The dark side

I have a confession. This week I have mostly been shopping for perfume oils, BPAL oils to be precise. Yes it's true, I've turned to the dark side. Those teeny tiny bottles of scent have been calling to me for a while now, and I have finally succumbed. Look what arrived this week from Posh Brats, the only shop in the UK that stocks them.

It's a bottle of a scent oil called 'Wezwanie/Hold' and it smells amazing - like hazelnuts, oranges, honey and cocoa - all rolled into one. Delicious! :) I am now, I confess, completely hooked on finding new oils to try from independent perfumers. I'm expecting some more BPAL samples to arrive this week, and I can't wait!

But don't worry, I've not allowed the new sniffies to distract me from my woolly interests. In the last couple of days I've also been spindling this alpaca fibre from Spindlefrog...

...into this singles yarn

The spindle's a new shape that my mum's been testing out, in walnut. I like it, so we'll be making more in this style. But the fibre is the star of this story, I'm loving the way Spindlefrog's colours are spinning up. I think this will become a two-ply yarn for a shawl or a scarf, it depends on what yardage I get. And, there's more! Or there will be soon, as Jooles of Spindlefrog and I have just posted our parcels to each other for a mini fibre swap. I made her some batts from wool from Willow (one of my sheep), and she's made me a surprise batt. I can't wait to see what it's like!

I've also been sent on a super-secret Spindlefrog mission (well it's not so secret now that you lot know about it, there are a few on Ravelry who've heard about this too...). I am charged with the task of going to The Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace this week, and taking photographs of Jooles' fibre on the Socktopus stall. And if I happen to buy some, or maybe get lured in by some of the other goodies that I know Socktopus will have there, then I'll just have to consider the purchases to be collateral damage resulting from such a difficult mission.

In other news, I've been dyeing wool like crazy over the last few days - all for the Wildcraft Shop. I've done a really big batch this time, which I'll photograph and upload in several updates over the next few weeks. As well as the usual range of fibres, I've done a new kind of fibre, which is specially aimed at beginner spinners. It's a super-easy spinning English wool blend, dyed in random unrepeatable shades. It'll be offered at pocket-money prices (although today's pocket money seems much more than I got as a kid!) and is intended to be used up, rather than to loiter in stash. I'm keen to encourage spinners who are new to handpainted fibre to dive in and try spinning some without worrying about the price, or about ruining the fibre.

Next post will show the spoils of Ally Pally. My credit card is already hiding, but I know where it lives :)

They're coming...

I know it's a bit mean, posting sneaky previews like this, but I've been up to my elbows in dye and wool for the last couple of days and it's done something funny to my head. At least the results are pretty.

In amongst this carnival of colour are some delicious new luxury blends of fibre. There's some BFL/silk (gorgeous lustre), and some BFL/kid mohair that's so fuffy and soft I want to hug it lots. My family reckon I should add a tagline to all the Wildcraft fibres to say that 'every roving has been hugged'. While that's not entirely the case, I do love all of them, even the wayward fibres (that superwash can be quite an escape artist!), which is why it's so nice to see them move happily to new homes, particularly when they've been spun up.

The other fibres on the line there are superwash BFL (so soft!), BFL, shetland, oh and some Wensleydale. They'll be in the shop just as soon as they're dried, braided and photographed. Drying was taking ages, but it's just got really windy here, so that should speed things along a bit.

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! :)

Fire!

I've been having fun dyeing and blending up some drumcarded wool batts for the Wildcraft shop this weekend. And of course I had to sample the merchandise, so I've done a little spinning too :)

The first batch was made from a blend of 'Buffy' the sheep's wool, some kid mohair and a little bit of dyed silk waste. I've called this colourway 'Fire', and I think you'll see why:





It's a fairly smooth blend, as I wanted it to be possible to spin an even yarn from the batts. And it looks like that worked, as I was able to spin this little sample skein from one of the batts:



Eye-poppingly bright isn't it? But I like bright colours :)

The batt I used to spin the yarn isn't shown in the photos above, as I didn't think of taking the photos until after I'd spun it up. The sample batt was a bit more blended than the others, which is why the colours have come out a quite even orange. The stripey batts will make more of a stripey yarn. I'd love to spin some more, but, tempting as it is, I mustn't use up all Wildcraft stock myself! :)

