Baby Blanket's Growing

Not a good photo because it was taken under artificial light (it's raining cats and dogs outside), but the blanket has moved on a bit.  Almost halfway there now.  The baby was actually due two days ago, but Rona seems to be doing a good job of keeping her legs crossed.  There's no way this is going to be finished and in the post by the time baby arrives, but hopefully it won't be too long afterwards.

In the meantime, I've run out of wool again and am in the middle of spinning the 3rd ball. With a bit of luck I'll only need four!

Speaking of rain, my greenhouse is doing its best to turn itself back into a swimming pool:-

By tomorrow, I'll have to wear Eric's waders - my wellies just aren't high enough any more!  Luckily, we raised all the plants onto blocks above the expected final water line so they should keep dry.

My plant scientist friend suggested I should grow rice in there!  I don't think he's far wrong, do you?

Elephant-itis

WOW - almost 2 weeks since I last posted.  But I haven't been idle.  Eric's first grandson is due to arrive on the planet at the end of January (not long now), so I've been busy making his blanket.  I wasn't planning to post photos on here until it was ready as I didn't want to spoil the surprise.  I don't think they look on my blog very often though, and anyway I wanted to show you how I was getting on.

The spinning is taking me some time because I'm spinning fairly fine and then Navajo plying (3-ply), so everything I've spun reduces to a third when I ply it.  I wanted to do it this way because you finish up with a more "rounded" yarn than a simple 2-ply would be.

The fleece I'm using is from Maco Merinos and looks like this before processing :-

I'm spinning this without washing it first because, unlike a lot of spinners nowadays, I actually like spinning "in the grease", i.e. the lanolin is still present.  I'm separating this fleece into it's individual locks and flick carding the ends so it looks like this :-

How fluffy is that, eh?

Then I'm making rolags from that (sorry, no photos, but I'm sure you've seen them before on here!).

Spinning in progress :-

and finally, the knitting . . .

The knitting is only a quarter of the way through, so I need to get my skates on.  So far I've used one complete ball of the white, and then I ran out.  I've almost finished spinning the second ball, but estimate that I'll need at least another two after that.  Somehow, I don't think this is going to be finished in time for the birth, unless she crosses her legs!

One of my Christmas presents arrived just in time to start this blanket.  I've been hankering after some new knitting needles for quite a while, but held off because they are quite expensive.  Then I received two Amazon vouchers from two of the wicked stepsons (Thanks Dan and Matthew) and thought, what better way to use them than this, especially as the blanket is for Matthew's child.

Ta da!!

So, that's it for now.  I'll keep you informed with progress, but I'm unlikely to be doing any other projects until this is finished.

St Distaff's Day Celebrations

I'm sure you remembered that today was St. Distaff's Day - ignore your French calendar which tells which saint is celebrated today . . . whoever heard of St Raymond?  (Apologies to all the Raymonds reading this).

Tammy (my next door neighbour) and I did our best and gave our spinning wheels some exercise this afternoon.

I was spinning some of my Maco Merinos fleece which has to magically transform into a baby blanket before the end of January (some hope!!) and Tammy was spinning for a woven bag she's making.

artistic shot of Tammy through my spinning wheel

Then Jak decided to get in on the act! (There's no show without punch!)

She won't do it right unless I watch very carefully!

So, that's it until next year.  Thankfully, there were no traditional pranks such as setting fire to our wool or flax, so I think we escaped pretty lightly!

What's On the Bobbins?

Or rather, who's on the bobbins at the moment.  I'm currently spinning some of Jorrocks' first fleece and  must admit I approached it with a little bit of trepidation.  Wouldn't you? This is what he normally looks like :-

But actually, his fleece was surprisingly low in vegetable matter.  Jorrocks is now 18 months old so has only had one shearing so far.  I expected to have a lot of work with this fleece - picking out grass and seeds, carding etc., but I'm spinning straight from the bin liner it's stored in.  Just grab a handful and spin.  Brilliant.  These photos don't really do him justice as far as showing softness is concerned, but they do show the different colours.

He has quite a range of shades in there, but is classed as a rose grey.

The yarn is turning out really soft and I'm looking forward to taking it off the bobbin - I'll probably Navajo ply it so I can use every scrap.

