Delay in transmission

My apologies for the delay in transmission, dear blog readers. I've been setting up a new blog which will be hosted on the Wildcraft site, it's going to be lovely and shiny. It shouldn't be long now before it's ready. Watch here for news and a link when it's up and ready to read!

I've been doing plenty of spinning, knitting and dyeing too, so there'll be plenty to write about. Oh and the first lot of coloured Ryeland lambs are due within a fortnight. I'm so excited, watch for lots of cute lamby pics soon!

The Pre Christmas Time Warp

Ok, so I've not been so good with the blogging lately. I'm blaming Christmas, and the time-distortion that seems to accompany it every year, compressing four weeks into the time of one! But mainly I haven't blogged because I've been so preoccupied with knitting and spinning secret items that I haven't had a chance to take photos of them, nor could I show any photos as that would give away the secrets, doh!

Here's a photo of the one project I can show pics of, some finished calendulas sock yarn:

When I posted about this yarn before I was spinning it on a drop spindle. However, my wheel has been looking lonely and unloved lately, so one evening I transferred the calendulas yarn to my wheel (Rose) and finished spinning and plying it there. The skein of wheelspun yarn looks pretty similar to the spindled version, which I'm very happy about - it means I'm consistent in my spinning at least... Now to decide on a sock pattern for this, I'm currently thinking I might try a Yarnissima pattern, either the Firestarters or the Fratellos, depends how brave I'm feeling. In any event I have a while to choose, as I won't begin these until after all the Christmas knitting is completed (unless that Christmas time distortion gets invoked again). Will keep you posted!

And in the meantime I've been very busy dyeing wool and completing spindles for the Wildcraft shop. These resin spindles went in the latest update, some of them are still available:

I've started making the shafts for the newer spindles myself, rather than using chopsticks as I did for the earlier resin versions. This has meant I had to learn how to use my mum's woodturning lathe. I'm still only at the 'point a chisel at the spinning thing and hope it looks ok' stage, but the spindles are turning out nicely - and I haven't lost any fingers so far!

Right, I'd better get back to my knitting...

A little horse, and some very bad lace

Exciting news! Krissie my arabian mare had her foal yesterday morning, a lovely chestnut filly. She took everyone by surprise by choosing the date that the vet predicted as her due date, but with very little sign that she was going to give birth until just a few hours beforehand. But all went well and both mare and foal are healthy and well. I visited them yesterday at the stud where Krissie's gone for foaling, and took many many photos! The photos in this post were taken when the little one was just 8 hours old.

I've named the foal 'Inara', as I've long been a fan of the one-series sci-fi show 'Firefly', which included a very beautiful character with the same name. Inara's also the name of an ancient Middle Eastern goddess, who was a protector of wild animals, so it seemed fitting.

She's by a stallion named Icon, who's a beautiful palamino arab x lusitano (a spanish breed). I'm hoping Inara will have inherited at least a little of his amazing talent for classical high school dressage.

It's hard to believe that just under 11 months ago, this was my first view of her, when Krissie had her first positive ultrasound scan:

The black circle in the scan photo is the embryo sac, I think Inara might be the tiny little bundle of grey cells at the top of the circle, but at that early stage it's hard to tell!

Krissie is being a brilliant mum, she's suckling the foal very well and taking excellent care of her. This is her first foal, so I'm really pleased she's taken to motherhood so well.

They need to stay at the stud for a couple of weeks, until Inara's strong enough to travel home. But I'm planning to visit a few more times before then, so hope to have some foal playing in field photos to post soon.

Back briefly to crafty news. As if I didn't have enough to occupy my brain, I've cast on my first ever lace project. This is the start of a Swallowtail Shawl, in Posh Yarn's 'Eva' (a cashmere/silk heavy laceweight yarn).

I'd been putting off learning lace knitting for a long time, although I've long been attracted to it. I'm left handed, and I knit left handed, so things are likely to come out the wrong way round if I knit lace without planning it beforehand. I've done a few simple motifs in lace before and got really confused about why my ssk's and k2tog's were coming out backwards. But after some research on Ravelry, I think I've figured out what to do. Basically I just have to read the charts in reverse, simple!