Next batch will be in 'water' colours, from Willow's fleece. Once I've got a set of each of the elements, I'll update the shop and you can try them for yourselves :)

Stash Enhancement Experience (aka Wonderwool)

Ok, so the plan was that my Wildcraft shop would be up and running by the 1st May. But after another week of growling at my computer and frightening myself with php code, it's not quite there. Almost, but not quite. I've been fighting with setting up Paypal accounts today, which was fun. Not. And don't talk to me about filling in bank forms! I got one in the post earlier in the week that confused me so much I had to take it into our local branch for help, only to find that the assistant there was as confused by it as I was. Next week I'll be away for a few days on a business trip, but that should be enough time for Paypal to have finally verified that I am who I say I am (which after this week, even I am confused about), so look out for grand shop opening notices towards the end of the week.

In the meantime, this weekend I'm planning to dye another big batch of rovings for the shop, since I bought a lovely bunch of undyed BFL roving at Wonderwool Wales last weekend.

Oh yes, I was going to say something about Wonderwool! It was so much fun, even the camping out in a wet and windy campsite part was fun. My friend Mel was a very able tent construction assistant, and an excellent cook (my cooking tasks mainly involved lighting the gas burner, which I think scared Mel a bit :) ).



It was a great campsite, called Fforest Fields, which was just outside Builth Wells. This is the view we had from the door of our tent:



Very nice, except you can't see the rain, or the wind, or the hundreds of sheep and lambs just off to the right who spent most of the night bleating to eachother. Which was nice to hear, but not ALL NIGHT! Somehow Mel managed to sleep through all that, I think I wore her out with all the navigating she had to do to get us there (another long story, but suffice it to say that as a result of an unfortunate set of road works and an impossible-to-find lpg garage, we are now far more familiar with Abergavenny than we'd like to be!).

Wonderwool itself was jaw-droppingly packed with excitement for anyone remotely interested in fibre-crafts. By the end of Saturday we were absolutely exhausted and mentally overwhelmed with all we'd seen. But we did manage to find many nice things. I picked up some gorgeous yarns from the Posh Yarn stand, which was so beautiful it was like walking into a jewel-box. I eventually chose some 'Lei' sock yarn (merino/bamboo/silk) in a pretty yellow/lavender colourway...



... and some 'Eva' cashmere/silk laceweight, which I'm still trying to pick a pattern for. I want to knit a lace scarf with it, but nothing too tricky as I'm still a beginner lace knitter.



I also bought some merino/tencel sock yarn from the Fyberspates stall, in pretty blue colours.



Looks like I have a lot more sock knitting to do!

That was in addition to the undyed rovings I bought (merino/silk, baby alpaca, soy silk etc.). Mel and I had reasoned that buying spinning fibres would give us more yarn for less money, but we hadn't factored in the effect that mental exhaustion has on the brain, i.e it makes your sense of stash control go out the window! I narrowly escaped buying a new spinning wheel too. It was a Louet Victoria, and so cute! Fortunately, with the car already packed with tent etc., there really wasn't space for it. Not unless I abandoned my promise to collect my brother from Bristol on our way home, and I can tell you, it was a close run choice! Suffice it to say, I did collect my brother, but I have also been perusing the net for cute fold-up spinning wheels since returning home :)

One of the nicest things about the show was meeting the stallholders. There was a great atmosphere at the show and people were really friendly. Definitely an event I'd recommend. Not so sure that I'd recommend the camping so much, having survived that experience I really feel I'm due a merit badge or something...

Spring things

Since it was such beautiful weather today, I took myself off at lunchtime to take some photos of spring things. I love the light at this time of year, which is soft and muted, and I love the fact that I can walk about in the fields without being togged up in a huge winter coat. I've been playing around with the metering on my camera lately, the spot meter is fast becoming a favourite, especially for white flowers and those pesky white sheep.

Some of the resulting pictures will probably become new colourways for some painted rovings. This blackthorn, for example, looks very pretty against the pale blue of the sky behind.



And this little violet has enough shades in the flower alone to inspire a new colourway.



Speaking of dyed rovings, the Wildcraft shop is progressing well. I've finally got a holding page set up at www.wildcraft.co.uk and the shop itself will be following soon.

Finally, this hairy monster is also a spring thing.



