Wool Combs

Errr - I've been shopping!  Couldn't live without these Indigo Hound wool combs any longer.  They arrived last week from the USA, and really I don't know how I managed without them.  They're so much better at preparing camel and llama wool than carders.

Lethal Weapons!

This is some llama being combed :-

and then pulled through my home-made milk bottle top diz (basically, a piece of plastic with a hole in it)

To make a perfectly clean (well, almost) length of fibre ready for spinning.

It may not be dramatically faster than using carders, but it's much more satisfying, and the result is so much more professional-looking.  Worth every penny!

Catching Up

Posts have been a bit sparse on here of late, not because I've not been doing anything worth writing about, more because there's just been too much going on.  So, here's what's been happening lately to keep us so busy.

There were gigs to be played :-

Sud Rock Festival

Look at the size of that stage!

Jeff, the bass player was to the right, Steve in the centre, Eric left, and Geoff the drummer is just visible in the background!  It's got to be the largest stage Eric's ever played on.  They had sound engineers too:-

and their own air-conditioned porta-cabin kitted out with settees, cool drinks etc.


The next day we went to visit Sarah and Paul of La Maison des Chameaux, to (finally!!!!) deliver her sweater.  I was a bit worried whether it would still fit her, as she's lost weight since we last saw her.  Luckily, she likes them "sloppy"!

We had a fabulous lunch with them outside in the shade (ankles got bitten to death though!), and ogled their kittens,

Basket of Fun!

My favourite

Their mother was killed on the road last week, so Hershey the dog has adopted them and regularly gives them a good clean and keeps them in order.

She's very protective of them, and sees off any other inquisitive cats.

As usual, it's impossible to visit Sarah and not come away with something.  Like half a ton of camel, llama, alpaca and sheep's wool!

I don't have enough lifetime left to spin all of this!


The cotton bolls are growing like mad - can't be too long now before they start to open.

They're still flowering too

These are such pretty plants, even if you're not interested in spinning the cotton.


This was a little dyeing project I did a while ago.  I found lots of these red dock seeds in and around the garden, and thought there must be some potential for colour.  So I collected them, just put the seeds in a pan of water, and soaked them for a day or two.

The dye was quite a deep colour and I was hopeful it may give a reddish orange.  I mordanted some fleece with alum and cream of tartar and heated it up slowly in the dye bath.  The results weren't quite what I'd expected, but it's still a nice colour.  That's it on the right below, next to a second-dip in the madder dye bath.

2nd dip madder on left, red dock seed on right

My current knitting project, the Buds of May shawl, has reached a standstill - I'm stuck! I'm about 60% through, and the pattern has become quite ambiguous and confusing.  So it's sitting in a bag, abandoned, until I manage to find some time to sit and work it out. This pattern would definitely not suit a beginner.  No photo, because I'm pretty disgusted with it at the moment.


Finally, the garden is producing lots at the moment.  I harvested this lot yesterday.

Yes, there are 26 cucumbers there!  Some of these will be pickled in jars, hopefully today, and I think some chilled cucumber soup is in order.

A few days ago I bottled 15 jars of tomatoes, and the next lot are ready for processing. Then yesterday I was given a large bucket of yellow plums, so they need bottling today too.  Maybe it would be a good idea to get out of bed and get on with it!!

Finally Finished . . . Or is it?

Well, at long last, here is Sarah's sweater all finished :-

As you can see, there are various shades in there (the fleece from 4 camels was all mixed together in the bag and, although I tried to match the same colours, I obviously haven't managed it).  Personally, I don't think it detracts from the whole sweater, and it's nice to think that all the camels have contributed.  But maybe the next one I'll just use one animal (i.e. Talullah the llama, or Brewster the alpaca).

The sleeves look a bit short, but I have tried it on and they should be just the right length. It's probably because the sweater actually turned into a sweater dress - I got carried away knitting the main body!

Anyway, I hope she likes it - it's pretty scary knitting something for a friend, especially when she hasn't had chance to try it on during the project.  Fingers crossed!

