Dunham Massey

This weekend I spent a day demonstrating spinning with the Cheshire Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers in the Wash at Dunham Massey. It may have been raining, but the company was good and the public were interested (always good!). The highlight for me was the group of Beaver Scouts who fell on the fibre "feely table" like a swarm of locusts!

Knitting & Crochet Blog Week 2013: A Reflection

Well, I did it! I blogged every day of Knitting & Crochet Week, and even though it was a really busy week at work (let's be honest, when isn't it?), the shedule function was my friend. And although I may not be able to keep up this kind of intensity, I do feel tha it has rejuvenated the blog somewhat. Thanks Eskimimi, and I'm looking forward to next year's already!

4KCBWDAY7: Looking Forward

One year from now, when the 5th Knitting & Crochet Blog Week rolls around, where do you hope your crafting will have taken you to? What new skills, projects and experiences do you hope you might have conquered or tried?

I would dearly love my crafting to have taken me to a specific house just outside Barmouth, where there are outbuildings galore and room for a couple of alpaca, but without winning the lottery, those dreams are beyond my reach at present.

In terms of techniques, I would like to make a fair isle vest that requires a steek. I would also like to learn dressmaking, but I'm not prepared to invest time in either of those activities until I have finished losing weight and my body shape has settled. Therefore the single biggest thing I would like to achieve craft-wise over the next year is to spin enough yarn from raw sheep fleece to make a garment. I've done loud and chunky with the Rainbow Liesl; now it's time for something more refined. 

 

4KCBWDAY6: A Tool To Covet

Today's task:

Write about your favourite knitting or crochet (or spinning, etc) tool. It can either be a tool directly involved in your craft (knitting needles or crochet hook) or something that makes your craft more pleasurable – be it a special lamp, or stitch markers.

Ooh, this is a good one! I always equate coveting things with sheer indulgence - after all, I am in the lucky position of having disposable income so if I would like a tool, I usually buy it when I want or need it, or if it's little bigger, ask for it for birthday or Christmas. There are a number of things that make my craftwork pleasurable though.

I love well-made project bags, so one of NicsKnots' bags is a pleasure to have. I knit from skeins a lot, and increasingly from handspun, so my yarn swift and ball winder are invaluable. However there is one thing that I really do covet, purely because they are a thing of beauty and a joy to use:

Ebony needles. They are warm to the touch, they have just the right amount of grip and they look gooooorgeous. They also seem to be a gazillion times the price of bamboo, which is why I only one one set of ebony DPNs. When I have pretty much every size of DPN that I need in bamboo, replacing them all with ebony is a dream that will have to wait until I win the lottery.

4KCBWDAY5: Do Something Different

Some of you will recognise my voice... but this is something different as I've never actually linked this, the original Tales From The Plain blog to the Yarns From The Plain one here.

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4KCBWDAY4: Colour Review

Today's brief:

What are your favourite colours for knitted or crocheted projects. Have a think about what colours you seem to favour when yarn shopping and crafting.

I love green and purple. I always have. I know I went through a period a few years ago when I bought at least two sweater quantities of green yarn and one of purple within a very short period of time. (What? A lot of it was Noro Cash Iroha on a silly "discontinued in the UK" price. No, don't be silly, of course I've not knit it up yet...) Even though I had my colours done 18 months ago I'm not great at referring back to the swatches and checking. If I see the pretty, I just buy it. And guess what's on my wheel at the moment? Yep - purple BFL I dyed myself on the Traddy and a green merino/silk blend on the Joy.

Only after writing this part of your post should you then actually look to see what colours you have used in your projects. Make a quick tally of what colours you have used in your projects over the past year and compare it to the colours you have written about. Compare this, in turn, to the colours that are most dominant in your yarn stash – do they correlate?

Looking at my projects from last year though, it's hard to see that reflected in items for me. So many of my projects in 2012 were Woolsack cushions that there was a lot of natural sheep colours, mainly in these cushions (some of which were collaborations):

 

Some cushions had green in them :

Did you see, the first of these had a purple stripe too.

For me I made a Rainbow coloured Liesl..

 

... a red Damson shawl...

 

 

 

 

 

 

.. a light blue crochet cardigan......















....a blue and green Colour Affection...
 

... and twowoven möbius cowls in neutral (one for me, one for my Mum. So mtchy-matchy!).

 

Not exactly overflowing with green and purple, then....

Well, what about this year? Surely I've worked on some green and purple this year?

Er....

 A tiny bit....



And although I haven't updated my Ravelry stash for a while, a quick look at what is listed on Ravelry, a glance at my stash and a quick mental tally of the Lenpur Linen and bags of yarn I bought at the Fibre & Clay closing down sale, I have fairly equal amounts of green, purple, red, and natural sheep colours, way ahead of any other colour family. Most interesting....

4KCBWDAY3: Infographics

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week 2013 Day 3: Infographics.  Errr....

Infographics sounds like a made up word to me, but I've decided that many words in these tech-savvy  social media days sound made up to me. Ho hum.

Anyway, today's task is to include an infographic into the blogpost - a way to combine both text and graphics to convey information to the reader. Well, with a brief like that I should revert back to my science and engineering background to present some well-researched and peer-reviewed data about the state of my knitting.

Yeah, right.

Instead, you have this purely anecdotal piece of bad science, as observed by my husband as I approach a work-related deadline.

Procrastination of work tasksWelcome to Pro! | Create infographics