Visitors and things....

 

I have two little visitors to my workroom this week, Lottie and Lily; they have come to stay whilst the rest on their family has a little holiday.

They're a most charming and entertaining pair who love company and a conversation, especially if it results in something to munch on :) They are keeping me company for the rest of the week.

Apart from that, I have been trying to finish clearing out and am down to one box now, which is a relief; then I have to start going though everything little by little again, as is the nature of keeping belongings under control. However, my visitors have instigated a change for the better, unexpectedly.

Having invested in a craft table - 6 feet long by about 3 feet wide - I realised that I might not find it as useful as I had thought because it would be too big to fit into my workroom. That thought remained until I had to get it out for the Guinea Pig cage and suddenly realised that because I could store some items under it, it would fit quite well as I had a gangway all round it. I lose my open space but a table to put things on when I unpack my fleeces etc is, in reality, far more use. Hey-presto! I have somewhere to do other things too! Admittedly, I need a couple of small blocks of wood to clamp my equipment to but the table is hefty and sturdy enough to use wool combs on as well as other things.

Having recently been to Yorkshire to learn how to use the English Longdraw method of spinning, it is now my duty to keep practicing, that is, once I manage to wash the fleece I am working on (Hampshire Down) sufficiently and make a good Rolag. The quality of each stage very much depends upon the quality of the process that precedes it.

As regards other making, I have only finished one other item recently and that is a Rainbow item as part of a Weavers, Spinners and Dyers project. I have decided not to finish it the way I originally intended and it will remain a bag, not a wall decoration. 

It is made of handspun wool, each colour plied with white and it's lined with white silk. The button is a large crystal. My thinking was that the rainbow is refracted white light, hence the white lining and the button, which can, in certain lights, flash with colour. The little knitted loop visible in the first image will be removed. I have no idea what I will keep in it. 

A while ago, I also managed to finish a cushion cover that I began knitting a long time ago.

It's very satisfying to get something else finished. It turned out to be quite a long project because I didn't like the way the Fair Isle was knitting up. I think this is because cotton has very little stretch in it and was unforgiving of my perhaps not to good technique. Still the recipient liked it, which is the main thing. (It was made from a kit designed by Lynn Turnbull of Gwennol Designs. She can be found on Folksy.)

It is the Guinea Pigs' teatime now, so time to finish this post. More soon....

As time goes by.......

It's been so long since I left home for anything other than a walk, I have to look at the calendar...I think it was mid-March to go to the Surgery. Since then, time seems to have gone by very quickly, as many people I have spoken to, agree. It is quite natural to believe time would drag, being confined to home and, if lucky, garden. I can't account for it. Perhaps some people are finding time drags and I just haven't spoken to any of them.

Apart from sitting outside in the sun, (with a coat on - the wind is really quite strong and chilly at times), Zooming, Skyping plus a bit of FaceTiming with family, there's been a bit more Tech usage because of ordering things online but as I find it tedious after a while, so not that much more than usual. I've made a tiny dent in my 'Mending Mountain' and have finished a Ballet cardigan.

There's been quite a lot of baking.... mainly biscuits of one kind or another....

and bread, both whole wheat and Sourdough..

(The rather incongruous pear is there to show someone that I have made a smaller loaf than normal.)

A few cup cakes..

...by way of a 'birthday cake' that could be shared when not able to get together to celebrate.

Meanwhile, too, Easter has come and gone..

No Simnel cake this year, either for Mothers' Day or Easter because I couldn't get any Marzipan and didn't have enough ingredients to make any. So, it was just Hot Cross Buns. 

There's a lot of bird activity in the garden, including a pair of Blue Tits (or Great Tits?) that appeared to be nesting in the box on the side of the shed as previously mentioned. At one point, there were a few days when this knocking could be heard on the roof of the bird box.

That stopped and now, there don't appear to be birds coming and going any longer but we've not looked so far in case we disturb them. I think the time is coming when we have to conclude no one is in residence now and take a look. We spend what seems like a small fortune on bird food but it's lovely to have so many birds around. I would like to set up a bath or some water provision for them but it has to be elevated as we seem to have quite a few cats around. I recently shooed one away that was stalking the bottom of the hedge, which seems full of Sparrows. Last week, there was a Jay hopping around the lawn - the first one we've noticed. It was good to see another kind of bird. Bumble Bees and Bees in general are more in evidence too.

Veg/fruit deliveries have resulted in us having Wild Garlic to find something to make into. 

We haven't used it before, even though I have walked through large expanses of it. We looked up some suggestions and ended up putting it with mushrooms in a Risotto, which tasted good..

Making Pesto and I tried pickling the flower buds.

