"Do it with a passion or not at all"

One of the things I love about getting older is the understanding that comes with all those years of experience. Something about myself that I am getting used to is the fact that I am rather an all or nothing person. I will spin wool or play the guitar or sew obsessively for several weeks, then won't touch it again for six months. This used to bother me. I would feel haunted by the spinning wheel/guitar/sewing and worry that I'd never do it again. Now I am ok about being like this. I know that the urge to do things that are special to me will return.
So, right now I'm into blogging. I've no idea why, I just suddenly feel like putting 'out there' all the things I've been up to. I find it slightly disturbing that I don't know why I'm doing it, I like to know the whys of things. I'm hoping one day it will become clear to me. In the meantime I'm enjoying sorting/labelling/resizing my pictures, and good grief I've even got a little notebook for keeping blogging ideas in. That's a bit disturbingly organised. I'll probably mostly ignore it and ramble on about what comes to me when I sit down. I do dream of being one of those people who is really organised. I dream of being the sort of person who would keep a track of what they spend their money on, what the weather is like every day, when the sowed what in the garden. Occasionally I get to be in that place for short periods of time, but ultimately it's not me, and that's ok. I'm really quite happy as I am, but there's no harm in aspiring to be better.
And so, from my library of (currently) well organised and labelled pictures here are two things I'm working on ..... when the urge takes me.

 One finished hat for the winter for me. One hat in progress for Vince. I'm a slow knitter, and I get bored after a few rows. It always makes me chuckle that a friend of mine will think nothing of knitting a couple of blankets and a  jumper in the time it takes me to knit one hat. I'm hoping to have Vince's hat ready for this winter, I'm making fairly good progress.
Both handspun wool (of course?)

Patchwork quilt in progress. These are quite large pieces, you can just see the toe of my left foot for scale. It's all made from scraps/offcuts/old clothes. Being a peasant at heart I think it's cheating to buy brand new perfectly good pieces of fabric from a shop and cut them into small pieces and sew them all together again.
The plan for this is to make it triangular for our triangular bed in the boat (the bedroom in the boat is in the pointy bit at the front of the boat). The longer term plan will then be to extend it into a normal shaped quilt when we get back from our travels.
These are pretty long term plans, which is a good job because I can see this is going to be a long time in the making..

Wool

My wooly projects are still ongoing. These pictures span a time period from about two months ago to the present.
I borrowed a drum carder from my mum. It's definitely a good idea to have the same hobbies as your mum! These things are amazing, they produce so much more wool for lots less effort than hand carders. I guess that's where the industrial revolution started, taking the drudgery out of hard labouring work, but perhaps that's another story.......

 As a result of this fabulous 'machine I now have huge piles of carded wool everywhere. Here is a box full of carded mule wool. This was a fleece I snaffled last year when I was fleece rolling for the farmer I work for. Mules are a hybrid and often have Bluefaced Leicester in their parentage, which have lovely wool. So while I was rolling I kept an eye out for one I thought looked long and crimpy and shiny and asked the farmer if I could have it. It would have been churlish of him to say no as they are worth very little to large scale farmers, so he said yes!

 I also have trays full of all sorts of other wool that I've scrounged and bought from various sources, including black and white Jacob, North Ronaldsay, Zwartbles and a mongrel black/grey sheep.

I'm now busy sinning my way through it, and on a cold and rainy day (ha ha) I lit the woodburner and boiled up some lichen

Strained it and threw a couple of balls in then boiled it some more.. (oops, bit blurry this picture)

And they came out like this. they haven't taken the dye very strongly, I think partly because the wool hasn't been thoroughly washed, but I don't mind, I like subtle.

and I've finally done some knitting. I loosely used a pattern (ahem). The brown is Shetland wool, the white is mule and the yellow is, I think dyed with onion skins. You can't really see the yellow, which is a bit of a design fault!

 It's a bit small for me, I like hats to come well down over my ears. But I knitted it on the boat and that was all the wool I had, and I wanted to wear it as I was cold.

I'll do another, make it bigger , and put the nice yellow wool somewhere where it can be seen. I'm on a steep learning curve here.

A quiet fourth day and some arty stuff

A few statistics today. I'm usually hopeless and not very interested in numbers, but today I had another ride in the the landrover with the farmer, and as he loves talking about his farm and I love listening, I thought I'd make an effort to remember some numbers. There are about 500 ewes due to lamb in this three week period. So far there are about 55 doubles numbered and turned out, 15 doubles still in pens and about 20 singles. The singles lamb outside and are left outside as long as everything is ok. We are nearly a week into the lambing now. So, with 400 still to lamb it's going to get very busy at some point!
As a result of it being quiet I got to go off on a jolly again today. I spent the first hour and a half doing pens and turning out ewes and lambs. I turned out 10 today (see, I've been keeping count for you!), and every one followed quite well. The up side of this was that I got it done fast, the down side was that I had to carry 10 pairs of lambs, and some were big and heavy, and several wriggled a lot, so my shoulders were definitely beginning to ache by the end. The teenage daughter was about today, doing stuff with her horses and hand feeding the few jacob sheep that are technically hers. I always think of them as an attempt by the farmer to get her interested in the sheep, but I may be wrong!