Well it would be simple if I could follow charts accurately. A few repeats after the photo above was taken, I got into a dreadful muddle. Fortunately I'd threaded a 'lifeline' through my stitches before the muddle, so I was able to frog back safely. But I've now knitted (and frogged) the following few repeats far more times than I'd like to admit. I keep miscounting, doing too many yarn-overs, dropping stitches, it's driving me a bit crazy! Perhaps I have too much foal on the mind. I feel inclined to put it away for a while and return to some nice simple sock knitting for a while. But knowing how my brain works, I won't be happy until the lace issue is fixed, so I could be in for a froggy weekend!

Hope to post some happy lace news soon. And also about my plan for the Tour de Fleece. Yes I have a plan, and I've even written it down. Somewhere, on my computer. It's probably hiding underneath all the photos of horses from yesterday... :)

A mixed bag

Ah, summer is here! I wish I could say I've been lazing in the sunshine with my knitting, but I have instead spent most of today trying to encourage a reluctant horse into a horse trailer, with only limited success. The culprit is Krissie, my arab mare, who's pregnant and due to have her foal in a fortnight's time (see pic below to see how very pregnant she is at the moment!).



I'm planning to send her to a stud to have the foal, they're much more experienced at it than I am and have foaling facilities and vets on hand. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to find a horse trailer of my own in time for the journey (I've been looking to buy a secondhand Rice trailer for ages), so I've borrowed a friend's box (thanks again B!).

But now after several very frustrating sessions of trying to load her, I've learned that Krissie doesn't like trailers much. I think with time she'll get used to it, as she's ok with going up the ramp and doesn't look overly stressed. She just doesn't like the ceiling over head, which is understandable, she doesn't like stables much either. The clicker training I've done with her has worked wonders with getting her comfortable in a stable and I'm really relying on the clicker work now.

She's has actually gone inside the trailer a couple of times, but she doesn't stay in for long, she seems to have got the going backwards quickly thing very well sorted! She's supposed to be going to the 'horsepital' on Tuesday, so I'll spend tomorrow working with her again and hopefully we'll get somewhere by the end of a second day.

Maybe Sam could teach her a thing or two, he used to be just as worried about trailers, but I did some trailer work with him a few months back and now he seems to love this one. He even loads himself, look!



Anyway, enough about horses. What about wool and knitting?

Well the Wildcraft shop has opened with much success. Big thanks to all those who've bought things already. I could barely keep up with the orders the first week, fortunately it's slowed down now to a more manageable level :) I'm very excited to see Wildcraft rovings appearing on Flickr and in people's stashes on Ravelry. I've even seen a few spun yarns appearing. Coley of Sheknitigans did a beautiful navajo plied yarn from a roving in the 'fumitory' colourway.

So the Wildcraft roving that started out as this:



Has now been transformed by Coley into this:


Tainted Love
Originally uploaded by sheknitigans

Lovely work Coley!

And there are others too. Take a look at what Belaybunny has been up to. She's working on some shetland in an 'anemone' colourway that's looking very pretty on the bobbins.

I updated the shop with some new rovings and stitchmarkers last week. A few have gone already, but if you like the Scottish Seascape or Calendulas colourways, they're still available. I have plenty more undyed wool top in stock, so I'll be doing some more Shetland and BFL rovings soon.

And then of course there will also be the wool batts. I've now prepared the Water batts from Willow's wool.



In real life they're quite a lot more blue than the pic here shows, I had trouble getting the camera to pick up the darker blues accurately. The dark is more like navy than the grey seen in the photo.

And I've washed and picked some of Cordelia's and Giles' fleece for the Air and Earth batts, so they'll be ready soon. I've tried spinning some samples of the fire and water batts and they're producing a lovely striped yarn, a little like Noro stripes, which is what I intended. The fleeces are quite strong English wool types, so they're not merino-soft, although the silk and mohair that's blended into the batts does soften them up a bit. I think they're going to make fabulous hard-wearing sock yarns, or great yarns for felting/fulling.