So, it's been a longer project than it should have been, but it's finally done . . . although, that neck looks a bit baggy round the edge, maybe I'll just take that bit out and knit the edge a bit tighter!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

I've been very lazy with the old blog this week - too busy with the new greenhouse (ex-swimming pool).  I spent four days last week stripping off the old paint from the inside walls, then had to scrub the lot with soap and water, then rinse down.  I've started repainting, but it'll probably take a while.

Meantime, Thursday night Eric's band had a gig in Carcassonne, which is about two hours east of here.  The deal included a free room for the night, but as I didn't fancy sharing with the rest of the band we decided to take the camper van.  The pub was right in the centre of Carcassonne and it turned out to be a real nightmare driving through the narrow streets in a camper, especially when there were cars parked at the side of the road and we had to mount the (very narrow) pavement to get through.  Then when we got there we couldn't park to unload so ended up driving out again and getting one of the other band members to come and collect both us and the gear.

The Celt is an Irish pub and was having a week of celebrations for St Paddy's night.  It's a really nice place which made us all feel we'd just walked into a pub in the UK.  I've not posted any photos of the band as they all start to look the same, especially as Steve was wearing the same shirt as last time!!  They played until just after 1 a.m. and after we'd packed away all the gear, Eric decided it would be a nice idea to walk back to the camper . . . only 15 minutes away (ha ha!).  When we got outside there was a light drizzle, and after walking for about 10 minutes we realised the directions given to us by the bar staff weren't exactly accurate.  We eventually found someone to ask and they put us on the right road.  Or so we thought!

By this time we could see the mediaeval city up on the hill, and knew we'd parked the camper in one of the car parks outside the old city walls.  Well, what do you know, we only walked the wrong way around it, i.e. we walked three quarters of the way round the outside of the walls when we could have gone the other way and just walked around a quarter of it.  And if you've ever walked around Carcassonne old city at 2:30 in the morning, you'll realise just how spooky it was!  Anyway we finally found the camper just before 3 a.m. after walking for over an hour!  And we were soaked.

(If you ever find yourself driving past Carcassone on the autoroute, keep an eye out for the old city - it's an absolutely magnificent sight from the road and one I'd love to have a photograph of.  One day!)

Next morning we'd arranged with Steve that he would bring the gear back for us in his car - luckily - as we'd just found that our battery was flat and we weren't going anywhere in a hurry.  Aren't jump leads a wonderful invention?

We had been planning to go down to Spain and spend a night there, but with the battery being a bit unpredictable we came home instead.  Bliss!  I got to spend the whole afternoon spinning.  I finished spinning a merino/silk mix for a secret project, then spun another ball of camel wool for Sarah's sweater (which I still haven't finished).  Then this morning I dyed up the secret wool and plied and washed the camel wool.  I need to get all my projects finished so that I can spend some time with my new 1 kg bag of baby alpaca which arrived on Thursday - lovely, lovely, soft-as-clouds white alpaca.  I don't think I'll need to card it, just spin straight from the locks.  But I can't start yet, got to finish Sarah's sweater and the secret project, otherwise they'll never get done.

By the way, when we tried the camper this morning, it started first time!!  Sods law, or what?

Update, Update, Update

That's three projects I have to report on.

Firstly, Sarah's sweater now has the neck finished.  I was a bit doubtful about this at first, because I used a ball of wool that I knew was a shade darker than the rest, but when I showed it to our neighbour, she couldn't tell the difference.  There are variations in colour all over the sweater, not from ball to ball, but there are variations in each ball.  I think it adds to the charm!  (Hopefully Sarah will too - they're her camels  who caused the colour differences after all!)

Anyway, here it is so far :-

Just the sleeves to go now.  I have one ball of wool left, so will probably need about two more.


Second project :-

Yesterday I mordanted some merino fleece and dyed it in the unknown fungi mix that I made the other day.  It came out a sort of muted yellow with orangey tips.  Quite nice, but nothing spectacular.  I pulled off a small piece and put it in a cup of vinegar to see if that altered the colour at all.  If anything it made the colours a little more yellow.  So then I tried another sample in a mix of ammonia and water and the difference was startling.  It immediately brightened and intensified the colour, especially the orangey tips.  This is it, what do you think?

