Heather Knits

Back in the middle of a rather wet July I spent a very enjoyable three days up at Imperial College in London for Knit Nation. I had booked a hectic schedule of classes which were all great fun.

On Friday I had an all day class with Anne Hanson on Sweater Fitness. This included taking a full set of body measurements and then looking at how to adapt existing patterns to our measurements. All useful stuff. I have been quite successful in designing garments from scratch using my own measurements, but less successful in adapting already existing patterns, so there were a lot of useful tips to be gleaned. The penny really dropped when we were looking closely at the schematics of our chosen patterns, and I realised that a lot of my problem was not just that I usually need a different size for my chest than for my tummy / hips (this is something I have been aware of for some time and so am used to compensating for), but that my shoulder measurement matches up with a completely different size. I am shaped rather like a pyramid So many garments hang from the shoulder line and if you don’t get that right the whole garment looks badly fitting. This was amply demonstrated by the T-shirt I was wearing to class. In order to get a size which was comfortable around my cake-storage areas the shoulders of the T-shirt extend past my own shoulders by a good couple of centimetres and droop in a not terribly flattering manner.

We covered lots of useful tips on how to transition from one size to another at strategic points in an existing pattern. I shall definitely be putting this information into action, and taking a very hard look at the schematics of the future patterns I knit. She also had some very interesting things to say about different ways to reduce the stitches from the bust line to the shoulders, whether you opt to decrease in the armhole area or do darts which go up to the centre of each shoulder. I look forward to doing some experimenting with this to see which works well for my shape.

On Saturday morning I went to a class on Vintage Fit and Finishing with Susan Crawford. It was very interesting to learn how fashions in ease and fit have changed over time. Very valuable information when knitting a vintage pattern. I am not sure I will ever go for the full vintage re-creation garments which seem to be popular, but I can certainly see me using some aspects of vintage patterns as inspiration.

On Saturday afternoon it was The Many Faces of Cashmere with Clara Parkes. Fantastic stuff! She manages to be hilarious and extremely informative and interesting all at the same time, and three hours of cashmere can never be a bad thing We had lots of little samples of fibre and yarn to feel and knit with. It is constantly amazing how many different yarns you can make from the same fibre.

Here are all my little samples before washing (click to make huge):

Top row L to R:

• Schulana Cashmere Moda, 100% cashmere, caged construction (so fibre is blown through a type of thin Icord-type tube), 4mm needles.
• Knitwitches Seriously Gorgeous Swiss Mountain cashmere / silk lace, 65% cashmere, 35% silk, 3.25mm needles.
• Habu Cashmere Lace, 100% cashmere, 3.25mm needles.
• Colourmart 100% cashmere, Cable (or crepe) construction, 6mm needles.

Middle row L to R:

• Classic Elite Posh, 30% cashmere, 70% silk, S on S cable construction, 5mm needles
• Laines Du Nord Royal Cashmere, 100% cashmere, knitted tube construction, 4mm needles.
• The bottom of the sample is Filatura Di Crosa Superior, 65% cashmere, 35% silk, brushed, and I used 3.25mm needles. For the top of the sample I used the same needles and as well as the Superior I added Filatura Di Crosa Nirvana, 100% merino, so the two yarns were knitted together.
• KFI Textured Cashmere, 100% cashmere, 4mm needles.

Bottom Row L to R:

• Hemp for Knitting Cashmere Canapa, 10% hemp, 60% cotton, 30% cashmere, 3.75mm needles.
• Carded cashmere fibre.
• Combed Mongolian cashmere fibre.
• Falkland wool fibre.
• The yellow slightly above is silk fibre.
• The white below is fake cashmere fibre, I think this is nylon.

Here are the knitted samples after having a wash:

All of the samples fluffed up a bit on washing. Cashmere is often oiled to stop it hairing up the machines when it is processed so you don’t get the full effect until you have given your knitting a wash.

I loved the opportunity to sample all the different blends of cashmere, and different ways of spinning. There are some very inventive manufacturers out there. I am still a bit afraid of spinning cashmere because of the short staple, which is better suited to long draw, which I am not very good at. I am hoping to do some practising soon though so I can overcome that.

After Saturday’s classes I went to see the film about Bohus knitting, not a subject I knew much about before, although I love their patterns and have the kit for the Wild Apple around here somewhere.

Sunday morning was Photographing Your Fibre with Franklin Habit. Again lots of interesting and useful information. Some of it about how to set up your scene for your photography, and some on how to actuallly use the camera. I shall be spending some time with my camera manual soon! I only have a little point and shoot, but even that I don’t really use to its full potential.

As is often the way with these events there was a very tempting market place. I came home with two books:

Little Red in the City by Ysolda Teague, and Going Straight by Woolly Wormhead. I am looking forward to finding some time over Christmas to read both of these properly.

I also found a fabulous skein of yarn:

This is merino  / nylon / stellina, 100g,  400m, 4ply weight in colour Mermaid from Krafty Koala. It was green and purple and sparkly, so I could hardly be expected to resist.