That's Sam, my homebred gelding. He's trotting towards me in the photo as he thinks I've arrived to do some clicker training with him (which he loves, it involves treats!). When he discovered that the thing in my hand was not the treat bag but a camera, he gracefully decided that a good tummy scratch from me was a reasonable substitute. Which left me covered in horse hair, as another sign of warmer weather is the start of moulting season!

FO's

The handspun socks are finished! I think stripes on the second sock came out even better than the first, but they still match pretty well.



It had taken me a while to spin the yarn and it looks as though I didn't manage to stick to the same spinning thickness all the way through. So my spun yarn was a bit finer by the time I reached the second sock, which means it's slightly off gauge and a bit smaller than the first. But hopefully no-one will notice that when I'm wearing them and jumping around!



Spurred on by this success, I've also finished spinning up the BFL roving that I mentioned in my previous post. I navajo plied this one too as I want to see that stripey thing again when I knit the next pair of socks (yes, I'm obsessed by knitting socks, I admit it). The BFL fibre wasn't quite as soft as I hoped, I suspect it was just a bad batch as I've spun other BFL that's way softer. But it'll do for socks, and it's made a pretty yarn. I'll have to knit toe-ups again with this yarn, the 70grams of roving only made 190mtrs of yarn. But that should be just enough yarn for socks for me, I have little feet.

Socks, again.

Back in January I posted about some superwash sock yarn that I was spinning from some roving I'd bought from Violet Green Yarns.

Just to remind you (and me), here's a photo of the roving before I spun it up.



I did actually finish spinning that yarn, a whole 100grams of it. It turned into three beautiful skeins of stripey navajo plied yarn in pretty burgundy and yellow colours.



They sat in my stash maturing for a couple of months. Well I say maturing, actually I couldn't bring myself to undo those pretty skeins. I've been taking them out and admiring them from time to time, muttering Gollum-like about 'my precious skeins'. Fortunately, my desire to knit with the yarn has overcome the power of the skeins, and I've now taken them apart and knit them into socks. Or rather, one sock and a bit.

Here's the sock:



And here's the sock and a bit:



Are they not striping nicely? I'm loving knitting with the yarn, and I'm loving the striping. I'm now also hooked on knitting socks with handspun! As soon as this pair is finished I'm hoping I'll also be ready with the yarn I'm spinning from this roving:



This is a roving that was left over after my big Easter dyeing session. It's BFL, dyed in the dyes that were left over from doing a another roving in 'sunset' colours. I'm currently spinning it finely, with a navajo plied sock yarn in mind. I'll keep you posted on how it turns out.

In the meantime, it's back to knitting that lovely stripey second sock for me, while watching a spot of Dr Who (yay for the return of the Dr! :) ).

Dyeing - the results

Ok, so the rovings I dyed didn't quite match the photos they were supposed to be based on, but they did come out very pretty colours. Here's the first one, in blackberry colours:



Which was sort of based on this photo:


And this one, which came out a closer colour match:



Used colours from this photo of the beach at Lyme Regis:



They're both Shetland wool top and I'm having a hard time not spinning them up myself (note to self - hands off, they're for the shop!).

The day after dyeing these two, I went a bit wool dyeing crazy. I spent the whole day painting and cooking wool rovings, which resulted in this:



The second one in from the right is my second attempt at the blackberry colours, which I think came out better - although I still like the purply colours of the original one. I took notes of all of it, so hopefully I'll be able to repeat the colours.

By the end of Saturday, I was absolutely worn out. Spent most of Easter Sunday sitting still and knitting (oh and eating Easter eggs). But hey, I have a week off from work this week, so it seemed an ideal way to begin the holidays.

And in case you're wondering, I did dye a couple of rovings for myself to spin, there were some short leftover bits that seemed to jump into my hands out of the dyepot saying 'keep me, keep me'. And I simply can't refuse wool that talks :)

Dyed and set

I was planning to do a whole batch of wool dyeing today, which I usually do outdoors as it's messy and (sometimes) smelly. But the weather didn't agree with the plan, we've had wild wind, rain, a bit of sleet, all sorts of stuff. Not to be outdone, I decided that I'd set my horse's stable up as a temporary dye studio. My horse, Sam, doesn't use the stable much, although there is still straw in there from Giles' occupancy a couple of weeks ago. Anyway, armed with a newly-purchased wallpapering table from B&Q (I usually use a picnic bench, but that just wasn't going to fit through the stable door), I set up a dye painting area and soaked some Shetland roving in preparation.

