I've moved!

My new blog's now online here: www.wildcraft.co.uk/blog

See you over there!

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 New Recruit

Meet Twinkle the Unicorn, a new recruit at Wildcraft. Twinkle is now in charge of Wildcraft's Quality Assurance. She’s taking her work very seriously, as you can see in this photo, where she’s checking the standard of some newly polished spindle whorls:

Twinkle was created by the very talented Amy, who’s a member of my local knitting group. Amy had a stall at a craft fair at the weekend, and it was there that Twinkle decided she was going home with me. Amy also has a new shop on Folksy, where many of Twinkle's friends and relations are now hanging out and looking for new homes.

Twinkle also very kindly checked out my progress on the February Lady cardigan today. She thinks the buttonholes are a bit wobbly, but other than that, it's looking very good, she thinks it might even be finished by Christmas if I don't get distracted by other projects!

Autumn Spinning

This week I have been spinning up some Wildcraft BFL/nylon sock batts in a colourway called 'Calendulas'...

On a calendula petals spindle...

Into a tweedy calendula coloured sock yarn...

I've only plied and finished about 25g of the fibre so far, so I still have three quarters of it left to spin. But it's a lovely relaxing project to work on, and I'm loving the finished yarn. A big thank you to Chriss, who prompted me into making these batts and ordered a custom-blended set of them, the yarn she's spun from them is amazing, mine is nowhere near as smooth and even. But it should make good socks, probably quite cosy too. I like these batts a lot, and they're fun to make so there will definitely be more around in the shop soon.

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 :)

Busy busy

Ack, it's been a crazy week around here so far, and it's only Thursday! Things are going from strength to strength with the Wildcraft shop, but this also means I've been run off my feet packing orders, making spindles and dyeing wool. I've nearly completed my recent stock update, which will have to last at least a fortnight :), then hopefully I can take a breather!

In the meantime, some interesting things have been happening around here:

Mum's started making spindles from Yew wood, in a slightly different style from the cedarwood ones. And she let me have the first one to test (for which, read - I snatched it and wouldn't let go when she showed it to me!).

The spindle spins really well, but I'm starting to expect that from mum's handiwork. She reckons making spindles is a lot like making toy spinning tops. I never mastered the technique of spinning a top, but the theory clearly works for spindling (which I can do)! The yarn on it is being spun from a gorgeous purple 'Beautyberries' batt from Loop, which I bought a few weeks ago.

These spindles are running out of the shop as fast as I can list them, actually some of them are finding new homes before they make it there, and that's not just because I'm pinching them! Don't tell anyone, but I hear that there might be some walnut ones appearing soon. I've seen the blanks and yes, I'll be keeping one of those too! :)

I've also managed to knit up my first spindle-spun sock.

The yarn was spun from some lovely naturally dyed roving from The Natural Dye Studio, which I blogged about before. I love the way the colours are shifting gradually from one to another. It's what I intended when I spun the yarn, but it's nice to see it's actually working out as I planned. This is the first time I've knitted a short row heel, and I quite like it. Normally I prefer gusset heels, as they seem more robust, but this style does show off the colours well, it's super-quick to knit too. I've started the next one before casting off the first, just in case the second ball of yarn isn't the same length. I can't be doing with odd-length socks!

And finally, I received a lovely squishy package that I'd ordered from Handpaintedyarn.com, containing many goodies.

It took a long while to get here (apparently they had a problem in their warehouse or something), but it was totally worth the wait (and the price, their yarns were an amazing bargain). There's three skeins of laceweight merino yarn, and two gorgeous chunks of merino wool fibre. The colours are so sunny and bright, they were just what I needed after all the rain and dullness we've had here lately.

Spindly goodness

I'm on a blog-posting roll this weekend! It must be something to do with watching a huge session of the Olympics today, which has left me feeling motivated to do lots of stuff! Didn't team GB do well?!

Anyway, here's some news about my latest completed project, not a Ravelympics one, this is something I've been planning for much longer. So without further ado, meet my newest spindles:

I'm so excited about these! They're handmade (by me), with resin whorls that I made specifically for them. The top one has rose petals embedded in the resin, the middle one has calendula petals, and the bottom one is extra special, those shells are fossils that I collected from Barton on Sea this spring.

The whorls are about 5cm wide, and the spindles weigh between 20g and 25g, so these are ideal for spinning laceweight to medium weight yarns. I've played most with the fossil one so far and, like the others, it spins beautifully, I can see myself using this a lot! The white spots next to the fossils are just air bubbles that have filled with polishing compound, I was so excited about taking photos that I haven't cleaned that out yet.

And the best part, I want to make a bunch of these for Wildcraft, so I'll get to go on more fossil hunts and to experiment with other interesting things to decorate them with. I'm even thinking of starting a spindle club, where members receive a seasonal ly decorated spindle and fibre with every installment. Exciting eh?!

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.

Much Spinning, or hurrah for the Tour de Fleece!

As promised, it's time for a post about my Tour de Fleece spinning. Actually, I've been spinning a lot since the Tour ended the week before last, so I have even more spinning FO's and WIPS to report about here.

The thing is, I've taken up spindling (secretly, I think it might be turning into an obsession). Don't misunderstand me, I love my wheel. Rose (a Majacraft Rose) is beautiful and spins practically any yarn I want her to. But she's not very portable, so spinning on my wheel is something I need to plan for. I can't easily carry her to the nearest seat, so I have to bring the chair and fibre supply to her. And then I usually want a cup of tea, or my ipod to listen to while I spin, so the whole thing becomes quite a palaver to organise. I'm a dashing around kind of person, not very comfortable at sitting down and doing one thing for a long time, so unless I deliberately organise time every day to spin at my wheel, I don't tend to spin at all.