A photo I took a while ago of a jacob shouting,
 probably for more food!

I hadn't quite finished pens when the farmer whisked me off in the landrover to collect up some electric fencing in some fields about 4 miles away. He doesn't own any land (as far as I know) but rents land all over the place. We were collecting up electric fencing from the perimeter of three fields. The fencing is plastic stakes and two wires. The farmer has a clever gadget that fits onto the wheel of a small trailer towed behind the quad bike. As he drives forward it reels in the wires onto two reels. My job is to trot on ahead, detach the wires, pull out the posts and leave them in piles which he picks up and puts in the trailer. It works pretty well most of the time. The only hiccups are when the wire gets twisted or a knot gets stuck, and today, because the wire had been left there for a while and not switched on something, possibly a deer had pulled it and broken it, so I had to find the two ends and join them. Here is the farmer on the quad stopping to take a phone call. If you look at the picture in large format you can just see the wire wrapper to the left of the trailer. And you can just about see the corner of the field.  I'm standing about halfway along one side of a roughly square field. Thankfully the two other fields were smaller and only partially fenced.

On the way back in the landrover he also told me about a lambing saga last night. He'd been to check the mules in the early evening and had left the quad bike trailer in the field as he thought it likely that he'd need it later that night. At about 10pm (in the dark remember) he went out to check the singles and one had a head out, and he knew she'd started trying to lamb at least an hour ago, so she needed help. He and his wife couldn't catch her, so they got the dog, herded the whole lot into a corner of the field and caught her. They got a healthy live lamb out, but the ewe just wasn't interested. They spent some time trying to persuade the ewe that she really should take some notice of her lamb but she was having none of it. He was by now getting cross with her (it's late, he's tired, he wanted a bath, and the trailer is several fields away), so in the end they lifted the ewe up onto the quad bike and tied her on the front rack (remember this is still all in the dark with only the bike headlights and a torch). They finally got her back to the farm and in a pen, tho it was gone 11 by then, and by morning she was happily feeding her lamb. A happy ending, but a tired farmer.
Back at the yard I had a few more pens to finish and a few bales to distibute with the bike.
This is my favourite little row of 6 pens. They have lots of character, and because they are at the top of a little south facing paddock they are always the warmest pens when there's a bit of sun about.

Well, it's Saturday evening and I've only just finished this, so the 'todays' are now 'yesterday', but I don't think that will spoil the story. I don't work on the farm on Saturdays.
Last night we went out singing, this morning I was gardening, and this afternoon we went to a local 'Food, Drink and Arts' festival which was lovely, and I saw some fabulous quilts, some of which you can see here

http://melindaschwakhofer.wordpress.com/art-quilts/

She spent ages showing us round and it is so wonderful to find such talented people living just down the road.

I am now really inspired me to get my quilt finished. Here it is when I started it, over a year ago.

These bits are now all stitched together and I just(?!) need to edge, back and quilt it.

This evening I finally got to use the drum carder that my mum leant me a few weeks ago. I've produced a few batts of wool so I can do some more spinning (before or after I finish the quilt?). Photos sometime, maybe. Off to the farm again tomorrow...

A quick catch-up

So, a long silence..what have I been up to..

Well, here are the 'things I have pictures of' what I've been up to's

I started a rug on my NEW peg loom, and the cat said thanks, when are you going to finish it for me?!

 And I've been decorating a hat.. because I've joined a morris dancing side (they are called 'sides' you know) This is not a new thing as I've done a lot of dancing in the past, including morris, and I LOVE it. I think that dancing, like singing is so very good for you. And recently I've been singing and playing the guitar more, I think it's a long winter evenings thing. I love them.

 Here are a few more of our weirdly dressed bunch at a practise night. I've only been to three practises and, weather permitting we're dancing in Newton Abbot tomorrow which is hilarious as we don't really know the dances yet!!

A bit more work on my cookery book repair 

 And using some friends as guinea pigs for some more potential workshops.

Marbling, a bit messy
I need to get better myself before I try to teach it!

Paste papers,
look at this beautiful design by one of my guinea pigs!

they were a very creative bunch and really got stuck in to it

And finally a bit of dying with some lichen (from a bonfire pile, not from living trees). I didn't believe my friend when she said that the grey furry stuff that drips off trees round here gives a yellow/orangey dye... but she was right!