My usual method for painting rovings is pretty time-consuming, as I'm a bit of a stickler for note-taking. Must be all those lab practicals I did at uni. However, since these rovings are destined for sale (in my online shop, which is on its way soon) it's probably a good thing I've got notes, someone's bound to ask me to repeat a colourway. So after setting everything up, I only finished two rovings today, but the table and dyes are still out there, so I can do a whole day's dyeing tomorrow.

Just as a teaser, here are today's two, just before I 'cooked' them.



I base my colours on photos I've taken, the bluey/greeny one was based on a photo of some rock pools at Charmouth beach, while the red/purple one was inspired by a photo of some wild blackberries. The last batch of rovings I did came out remarkably close to the colours in the photos:

This roving, which I called 'Coast'



Was inspired by this photo, taken at Charmouth Beach last spring:



And this one, called 'Calendulas',



used colours from this photo of some calendulas I grew last year:



No idea if today's colours will come out as well as these, I'll post pics of them if they do. And I'll go back to my drawing board if they don't! :)

p.s. Giles and Splodge the rams are getting on much better now, so it looks as though Splodge will be around here for a while. But just to maintain Giles' cute and friendly factor, I'm planning to halter train him, so I can take him out on walks on his own sometimes. Splodge isn't going to like being left on his own at all, but it serves him right for being so mean to Giles in the first place!

Skeined Prawns

That's a picture of the latest addition to my yarn stash, I made it myself. It's a nubby blend of cashmere, shetland wool and tussah silk. "What are you doing making crazy yarn with a luxury blend like that?" I hear you ask - "shouldn't you make a fine sock yarn, or laceweight for a beautiful shawl?". Ahem. Well that's what I planned to do. Only my drum carder had other ideas. It thought that cashmere and silk would look great all knotted up and coughed out over the shetland wool. "Blending's boring", it told me, "I want to make neps!" Stupid drum carder. I've been saving that cashmere for years, thinking it was too nice to use until I could spin well enough. Well now that I can spin a decent fine yarn, I have decided I also need a decent drum carder. The one I have is a secondhand Barnett. And I've only just found out that the carding cloth is classed as 'coarse' by most other manufacturers. I don't completely dislike it. It's actually a great carder for the wirey suffolk wool that I normally put through it. But clearly cashmere and silk are a step too far. My mistake. New carder required. Actually, make that an additional carder - I'd still like to card suffolk fleece from time to time.

Anyway, since the batts turned out to be not so beautiful, I decided to use them for an experiment. I dug out some koolaid packets that my friend Barbara had sent me a few years back and tested them out on the roving, handpainted style. It turned out a pretty pink and purple colour. Quite nice really. See:




Then I spun two singles from it. One plain, but quite thick (like my drum carder, not that I'm bitter or anything...), and one with big slubs along it. Then I plied the two together, coiling the slubs around the even yarn whenever I reached them. I've done three skeins now, and I'm getting better with each skein I make. I think the slubs look like peeled prawns, so the yarn has been titled "Skeined Prawns". Better that than "look what you can make with a bunch of neps".

Stash sort out

I spent most of yesterday sorting out my yarn stash, photographing it and putting the items up on Ravelry. There are now 39 items in my Ravelry stash, heaven knows how many meters that is, I daren't add it up. What's nice is that I now have all my yarns organised, so I have no excuses for buying more yarn because I didn't realise I already owned something suitable. Besides, there are always other reasons for buying more yarn :)


My favourite find was this:

It's a commercial dk weight yarn that I hand dyed with indigo a couple of summers ago. I thought I'd used it all up on a Rowan cardigan that I also knit that summer, but yesterday I found six skeins' worth of it tucked away in my stash. I clearly made more than I thought. The Rowan cardigan is one of my favourites, the indigo colours came out beautifully and they are really colour fast, despite many washings (in the machine, on the delicate cycle). At the time that I dyed it, I thought it was a complete disaster because the colours came out so unevenly, but now that I've learned more about handpainted yarn, I've decided that I really like it. Might even have a go at indigo dyeing again when the weather warms up. Although it was very stinky, and the blue stained my hands for days.