I don't think we are the only folk to be using this either, as I have seen photos of meals and products others have made. Having a food box one hasn't chosen gives catering a new dimension, which makes for interesting and refreshingly different meals.

It's time to do something other than write now, so I will save other things for the next post. I hope this finds all who might read this safe and well. 

Times of Change.

This is a corner of Rutland Water. At the beginning of March, when we went to stay nearby, we didn't realise how lucky we were to get away from home. The weather was fine for the whole three days, during the day and the sun shone but the wind was so cold that it was impossible to sit outside or for me, anyway, walk far. It made a pleasant break, however.

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Now we are a few weeks down the line and everyone is being asked to keep themselves at home. So far, the weather's been dry with lots of sunshine (where we live, anyway) and this is currently, a warm, dry Easter, which doesn't often happen. We are lucky to have a garden to sit in and everything seems to be putting on a growth spurt. Our garden is a work in progress but despite having few plants at the moment, we have lots of Bumble Bees - and others too, some of which we can't identify for sure. The birds can and do rely on a good supply of food and throughout the day, lots of little ones occupy the old hedge at the bottom of the garden and visit the feeders when the larger birds are away. Sparrows squabble and Blue Tits and Robins flit about. We have a family of some sort of Tit in the bird box this year, too, which is very pleasing.

Try as I might, so far, I haven't been able to take a photo of the incumbents and neither of us have managed to completely identify with kind of Tit it is. At more of a distance we see and hear the resident pair of Buzzards, although I once say one sitting on the fence in the garden, too.

Some of the plants, mainly the potted ones, are looking good.

It looks as though we are going to have a good crop of Lemons again this year.

We both try to get out for our daily exercise. I am a bit limited in where I can go because I can't walk far and I can't use the car to go anywhere else for now.  The verges are showing the effects of the weeks of rain we had before this drier spell and are very churned up in parts but there are still Primroses and Bluebells and quite a few clumps of Dandelions - not as many of these last as I have seen in past years, though, I fancy. There are lots of Lambs hereabouts too.

Time now for tea....so more another time.

Making things and (very) wet weather.

(Note: I began this post last week and didn’t get time to publish it.)

This morning sees us trying to prepare for a trip to Barmouth on the West coast of Wales. The rain is coming down in torrents and, according to the weather forecast, is likely to be doing it all day. So, the bedding, etc. Is like to remain upstairs until tomorrow morning.

More about this trip after we get back in a few days.

Since I feel determined not to have a last-minute rush to get what I want to do for Christmas done, I have made a list, have a space for keeping track of what I have managed to do in relation to the date and made a start on finding presents - or at least begun thinking about them. 

I have always enjoyed Christmas - all aspects of it - since I was quite young. From the Christmas present ‘box of treats’ my mother’s sister used to give me each year for a long time, to the playing of Carols on my Recorder on Christmas morning outside my Mum and Dad’s room (I never did discover what they thought of this but it did include tea in bed); I have some fond memories. Even if my Dad did opt to work over the period (I don’t think he particularly enjoyed Christmas), my Mum and I always got invited somewhere or went to relatives. Only in later years did it degenerate into a mad rush to get what I wanted to do finished, some years seeing me finish decorating my cake on Christmas Eve or even one year, Christmas morning - as my family will testify...(partly due, in my own defence, to how close to Christmas the school I worked in broke up for the holiday - well that’s my excuse, anyway!!).

Since I wrote my last post, I have managed to finish a wall-hanging for the bedroom, made some progress with some cushions for the same room, worked a bit more embroidered post-card, attended a workshop about making fabric books and called a halt to a not very successful, knitted, silk shawl.

The wall hanging is made up of a piece of circular weaving I did earlier in the year (or last - can’t remember) and didn’t know what to do with. I’ve mounted it on half of an embroidery hoop and stitched in some cream pearl, clear and gold seed beads at random. The tendrils hanging down are pieces of yarn that resulted from me undoing some knitting; it’s man-made fibre not handspun. It’s all meant to allude to sea and sand....

The cushions are likewise being made from ‘something else’. I was knitting a caplet and ran out of yarn to finish it. Have searched for a long time, without success, for something the same or similar enough to make it work to my satisfaction I gave up and decided to do something else with the squares. The colour is, once again, sympathetic to the room, like the hanging, so, cushions it would be. I am discovering how hard it is though, to attach a piece of knitting to a backing for a cushion cover, especially when only the front is knitted. I have brought feather pads and am making up a cover using a piece of lining fabric (under the knitting and using a pieces of shawl, doubled, for the back. The shawl is a kind of Muslin and very thin but I have managed to inset one zip and am about to insert another, at the moment. I am hand stitching the whole thing as it seems to need a lot of control that I feel I would lose using a machine.