And all is, overall, well

 ...in my perfect life

Particularly now I'm not worrying about how many books I'm not selling

Poor but happy!

oh dear and lovely......more wool

Look... can you tell I've just got the hang of some image editing software!

I've been to a few spinning groups, it's lovely meeting other people passionate about the same things. At this meeting there were 5 of us with wheels, all different, and one person learning on a drop spindle.

I made the mistake of admiring some black fleece that someone was combing. Uh oh. Before I knew it someone had trotted up the road and brought me back a feed bag stuffed with lovely black wool. That's it tipped out at home bottom left. It's a bit course, but nice and clean and barely needs combing before spinning. Which is more than I can say for the North Ronaldsay, which is starting to drive me nuts as it's so fine, sticky and full if grass seeds. However I'm persevering because I'm pretty sure it will be lovely once it's spun up and washed.

SO..I think if I spun continuously for a few months (or years?) I might get through all the wool I have sitting around the house in bags.

I wonder if that dinky wheel, middle right, will fit on a boat?!

Learning to knit

I'm on a mission to learn how to knit.

If you are an experienced knitter you may find this dull, if you are a beginner like me you may enjoy this journey with me.

If you've read much of my blog and seen my jumper you may think 'what is she talking about..she can knit..'
Two people have recently said to me, 'oh if you can knit and purl you can knit' Well, on a very basic level I would agree, but when faced with this... hmm, that's a bit more complicated isn't it?

k2 tog I can work out, and 'yon' means yarn over needle, but which needle, and in which direction? And what does (s1) slip 1 mean, and what do you 'pass the slip stitch over' (psso)?
Well, I'm pleased to say that with a combination of a Book Of Knitting and some advice from a friend I did this....

Woh...impressive eh?! Well, impressive if you don't look to closely and realise that although the bottom half looks like the picture in the book, the top half looks like a variation on it...which it's not supposed to be, oops. I found it really difficult to follow all those instructions and this is one of the simplest patterns in this book. So anyway, my long term ambition is to understand why "k2tog, yon, k1, yon, sl.1, k1, psso" etcetera makes the pattern it does. Because, once I've understood the principles I can then make things up as I go along, which I'm much better at than following patterns. I realise this is pretty ambitious, so in order to be realistic and learn to walk before I can run I've also had a go at a couple of other patterns

That's lace wings at the top again, and 'ridged eyelet' and 'miniature leaf 2' at the bottom. Ridged eyelet was seriously easy, after having almost mastered lace wings anyway. I also did a couple more test pieces.
This is some bought wool on 4 different needle sizes. I was supposed to put a row of purl stitches in between each needle change, but I only remembered once. What hope is there for me following a whole jumper pattern I wonder?

And then I did two squares with my own wool. The top is 20 stitches and 20 rows on size 4 needles, the bottom is 20 x 20 on size 10, and err, no I don't know what that is in mm, that's just what is written on my new-to-me old needles.

I'm quite impressed by how different the knitting is on different needles in terms of both density and size, I'd never given it much thought before. I just used to think, bigger needles = knitting grows faster = good.
I can see I've go a lot to learn, and I think I'm going to enjoy the journey, even if it is slow and a little frustrating at times.
Many thanks to Ren for lending me the book these patterns came from. It is the 'Vogue dictionary of knitting stitches' by 'Anne Matthews' and it's really inspiring, as long as I don't look at the patterns that are 25+ rows, eek.

Wool again..

And so the wool theme continues.. 

carded candy floss
(or elderberry dyed wool!)

spun candy floss

miscellaneous bits of cloth
from the elderberry and onion skin dyebaths

 And finally I dug out this motley collection of single ply balls of wool. They are all leftover from my jumper project  and were spun on my drop spindle. There are all sorts of lovely colours and textures in amongst them, but I've no idea what they are now! I'm plying them together, and then all I have to do is wash and dry them and knit them into something. It's not a speedy process this wool thing is it...good job I enjoy it!

single ply balls and plied skeins

And talking of knitting, my friend Mrs Fairysteps, who is as mad about wooly stuff as I am has lent me some knitting books, they are simultaneously inspiring and scary. Between her and my mum and some local knitting groups I might learn to knit properly eventually... and maybe spin properly too, there's SO much to learn.

I've done a bit of sewing but need to find the credit for the pattern before I tell you about it, and I can feel some book making coming on, and have promised myself I'll get some books out on Etsy when open studios is over.

...and have you spotted that I've learnt how to do 'links'....I'm easily pleased!

more wool

I'm pretty busy being on duty for the open studios fortnight, but in every spare moment I'm now obsessed with wool.