I had a great time and it was a wonderful opportunity to catch up with lots of fun knitting people. I was a bit tired by the end and managed to get completely drenched on the way home – you could literally wring the water out of my trousers from the knee down where my umbrella didn’t cover them.

I think there isn’t going to be a Knit Nation next summer because of the Olympics, I am looking forward to one in 2013!

Just when I was nearly caught up things became busy again. They are calming down a bit now, so I shall plod on with the catching up, like the tortoise I shall get there in the end

At the beginning of June we had a lovely week’s holiday up in Orkney. It was the first time we had been, and it was lovely. Beautiful landscape, and interesting things to visit, and we were very lucky with the weather. The light up there is really beautiful, though it takes a bit of getting used to that in June it only gets dark for a couple of hours a night. We had to hang a blanket up over our window in order to sleep. I’m not sure I would fancy it in the winter though. I think it would get a bit depressing with only a few hours of light each day.

We stayed in a cottage about a mile outside Kirkwall, the capital, and this was the view from Scapa Bay just a short walk from the cottage:

The light seemed to make the seaweed glow.

We visited a lot of the typical tourist things. All the neolithic remains are very impressive, and well worth visiting if you are in the area. Also the advantage of going before the school holidays was that most things weren’t too crowded.

The air up there is very clean, and the most amazing lichens grow. These were on a grave stone at the Brough of Birsay:

The landscape was not as barren as I had been expecting. I think I had been picturing something more windswept and moor-like, but actually most of the mainland is gently rolling, and very green. Also there are trees, they are just not very tall. This is the Ring of Brodgar, one of the stone circles:

We spent most of the time on the Mainland, but on one day we had a trip out to Rousay, one of the closer islands. We had a moment of excitement on the way there, when we realised that we would have to reverse the hire car on to the ferry. The ferry is quite little and only takes about 9 cars, though it had fewer when we went over because a lorry carrying what looked like road surfacing stuff was taking the space of about 6 cars. Luckily the hire car was quite titchy, and the ferry staff were very friendly and experienced. Since there is only one hire car service at the airport, and the vast majority of their cars are the same, the ferry staff were well practised at the exact instructions they needed to give in order to get the desired outcome. I also got the impression that if one had had a total melt-down about it, they would have driven the car on for you. At least we had been driving the car around for 4 days at that point so were also quite familiar with it. The Antipodean lady we were talking to in the queue had literally just arrived by plane and picked up a car and driven straight to the ferry.

There were several cairns on Rousay, and a very impressive broch and tomb at Mid Howe. This is the broch, to give you an idea of the scale, the two little blobs at the bottom left are people:

And here is the tomb, protected by a building which has been built round it:

Unfortunately it is hard to tell the scale, but it is really massive. The walls are seriously thick, at least a couple of metres, and the whole tomb is enormous. Very impressive, especially considering how long ago it was built.

After visiting Mid Howe we drove round the rest of the island, and were delighted to find a bay where we could watch seals swimming around, really close to the shore. They are very graceful in the water, and surprisingly ungraceful out of it.

Here are some flopping around and sunning themselves on a shelf of rock near the shore:

And here are a couple playing in the water:

It was wonderful to watch them.

On our last full day we went into Kirkwall and had a look around the Orkney Museum. They had quite a bit of knitting, and a couple of spinning wheels on display, including these lovely stockings:

I found a couple of nice fibre-y things on our travels to bring back and remind me of a lovely holiday. We didn’t manage to get up to North Ronaldsay this holiday, but hopefully might make it up there to see the sheep another time. I got these both from The Woolshed, who I don’t seem to be able to link to at the moment.

First 100g of hand dyed North Ronaldsay fibre:

I haven’t decided on the best way to spin this yet, but I love all the colours.

And also some DK weight North Ronaldsay yarn in natural white, and natural dark brown:

I am thinking about making a two-coloured hat with these though I haven’t totally made up my mind yet.

The cyclists are having a well-deserved day off today, so I thought I would have a break from the spinning and catch up with some other bits and pieces from the last six months.

Back at the end of October I went to Devon for Terri‘s second lovely Fibre Weekend. The Friday starting early with me packing all my stuff in the car, having a think and then re-packing. Then I finally set off to collect Marty, and re-packed the car, and then down to collect Joanne, and you guessed it, re-packed the car again. I was quite impressed that you could get three people, three spinning wheels and their luggage including bedding in a Nissan Note, and no-one had to be strapped to the roof or balance their spinning wheel on their head, though Joanne was squashed in the back with a wall of stuff along side her.

Luckily the drive down was nice and uneventful, and we arrived at Sheldon in time to unpack the car and eat our packed lunch before the afternoon’s workshops started. I had signed up for natural dyeing with Amanda Hannaford, which was great fun, and very interesting. Amanda sent us the mordant recipe so we could mordant our yarn before we arrived. I used some 4ply weight superwash bluefaced leicester wool, and made myself a selection of mini skeins so I could try the different dyes.