Close up :-

This is still damp, but I don't think the colours will change much in drying.  I'm quite excited to see how this cards up and spins.


OK, third project.  This is actually an old project which I thought was dead and gone, failed miserably!  Well, not really as it did give some hope for having another go this year.

Remember the cotton I was trying to grow and ran out of sunshine and warm weather before it had matured?  I didn't take the plants out, I just left them as they were, covered with glass cloches.  Yesterday, I noticed that two of the seed heads had opened a little bit - one only just.  I picked them both and took the more open one to bits.  We have cotton, and we have seeds!!

The seed head on the right hadn't quite made it.  Those are the seeds in the middle on the piece of paper.

The cotton is extremely soft and very fine.  I think I would have a larger amount if the cotton bolls had been able to carry on growing and then mature in the sun, but I'm actually pretty proud of this!

Seeds will be sown in the greenhouse (which is almost finished) within the next week.

Projects Progress

Just in case you think we're just sitting here idle since we've been iced-in, you wouldn't be far wrong.  But there has been knitting, and spinning, and planning.

Firstly, I spun the first skein of mohair/silk for my Rowan cardigan.  I weighed out probably a bit more than 100g (70g mohair and 30g silk), and have ended up with 95g, giving me 694 yards (640m).  The cardigan needs less than 1,374 yards, so I reckon if I do another skein of the same weight, I should have enough.

I was very careful not to put too much twist in this while spinning, because I realised it would have to be a single strand, not plied, and I didn't want it to "lean" to one side in the knitting.  When taking it off the bobbin though, I did have 3 or 4 places which were too thin or didn't quite have enough twist, so I ended up knotting those together.  I'll deal with them properly when I'm knitting the cardigan.

The wool has a nice sheen from the silk (which shows up in the second photo), and a bit of fluffiness from the mohair (which you can just see on the first photo) and should be nice to wear next to the skin.  This still has to be dyed, and I'm a bit undecided on the colour.  It will either be blues or pinks, two of my favourite colours, but I just don't know which to choose.

Before I can finish this though, I decided it was time to do some knitting.  I've been promising Sarah (from the Camel Farm) that I'd knit her a camel wool sweater using the wool from her own camels.  As winter is (hopefully!) almost over, I thought I'd better get on with it.  Otherwise she won't get to wear it until next winter.

The wool is spun as chunky, and she decided she wanted a long, baggy sweater with a deep rib and v-neck.  I only had enough wool if I used mainly camel but with alpaca and llama mixed in.  Since these were different colours (Brewster is a bit of a ginger nut, and Tallulah is dark grayish brown), we decided it was best if I spun some more camel and knit it all one colour.

This is as far as I've got so far - 17.5"/45cm, and am almost ready to start the neck decreases.  I have two balls of wool left, so this afternoon's job is to spin this lot :-

which will give me another ball of wool just in time to carry on knitting.  There may be a slight pause while I spin some more though.

Mousie Mousie

Finally got around to making Jak's mouse :-

He's made with camel wool, knitted and then felted.  I stuffed him with slightly smelly sheep's fleece, which Jak seems to like to suck (yeuch!).

It was a tense moment when I gave it to him.  He looked, twice, sniffed, turned away and went to his food bowl.  After he'd finished eating, he came back and actually played with it for about 10 minutes.  He loved it!!  Success.  He even cuddles up with it to go to sleep - after giving the tail a good old chewing (still in one piece though!)

It worked so well, I decided to make some for a friend (not a cat!, but a cat person), but filled them with clean fleece and lavender.  I thought she could put them in her undies drawer, hang them in the wardrobe, or slip one inside her pillowcase to help her sleep.

Monday was Katharine's 50th birthday so I decided to give them to her then.  She did not have a good day.

Poor soul not only had to go to hospital because of an ear problem, but also her car broke down on the way back.  She waited two hours for the breakdown truck to take the car to a garage, then got a taxi home (quite a distance).  She finally arrived at her party (at a local restaurant) over an hour and a half late.  In the meantime, the guests (us included) partook of aperitifs and the local wine.  Thankfully, she soon caught up with us - must have been the champagne!

