Spinning a peacock.

It occurs to me that I`d better blog something about spinning or start calling this blog another name, like Digging Fishwife or Camping Fishwife or even Mother-of-two-on-school-holidays Fishwife, eh? Truth is, not much spinning has been perpetrated since Woolfest, despite all the swag I picked up there. Who`s bright idea was it to put Woolfest on the weekend that our Scottish schools broke up for the summer? I haven`t even got round to blogging about the stuff I bought there, ho hum.

Anyway, the wheels were sitting there looking reproachful and I was getting itchy fingers, so last Wednesday I picked up Old Man Louet and took him out to Prestongrange Industrial Heritage Museum, where Gourdongirl and I spend a greater portion of our spare time in the cafe, listening to the distant screams of our children rampaging around in the woods.

I thought I might get a quiet hour or so of spinning done, sitting outside the cafe in the sunshine, but not a bit of it. There were a couple of families visiting the museum hoping that they had one of their childrens` craft sessions on. "No", sez Malcolm, one of the museum assistants, "But one of the mums has her spinning wheel here and would be delighted to give you a demonstration." Sigh. Thanks, Malcolm! (He`s actually a really nice guy, and felts. You can forgive anything in a guy who opened his first felting exhibition last weekend, no?)

So instead of my quiet afternoon spinning, I ended up giving a demo and letting several pre-teen girls have a try at spinning instead. Fortunately I had brought the Louet, because it can stand up to this sort of abuse. And there`s always odds and ends of roving and a spare bobbin or two in the bottom of the spinning bag. I`ve never taken a wheel out in public and not had someone wanting to try spinning, come to think of it.

I did get a little bit done at the end, though. I started this yarn back in June (eek!!) when I was demonstrating "fancy yarn" spinning at the Edinburgh Guild Open Day. I`d decided to try to create something that would catch your eye if you saw it in a wool shop, so it had to have a bit of glitz and colour. Back at SkipNorth in Feburary we had gone to Wingham Wool Work, where they had an entire shed that contained nothing but huge coils of pre-dyed rovings. It was like a sweetie shop! I went around with several bags making up mixtures of coulours that I meantally labelled "Peacock" and "Indian Spices" etc etc, and the yarn I`m spinning at the moment is from the peacock bag.

Basically I`ve been lightly carding together six colours of pre-dyed roving (royal blue, lime green, emerald green, turquoise, jade and purple) plus some cut sari silk threads in purple, turquoise and emerald, plus some fine gold angelina fibre for the glitz.



Making rolags...




...and spinning singles. This is the second bobbin.




When plied, it`s going to come out as a lightweight DK or four ply...3.25 to 3.75 mm needles, probably.

No idea what I`m going to make with it, though. I`ll wait till I know the total yardage, though given the size of the Louet bobbins, I`ll probably have about 300 yards. Any suggestions?

Book destash.

I`ve been having a bit of a tidy up and clear out of the stash, and found a lot of old knitting books (dating from around the 80`s)that are surplus to requirements. Anyone want any of them? Happy to swap for anything knitting or spinning related, just to cover the postage charges. Send me an email (Link on profile) if you want anything.



(Click on the pix for a bigger view. Hopefully all the titles are fully legible, otherwise I`ll add a list when I have five spare minutes.)

Sheep Challenge.

Woolywormhead is asking for pix of sheep. No, not real sheep, but...erm, alternative sheep. "Daft, imaginary or artificial sheep."

Okay, here`s a few that just happen to be lying around my desk...

Pencil case sheep, bought last night from Asda, £1. (And I got one for you already, Shonze, so don`t rush out specially....)



A rainbow of Fimo sheep, as bought from Ebay last year from a seller called weegreenfrog.....



Weegreenfrog also made my daughter a special bespoke pink Fimo sheep, after Mairi complained about there being no pink sheep in the rainbow. (Sent it to her as a gift as well. Nice lady!)