Here are some of the skeins we dyed drying outside:

And here is everybody’s skeins laid out for everyone to admire:

Here are my 12 little skeins:

From left to right they are: madder x 3, weld x 1, goldenrod x 3, logwood x 1, indigo x 2, and cochineal x 2, all using an alum mordant. I like some of the colours better than others, but it was fun to try it all, and interesting to see the results.

After Terri’s fantastic cooking for dinner and a bit of knitting and spinning we all fell into our beds in time to get a bit of sleep in before the excitement of Saturday’s outing.

Saturday was our busy day, lots to do, so we set off early to go to the David and Charles book shop. There didn’t seem to be quite as many craft books this year as previously, but I did find a copy of Girolamo Cardano’s Ars Magna (English translation) for £1 so I was happy

Then back in the minibus and on to Coldharbour Mill, where we were treated to tours of both the upstairs machinery open to the public and John Arbon‘s machines in the basement which aren’t normally viewable. I love all the machinery, and it is amazing how so much of it is recogniseably the same process as hand spinning just on a much larger scale.

In the shop at the mill I treated myself to 600g of 70% alpaca, 30% merino fibre, in Cappuccino:

After lunch at the mill it was back in the minibus again to go to Westcott Farm to see Lesley Prior and her Bowmont sheep and Cashmere goats.

Here are some of the sheep:

And here some of the goats:

It was great to see Lesley again and catch up on what is happening on the farm. It is always interesting to talk to someone so passionate about what they do.

After the tour of the farm Lesley very kindly made us all tea and fantastic scones. I couldn’t resist buying some of her lovely cashmere:

This is 4ply cashmere, 25g, 116m. I’m not sure what I am going to do with it yet, but it is such a lovely colour and feels very soft and squishy.

In the evening we all went out for a delicious dinner at the Nobody Inn, there were enough of us that we got our own room

Tired and very full we trundled back to Sheldon.

Sunday was less formal, but still packed full. In the morning we had a go at blending different colours of fibre on drum carders and hackles.

Here is some of the carding in action, with the enormous pile of fibre to choose from behind it.

And here is Terri having a go on Rachel’s hackle.

I spun up my efforts when I got home:

The red is merino blended on the hackle, and the greens are a mixture of merino with a little bit of silk carded on a Minty Fine Carder. I enjoyed having a go at this, particularly because I don’t own a carder or a hackle, it was very useful to be able to compare. I prefered spinning the fibre from the hackle, in general I prefer a combed preparation and like to spin smooth yarn, although I prefer the colours I chose with the carder. I love playing with colours and seeing the different effects you can create and would like to have more of a go at this soon.

After the tables were cleared away the floor was used to share out the two enormous bags of waste fibre John Arbon had given us, a mixture of alpaca and different wools. I decided this was best as a spectator sport!

And this is my share:

I’m not quite sure what I am going to do with it yet, but I think it will come in really handy for learning new techniques.

After a delicious roast dinner, there was just the clearing up to do, and then all too soon it was time to pack everything back in the car and say goodbye.

Very kindly Joanne gave me this sheep for doing the driving:

He has a lot of character, and is currently keeping an eye on me from on top of the printer.

And Marty gave me a skein of 4ply Alpaca/BFL which I am looking forward to dyeing:

The drive home went ok if rather slowly, there is always a lot of traffic on a Sunday afternoon.

In all a wonderful weekend. Lovely to see so many old friends and make new ones, and to have such a fun time.

Last Friday I packed the car well before my normal getting up time and trundled over to pick up Joanne (only 5 mins late, I am improving!) to head off for a weekend of knitting fun in Haworth for Skip North 2010. The drive up went surprisingly well considering that there were roadworks every couple of miles all the way up the M1 (and on the M3 and the M25 too).  We arrived at our B&B at lunchtime, and discovered there had been a mistake with Joanne’s booking, and that although there was space for her on Friday night, there was no room on Saturday. Luckily a spare room was found at the Youth Hostel for the Saturday, so after unloading our stuff from the car (I seemed to have brought a greater volume of knitting than I had clothes) we trundled up the hill to the Youth Hostel to check in and get our acts together for the afternoon workshops.

I did Sue‘s workshop on shadow knitting first. I had read a bit about shadow knitting (also called illusion knitting) before, and seen Steve’s fabulous work, but never given it a go, so this seemed the ideal opportunity. It is great fun, and I love the moment of discovery when you tilt your work and see the pattern appear.

Here is my sample as seen from above:

Can you tell what it is yet?

I am looking forward to having more of an experiment with this technique.

Then I did a workshop with Jane on different kinds of colour knitting. Here is the cup cosy I knitted:

The two coloured braid is a Twinded Herringbone braid, and the single coloured braid is a Vikkel braid. I am definitely looking forward to incorporating these in something in the future. There is also a bit of mosaic knitting, and a double strand cast on using two strands the same colour, and a double strand cast off using one strand of each colour.

After tea was the P/Hop swap. People brought along yarn, needles and books they no longer wanted, then other people could claim it in exchange for a donation to Medecins sans Frontieres made later through the P/Hop website. Here is Nic presiding over the chaos.