That was until my mum made me my first proper top-whorl spindle, turned from cedar of lebanon timber on her lathe, which was a prototype for the ones we now have in the shop. She's now made me several and I love them all.

They're portable, lovely tactile tools and an unexpected bonus is the the feeling of connection with the past that I get when I'm spinning on a spindle. Spindling is one of the oldest human occupations, and when I'm using my spindle I often think on who in times past would have spindled, what kinds of spinning tools they might have used, and what they might have been making the yarn for. What's also surprised me is that my yarn production rate on a spindle is easily higher than on my wheel. This is probably because I pick the spindle up more often during the day, but I've also got the technique sussed now so that it's a very smooth operation and v.nearly as fast on a yard-by-yard basis as my wheel (except for very bulky yarn where I concede that a wheel is probably faster). During the Tour de Fleece I spun all my yarns on a spindle (with a small exception due to muppetry on my part, see the turquoise skein below). I was supposed to be doing some laceweight on my wheel, (as I blogged about here), but that never actually happened after I caught the spindling bug...

So this is the grand line-up of the yarns I spindled during the Tour de Fleece:

Lined up like that it doesn't look a huge amount, but it's certainly more than I've spun on my wheel in a long time!

So here are the details (from left to right):

85 metres of Wildcraft shetland in lavender colours, spun to aran weight, which started out as this:

The 85 metres was only part of the fibre, I've now finished spinning the whole braid and it's come to about 150 metres in total, certainly enough for a cosy winter hat.

Next is a 210 metre skein of turquoise three-ply yarn, which is about a dk weight. It started out as some corriedale top in three colours, which I'd blended with alpaca and tussah silk on my drum carder a long time ago. One of the singles was wheel-spun before the Tour, but the other two were spindled. Plying was only partly done on the spindle, as I got into a huge mess during plying from a centre-pull ball and transferred it onto the wheel to sort it out (note to self, never spin a three-ply yarn on a spindle again, or at least not before sorting out how to keep the plies properly tensioned!).

Then there's the Wildcraft Apple Blossom roving (superwash BFL), in cream/dark pink/green colours, which I turned into 225 metres of sock weight yarn. I think I like this one the most, and it's due to be knitted up into a Morning Surf Scarf for the Ravelympics.

And finally there's the little skein of 85 metres of BFL laceweight which I'd dyed in a colourway I called 'evening shades'. This I spun on my most recently acquired spindle, which was from Butterflygirl Designs.

And now that the Tour de Fleece is over, can I stop spindling?! Um, no...

Since the Tour I've spun another 100 metre skein of the evening shades BFL yarn, which finished that fibre, and I'm now spinning this tussah silk top from Fyberspates with the BGD spindle:

And this weekend I turned half of this beautiful BFL from the Natural Dye Studio...

Into this sock yarn...

I still have half of the Natural Dye Studio roving left, so I'll make a matching skein so I can have two matching socks.

And remember the merino/silk laceweight that I never got around to spinning on my wheel for the Tour de Fleece...? I've just added it as my entry for the Handspun Heptathlon in the Ravelympics, to be spun, yes you've guessed it, on a spindle :)

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 :)

Finally open...

First off, here's the big news: the Wildcraft Shop is finally open! After a week of testing (thanks B!), I'm now reasonably confident that the Zencart software is playing nicely, so do go ahead and take a look. The shop can be found here: www.wildcraft.co.uk.

With the shop open, I took a bit of a break from programming and wool dyeing this weekend. On Saturday I went with a friend to Charmouth, for a day of fossil hunting. The weather forecast was for lots of rain, but as you'll see in the pic below, it didn't turn out too badly.



I also made my finest fossil find to date, a huge pyritised ammonite. I believe I squeaked a bit when I found it, but who wouldn't, isn't it a beauty? :)



It was just lying on the sand, on its end so it wasn't immediately obvious that it was an ammonite. Which is probably why the party of cliff-hackers a few yards away hadn't spotted it first :) The pencil in the pic below is for scale, but if that doesn't help, the fossil's about 4cm in diameter. It's currently soaking in plain water, to remove the salt from the sea. I fear I might have to retire from fossil hunting now, as I can't think how I can beat this find!

Returning to crafty matters, I also have a FO to report. My Layla crochet cardigan is finally finished, hurrah! This was my first major crochet project and it's been a real struggle. I had to rip and redo it so many times! But today, after re-crocheting the edging for the third time, I finally got it to look as I wanted it to. The best part is that the cardi fits me very well, and I really like how it looks. That's unusual, normally I can't stand items I've just completed, they need to go through a process of maturing (i.e. being hidden in a wardrobe) before I'll wear them. But I think Layla will get worn often, she's very comfy and quite flattering. I still have to sew in the yarn ends, but then I'll get some photos taken and post them here. In the meantime, here's a sneak preview:



I'm now keen to crochet more garments, since I've got the hang of how crochet works. I've already sussed out my next project, it's going to be 'Gudrun' by Annette Petavy, which is another cardigan. I'm planning to make it with some Debbie Bliss cotton angora from my stash. The pattern doesn't look too complicated, so hopefully I won't have to rip it out as many times as I did with Layla!

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...