on Monday I'd have no idea!

I do however know what I did on Saturday.

My local guild were invited to spin at a local village show. We had a lovely day, recruited a few members, and showed the general public that spinning is a craft which is alive and kicking in this part of Wales.

The only other noteworthy thing from this week are these

Brand new spindle bags. Most of the spindle bags out there are just cloth bags, but spindles can be delicate things. The hook is particularly fragile, and can snap off really easily. Mum designs and makes these for me, a couple of weeks she showed me a prototype, and since then we've refined the idea. 

Inside there's a recycled plastic bottle, which gives the bag rigidity. It's not completely solid, if you plonk a heavy bag on your spindle case, or sat on it, you'd probably still get damage, but it will protect from everyday bumps and bangs, particularly if you put the hook at the bottom end. We're adding new fabrics all the time, so keep checking the shop, or if have something specific in mind we've already made a few custom requests. We're already running low on plastic bottles, so I'd better get drinking more lemonade!

Slow

We'd not seen any  of these lovely creatures for a while. Who know's why they're called slow, because they can be anything but!

Can you tell what it is?
Maybe a close up will help....

Not a snake, but a slow worm. A lovely healthy adult. 

We're lucky to have a healthy population living in the garden. The damp cool weather has meant we've not seen them much, but as it's warmed up over the last few days they've been basking in the sun.

Support

I just tweeted about posting parcels. It's Monday morning, which means it's parcel day. I only post on 2 mornings per week. Partly because it's more efficient, and partly because I'm limited by the opening hours of our post office.
It's been a busy weekend in the shop which is lovely, and I'm also posting the Handblended Club this morning. That means there are 4 large Ikea bags all full of parcels. In response to my tweet a friend said  you can just print the postage online and then drop them off. This is an option, but it's not currently what I chose to do.

Our post office is in the garage a mile from our house. It's run by Dilys, who is the wife of our neighbouring farmer. Dai and Dilys are the "go-to" people in our community, if you have a problem or question they will either help, or know someone who can. When our water was blocked (we're not on mains water) last year, Dai and his son were the ones who un-blocked it.

Our community is small, our village isn't much more than a hamlet, and it's 20 minutes drive to the nearest small town. A resource like our own post office is something to be treasured, and used. If I print my parcels online and drop them off at the post office, it means that the postage isn't going through the records of my small post office. Dilys is also very nice, and lets me drop off the parcels and come back to pay later, it's not even that I have to wait around for them. It also means she can fit in other customers around my parcels.
Should Post Office closures in my area be looked at, it would be disastrous if we lost this resource, instead of a 3 mile round trip, I'd have to do a 30 mile round trip to post my parcels. It's in my own interest to get Dilys to post my parcels rather than use the online postage.

Getting in to the spirit

I am immensely lucky in my job, for the past few days the TV has been showing wall to wall Olympics. I can usually card while keeping half an eye on the TV, the past few days have been all about the handblended club and preparing 3kg of the same blend can drive me a little bit batty unless I have something to entertain me at the same time.

The evening's are my time however, and I get to indulge in my own thing. Sometimes it's spinning, sometimes it's knitting, usually it's a bit of both.

Here's my choice of projects for the Olympics

It's a colour affection shawl using the handspun I created during the Tour de France. It's going to be a fantastic reminder of a wonderful summer of sport, a real once in a lifetime summer, that I can't quite believe I get to witness. 

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.