Odd carols

One of the monthly woolly days I attend has a lovely man singing unusual carols at the December meeting.   I love it, but some of the carols really are odd.   He doesn't get round to all of them, so I have to just goggle at the lyrics info the booklet

In the grip of the muse

Sometimes you just have to go with where the muse takes you.   Today that was from this

which pleasingly turned into this 

Louis Theroux appears to approve of my endeavours, ably assisted by my daughter

Christening

Just before Christmas one of our former guild members e mailed to say that she was selling some of her late mother's spinning and weaving equipment. I was the lucky first one to reply so as well as various warping pegs I soon became the happy owner of a lendrum with plenty of bobbins. All thanks to my past self who was wise enough to save birthday and Christmas present money instead of frittering it.

I knew exactly what fibre I was going to use for my first spin as I won a raffle prize of Babylonglegs fibre at a spinning day. As Sarah helped me check my new wheel, it only seemed fitting.

As the fibre came in three lots, I decided to spin a three ply (as a hat tip to Sarah's preferred yarn structure). I also decided to play with fractals using a one, two, three split. So, the first ply was spun across the top; the second was split in half along the length and spun and the last was split in thirds. With each ply I tried to keep the colours clear.

As always with Sarah's fibre, the spin was smooth and pleasurable and soon I had three bobbins of beauty which I was excited to start plying.

Which is when the problems began.

Everything started off fine, but then I realised I'd snapped a ply and been making a two ply for a couple of minutes. I couldn't just take that part out because of the sequencing, so I laboriously started unplying and rewinding. It took hours. It took the twist out of the singles. It made my arms and shoulders ache. I couldn't let it defeat me.

Once I had the plies unwound the only thing I could think of doing was to respin the singles to get the twist back in. However that meant I had to then spin again to get them the right way on the bobbins. I even did the same to the third bobbin to make sure it had the same amount of twist.

I joined all three plies back on and with a sigh, restarted. Five minutes of plying and the end of the bobbin popped off. By this time my shoulders were around my ears and I was tempted to cry or throw the whole wheel across the room. Instead hubby tried to help in various ways. None of which worked. Eventually, I had a strop, snapped the plied yarn and did the spin and respin thing onto more bobbins. Thank goodness this wheel came with lots of them.

Heartily sick of it all, I put the whole lot in the naughty corner and stewed for a couple of days. I came back to it and this time the plying went well, but I was really disappointed that I couldn't get all of the yarn onto one bobbin. I made this into a positive and decided to chain ply the remaining singles, just to see.

Cute enough on the bobbins, so winding them onto the niddy noddy then into skeins was very exciting. 

I'm so pleased with how these turned out, despite the wheel related difficulties on the way.   I've learnt a lot and resolved to use my Sonata for plying larger quantities. (Thereby taking a step to understanding multiple wheel ownership.) Next is finding just the right project I guess.   No rush! 

Sick with and of grief

My step dad died yesterday. Months of cancer and related treatment with no hope at the end of it and still I'm felled at this point.

I can't properly cry yet. I'm mostly frozen emotionally, with just the odd leak of a few tears before I clam up again. Either that or I'm insanely angry at something stupid, some thing that's out of my control. I've been a touchy cow for months at work while dealing with this. Ridiculously cross at colleagues' actions or inability to follow processes and procedures.

I'm already sick of grief. Knowing that this is just the start and that I will go through it, work through it, follow my own path through it does not make it any more welcome. I'm not resisting it, more acknowledging that it's a visitor none of us want.

The thing I already hate about it is how overbearing it is. How it takes over everything. I'm heading into work, dreading the solicitation this news brings and delaying sharing it. The caring, gentle consideration and the head tilt. All well meaning but just at this moment (but probably not in 5 minutes), too much to bear when all I want to do is be the workplace bitch, the money dragon. Just for a few minutes, just for a refuge, just to catch a bit of normal before the tears come crashing in.

Testing

Just trying to wrap my head around this

Revitalisation

I didn't realise how long it was since I'd posted on my blog.  Oops.

I've had quite a run of contracting work, so let's blame my lack of words on that shall we?

I do know that after Christmas the creative muse left me for an extended holiday - battered by Christmas and all that entails, and a less than optimum working environment.

After a rather peculiar end to this latest contract I felt the urge to make something.  I wasn't sure what.  I started knitting my beautiful lambswool hand spun into a jumper, but it's not quite right (so is consigned to the naughty corner for a time out).  I looked at my warp dressed loom (yes, I got one - he derseves a post of his own though) but didn't feel inspired.