After the swap we all sat around knitting and chatting. It was lovely to see old friends and meet new ones, and to spend time with other enthusiastic and knowledgeable knitters.

Luckily after all this excitement Saturday featured a bit of a lie in. We had a fantastic cooked breakfast at the B&B and then made our way up to the Youth Hostel to catch the bus at 11am. First stop was Coldspring Mill, a strange combination of camping shop upstairs and bargain yarn basement downstairs. There were lots of lovely cotton yarns, although I managed to resist. I actually have a lot of cotton yarn still despite giving a lot away last year, and find that it is a bit painful on my hands to knit with, I think from now on I shall stick with blends. They had quite a selection of other yarns too, there seemed to be a lot of pale yellow about, unfortunately not really my colour.

Then it was back on the bus, where we ate our sandwiches, despite thinking we would never need to eat again after breakfast, and headed off to the Knitting and Crochet Guild. Liz gave us an interesting talk and showed us a lot of things from the guild collection, then it was time for a spot of shopping with KCG Trading. Unfortunately the book I was hoping to look at hadn’t arrived yet, but I did manage to get a skein of wonderful radioactive green sock yarn

This is Trekking Hand Art, 100g, 420m, 75% superwash wool, 25% nylon, the colour is officially called Brazil.

Tired but happy after a hard days shopping we piled back on the bus back to the Youth Hostel and yet another great meal

In the evening we were treated to a talk by Shaun and Julie of County Alpacas. A very interesting talk about the history of alpacas in the UK and the situation currently. I loved this opportunity to hear more about the fibre industry, and their alpacas are very cute! They also brought with them some lovely fibre and yarn from their own animals, so I bought a 250g bag of black fibre. I haven’t quite decided what I am going to do with it yet. It is special so I want to do it justice, I shall think on it for a bit.

Sunday was a bit of an earlier start with the coach departing at 9am. I was cutting it a bit fine as I screeched into my parking space just after the bus drew up, and had just enough time to dash in and grab my packed lunch while everyone else started to board the bus. The early start was because Sunday was Wingham Wool Works day, which is about an hour to an hour and a half from Haworth, depending on the traffic.

Despite having been there a couple of times before, and the last time only in November it still took me a while to stop being overwhelmed by all the fibre and actually start to look at everything properly! We were very fortunate that the weather was lovely. Great for standing outside in a daze while contemplating more different colours of fibre than you know what to do with.

I managed to fill my bag with a few little goodies.

I got three different colours of rainbow merino / silk tops. I think this blend is 70% merino, 30% silk. I got somewhere between about 150g and 200g of each (I wasn’t being terribly accurate with my measuring).

These are all going to be sock experiments. I am going to try and spin a tightly twisted 3ply and see how they wear.

I also got a little selection of their sample fibre bags.

Corn, ramie (nettles), milk protein, two kinds of tussah silk, and banana fibre.

These little sample bags are such a great idea, you have enough fibre to play with and see whether you like it, without having to have 100g of something which it may turn out you are not that keen on.

After we had shopped until we dropped, and had a quick drink in the pub down the road, it was back on the coach to the Youth Hostel for the final tea and cake and goodbyes, and then time to wedge all our new purchaes into the car.

I had a wonderful weekend, and have come away with so many ideas, as well as some rather yummy yarn and fibre. I love these opportunities to spend time with so many lovely knitty people. A big thanks to Alex and Nic for all the organising and cat herding. There are better photos than mine on the flickr group.

The trip home wasn’t quite as smooth as had been hoped. Not awful, but there was a lot of stopping and starting and traffic as we made our way through the many roadworks. We made it home fine if a bit tired, and not too late in the end.

As I mentioned in the previous post I missed the first half-day of Unravel due to being stuck in the US. This was a bit of a last minute trip, booked only the week before we went out there. Paul was sent out for a work trip, and I went along for the first week so I could go and see my sister Annie.

The travelling was also the reason behind the hastily cast-on portable projects. I didn’t take the jumper with me as I didn’t want to risk it being either confiscated or lost by the airline. We were staying in New Jersey, a 1 hour train ride from New York, so that gave me a good bit of knitting time on the journeys into and out of the city on the days I went to see Annie.

While we were there we did a mix of typical touristy visiting, and helping Annie and her husband Andy move into their new appartment and generally hanging out with them.

On the tourist front we went down to Brooklyn and walked back to Manhattan over the Brooklyn bridge, you can see the bridge in the background here behind Paul, Annie and Andy.

And we went to Thomas Edison’s factory and house in Orange, New Jersey (this is his house).

The house was interesting, and the factory definitely worth visiting. Edison was a man with many interests.

On my last day going in to the city Annie and I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I have been once before about 12 years ago, and was keen to see it again. It is a fascinating museum and I am looking forward to going again next time we go out to visit them.

