It’s that time of year again…

It’s that time of year again, World Wide Knitting in Public Day. I haven’t done one for a couple of years and hadn’t really thought about doing one this year, but Big J mentioned it, and the seed was sown. I checked when the big day was happening, in the 10 days (6th – 16th) WKIPD could be held, there was 1 day in my diary where I wasn’t going to be busy, I posted the idea on Facebook to see if there’s be any interest…lo and behold it was practically organised for me!

We decided to raise money for Wales Air Ambulance as this was the charity the LWS supported and she provided some fabulously woolly raffle prizes.

Sadly and stupidly I forgot my camera…so the only photos I have of the event was this one taken by Ms Daines.

Yep, this is me, spinning some cotton

and these taken by Ms James

We had a fantastic day sharing interests and tips, teaching new crafts, knittin’ and nattin’.

I’ve been spending a lot of my time making items for my old new shop and getting back into the habit of spinning every day, because of course it is that time of year too.

Tour de Fleece. I’m yet again on Team Jellylegs, spinning some of Limegreenjelly ’s beautifully hand painted fleeces.

The latest hank to come off the spindle is this,

“Little Haven” Wensleydale fibre singles, I think I bought the roving from Thefeltbox.com, but I am honestly not sure. I’ve got to say, I didn’t enjoy spinning this, I found it really fluffy, with loose staples flying everywhere, which made me sneeze a lot!! But, the colours are beautiful and now that it’s done, I love it.

I’ve only got a small amount of the cotton (which has been in my stash for a while) left to spin and next is some BFL, which I will attempt to dye…once the weekend is over.

It’s going to be a busy one. Big and little J are off to Leicester to see Madness (yes, Madness!!) and particularly their supporting band By The Rivers. I’m only slightly jealous! This leaves me with entertaining the other 3 babies and loads of face painting with Pembroke Dock’s Summer festival and as hectic and tiring it is,  I love this job and so thankful that i am asked back each year.

I shall leave you with Take Control by By The Rivers :

I’ll see you on the other side. x Have a fab day.

It’s here!!

At last it’s here!

That shark hat pattern I promised you…ages ago. It’s here! My very good friend Linda tested it out for me, made some adjustments and now it is done and will be available here or in Ravelry. If you ever want to add me there you’ll find me as “Riggwelter”.

After knitting the hat I had some trouble with my shoulders, so put the needles down for a while and did some felting instead. I find I can use fibre like I would paint, playing around with texture and experimenting with combinations.

In this fabulous online shop World of Wool you can get a 500g bag of waste fibre for £10. You’ll never know what you’re getting, but sometimes you can get some really nice fibre blends which can be spun.

These two are part of a tablet/ipad case made to sell. I love to play with fibre, try out what will felt, what won’t and if they don’t then will they get caught in the fibre without breaking my needles!! I think I lost about 6 making this, but I love it.

Then I thought, well if I can’t knit for the time being…why not crochet? I was a bit nervous as I haven’t used my hooks for quite some time, and it took me a long time to get the hang of them anyway! I ended up buying a children’s book…why I ever though I could just pick up a hook and get started I don’t know. But it’s the learning process I enjoy, give me something new to try and I’m happy as larry, though once I have mastered it, lived it and breathed it… I tend to leave it for a while.

So, I went to the trusty Ravelry site to find a pattern but amazingly couldn’t find anything I fancied or anything that didn’t use a chart (I haven’t mastered that yet). So, using Nikki French’s “A Complete Guide to Knitting and Crochet” I found some “Granny” squares and off I went. and ended up with this…

I’m really pleased with it. It’s slightly too big for me, so I will sell it in my Folksy Shop or Market stall (which ever goes first) and make another with a smaller hook. It was good to get back to making big stuff again and that feeling of great accomplishment makes a big difference.

And once I have written out the pattern in a language most people will understand, I shall post it on my Knitting Pattern Page.

Love Ravelry…

I’ve joined a group in Ravelry with the intention to make Christmas gifts before December the 24th! This months is to make hats. The moderator kindly does all the searching, suggests some hats and everyone knits either her suggestions or something else…..I opted for the something else;

So, bumbling around Ravelry for a quick, fun, child’s hat I found these…

Brilliant, just what I wanted.

I then remembered a lot of people asking me about shark socks (I think the pattern goes live in October). Where it looks like the shark is eating the wearer’s leg….fun!