The only thing that tickled my interest was having a play on my blending board.  I grabbed the first bag of scraps I came to and remembered how much fun these are

I tried taking a picture at night - how dull these look.  However, in the daylight...

 Kaboom!


I didn't know how I wanted to spin these and ended up playing around with coreless corespinning.  I've yet to find anyone else referencing doing this with rolags - please point me to anyone who does.

The resulting single seemed to my inexperienced eyes, rather rope-like and overspun.   Being coreless, it was still very soft and squishy.  I wanted a bit more give in the yarn and thought that I would like to ply it with something to help counteract the extra twist..  I grabbed a reel of thread and some machine embroidery lurex type stuff

And just quickly thread plied the single

I gave the skein a bath and snapped it a few times to encourage the twist to even up a little, then let it dry hung in the gentle heat of the airing cupboard

Finally, here's my finished skein - soft, poofy and squidgy!

Another first

My son finished his A level exams today, so went out to celebrate with his cohort this evening.  It's the first time I've seen him a little worse for drink!

Ob-session

As predicted, I finished my weaving within the week, despite working over 42 hours in my day job.  I took it to the woolly day at Twyford (which I highly recommend - the second Saturday of the month - just comment if you are interested and within reach of Leicestershire - I'll get details to you!)

I was bowled over by the lovely comments and support of my fellow fibre fans.  I was encouraged to cut the work off the loom and knot a fringe - do you want to see how it looked?  If not - too late!

Sally wanted us to play with colour and texture - I think I gave it a good go.  I discovered I'm not keen on eyelash yarn or yarns with ends sticking out, but I love the effect of slubby yarns in the weave.  Plies of different colours tend to give a diagonal stripe effect as do random dyes.

Here's the weaving before it came off the loom

and here I am wearing it.  I'm going to wait until I've showed this to Sally before weaving in the ends so she can see the variety of yarns that went into it.  I've steamed it and will trim the fringe to even it up.  Is there anything else I should do?

I'm still pondering what loom.  Do I get something simple to start and then aim for something more for my big birthday next year?  Hubby asked me what I intended to do with whatever I wove, as he knows I like the things I produce to have a purpose.  I think that's a great question.  What do you use your own woven cloth for?

Maybe I need a course or a play day - suggestions for those would be great too and I'd be willing to travel for a weekend away

Sweet!

I did a tiny, decent thing the other week.  The smallest act of kindness, but something that anyone could have, would have, should have done.  The only reason I'm talking about it is because of the huge reward it precipitated - the most divinely dyed sock yarn from Verity of TrulyHooked.

She offered me the choice of any yarn in her Etsy, but I had to leave the choice to her as every yarn I looked at I thought 'yes, this is the one', only to look at the next and think 'wait, no, this one'.  The only one I rejected was a chartreuse - so not my colour.  I was thrilled to receive the above in her Antique colourway.    I think it is the shades of fading rose petals - so lovely!

Not another hobby!

I blame Sally.  And my husband.

At the Guild of Long Draw Spinners Sally ran a workshop to introduce novices to weaving  I was unashamedly the first person to sit down at one of the looms and 'have at it' -  and found I couldn't, wouldn't stop.  I didn't have a clue what I was doing, so both Sally and Maggie were very patient in their explanations to me,  The idea was to play with colour and texture, so that's what I did.  Luckily both Sally and Eileen had brought a wide variety of yarns to sample.  (By the way, I really dislike the white textured stuff in the photo - it makes the weaving look like a threadbare towel.  The ribbon yarn above it though, I love!)

My first weave since making a tiny purse at school 40 years ago! 

I did try very hard to leave the loom alone for someone else to have a go, but when I noticed that no one else had done so, I went back.  I wove all day.  Then Sally did something incredibly kind - she lent me her knitters loom for a month!  (It's not her only one I hasten to add).

I took it home, I sat in the kitchen and wove all evening.  When I was madly into papercrafts, I did lots of swaps of yarn and thread samples - I ended up with boxes of small amounts of novelty yarns all wound onto embroidery floss bobbins.  They were ideal for this.  So the weaving went on.

  The next day a friend came to visit.  I showed her the loom and she had a go.  For two hours.  Not the only one hooked then.  When she went, I must confess I took her work out so I could say that the whole thing was woven by me.  And I started again.  And did a bit more in the evening.  And the following two evenings because while I was at work all I could think about was the weaving waiting for me at home.  Oh, and how my shoulders and upper arms were a bit achey.

