Flowers for Liz

This is a little "Happy Birthday" posting for my big sister Liz who is 60 today!!
Here are some flowers for your birthday, hope you have a brilliant day.

 

These are calendula officinalis growing in my garden.

And some apple blossom (Bramley).  Just as I was about to take the photo, a bee obligingly hopped on!

Sorry we can't be with you for your big day, but hope you'll be able to visit us this year.

Little Project Bag

mJust finished the embroidery on the bag I was making.  I have to admit it came out a bit smaller than I'd anticipated - maybe 90 degrees in the washing machine was just too much for it!!  Yet another lesson learned.

Anyway, I'm really pleased with the way it's turned out so here are the piccies :-

. . . and the other side:-

Not bad for my first attempt at felting a knitted article?  So now I'm off to wrap and pack it for the post tomorrow.

Blue Blue Blue

Well, I managed to get the blue dye right!  This has now all been knitted into my project and the whole lot has been bunged into the washing machine (so far 3 times) to felt and shrink it.  As it's the first time I've knitted and felted anything in this way, I'm waiting with baited breath for the washing machine to finish.  It's been on at 40 deg, 60 deg, and I've just put it back in at 90 deg. (to speed things up a bit) so am keeping my fingers crossed that it isn't totally destroyed!

I'll post a photo on here when it's finished, but I still have "finishing off" to do when it comes out.

A little clue to what it is : if any of you bought the March 2011 issue of Yarn Forward magazine, it's in there!!  Hopefully Sandra (whose birthday present it is) won't have a copy!

Clever Husband . . .

Yesterday morning I decided to start my latest birthday present project and went to look for the knitting needles.  I needed a 7mm circular needle.  I think I must have nearly every size up to about 5mm, but no 7mm.  Problem.

But then Eric came up with a good idea, what if he took an ordinary 7mm needle, cut it in half, drilled the bottom ends and glued in a length of strimmer wire, then tapered and smoothed each end?  I've got to admit the end result was pretty good and just what I needed.  Saved a trip to the shops and saved about 8 euros too!

I thought they looked quite professional when finished, don't you?

Wrong Colour !!!!!

Started a new project the other day - a birthday present for my friend in the UK.  Can't possibly say at the moment what it is in case she peeks!

I washed some fleece - haven't a clue what it is, I had it given, and they didn't know either - and then tried to dye it brown.  Not being very good at mixing colours I asked my knowledgeable (?) husband who said "oh, it's easy, you just mix all the primary colours together".

This is what came out :-

Gorgeous colours, but not brown!

Anyway, I spun it and then consulted an artist friend who advised me to add yellow/orange.  Mine was actually orange/red, but it worked and I ended up with a slightly reddish dark brown.

The next colour (green) was a lot easier to mix.  I would have liked it a bit yellower, but ran out of that colour.  It actually looks a bit bluer here, drying in the sun, than it really is, but it is in full sunlight and I don't think that helps.

 I

The last colour should be a lot easier as it's blue.  I don't think even I can get that wrong!

. . . but don't hold your breath!!

Eric's Mum

Again, more time has gone by than I intended before writing another post.  In my defence, we have been rather busy here in Scotland.

We finally got Eric's Mum moved from hospital into a nursing home last Tuesday morning and had spent some time trying to make it homely for her.  Unfortunately she was only there three and a half days before she died.  At the end she was very peaceful, more so than she had been for some time.  In fact, she just fell asleep, which I think is the way we'd all like to go.  Her funeral is on Wednesday and we'll stay another couple of days after that to tie up loose ends, finish emptying the flat etc., then we head back to the ferry and France.

The last 3 months have been quite a strain and we're looking forward to getting home and spending some time trying to get back to normal.  All in all, a very sad time.

Home Again in Sunny France - Meet My Cat - Latest Spinning

Here we are home again for a brief spell.  Eric's brother Alan and his wife Jane are holding the fort up in Scotland so we've managed to escape and have a bit of time here.  We're waiting for Eric's Mum to go into a nursing home and have just heard that there are two places available in the town where we would like her to be.  Hopefully she should be moving there by the end of February.  We're off back to Scotland again next Wednesday and have booked the ferry back for 3 weeks after that, but we're hoping we'll be back before then.  Once she gets into the nursing home they'll want to get her settled and into a routine and probably won't welcome visitors coming in all the time upsetting her.



Thought it was time you met my cat.  His name's Jak and he's nearly 8 years old.  We adopted him when we first arrived in France and were staying at a campsite in Marciac.  Jak and his sister had been abandoned as kittens and were wandering around hoping the campers would feed them.  Our friends, Rod and Brian, took the female, and we got Jak.

He loves to help me knit, jumping on my knee for a cuddle every time I pick up my needles, and have you ever tried spinning with a half ton cat sitting on your lap?  Today he decided to help with the carding of some camel.  He loves to snuggle up in the wool and then have a good suck.  This must have been particularly tasty as it hasn't been washed!!

Oops, obviously didn't like the flash . . . he's off to terrorise the local mouse population, snack on a nice warm lizard, or catch a snake in the long grass by the field.

This is the latest wool I've spun.  It was very easy spinning as it was all pre-carded Merino.  When I bought my new spinning wheel it came with a £15 voucher for yarn, so I bought a large bag of mixed colours.  This was five different colours, all spun in rotation, one after the other, and then Navajo plied which means only one bobbin is used to make a 3-ply yarn.  That way I could control the colours and not have them overlapping each other too much.

This ball is going to be knit into a pair of socks.  It was spun very finely so that it was still quite fine after plying.  I'm using 2.5mm needles and it's knitting up well so far - a little handy project to take back to Scotland next week.

Whilst walking around the garden the other day, I came across this lump of oak, destined for our log-burner, covered with fungi.  I wonder if there'll be any colour to extract from these - must consult my latest dye book "The Rainbow Beneath My Feet", a mushroom dyer's field guide.  If they're still here when we get back, I'll maybe cut some off to experiment.

OK, first post in quite a while but hopefully I'll be more in touch soon.  Eric has just donated his mobile phone to me - this has quite a good camera so I'll be taking more photos if I have it in my sticky grasp instead of in his!