As well as all the wonderful exhibits (including a whole temple from what is now the site of the Aswan dam) they have fantastic tiled mosaics on the floors in the Greek and Roman art section. There are 8 different mosaics, 4 circular, and 4 square. I love symmetrical patterns like these, particularly tiling patterns. I am hoping to do something on symmetry for my City and Guilds Diploma course (the Diploma is the course after the Certificate course I am currently doing), and so am collecting inspiring images.

As you can spot here one of the mosaics is in twice to make a nice grid.

We had a great time visiting the city and seeing Annie and Andy again, and were really lucky with the weather at the start of the week. It was colder than home, but warmer than New York had been the previous week, and lovely and sunny. Unfortunately after the first three days the rain started, and on the day I was due to come home it snowed all day and then there were high winds in the evening, so finally after attempting to take off once my plane was cancelled and we were all rescheduled to the day after. The next day was much better weather-wise and although we were a bit delayed it all went fairly smoothly, and I even managed about three hours sleep on the plane (this is quite good for me, I am not a very good traveller).

My travel socks are motoring along, although they have been abandoned now I am home in favour of the jumper. Pictures of knitting will come soon!

Back in the middle of November I had an outing up to Yorkshire to see my parents, and managed to fit in rather a lot of knitting related things while I was there.

On the way we stopped in to Texere in Bradford. A marvelous fun place if you happen to be up in that part of the world, definitely worth a visit. Basically it is a mail order warehouse which is also a shop, great fun to wander round and see all the bits and pieces.

I bought some coloured merino tops.

Emerald, terracotta, wine, purple, petrol, ink, and chestnut. Each bag is 50g. I am going to experiment with mixing colours together in my spinning. I am thinking of spinning a single in each of 2 or 3 colours and then plying them together, to see what the effect is like, and also to see whether I like it knitted up.

I also bought a couple of posters of sheep breeds which have gone to Mummy as part of her Christmas present

No trip to Yorkshire at that time of year would be complete without an outing to the Knitting and Stitching show at Harrogate. We went on both the Thursday and Friday this time, allowing us finally time to see the exhibition as well as to see all the stands multiple times. This year for me was definitely the year of needles and fibre. I bought these fabulous coloured acrylic needles from Bev at Knitting 4 fun.

I am such a sucker for pretty knitting needles.

There are sizes, 3.5, 4, 4.5, 5, 5.5, 6, 7, and 8 mm needle heads, cables in 60, 80, 100 and 120 cm, 8 end caps, and 4 cable keys in the bag. They are all fully interchangeable with all the other KnitPro needles.

I did quite well with Mummy’s Christmas present, and also got her 6 balls of Lang Mille Colori from Art Yarn, and a wooden shawl pin. She chose these so although they wont be a surprise, at least I know she likes them!

Continuing on the needle theme, I got another couple of Knit Pro needle heads, and some very cute cat buttons from Knitting 4 Fun, and a 30cm, 2.5mm addi circular needle from Art Yarn.

The 30cm circular has very short angled needle heads. I am intrigued to see whether I will be able to knit comfortably using my normal knitting hand position. I am looking forward to experimenting!

Last but not least, I got some gorgeous purple silk fibre from Oliver Twist (I can’t find their website, not sure if they have one).

This is so soft, but they have washed it in some incredibly strong smelling detergent! I think I may have to spin this in small doses, or try and air it or wash it before I start spinning.

While I was staying with my parents we also popped into Boyes, and I bought 2m of a fabric described as Chef Check.

The squares are about 3cm wide, and it is a nice sturdy non stretchy fabric. I plan to pin it over my foam playmats when I am blocking knitting, and then use the checks on the fabric to make sure that I have everything lined up.

As a special treat on my way home we went to Wingham Wool Work. I hadn’t been for three years, and the last time I was there I wasn’t a spinner, so there was lots to see, we ended up spending most of the afternoon there!

I think I now have enough fibre to last me for years!

I got some Falkland.

Some Corriedale.

Some Manx Loghtan.

Some Shetland Moorit (this really is a lovely colour).

Some Teal Merino.

Some rainbow merino in blues and greens.

Some rainbow merino with silk in, in turquoises.

in greens.

and in oranges.

Whew! This will keep me busy for a bit! It seemed like a great opportunity to buy things while I could see them and feel them. Particularly with the blends, which were all a bit different, and there were many more than are available generally on the website.

Mummy and I spent two days at the Knitting and Stitching show at Ally Pally this year. We went on Thursday and Friday, giving us plenty of time to look at everything at our leisure (although we still didn’t have time for a proper look at the exhibitions!) and enough time to be able to chat to everyone without feeling we had to dash on to the next stand.

There seemed to be a lot of knitting stands again this year which is good from my point of view, and all the stand owners we talked to were having a good show, which always bodes well. There were a slightly different collection of stands from last year, I don’t think there were as many indie dyers as there had been last year. I wonder whether they were trying the show out last year, but decided not to come back. I gather that stands for this show are very expensive, and so depending on what you sell, and your target market, some of the dedicated knitting shows like Woolfest, Wonderwool Wales, and Fibrefest might be a better investment of time and money. Get Knitted were another notable absence, but luckily Bev of Knitting 4 Fun had brought a good range of the Knit Pro knitting needles, and were doing a roaring trade.