Now I just need to get Krissie loaded, then I can get back to the wool preparation! :)

Shearing Day

I'm broken! I sheared the sheep yesterday, and it was very hard work for a newbie :( Those oh-so-cute looking Texel cross ewe lambs were not-so-cute when it came to removing their wool! The sheep on the BWMB course that I did in January were nowhere near as wriggly as mine...

Anyway, I got the fleeces off, not in once piece, but without destroying them completely. I think I'll have to process them myself (not send them away as I was intending) as there are a fair number of double cuts. But hey, it'll mean I've done the whole lot myself, from shearing onwards...

So here are some of the girls after their haircuts:



Velvet, the old girl (black head and legs) on the right, was by far the easiest to do. She's around 13 years old, so she's had a few shearings from the professionals and clearly knows the score: sit still and it'll be over soon. Do you see the wild-eyed look in Willow and Cordelia's expressions though? It'll be a while before they want to be anywhere near me again!

The Texel x fleeces are very nice, a bit softer than the Suffolk that I'm most familiar with and with a more open staple (I used to have a flock of pedigree Suffolks). It should card and spin very easily. I'm planning to make some drumcarded batts from this wool for the online shop.



Oh and I did also shear Giles the ram, who behaved impeccably, but he needs some more clipping around the legs and face before I take pics. Otherwise he'll be really embarrassed, as he looks very silly. Actually it'll be me who's more embarrassed, I can't believe I left him looking so awful! So no, you can't see photos yet. My excuse is that he was the last sheep I did, at the end of a long day and he's a Very Woolly sheep. How one ram lamb can grow so much fleece is beyond me! It was good that I did him this weekend though, as I already found a small patch of fly strike (maggots, yuk!) in his wool, left without treatment it would have spread very rapidly in this warm weather. Removing the fleece got rid of it very effectively. I'll finish trimming up his little legs later in the week and post pics then. He really is the cutest little thing under all that wool.

Socky goodness and a problem with wraps

So, I've decided I like knitting socks. This is my second proper pair that I'm working on and I'm smitten. The pattern is the plain version of Widdershins from Knitty, which is worked from the toe upwards, but has a cushy heel flap that looks as though it was knit from the top down.

Warning - knitting tech talk follows (if you'd rather avoid this, skip between * and *... hey, that's like a knitting pattern):

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The heel is turned with short rows, and at the end of every short row, you're supposed to do a 'wrap and turn' (i.e. wrap the yarn around the turning stitch). It took me a while to work out what to do with the wrapped stitched after I'd turned the heel and was joining in the gusset stitches. The pattern said that on the final round of the heel turning part, where you do a whole round past all the wrapped stitches, whenever you meet a one, you have to to knit the wrap with the stitch it wrapped around. Hmm, this is sounding complicated just to write about it! Anyway, at first I did as I was told by the pattern, but while the wrap picking up thing worked on one side of the sock, I ended up with gappy holes on the other side. I knit and frogged the whole heel three or four times, and threw it across the room in disgust (at which point my sister, who was staying at the time, nearly suffered a knitting-related injury) before I figured it out.

When I had finally calmed down, had a cup of tea and gone to my 'happy place', I eventually worked out what was causing the problem. The gaps were appearing because I was knitting the wrap into the wrong stitch on one side of the sock. The gaps appear because the heel is worked back and forth, but the rest of the sock is knit in the round, and switching between the two styles makes a hole where the turn is. The point of knitting the wrap in with the turning stitch is to close the gap where a short row turn has been made. However, on one side of the sock this gap appears before you reach the wrapped stitch, and on the other side, the gap happens after the wrapped stitch. That's because on one side you're knitting forward in relation to knitting in the round, and the other side you're going back. So the cure for the gappiness? When you do that first row in the round after the back and forth short-rowed heel turn, on one side you knit the wrap with the stitch after it, and on the other side you knit the wrap with the stitch before it.

I've no idea if this is the orthodox method, but it sure worked for me. And my first sock is now pretty and non-gappy, I'm very happy with it. I'm just about to reach the same point on its partner, so just in case I'm wrong about all the above, watch out for flying sock needles!

Here endeth the knitting tech talk.
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In the meantime, I've decided I like the look of the Widdershins socks very much and have been scouring the net for more pretty sock yarn. As if I need it, have you seen my stash on Ravelry??!!