The other projects to show you are made from some hand-spun wool I won in this year's Tour de Fleece on Ravelry.  This was a mix of black alpaca/Gotland/Finn sheep which came from Australia - spun by Sharon (Shazzapug on Ravelry).  She also sent a skein of black alpaca/Icelandic, which is rather dense, but very soft.

Not long after I received it, I started knitting a shawl, the Lonely Tree Shawl.  It probably took a few weeks to knit, but then it sat in the bag for quite a while because it turned out a bit smaller than I'd anticipated and I planned to pull back the border and knit another pattern repeat.  Needless to say, it just sat in the bag, neglected, and the extra pattern never got done.  In the end, just before Christmas, I washed and blocked it and, hey presto, it stretched out to a size I was happy with.

I still had some of the yarn left, so made a hat for Eric for Christmas.

Here it is in progress, and I was really pleased with how it turned out.  We call it his "rasta hat", but really it's an Anemone Hat.  Here's the grumpy old man wearing it:-

He doesn't look too happy with his new hat, does he?  But actually, he really likes it - just keeps saying how heavy it is.  I think that's probably the alpaca/Icelandic wool, which is what I did the "tentacles" with.  It's also rather warm, but perfect for outside in the winter : he's just got to learn to take it off in the house!!

Christmas Time, Mistletoe and Wine

Merry Christmas everyone.  Hope your Christmas Day was spent with good friends, family, good food and all the best things in life.

We were awash with wine as usual (well we do live in a wine-growing area) and we spent the day with friends and neighbours.  The mistletoe was missing though - it doesn't grow here, although you don't have to travel far south to see the trees festooned with it. Everyone contributed to the meal so no-one had to do the whole lot.  This was our contribution (Salmon en Croute), along with lots of roast potatoes :-

A bit selfish really, because everyone else had Tammy and Rob's home-grown pork and lamb, but I don't eat meat so took this for me!  There was plenty for everyone, but after stuffing themselves with the meat I'm not surprised they couldn't manage any fish.  This will feed us both at least another twice, so I may have to freeze some for later.

Eric was in charge of after-dinner coffees so we took our super-duper bean to cup coffee maker with us.

We had a secret Santa too and everyone brought a gift destined for a particular person, but no-one knew who bought it.  There was even a present for Henry (super-duper coffee maker in background!) :-

He got two dried pigs ear treats, one of which he demolished in double quick time!

We ate at probably 2:30-3p.m., and it's now 6:45 a.m. on Boxing Day - I'm finally starting to feel slightly hungry again, although not hungry enough to actually get out of bed and do something about it!  Boy were we stuffed!!  Think we need to limit ourselves to fruit and salad today to try and sort out our digestive systems.

Happy Boxing Day!

Christmas Market

Sunday was the day our village Christmas market was held.  We were all up early and busy setting up our displays.  My 3 neighbours and I had booked two tables between us, so it wasn't too difficult to fill them with only half a table each.

I took my wheel and spent most of the day spinning, which attracted quite a bit of attention and lots of people stopped to take photographs.

The Two Christines

There was a steady stream of people in the morning, and the afternoon was quite busy. Santa was there (I told him what I'd like for Christmas and he said I needed to write him a letter . . . and gave me a chocolate instead),  and guess what?  I won a prize in the raffle - a memory stick for my computer!

So, what were we selling?  Well, there was Victoria's jewelry and dolls :-

and Sheila's knitted children's clothes (that's the clothes that are knitted, not the children!):-

Tammy had some lovely felted and sewn things for sale (and Rob had made some wooden lathe-turned items, but I don't seem to have any decent photos of those) :-

Tammy's felted shoulder bag - love the mouse!

and I was selling handspun wool, some knitted items, felted soaps, lavender wands etc.

I use the term "selling" loosely - in fact I didn't sell a single thing!  Oh, except a little beaded Christmas tree ornament that my sister had sent to put on the stall.  Oh well, you win some, you lose some!

Actually, I really wasn't upset at all that I didn't sell anything.  Whilst packing the basket with balls of wool I kept thinking "I hope no-one buys this one, I really like it", and "ooh, this one would make a really nice hat".  I think it was a good experience to see all of my yarns together to realise what I had and see which ones went well together.  So yesterday I started knitting - what fun!!

The Last of the Woad

The skeins of merino I dyed recently have turned into an Age of Brass and Steam Kerchief :-

and a hat :-

Not sure who these are for - maybe someone's Christmas present this year.  Any takers??