Ice Castle.

As promised, here's the contest prize. Incidentally given the very high standard and number of entries I've decided to give one spinning and one non-spinning prize. Spinners will win the batts, non spinners win a skein of Angels & Elephants hand-dyed 100% Shetland sock yarn, to knit socks or a scarf to keep you warm in all that snow and ice.





Spinning Fishwife's recipe for Ice Castle. (Makes 50g approx.)

1) Take a field of perfect untrodden fallen snow. (Finest white merino tops.)

2) Add a sprinkling of snowflakes (white angora from a rabbit called Snowball) and two pinches of midnight starlight. (Sapphire Angelina fibre)

3) Blend smoothly with the frost flowers of deepest winter (white mulberry silk tops) and icicles gathered from frozen mountain waterfalls. (Indigo dyed silk tops.)

4) Draft and spin to taste.


It should spin very evenly into a nice drapey soft yarn with all that silk, with a few neps for texture from the angora and a very subtle bit of sparkle from the Angelina fibre. Very easy to spin though. And the batts are as soft as kitten fur, belive me.







There's still time to put an entry into the contest. The contest closes at midnight (GMT) tonight, and Princess Mairi and I will choose the winners tomorrow.

Blog theft...

I stole this from Chronic Knitting Syndrome's blog sidebar. (Thanks, Helen!) A MUST for knitters everywhere though be warned, it's a real time black hole once you get onto the 120 piece and above cuts.

Just a reminder that you've got till midnight on Saturday (GMT) to enter the contest. Picture of prize later today. I have to go to Ikea now to buy some new plates for Christmas dinner.

Eek, just mentioned the C-word! Shoot me! Actually I've resisted doing any Christmas preparations before December for years but it's dawned on me over the last couple that this is why I get so stressed out in December. So this year, I'm trying to get a bit more organised. At least when it comes to new plates.

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie.

There's a mouse on my desk....



No, not a house mouse but a little field mouse. Theo brought it in last night for a suppertime snack but rather grumpily dropped it when I told him to. I don't like them eating their rodents in the house very much (stains the carpet), especially when I'm still up to hear the screams. I usually either flush the corpses down the loo or, if the mouse or whatever still has all its limbs and looks lively I take it over the road to the park and let it go. Ocassionally I have to kill a half-dead rodent to prevent further suffering. They don't do well minus a leg.

This one however looked intact, but very, very wet and was shivering like crazy, presumably from fear and cold. It was cold out last night however and I thought if I put such a drookit little creature outside it would die very quickly. So Mr/Ms Squeak became the first mouse to get offered emergency residential accomodation...an old storage jar with a muslin cloth stretched over the top. And a teaspoonful of muesli for dinner.

Poor little sod just sat for the first twenty minutes amd shivered, until it dawned on thicko here s/he needed a bit more than a cold glass jar to warm up. So mousie got presented with a luxurious bed of drum carder cleanings (silk/merino, no less!) and the jar went through into the cupboard where I keep the freezer, where it gets warm enough to proove the bread.

This morning? Bright as a button. I have the jar on my desk now and Squeak is looking nice and fluffy after a lengthy preening session. S/he is sitting eating a raisin.

"Time to go home, Squeak? Back to the park? Keep away from the big bad cat from now on...next time, you might not be so lucky."

(Yea, I'm a softie. Especially when it comes to wee furry things.)




PS. Thanks for all the Competition entries! I think this must be my record for comments so far. Still time to enter though, up until midnight GMT on Saturday. Winners will be judged by my six year old princess and myself. There'a been some wonderful stories and some equally great short but beautiful suggestions, so keep them coming. And I've blended up a beautiful batt of spinning fibre for the winner, with an alternative prize for these of you that don't spin. (Yet.) Pix tomorrow.

Spinning with glass.

This is beauty....






It's from here, by a designer called Andy Paiko. You can click through several pictures of the wheel, and he has other amazing glass objects.

But the wheel is the best. (I would say that, no?) He says you can spin on it, but I'd be terrified to try! Nope, this wheel should be used by a beautiful princess with silver gilt hair down to her knees, wearing a white dress embroidered with silver threads and crystal. In the top chamber of a tower made of ice, of course. On the other hand, I'd give it a go if he would let me. What would you spin on a wheel like this?

Yeah, go on, we'll make it a competition, okay?

What would you spin if you were allowed to try this wheel? Spinners and non-spinners alike may enter and suggestions can be as fantastic as you like. Unicorn fibre blended with moonbeams or whatever!

I'll try to find a suitable prize for whoever wins, but it will be a choice of either fibre (a specially created batt of something fabulous) or something knitting-related. Winner to be judged by my own six year old Princess and myself. Answers in the comments before midnight (GMT) of Saturday 17th.

Spinning Tuesday.