One very blurred photo of Katharine opening her presents :

Too much champagne obviously!

Happy birthday Katharine.

Made with Love in France . . .

Hey, I finished something else!

A few weeks ago, a friend asked me to knit one of these :-

Sorry about the model, she was the only one available at the time.  Must speak to the agency!

I only realised afterwards, it looks rather odd with my plait hanging over my shoulder as well.  Too late now, the hat was delivered this evening, so can't take any more photos.

This pattern is an adaptation of one in Lexi Boeger's book Intertwined.  I love this book, every spinner should have one - amazing!  Instead of using the same wool as the hat for the plaits, I used camel wool and just ran some sparkly wool through each strand of the plaits.  The camel wool really does look like hair, and when I've worn mine people have actually thought the plaits were my own (from the front view anyway).

The hat was made of merino with a touch of silk, and some of the colours were hand dyed using plants from the garden (can't remember exactly what was used, but there was definitely some madder in there), and the sparkly wool in the plaits was Sirdar Vegas which I really love to use as an "add-in".  Think it might be a bit much on its own though.

Made with love in France . . . and a helping paw from Jak!

Long time no speak

So, what have I been doing all this time?  Well, we were given some cherries (black and red ones), so last Monday I bottled them in a sugar syrup :-

I finished spinning some Ouessant sheep's wool and silk (a strand of each)

Then on Wednesday, we had a trip out to Ikea in Toulouse, and I found these cotton bolls and just had to buy some.

I couldn't resist taking one of them apart and was amazed at the number of seeds there were.  I grew some cotton a few years ago, but when the weather started to get a bit colder, they all died.  My greenhouse had just blown away in a storm so I really didn't have anywhere warm enough for them.  Maybe I'll have another go with these seeds.

I may just take them all to bits and use the cotton in some yarn - it's lovely and white.  But first, I'm spinning some more camel :-

and my cat :-

This is a ball of recycled silk yarn that I was given a few days ago by a friend (thanks Sue!).  I'm planning to use it as a detail in something, but I'm not sure yet quite what.

And, last but definitely not least - my silkworm eggs finally arrived today.  They were only posted in the Tarn and Garonne, which is the next department to where we live, but they've taken 11 days to get here.  They could have walked quicker.  Anyway, it was quite a hot day today (32 deg C in the shade) and by the time I got them, most of them had already hatched.  Luckily they were still alive, so I put them in a box and fed them.  Within seconds they had climbed onto the mulberry leaves and were chomping away happily.  I'll post some photos when they're a bit bigger - there's no point at the moment because they're extremely small and I don't think they'd show up on a photograph.  They're also black and don't stand out very well against the leaves.  So keep your fingers crossed that I don't manage to kill them off!

Long Time No Speak

We're now entering the second week of our stay in sunny Scotland and Eric's Mum is still in hospital.  The doctor has now told us that there's no way she can go home again, so we are trying to make arrangements for a nursing home.  Not good news, but we know she'll be looked after a lot better there.

The good news is that my spinning wheel came with us this time - didn't have to hide it in the boot as Eric suggested I bring it.  I managed to put quite a bit of stuff through my drum carder before we left home, but have brought the old hand carders just in case I run out.  I'm currently spinning Brewster Bob (he's the cutest alpaca at La Maison des Chameaux, in fact, he's the only alpaca at La Maison! - sorry Brewster, but you are cute anyway!!)  Also brought a bag of llama (from Tallulah), a bag of camel, and some red and blue merino which I need to spin to finish my sweater dress.

Spinning activities happen in the morning, hospital visits in the afternoon (we don't go in the evenings any more as she just gets too tired) and cooking and knitting in the evening.  What an exciting life we have here!

Tomorrow night we're going to the local village pub where some friends are putting on a traditional music night.  Pete, our friend who has a traditional music shop in Stonehaven, has promised to bring a guitar for Eric so he can play a tune or two.  That might come as a bit of a shock to the audience though as he's a rock and blues man!  Should be an interesting night.