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.

Blizzard

There isn't really a better word to describe the weather. It's been a blizzard all day, not just heavy snow, but heavy wind as well, so much so that I have no idea how much snow has fallen. Some patches on the drive are free of snow, and in others it's over the top of my wellies.

This is probably one of the most sheltered spots, its a bench outside the caravan and there's probably around 4 inches of snow sat on it. 

This is the back of the house, where it sits in to the hillside, my barn is on the left and the main house on the right, the wind has been blowing down the valley, so I've been blasted all day, the deck is mostly clear of snow. 

Round the  other end of the building is another matter, here the snow is piling up in drifts, we've cleared the back door several times today, but it's so windy it just keeps piling up. 

The chickens are unimpressed with this state of affairs, their front door normally faces away from the prevailing wind blowing up the valley, this is blowing down the valley so it's been a bit crafty, and they've pretty much sat inside their house all day!

The main road running past the house has remained passable all day, but overnight with more snow and   the wind I suspect that it will be blocked for a while tomorrow morning. This is all due to stop for the weekend, but then we're due more snow at the start of next week. Good job I work from home and can just sit back and watch it fall!

Wintery Musings

We have snow, not much, but enough to make me happy. This winter has been so wet that it's nice to have a bit of variety. Today was particularly nice because the sun came out as well!

This is the view down our valley, the hills in the distance are pretty big, and Mum and Dad were walking in them today, apparently the snow is pretty deep up there. I would have loved to have joined them, but I had to use this instead.

It's the brand new boiler in my dyeing caravan, the last cold spell we had burst the pipes, which was a rather expensive error in not draining all the water out. This boiler looks rather space age, but isn't actually any better than the 1970's model it replaced. 

While I was busy dyeing, the chickens were busy being spoiled pests! They spend most of their day hanging around by the caravan and my Dad's workshop. He throws them a handful of corn on a regular basis, so today, every time I stepped outside I was met with sqwarking and indignant waddling unlesss a handful of food was produced. Of course, they then ignored most of it in favour of finding yummy things under the caravan...

All this is a roundabout way of saying, look out for some new dyed fibre in the shop over the next few days, there's definitely some Camel/Silk, and a few other things coming your way soon.