Tuesday is my day for going to the Haddington Spinners. Today was a bit different though, as I took thereyougothen to for a little convalescent therapy. I'm not 100% sure that she went with the intention of learning to spin, but when she was handed the spare Ashford Traditional she got stuck in with good grace and produced a very jazzy mini-skein of designer yarn very quickly. I don't think she thought it was particularly impressive as yarn goes but belive me, I've seen considerably worse from spinners that have been spinning for months, not just one hour.

No pix, unfortunately. Forgot the camera.

I manage to spin about ten yards of the Aspen merino-tencel but the rest of the time I was either gossiping or doing a little remedial surgery on a pair of socks another member had fallen afoul of. I'm pleased to report, btw, that I've made three sock-knitting converts this term alone and as thereyougothen was also sitting knitting her maiden sock for a while, I'm going to claim her as well since I gave her the Opal pattern to get her started, lol. New spinner AND new sock knitter, yeah!

Rest of the day was spent rushing around for shopping and a meeting at the school. I'm typing this in the brief moments between getting the kids home and getting them to do homework, make their tea and get myself out to diet class. Oho yes, I'm still going to diet class. I may have spent the last three months or so circling around the same couple of pounds, but at least regular attendence at class means I'm not putting the flab back on. I need a bit of motivation to get back onto the True Path, though.

(After Christmas.)

Sewing.

Yvette asked me why I had the sewing machine out.

It was for this sorry object, which normally lives in the lounge with a tartan blanket over it so that I can put my feet up when I knit.

It's a well made old thing though and I've owned it for aeons, so have been intending to take it to upholstery classes one day. However Hubby loathes it. A quick fix was required.



I found this in the Scrap Store last week. They had a newly arrived consignment of mill ends and I bought this piece of really fabulously high quality all wool tartan for 50p. It's actually quite a bit darker than the pictures show, btw. Usual problem of not enough natural daylight and having to use flash.



Bit of glueing required, to cure the shoogles. Rowan Cotton Glace to hold the legs in place while the glue dries.




A rare sighting of this shy item. I don't iron (seriously, I DON'T IRON) but I firmly belive in "Sew the seam, press the seam". Good pressing and pins save hours of tacking time, IMHO, and the finish is 100% better. This is me pressing the fold and sewing lines into the fabric. It turned out during this process that not only was the tartan piece a tad off grain there was also a weaving error in one of the checks. Well, what do you expect for 50p? And it was a mill sample, after all.



Secret weapon.



Hiding a multitude of sins. Nope, I didn't take the old cover and padding off. I'll do that at upholstery class one day. This is a quick fix, remember?




Yeah, it fits first time! Amazing! (Or could it be because I measured the thing????)




Underbelly.....




And nearly Finished Object.

Bit of an improvement, no?



Actually, it's not finished because I still have to put an underlining piece in place. I stopped here though because I was a bit unhappy with the staples. The staple gun above is a cheap and nasty one from B&Q, but I have a heavier one at the allotment, and will change the stapling I think. In the meantime I've sewn the corners of the flaps in place. It's pretty sturdy. What's the likelyhood I never do go to the upholstery class now?

PS. With optional accessory.

What...????

Umm...what is this, and what is it doing on my blog?????




Yeah, it's the sewing machine, and it's just been brought out, dusted down and plonked on a side table, ready to use. And you know what? I don't like it much.

I bought this about four years ago when my old Jones bit the dust. I loved my old Jones. My mum bought it for me after I got good results for my Higher exams, back in 1975, and it did me proud for 28 years and two new motors. Before that I had an old Singer treadle which my parents had bought me when I was eleven and showing signs of becoming a competent seamstress, but the Jones was my best machine. I remember my mum and I making a special trip to Patrick Thompsons in Edinburgh for it, in the days when fabrics and haberdashery occupied the prime selling space on the ground floor. The sales assistant couldn't at first belive we wanted a nearly top of the range machine for a 16 year old, but eventually we chose one...then my mum decided we'd just better pay the extra and buy the next one up, top of the range. It cost £135 back in 1975 plus £30 for the sewing cabinet, a bloomin' fortune then. Worth every penny.

Now I have this imposter. I just wanted something I could do the odd bit of sewing on because I had no time and nowhere to leave it set up permenantly anywhere, and we all know what a drag that is. It's a good enough machine and can do just about everything I need but...it's not my Jones. It feels lightweight and tacky compared to the great lumps of metal that machines were in the 70's. It threads up a different way. It's got a free arm, which Jones never had, but then again Jones used to fit into a proper sewing cabinet so I had this huge flat bed for sewing. I miss that. Now I have to sew with this perched up on a table. It's too high. It's just wrong.......

Better thoughts...this is the final result for the Guild Fibre Challenge. We swapped fibre with another spinner in the guild, and were supposed to feel challenged by spinning something out of our usual range fibres. This didn't quite work in my case as I recieved the sort of fibres that I do like spinning with, but never mind. This is from a drum carded batt of mixed silk roving, merino and a tiny bit of hand-dyed Shetland, for texture.

Singles...



And plyed. 280 yards from 50g of fibre, so light fingering weight I suppose.



Nice and bouncy, but with good drape from all that silk. Another beaded scarf?