You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May 2009.
First up, I haven’t forgotten about the competition from the last post, but I will wait until after midnight tonight before choosing a winner, just in case there are any last minute entries. I should also say that the winner can choose “The Creature” as their prize if there is nothing in my Folksy shop that takes their fancy.
Anyway, I’m sitting out in the garden to write this, after a day of gorgeous blue skies and sunshine – much too nice to be stuck indoors. The garden has acquired some new plants today – six tomato plants and two pepper plants, so hopefully I’ll be able to eat home-grown salad this summer and maybe even home-grown ratatouille. Yum.
Handspun socks!! Yay! I’ve finally managed to complete a pair of socks from my very own handspun yarn, a blend of blue-faced Leicester and nylon, 3-plied and dyed with Landscape dyes in…um…can’t remember the colours, it was left-overs I think. I can’t begin to say how pleased I am to have produced these socks, but I hardly dare wear them now…
I was not sure about this pattern as I was knitting it, as I didn’t think the twisted stitches showed up very well, but as you can see, when worn the pattern is very obvious. This was a mystery sock-a-long by Yarnissima (Ravelry linky) and was a very well-written pattern.
With those finished, my sock needles were feeling rather naked so I had to find another pair. A friend had bought a copy of Yarn Forward magazine, which I am not generally very keen on, but this issue had a lovely sock pattern, so I bought my own copy and leapt straight in:
Regia silk, 2.25mm needles, lots of cursing about pesky twisted stitches, but hopefully all worth it. (Ravelry linky). The instructions could be a bit clearer, especially with regard to which bit of the charts is to be repeated, but I’m muddling through.
Yesterday, three friends (Pie, Emma’s Monsters and Jenny Leggings) and I went off to Eastbourne in search of a new yarn shop that we had heard about. Tucked away down a little alley, in the charmingly-named “The Labyrinth” was Yarn Over, a gem of a yarn shop with beautiful yarns and a really warm welcome. Comfy sofas, tea, coffee and biscuits, practice yarns and needles, swift and ball-winder – heaven. Will definitely be going again. We all spent money, in my case on some gorgeous Manos silk blend (30% silk, 70% merino) in rich autumn tones, already well on its way to becoming a crochet shawl (yeah! Crochet! Wanna make something of it?)
Delicious, isn’t it?
… I found the emergency chocolate supply, so I feel almost normal again. Don’t really know why I wasn’t feeling normal, but I wasn’t. OK now though.
So, Friday saw me wending my way westwards to retrieve Lucy from her student flat and transport her back into the bosom of her family for the summer. Seems like only yesterday that I was dreading the day she went off to uni and severed the apron strings, and here she is, back again already! Nightmare drive home – M25 was doing a very good impression of a car park so it took 4 hours to travel 115 miles, not fun.
A strange thing happened earlier on this afternoon… my wrists and forearms seemed to be taking on strange colours, a bit of yellow here, some blue splodges there…red blotches… a new variant of swine flu possibly? Nah, I’ve been splooshing the dye pots again:
A rainbow(ish) of 4 ply merino; there is a project in mind for this multi-coloured confection, but nothing definite yet.
Now, I need a bit of help, please.
I have been using up leftovers again and have ended up with this creature:
Cute, huh?
He/she/it does not have a name or a back-story, so what I propose is that you, dear reader(s), send me a name and a short biography (nothing flash, just a couple of lines) by 31st May to this address and the winning entry (as chosen by the judging panel*) will be able to choose any item from my Folksy shop. I look forward to hearing from you.
*Judging panel to consist of me and whichever daughter(s) happen to be around at the time 
Not much knitting to report at the moment although I have plenty of ideas. I am working on a pair of socks with the handspun yarn that I had to frog recently, but progress is slow – not due to the speed of my knitting but because the pattern is released in weekly parts as it is May’s Mystery Sock-a-long on Ravelry (link here for those of you on Rav, the rest will have to wait until they’re finished). I’m enjoying the knitting so far – they’re toe-up socks but with a gusset heel rather than my usual short-row but I may be converted to this type of heel as it is very neat and you don’t have to pick up stitches, Yay!
Spinning has been pretty much non-existent recently apart from a small amount of the Winehouse fleece which I have spun into a chunky 2-ply. I knitted a small swatch and felted it by hand – it’s very hairy, but I think it will make a very durable fabric, particularly if I felt it in the washing machine. I’m leaning towards a bag of some description, but need to think some more on dimensions and fastenings.
Although I have been spinning for a while now, I do not consider myself to be experienced or accomplished as I tend to spin the same type and weight of yarn all the time, stemming from a lack of proper techniques. In a bid to improve matters I decided that a bit of drop-spindling would be a good idea as it would help my drafting and control. I have had a drop spindle for ages, but it was a rather cheap, solid thing that came from Ebay some time ago and although I produced something that vaguely resembled yarn, it was never very satisfactory and my attempts leaned more towards “dropping” than “spindling”. So, I bought this:
Seaglass spindle
Isn’t it gorgeous? The little coloured pieces you can see embedded in the resin of the whorl are pieces of glass picked up on the beach in Dorset and smoothed by the sea. It came from Wildcraft and I heartily recommend them – service was very quick and the spindle came very securely packaged in its own golden rigid cardboard tube which can double as storage. It is well balanced and a joy to use. The stuff on there in the picture is some recycled sari silk fibre that I’ve had for ages; it’s not the easiest fibre to spin, but looks fantastic when finished. I also spun a mini-skein of merino (I think, it wasn’t labelled) which has come out quite nicely – a huge improvement on my previous efforts.
Yesterday saw me in the garden (not my favourite pastime) as I took part in the annual fight with the hedge-cutters attempt to bring order out of chaos. It looks better than it did, but in my ruthlessness I have created some gaps that are crying out to be filled with something pretty – any ideas as to what shrubs can survive in salty sea air? Have also decided that I loathe grape hyacinths – they look nice enough when they’re in flower, but they are extraordinarily prolific and you just can’t get rid of the little b*****s. I never planted them in the first place and have no idea how they came to take over be in the garden. I also tried to sort out the rose bush in the back garden which has inexplicably started to lean over rather alarmingly and needs to be taught a lesson staked to the wall; after several unsuccessful attempts and a completely unprovoked attack, I have had to retire hurt, so am now sulking on the sofa as the injury sustained is making it a bit tricky to knit. I never realised that gardening was a combat sport…