(My fingernail included for scale. Sorry it`s so grubby...I was gardening today.)

In my next life...

In my next life I want to come back as one of my cats.....



Nothing to do but lie around sleeping, eat tinned sardines (note the little fat tummy on that cat...she likes sardines), sleep, preen, sleep and play. Tough life, eh?

We didn`t go to Wales. Did I mention that someone hit my completely legally parked car the week before we planned to go? She hit the corner of the driver`s side bumper, right on the place where three panels join. Not hard, but just enough to dislodge the rust a bit. All three panels need replaced, and currently the bumper is tied on. The garage told me that it would be all right for local trips, but not a six hour drive to Wales.

So, after a major kerfuffle getting the big bike racks (for the tandems/triplet tandems) moved over to Hubby`s Citreon, we set out on Wednesday for Wales, with a full camping load, trailer tent and five bikes. The sort of load my Renault sneers at pulling. The 1.9 litre diesel Citreon Xantia? Umm...no. We got three miles down the road and red lights started flashing everywhere. The fancy hydraulic suspension wasn`t going to make it, Captain.

So we did the only thing possible in the circumstances...went home, cancelled the Welsh campsite, hooked up the trailer tent to the Renault and went to Peebles in the Scottish Borders instead, 25 miles away. Wales, Jim, but not as we know it. The kids didn`t care anyway, it was a great campsite, lots of things to see and do and we had a lovely ten days there instead. And I certainly didn`t miss the six hour drive to Wales and back. Was a shame Hubby missed seeing his pal Huw though. He was upset about that.

I did miss going to Colinette though! I went round Woolfest determinely ignoring all the Colinette because I thought I was going to vist their millshop when in Wales, bah!

Gone to.....

I`m off to Wales
today, for a couple of weeks of camping and to look at the sheep. The fleece for Huw the Sheep came from a sheep on a farm not three miles from the campsite. So who knows...I might see him.

There has been a bit of doubt as to whether this holiday was going to happen...over the last week we have had an attempted break in, a heatwave (In Scotland??????), Hubby has been snowed under at work, the kittens have arrived and, crucially, my car was hit by a dozy female muppet while she was attempting to park twenty feet in front of mine. Looks like it`s going to be an insurance write-off, and of course it was the tow car for the trailer tent, eek! so on Saturday there was a mad scramble to get Hubby`s car fixed up with towball and bike racks etc. (Whether it can actually get that far while towing 600Kg of trailer tent is another thought. Will let you know.)

So apologies to my lack of blogging. I have been harrassed! Also many apologies to Sue..I didn`t get back to you about Colinette because (1) I didn`t know till yesterday if we were going to Wales at all (2) We may not be staying the two weeks planned because of Hubby`s work so (3) I have no flip of an idea as to whether I`ll get to Colinette or not, so didn`t want to arrange something and then have it fall through.

Off to jam everything in the car. Did I mention the boot of Hubby`s car is considerably smaller than that of my my Renault, so I can`t take the little spinning wheel? Baaaaaaah!

Competition at Texere.

Texere are running a competition, and they very kindly give you the yarn to make your entry. Nice, eh? I`ve written for a pack, but as yet, no idea as to what I might make with it.

We`ve all been there..

We`ve all been there, haven`t we? Lengthy post, lots of pictures, witty jokes, pearls of wisdom...and then Blogger eats the lot. Even the allegedly saved draft.

I hate Blogger.

Anyway, it`s just gone midnight here and I really, really don`t feel I want to type it all out again tonight. So you`re just going to have to be content with a couple more kitten pictures. The furry duo are really settling in and making themselves at home...in all sorts of places.

This is an alternative idea for recycling your old cereal packets...into cat duvets.



Theo prefers a more macho approach to sleeping. Yup, he`s on top of the kitten pen.



Oh, and just in case you`re thinking that tomorrow I`m going to stun you with hundreds of pictures of finished knitting and spinning...well, I`ve cast on the second sock!