This is a batch I've dyed. Yellow with onion skins, pink with a fresh batch of elderberries and blue with food colouring. I thought I'd taken more photos but this is all for now. The pink is now carded and ready to spin...it looks like candy floss! I threw some bits of cloth in the yellow and pink vats which have come out all different shades, and then I soaked a white t shirt in the leftover elderberry juice, which is looking quite purpley! I'm pretty random with it all, so I don't know how fast they will be. I might wrap some wool samples and leave them in the sun to see how much they fade. Just need to decide what to do with all this wool once I've spun it. A woolly hat might be useful in the months to come...

Open Studion and a bit more wool

For the next two weeks my books will be on display in my friends studio as part of Devon Open Studios. There are 4 of us sharing the space, me, a potter and two painters. I feel very honoured as the potter and one of the painters are well established artists with a following of people who love their work, and the other painter (my friend) is also fast becoming a very popular artist too...and then there's little me with my books!
The first image is a big one, I think if you click on it you can see the paintings a bit better, tho the image itself is a bit blurry! To see some decent images of their work go to
http://www.greenawaybarngallery.co.uk/



general view of the studio





a table of my books

 and, although I've been very good and resisted the spinning wheel while I've been sorting signposts,duty rotas, pricing and stuff, I did succumb to dunking some wool and cloth in some elderberry juice that's been in the freezer since last year.


yummy colours (bit on right is an undyed bit)

 and.... I also dug out some old spun-but-not-washed wool from yonks ago and washed it. There's a yellow batch in there that I dyed with onion skins..


wool hanging out to dry

 And then the cat came to help me roll it into balls....like cats do...

Ahem...thanks mr pook..

Lots of wooly stuff

So, I have lots of things I should be doing for Open Studios, but instead I'm gadding about at Fibrefest, which was at Bicton College over the weekend and was utter heaven for a fibreaholic. Luckily I didn't take too much money so only bought some shetland wool, some alpaca, and a  knitted mermaid, and came home with lots of inspiration.

peg loom weaving

more peg loom weaving

 And the most amazing knitted thing I've ever seen. A huge inside and out sculpture of the Devonshire coastline...all knitted, with cliffs, water, seagulls, fishermen, pebbles, everything. It is a project that was devised by Alison Murray (link to her blog when I've got more time..), and I was in a hurry to get to a talk,so almost ran round! I'd love to see it again. They were raising money for the RNLI, a charity we are keen to support in view of our future sailing plans (er..nothing much happening there at the moment but we live in hope)

Above and below the Waves

not a brilliant photo, but you get the idea

Fishy bunting

RNLI boat, this pic's forthe lovely Peter
 who collects for them regularly

And so the next exciting thing is..

oooh...what's this..

instructions..

lots of bits..

Some help from Vince..

and I have my own spinning wheel..

I borrowed a wheel from my mum and then she said she had this one in a box in the loft, so it's my early birthday present...or maybe a late wedding present? And now I have to resist it for a few weeks while I work on my patchwork garden, my patchwork cloth, my books, and my 'proper' job of looking after peoples gardens. Oooh but can't I just spin a little bit of the shetland wool...or try dying some and then spinning it?! And have I got time to make a peg loom?!

lovely lovely wool

I love wool, the feel of it and particularly the smell of it. I love it most when it is fresh from the sheep, raw, straight from nature, just like stones, leaves, shells and twigs (I'm particularly thinking of willow twigs to make baskets from). My house is full of these things, they are free, beautiful and can simply go back to nature when I need to move on.

I spent 2 months in Norway 4 years ago rolling fleeces all day most days. It was heaven for a wool lover like me, arm full of wool, taking great sniffs when I thought no one was looking. Unfortunately, apart from the heaven of having my arms full of fresh wool all day, I have never been so miserable in my life...but that is definitely another story..

Anyway...back to wool



nice white wool, washed and drying in the sun




not so nice brown wool, ditto



carders and rolags (I beg your pardon?)



me with my drop spindle in action




drop spindle with nice white wool



jumper front



jumper back



flower on arm that I'm particularly proud of

Well, in case you think I've just whipped up this little jumper recently I'd better set you straight. I finished it last winter and it was somewhere in the region of 7 or 8 years in the making.

I did however spin it all on the little drop spindle seen in the above pictures. I used to live in a very small space and a spinning wheel would not have been very practical. I now live in a bigger space but I am still rather fond of my drop spindle.

 I also dyed some of the wool with natural dyes, mainly onion skins. I didn't use a pattern because the wool was so uneven, and I'm not very good at following patterns. As I'm not much of a knitter it's a pretty weird shape. The left arm was far too narrow for example and if you look in the back view you can see a croched insert. I'm not sure I want any 'good' knitter to get a close up look, I don't think they'd like what they saw, but I love it very much.

I'm not sure what I'm going to make with the next lot of wool. A bedspread would be nice, but I might be about 80 when it's finished.

....and thank you for your comments below, I can't seem to reply. I loved the spinning, it was the knitting that drove me nuts, I'm not much of a knitter but I felt I had to do SOMETHING with all the wool!