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!

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.

4KCBWDAY1: The House Cup

Today marks the start of this year's Knitting and Crochet Blog Week. I've never taken part before, but I thought it might not be a bad way to rejuvinate my blogging. which is A Good Thing.
So Eskimimi, whose brainchild this is, sets the topics for everyone who is taking part to discuss on each day of the week. Today's topic is the House Cup. In a bit of a Harry Potter stylee, bloggers need to assign themselves to one of the four Houses Eskimimi detailed. Me? I belong with the bees:

The House of Bee: Bees are busy and industrious, but can flit from one interesting project to the next as bright and shiny things capture their interest.

So why The House of Bee? Well, as I become more proficient I realise that I can be quite industrious with my craft. However, although I do craft busily, I don't always seem to have the product output that one might expect. Why? Well, I am always captivated by the shiny, but it's the flitting that is really apt. I don't even have all my current partly worked on knitting projects detailed on Ravelry. It's not just flitting about from one knitting project to another, either; I flit from craft to craft - knitting (sometimes crochet), spinning, weaving, patchwork... Even as I write this I'm trying to work out whether the next lot of craft time ought to be spent knitting my next Adrift cardigan, sewing in a zip to a baby jacket, carding some fleece I washed over the weekend, spinning some more of a merino/silk blend so I can have the smaller spinning wheel free to spin said washed fleece once carded or finishing sewing some patchwork blocks. But it is the knitting that draws me back time and time again, simply because the repetitive action is soothing and meditative. A little like the lazy hum of the bees in the garden on a lazy summer day.

Buzzzzzzzzz.