What about a hat that eats the wearer’s head? What child wouldn’t think that was fab!?

Looking at the fish hat pattern I realised that this wouldn’t be able to be knitted in the round as some intarsia would be involved, then I had to change the shaping, and the tail and add teeth.

Lo and behold the Riggwelter’s Shark Hat (It still needs a name, my friends on Facebook are working on this)

 

The pattern is being looked at right now, so once I have the go ahead from a knittyfriend, I shall publish the pattern here and on Ravelry, for free, naturally.

So exciting!

Well hello there…

 

Right…well, it’s been some time hasn’t it. 

After falling quite ill for 6 mths, being diagnosed with CFS, FM and RLS I am slowly finding my way back to the surface.

I have found that I am unable to knit big projects anymore, so concentrate on little ones, gloves, socks etc and still spinning as long as I take it easy….so all that aside.

Let the crafting commence!

I’ve just finished spinning this:

Some superfine Merino, Camel and Silk from Limegreenjelly. Beautifully soft.

I’m making Mr H a pair of Manly Man Man Mittens.

While I’m concentrating on making little projects I might turn my hand back to designing again…watch this space…or Ravelry….s’up to you.

See you soon x

What was I saying?

It seems the “Manx Missile” is back on track…I really felt for him standing up there on the podium, crying his heart out. It just goes to show that saying is true…”If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again”. I almost live by that saying. I love to learn new things and I won’t leave it until I’ve won, I suppose you could say that I become obsessive. I will live and breath the new task. But what do I do with it, once it’s learned? Nothing, I go on to the next thing. There’s another saying; “Jack of all trades, master of none”, oh yes, that’s me. There is hardly anything I won’t try (as long as it doesn’t involve leaving the ground…and water…not keen on those!). Fibre wise, I’d love to be able to do it all, but I will also admit that if I really feel I’m “fighting a loosing battle”, I’m quite happy to wave the white flag and surrender.

designed by Barbra Breiter

Lace…the bain of my life. I look at all the beautiful shawls and scarves and wraps and I long, really long to be able to produce such stunningly, wonderous garments. Alas, I do not have the concentration, the time nor the patience needed to make them. I will get there one day, but today is not the day. No, today is the day for mastering the corespun yarn, on a drop spindle!

First attempt – it wasn’t pretty!

If you search on You Tube you will find plenty of tutorials…though they are for the spinning wheel (I came across a lovely one where the lady was spinning yarn that looked like a Christmas tree, complete with presents and a star! But I can’t find it now), but the theory is just the same. The main difference is, you have two free hands with a wheel as your feet are doing the spinning.

Here’s a quick demo

So, you need one hand to hold the core with tension, one hand to hold the wrapping fibre and another to spin the spindle…hmmm…unless you have a willing spouse, child…dog(?) to hold…something, I didn’t think this was going to be easy.

I then thought teasing fibres whilst spinning is going to be out of the question, not enough hands, so prepping needed to be done. On my first sttempt I had already spun the yarn.

Welsh Black tops, spun with silk then plied with merino.

I then attached the core yarn to the drop spindle, holding that with tension between my thumb and finger. The wrapping yarn  I placed between my index finger and the next so it could freely slide, while my right hand did the spindle spinning.

Like so; the fibre needs to be kept well away from the spindle otherwise you end up with a big fibery mess…which I suppose could be interesting in itself!

After spinning I washed the yarn in hot water and soap, so lightly felting it all together.

TaDa! merino/bamboo/flax/tussah silk corespun yarn.

Just a little bit of patience and knowing what you hands are doing and it’ll all be ok. Another yarn I’ve been working on is Limegreenjelly’s “Ocean Drive” Merino/Bamboo.

Which is turning into a very nice sock yarn weight yarn if it’s left in it’s single state. I’m not sure whether to make socks or wristwarmers…I’ve seen a couple of patterns I’d like to try - Archie’s socks (ravelry link) or there’s the hat heel in Knitty and these Mary Wristwarmers. I would dearly love to be knitting lace…

Buns and bikes and batts…oh my!

*fanning myself franticly!*

The Tour de France got on it’s way on Saturday evening and as always, the house goes a bit Tour mad…the poster of the route has gone up and Cycling Weekly will be bought and ITV4 will be on almost religiously for the next three weeks.

And of course the fibre and spindles are out too for the Tour de Fleece…where spinners all over the world have wheels moving as fast as Cavendish on a winning sprint…or, maybe not going by yesterdays performance!