The Ash knitting group organised a coach up on Thursday although we went independently since the coach pick up points were both a 3/4 hour drive in the wrong direction. It was lovely to see so many people I know as we went round, and to compare notes on good stands to visit, and interesting things to see.

I did find a few nice goodies to come home with me as well. As part of my plan to expand my spinning experience I bought some carded fleece from Jamiesons.

Two lovely shades of green. All the fibre I have tried spinning so far has been combed so I am interested to see how the carded fleece will be different. I have 150g, about half each of each colour. I think I am probably going to make some kind of hat (said she vaguely).

I also bought three shawl patterns from them, two Jamieson’s own patterns, and the Princess Shawl from Sharon Miller.

I have been eyeing the Princess for ages, and thought now would be a good time to buy it. I am saving it up for when I am feeling suitably confident, or barmy, or probably both.

Continuing on the fibre theme, I bought some lovely 70& alpaca, 30% BFL fibre from UK Alpaca.

Two bags of 200g each. Gorgeously soft. I love the colours in this, and am really looking forward to seeing how it will look once it is spun up. It is something I am trying to get the hang of, imagining how a multicoloured fibre will look when it is spun.

And I also got a shade card for their yarns.

Next up a sample pack of 5 colours of shetland combed top from Jamieson and Smith.

I think their sample packs are such a good idea. You can see what the colours are really like and have a play with the fibre before buying huge quantities

I also bought an up to date version of their shade card, since the one I had was ancient.

I do love shade cards. So much possibility. So many happy hours spent looking at colours and textures.

I found some lovely yarn too. These are all from Art Yarn.

The first is a ball of Admiral Ombré by Schoppel Wolle, colour 1564, 100g, 4ply weight, 75% wool, 25% nylon.

I discovered when I was entering this on Ravelry, that I have obviously had the same idea before that this was a good colour. I thought it looked a bit familiar. Oh well, I shall enjoy it anyway, it is still a nice colour I must remember to check my stash before I go on outings so I don’t do this so often.

I have been having the urge recently to knit some textured socks in solid coloured yarns, so I indulged in some Lang Jawoll 4ply weight sock yarn. Each ball is 50g, 75% wool, 18% nylon, 7% acrylic.

A lovely gingery brown, colour 83.0268.

A purple, colour 83.0280.

Bright green, colour 83.0216.

And a dark red, colour 83.0061.

This lot will keep me busy for a while!

One of the things I love about these shows is the variety of things to look at. We had a nice look at all the bead stands and a lot of the other bits and pieces too, and bought some lovely beads from Ilona Biggins.

They are both reformed amber. I love the way the light glints off them. The darker strand on the right is for me, and the paler one is part of Mummy’s Christmas present. Which I have just discovered I have not wrapped and handed over, and I thought I was doing so well. We had our present exchange earlier in the week, and I’m not going to see them again before actual Christmas. I will wrap it up and send it with my sister who is going to see them between Christmas and New Year. I have to hand over some presents to her anyway since a couple of things for her husband are still in the post.

On 30th October I went down to Devon for a fantastic fibre-filled weekend organised by Terri.

Friday got off to a slightly inauspicious start, I was 15 mins late to pick up Joanne because I had lost my knitting. I am never exactly at my best in the mornings, and spent 15 mins running round the house trying to find my knitting before I packed everything into the car. In the end I decided to pack the car first, and then search for the knitting afterwards, and went out to the car, to discover my knitting sitting on the passenger seat! I had thrown it out of my bag the previous evening when searching for my purse to pay for petrol and had obviously just left it there over night. At least that mystery was solved!

Luckily we made up time on the way and arrived in Exeter in time to have a cup of tea before picking Rosie up from the station. Then we were all on our way to Sheldon for a weekend full of fibre fun.

Sheldon itself was beautiful. It is a collection of converted buildings that can be hired out, run by a religious community. The ladies running the place were kind and helpful, and the long barn where we were staying was clean and comfortable and had a lovely big sitting space downstairs and beautiful views.

Friday afternoon was workshop time. I taught my emerald beaded bracelet. Joanne and Trudy my victims both made lovely choices of colours of beads and thread, and I am kicking myself that I didn’t photograph their work. I made a bracelet with some interesting matt red beads and ecru thread, something of a colour departure for me, but I like the effect.

I used DMC coton perlé size 8 in colour 739, and about 15g of size 11 seed beads.

After a delicious dinner of homemade soup (3 different kinds!) we sat and knitted and got to know each other. There were 12 of us altogether, 8 of whom stayed over. A really nice number and a lovely group of people.

Saturday dawned with rather atmospheric weather. I wasn’t as quick off the mark as some people so the mist had almost totally dissipated by the time I got my camera out, but you can still see a little bit.

Then it was onto the minibus for a hectic day of enjoying ourselves!

