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!

printing

On Sunday I had a great day out. In the morning I went into Exeter to see the dragon boat racing, which was quite impressive, like mini viking longships. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos, but here's one I got from their website. I'd never heard of them before but a friend had seen them practicing down at the quay.

I waved hello to the Tinners morris men and would have liked to hang around longer but I had to rush off to a printing workshop at West Town Farm. We went for a short walk to find inspiration and collected leaves, grasses and seedheads.

I love printing, I don't do it often enough. There's a kind of magic about it. It's one step removed from drawing directly. The print always looks to me as though someone else had a hand in it.

my neighbour busy carving and my piece of lino half carved

then we got all inky



oak leaf print (and inky lino)

prints drying in the sun



my lino and prints (taken when I got home)



my favourite

  I can see possibilities for book covers and endpapers. Talking of books I'm busy chopping paper and card up for the workshops at Buddhafield festival next week. I'm also busy repairing our very ancient caravan awning, pictures of both in the pipeline. Oh yes and a bit of spinning on my drop spindle..and learning some new songs, life is GOOD!

Holidays

We've been away for two whole days, all the way down to Cornwall and the sun shone, hooray.

(it was good weather for sailing ahem..)

And I've downloaded a fun program that allows me to make arty looking pictures like the above.
Vince's van becomes a campervan with the help of a mini mattress, some bedding, two folding chairs and the rustyest little camping stove you've ever seen! Glad to be home as always, and back to books and gardening.