That was a pretty impressive crash!

So what’s my plan of action for the Tour? Well, Cycling Weekly gave me an idea. On the front cover it poses the question “What type of Tour rider would you be?” Now, during the TDFKAL the “riders” would state which jersey they would be working towards, but in the Tour de Fleece, we don’t do this so I decided to see which kind of rider I would compare to instead.

hmmm..

Cycling Weekly suggests that sprint climbers need to propel themselves upwards so being a small or medium in size helps. Yep, sounds good to me, not sure about the stocky build and large quadriceps…(where are they again?) though.

Climbers have long legs and ferocious aerobic power…that’s me out then being a measly 4ft 11″!

Sprinters can be any size (cool) have a strong core (yep) and arm and shoulder strength…hmmm.

and then Time trialists…have narrow shoulders and a small frontal area…(uh yeah, that’ll be me then), flexible, yep,  and feel more comfortable in a low position. sounds perfect. So the aim of the Time Trialist? Fastest average speed…

So, this concludes that I shall keep spinning as much as possible, speeding up for the straight and slowing for the bends. I had intended to spin everything I have until I bought a load more fibre. So now I’m going for as much as possible as long as I keep going, no days off.

During the prologue I finished Jo’s “My Velocity” BFL/Seacell

Sadly after spinning so much on Saturday, I had great difficulty spinning on Sunday as my hands and arms were aching but I did manage 50g of a Merino/Alpaca/Camel and Mulberry silk blend, which was incredibly light and easy to spin, although it made me sneeze like …a big sneezey thing!

Now this beautiful fibre is now spun into DK weight singles I have aptly re-named “Velo” .

Purchased from Limegreenjelly

Chunnky singles. Merino/Alpaca/Camel/Mulberry Silk

Laceweight singles so far. BFL/Bamboo which I think I may ply with some Black Welsh tops.

It’s back to the doctors for me today. After being told I will have to wait 6 months to see a specialist about my legs, I’m pretty annoyed so a fair bit of…not shouting but a little more than gentle persuasiveness (oooh think i just made up a word) and get this sorted. Just some non drug induced sleep would be nice.

Good luck with the spinning and knitting everyone!

Hello again!

I wasn’t going to post for a while but I just had to share with you my latest fibre haul, but first to say thank you to everyone who helped out with the World Wide Knitting in Public Day, without you all I’d have never been able to do it.

It was great! Loads of people I had never met before. A couple of ladies came over from Carew and taught another lady how to crochet before she had to go to a wedding! While I taught a friend how to spin.

I hope you’re still going M!

Some had a go at needle felting and made brooches and some came to listen to the fabulous storyteller…I learnt a little Dutch,  the sun shone and everyone was happy, it was brill!! It got a bit busy after, with Dylan loosing his shoes and the kids paper flying everywhere so I didn’t get any more photos sadly. I hope everyone else who did a knitting day had fun too.

I’ve really got into this needle felting lark, it’s really easy, though I have to do it in short bursts as it tires out my arms.

I’ve made a couple of these, recycled watches, the one above is made from Shetland wool with metal and glass beads.

I’ve had some reasonably good news about my health problems. I have actually got doctors taking me seriously about my restless leg syndrome now! Woohoo!  I am being referred to a consultant…so we shall see what’s happening there.  I’ve known that it was RLS for some time, but because it comes and goes and it’s really hard to describe the symptoms it has taken some time…10 years…to get someone to listen. I’m not really sure how they test for it so this should be interesting.

So, the fibre. I felt I needed a treat…not an expensive one, just something nice and different. Instead of buying some of Limegreenjelly’s fibre as I had intended to (sorry Jo x) I went to World of Wool and got these:

200g of Wenslydale Top

100g Grey Massam Top

200g Black Welsh Top

100g Yak Down

100g Bamboo

and the peace de resistance

100g Baby Camel

This stuff is like spinning air!

but it’scoming on ok.

Hmmm…note to self…don’t say that you’re going to spin everything you have for the Tour de Fleece and then by more! Silly Woman!

Won’t be long now spinny people…do you all have your spindles and wheels at the ready? No, me neither! I’ve joined two groups, Team Jelly Legs spinning some Limegreenjelly fibre and Team Spindle for obvious reasons…I shall be spindling all the way.

C’mon you greens!!