First stop was the David and Charles bookshop where I picked up these goodies:

The sock book is one of those ones where the pages are cut horizontally so you can mix and match your cuffs with your heels and create lots of different socks.

Then it was back in the bus and off to Coldharbour Mill. We had an excellent tour of all the interesting machines in the basement that turn the raw fibre into yarn, given by the man himself, John Arbon. This is the area that the public normally don’t have access to, although they are hoping to be able to create a gantry (is that the right word?) at some point in the future so that you will be able to look down on all the machines and see them in action. The machinery was all fascinating, since starting spinning I have been learning a bit more about how fibre is processed into yarn, and with a lot of the machines you can easily see how they are a vastly scaled up version of how a hand spinner processes their fibre.

The big machine with the person-height drum behind the screens behind John is their carder. You can’t imagine clamping that to the dining table!

John very kindly put each of the machines on briefly for us so we could see what they did, even though they weren’t actually processing any fibre at the time we were there. They tend to do their processing in batches, part of the difficulty is that the machines use an awful lot of power. There are a surprising number of stages that the fibre passes through before becoming yarn. I found the whole experience fascinating to see how it is done on an industrial scale (I do like a nice bit of machinery, coming from a family of engineers ).

After our special tour we had a wander round the rest of the museum to see the machinery which is powered by the water wheel. Unfortunately they don’t run the wheel on a saturday but luckily I had actually seen it working when we stopped in on our way on holiday last year.

We had a bit of an opportunity for stash enhancement. I got three lovely skeins of brown 70% alpaca, 30% bluefaced leicester 2-3ply, 100g and 670 yrds per skein.

One skein of a gorgeous green 4ply merino, spun on the water wheel (100g, 370 yrds).

And a yummy wool fat soap which is currently in use in the bathroom.

We had our lunch in the cafe at Coldharbour Mill, and then piled back on the bus to go to Westcott Farm, home of Devon Fine Fibres. They have England’s only flock of Bowmont sheep (originally bred in Scotland as a mixture of 75% Merino and 25% Shetland), I think Lesley said they had about 50 of them, along with about 200 cashmere goats, and a small number of angora goats (where mohair comes from) and Boer goats, which are a meat goat.

Here are some of the Bowmont sheep out in the field:

And here are some of the Boer goats (the brown and white ones), and the Angora goats (the curly ones):

You can tell just from this picture how intelligent and inquisitive the goats were!

Here are some of the cashmere goats in the field:

And here are a particularly handsome pair of gentlemen (the goat at the back is a cashmere, the one at the front an angora).

I also took a lot of pictures of the goats and sheep who were inside, but they are all rather dark, so I shall spare you from thousands of dark pictures of goats.

It was really interesting to hear about life on the farm, and to talk to someone so passionate about what she does. It sounds like incredibly hard work, and a real labour of love. It is a very delicate balance with the flock of Bowmonts to increase the flock size, while maintaining as high a fleece standard as possible, but also avoiding inbreeding. This last point is especially a concern when the flock size is relatively small, and there are no other flocks available for interbreeding.

Lesley had some gorgeous fibre and yarn, some of which inevitably has come home with me.

First, two 50g bags of washed and carded, undyed Bowmont fibre.

And 25g of Devon cashmere fibre, washed and carded, undyed.

I also bought 2 skeins of gorgeous DK weight green cashmere (I am obviously having a green phase). 50g, and about 100m in each skein. You really need squishy-vision to appreciate this yarn, it is so soft that it is hard to put down.

And 2 skeins of DK weight undyed Bowmont. 50g, and about 150m per skein. I am thinking about dyeing one, or maybe both of these skeins and making some kind of colourwork hat. This is a lovely bouncy yarn.

After tea, biscuits and a very interesting discussion we hopped back on the bus and were driven back to Sheldon in time to stroke all our goodies again before we piled into three cars and drove down to the Nobody Inn for dinner. Here we all are, doing a spot of knitting and chatting before our food arrived.

The food was delicious, and needless to say, the company excellent. We rolled into bed very full and happy.

Sunday morning was a little breezy as you can see from this picture of Rachel, Bex, Donna, and Rosie outside our building.

The ladies at Sheldon very kindly opened their shop up specially for us. I was delighted to be able to buy a couple of balls of DK weight Castlemilk Moorit in natural brown from a local farm (50g per ball, no idea how many metres).

They also had some Aran and DK weight Manx Loaghtan spun from wool from Sheldon’s own sheep, but my wallet was feeling rather pummelled by then so I didn’t get any.

We spent the rest of the morning doing a bit of knitting and spinning, before having a delicious roast lunch.

As you can see Donna has a beautiful purple Suzie pro, and Joanne (at the back right, spinning on Terri’s Lendrum) was a total natural at spinning, her first yarn was much better than mine.

Then time for a clean up and pack everything into the car, then time to go home (which always comes much too soon).

I had a wonderful weekend, the food, outings and company were all excellent. Terri put together a great program of things to do and the food was fantastic. It was great to meet so many lovely fibrey people and spend a weekend together. I am going to have a lot of fun knitting up my purchases too

Friday 11th and Saturday 12th September were the dates for this years IKnit show in London. This is the first time it has been spread across two days, and I went on both.