A riot of colour and textures

I'm not sure if this is an infatuation or the real thing. Only time will tell I suppose.  I do know that I've found myself thinking about buying my own loom and wondering what type I should get.

Sally wasn't expecting to lend her loom out, so she didn't bring all of the equipment for warping up etc.  I'm going to have woven to the end of the warp before the month week is up, so what do I do then? At least there's another woolly day on Saturday (why yes, I am a guild tart, glad you noticed) where I can get advice as to whatever I need to finish everything off, sort out the numerous ends etc. 

I am looking forward to seeing the whole thing unfurled

So, if you've been paying attention, you might be wondering why I'm blaming my husband for this sudden interest.  It's not that I'm looking for interests to take me out of the house and away from housework (never had that problem). The short answer is that he knows me too well.  When I started knitting he predicted I'd end up spinning, despite my protestations.  When I took up spinning, he told me I'd want a loom next.  Maybe I'm a good wife who doesn't want to confound his expectations?!

Thank you Facebook

I was really pleased that Facebook reminded me of the shawl I knitted for my friend today as I've never got a picture of it being worn before.  I had a beauty shot of it here, but here's Sarah modelling it - doesn't the blue look great against her hair? If you didn't know, Sarah is the creative talent behind Babylonglegs, where you can find lovely yarns and fibres that she dyes in her studio. Sadly for everyone else, she no longer stocks this yarn base, so I'm very privileged to have had the joy of knitting with it

Bounce bounce bounce

Following on from my playing with colour, I spun up the hidden depths batt so that the greens would have something neutral to pop against.

So,there's 238 yards of approx DK.  The green blue pop is at the beginning/end of my yarn and stems from what was on the bobbin before I spun up the green rolags.  I love how it looks in the skein, but I'm not sure I'll be using it at this point

What do you think?  I love the colours flickering in and out and I'm so curious about how it will knit up.  I'll have to decide what to make first though - any suggestions?

Playing with colour

I went to one of my guilds on Saturday and thoroughly enjoyed a mini workshop on Tones, Tints and Shades.  It was given by Pam Austin, who always entertains me.  (She taught me to long draw by smacking my hand when I tried to control everything worsted style - something that horrified me at the time, but amuses me greatly now.)  Pam explained how blending colours with different neutrals changes their appearance and we used hand carders to produce the effects she talked about.  I won't go into too much detail as it's her workshop and living.

So, fired with enthusiasm, I spent some time on Sunday experimenting.  Here are the fibres I used  that were in my bit bag - yellow with a streak of purple that had clung to it, lime milkshake harshness, deep navy blue, natural that somehow looks pink, and grey drier lint (not really, but it was peculiar stuff)

Here's a taste of the shades I carded up.  Look as those airy rolags!

 Want to see some blending shots?

I put a mix of fibres on the card

One pass

The other carder

Action! (very hard to take all of these pictures with one pair of hands and one crappy, very crappy camera phone)  Look how the awful short grey stuff was clumping at this point.

Still struggling to get it blended at this point

But after some more work.....

I am so looking forward to plying this!

And yes, that is a mirror underneath the flyer - this way I can see the nearest end of my bobbin without having to half stand

A Better Beret

So, here's the improved beret, beautifully modelled by my lovely daughter.  I'm not so enamoured of all the pink appearing at the centre where the bobble is as it makes it a bit nippley.  It has led me to save it in my Ravelry projects as the Tit-fer Hat though!

Batt-y goodness

I've been playing with the drum carder and I'm in love with what comes out of it. I'm calling the one on the left hidden depths and the one on the right deep lagoon.

Colouring for Crafty Adults

Colouring books for adults are all the rage.  I've got one and have enjoyed what I've done so far, but there's been a question mark in my mind about it all.  I don't like that it's become a big business opportunity and I've had the niggling question of what the heck do you do with it once you've finished a page.

I have unwittingly found a crafty alternative and it's all due to my friend Brenda.  We've never met and I'm not at all sure how we ended up as online friends - a combination of common interests and admiration for her photography I think. (Correct me if I'm wrong/ if you have a better memory than me Brenda!)  A month or so ago she invited me to take part in a project called the Embroidered Digital Commons which involved embroidering phrases ready to be combined into a definition of the word liminal, which in turn will combine into a larger lexicon.  The link gives a far more in depth explanation.

Here's what I produced (everything was pressed before it went, but excuse my enthusiasm in these hot off the needle pictures)

The action of embroidering turns out to be absorbing and meditative as well as creative, plus at the end there's the possibility of having art you can do something with - what could be better?!