The star-shaped buttons are made of shell. Originally, I found some round ones at the Redditch Needle Museum but decided to use those elsewhere.

I am also (slowly) working on an embroidered postcard to send to Australia. I have already sent one to New Zealand as part of a swap organised by the local Embroiderer’s Guild. This one, I am using with a piece of fabric to embroider over the design printed on it.

In September, I joined a day workshop in order to make a Nuno scarf. It was a very enjoyable day, lead by the International Felters Guild area co-ordinator. I haven’t done much Nuno felting but learned that I prefer smaller motifs to larger ones because of the effect on the drape of such fine fabric. I was reasonably pleased with the outcome, though.

Lastly, I attended another workshop, recently, about making fabric books. I think I was somewhat flummoxed to begin with because we were expected to use Indian Muslin and I found this very difficult to handle, possibly because I am more used to denser, heavier fabrics. Consequently, I got off to a very slow and confused start and never really caught up, although over lunchtime, I began having ideas as to what I could do with my rather unpromising-looking book. I began trying some of these but ran out of time, so I haven’t got very far with it. However....at least I have a few more ideas, so I suppose that is progress. I don’t think this kind of book is for me, though; I would prefer thicker fabric or felt to use as pages.

My idea, when I get time to return to this project, is to create pockets in the front and back covers and  then smock the some of the rest of the inside covers (where drawn up, above). The edges are supposed to be frayed and the ‘pages’ are stitched in across the width of the spine of the cover. The pages are made up of two pieces of Muslin stitched together twice, so that the decoration on each page is hidden within the layers of Muslin. The pages can be decorated and stitched into in whatever way and with whatever one likes; I haven’t decided yet.

That’s all the making I can publish for now (Christmas is coming and I can’t show pressies!). My next post will be about our short visit to Wales.

Beginning again....

I have been using Wordpress for my Blog for a while having become disenchanted with Blogger’s lack of App, since I write a lot of posts using an iPad. However, I have never really got to grips with that system and have decided to return to Blogger and hope that I can make it work better for me. Because I haven’t used it for a while, the Blog looks a bit dated but I will address that as I go along (hopefully).

It is well-known that moving house is stressful and I can now vouch for that, personally. It feels as though it has taken ages to get some sort of equilibrium.

I have managed to make a little progress again with making things. I now have a Workroom but it still isn’t straight as I tend to go and make something rather than carry on with sorting and getting rid of unwanted items.

I have already published some images of things I have made but maybe not all...

I managed to complete my modular jacket knitted from hand-dyed Flax, earlier this year:

Also a textile postcard as part of an initiative by the Branch of the Embroiderer’s Guild I belong to:

It's made out of a piece of felt I made for another project and embroidered/finished round the edge with some of my handspun yarn. I am currently working on another one and then, I have two more to make. I joined in later than everyone else and so, I am rather behind.

I have several knitting projects on the go: a shawl made out of 1-ply silk, which I can sit and knit and watch television/travel/hold a conversation working on, a lace triangular shawl (which I can't do unless I can give it all my attention) and knitted cardigan that I began over a year ago for an event and didn't finish in time. I only have the peplum to knit now but in order to do so, I have to pick up 300+ stitches and I haven't managed to get myself geared up to do that yet.

I have recently spun some Mohair and plied it with either some Bluefaced Leicester or some Shetland that I spun a very long time ago. I discovered it during one of my 'turning out' sessions, thought it was pretty and began to spin it.

It was very hairy and not easy to spin, so I decided plying it with something more stable would be the best thing to do.

This is the outcome; I haven't decided what to make with it yet...

On the travel front, we went to the Netherlands in June with the motorhome. It was an interesting trip but the weather wasn't the best, although it wasn't as wet as it was in the UK during the same period. That's for another post..

We've visited the West Country three times recently and went to Derbyshire in the Spring..The two visits to Devon were to Bovey Tracey and Mortonhampstead to be fitted for and to fetch sandals from Green Shoes and to order some boots. They take a couple of months to be made but since I can rarely get shoes that'll take my insoles these days, I don't mind waiting.

I'm so pleased with them. I now await my boots, which should be ready this month.

We've picked almost 3kg of Blackberries from out garden during August and September; they were early and very abundant. Blackberry and Apple pies and crumbles will follow in due course.

Half Term is now behind us but saw Grandpa and I took the two girls to the Butterfly Farm in Stratford-upon-Avon. It was a horribly wet day, which was why we chose to go there. 

There was great curiosity and these are some of the things we saw:

I don't know what they are all called but the one immediately above (and slightly out of focus) had transparent wings and looks impossibly delicate. The third image is a very large Moth.

The Farm has a colony of ants and it was fascinating to watch them walking along the rope carrying a piece of leaf.

Time to finish now....more in a few days, I hope.