On Friday morning I went to the Twined Knitting class held by the Dutch Knitters, Carla and Hilly. They were fabulous and I had a great time. Here we all are working hard:

They also very kindly brought lots of samples of several different examples of twined knitting, here are just a few of them:

A really interesting technique and one I am looking forward to exploring more.

During the workshop we were working on a pattern for a little pouch, which cleverly incorporated the major techniques of twined knitting. I finished mine on the train on Saturday morning so was able to show them how it had come out.

My cast on was a bit tight, but I think I have got the idea now. This is just the right size for my iPod too, which is very convenient

On Saturday lunch time I went to a talk by the always excellent Joyce Meader on military knitting from the Crimea to the present day. She was hilarious and informative as always, and brought an incredible amount of stuff with her for us to look at. The only thing which I thought was a shame with this talk was that as the timing clashed with both the morning workshops and the afternoon ones so there weren’t that many people who came to hear it.

As seems to be inevitable with these events I didn’t escape without a few purchases. First, a lovely skein of Fyberspates Sheila’s sock in colour Jewels, 100% superwash merino, 100g, 365m.

Next some laceweight in the brightest green you have ever met. This is Tosh Lace from Madeline Tosh, colour Seaglass, 868m per skein (I bought 2), 100% superwash merino.

Then two balls of Crystal Palace Mini Mochi, 80% merino, 20% nylon, in colour 108 from Gill at the Woolly Workshop. This is very soft.

And the last yarn I bought was a ball of crazy zauberball by Schoppel Wolle in Tropical Fish (I do think the German frische Fische sounds better) from Bev at Knitting4Fun.

I did buy some fibre too from John Arbon. This bag contains, 400g of 100% white fine alpaca, 22 – 26 micron, 400g of 100% champagne fine alpaca, 22 – 26 micron, 400g of a blend of 70% champagne alpaca, and 30% white merino, 22 – 26 micron, and finally a little paper bag with 100g of undyed tussah silk top.

And lastly I bought a fun card from Tilly Flop. I’m not going to put a picture up because I am thinking of giving it to Mummy for her next birthday and she does read the blog from time to time.

There were a good range of stands, and nice wide aisles between them. From a customer perspective it was very nice that it wasn’t as busy as some of the bigger shows, since it meant you could easily get in and see all the lovely things to buy, without having to elbow a couple of dozen people out of the way first. There seemed to be better seating than last year so I could actually sit down to eat my lunch this time which was nice.

Although all the stuff is of course very nice, the best bit of the two days was the people. It was lovely to meet up with so many knitting people, both those I already knew and people who were new to me. I had a wonderful time and am looking forward to next year! I had better get knitting with some of the stuff!

Whew, I am exhausted! I have had a wonderful and inspiring day out today at Art In Action. If anyone is interested it is on til Sunday and I would really recommend it. There are a collection of marquees full of artists and crafts people, exhibiting, selling and demonstrating their work. It is wonderful to see so much interesting and inspiring stuff, and even better to see how it is made, and to have the opportunity to talk to the artists about their work. There wasn’t any knitting in the demonstration tents but there were several knitwear stalls (both hand and machine) in the market (the market tent contains people who are only selling, not demonstrating). I did see some lovely fine silk weaving by Alpa Mistry:

I saw a glass vase being blown by Kathryn Pearce:

I saw (and heard!) a Mexican band outside the Mexican art tent:

I saw some of the amazing wood turning by Stuart Mortimer:

I saw a glass goblet being made by E & M Glass:

And lots and lots more.

The food is pretty excellent too. I was hoping to try some more of their home made cake (I had some last year and it was very good), but unfortunately couldn’t squeeze it in after the cumberland sausage, the Belgian waffle with strawberries and cream, and the toffee ice cream

The only downside was that it was very busy. The weather was better than last year when it drizzled, and the year before when it was so wet they had to tow people out of the muddy car parking field. This year the weather was kind enough to hold off with the rain until this evening (it is making up for it now, we have even had lightning!). The number of people though is a personal gripe, I am just not that happy in crowds, I find it rather tiring. I hope that all the people will have made it a success for all the artists.

This is another thing I like about Art in Action, that each artists work is really valued. Proper prices are put on the things for sale, reflecting the amount of creativity and  hard work that goes into each piece. And the members of the public all understand this too. There is none of the devaluing that one often sees with craft pieces. It can be heart breaking to see someone’s beautiful piece priced up at less than the cost of the materials, in a mistaken belief that it needs to compete pricewise with mass produced machine made items. I feel this is a rant I could go on for some time about, but it is getting late and I could do with some sleep, so I will spare you now

I did manage to do a bit of spinning when I came home, and finished the current lingerie bag of fibre.

Somewhat depressingly I worked out that at my current speed I will probably take another 3 1/2 weeks to finish the white Dorset. Time to crack the whip a bit harder I think.