befogged

I’m feeling fairly contented at the moment. I’ve been making good use of my free Fridays to really take in the city centre - it’s a beautiful place with some wonderfully varied and quirky architecture that makes me wish I had a decent camera and rather more skill as a photographer. Fridays show the place in a different light, much calmer and less rushed and busy than Saturdays, and the last few sunny Fridays have seemed to be full of people with contented smiles and cheery looks for strangers.

I’ve also taken the time to do a little non-work writing, which I’d lost the habit of (witness this poor, neglected blog!) and didn’t really know how much I missed until I put pen to paper again. I think maybe it’s always like that.

And, of course, I’ve been spinning. Here’s my first attempt at spinning something with a high proportion of slippery fibre - 125m of ~dk weight 50:50 alpaca bamboo, spun from a batt from Butterflygirl Designs. Bamboo is immensely slippery to work with, but the finished yarn has wonderful drape and sheen.

What a beautiful sunny day we’re having so far! Nottingham city centre was bright, cheerful, and a pleasure to be in this morning:

In the garden, the snowdrops have reappeared, and the daffs, crocuses, and tulips are clearly on their way. Amazing the difference it makes when you can feel that spring is trying to creep round the corner.

There are, it has to be said, much worse ways to spend a morning. It’s wonderfully sunny, too, so the birds are out in force and singing springy songs as the last of the snow melts away from our garden.

So, the wheel and I have been getting to know one another since my last update, erm, last year! So far I’ve thrown some corriedale (not my favourite fibre so far - it’s ok, and it’s easy to draft, but it’s not nearly as *nice* as other sorts) and merino at it and produced decent results. There’s some alpaca on there at the moment that is looking like it will turn out to be laceweight or not much heavier by the time I’ve plied it (just started the second bobbin… getting there, but it takes a while at such a fine weight!), but so far what I’m most happy with is this:

It’s about 300m of roughly sock weight 2ply Wensleydale from Babylonglegs in the ‘Blue Banana’ colourway. I tried to split the fibre in such a way that I would get a degree of colour-matching between the two plies. It seems to have worked to some degree, although not 100% perfectly, which means I should have some nice gradations of colour once it’s knitted up. I really enjoyed spinning the Wensleydale - it’s got a lovely sheen to it, rather than being a floofy fibre, so it’s a totally different look and feel from BFL. We like variety!

And just to prove that point about the colour gradations:

That’s the beginnings of a Tudor Grace  - it’s probably a more accurate shot of the true colours, too.

And just before I started that, I finished this:

It’s a Logan River Wrap in New Lanark Donegal Silk Tweed Aran. Great pattern for a simple but warm and effective wrap, and the yarn is a real bargain - produced on a small scale in Scotland, excellent service and a good price for natural fibres. It feels rather tweedy at first, but it softened a lot with knitting and still more so with blocking - it’s got a lovely softness and drape now.

The days of festivities went pretty well in this neck of the woods. Those who were in hospital were out of it in time to not have to spend the season in the ward, we are now properly installed and comfy downstairs (well, we could do with some more and more suitably coloured throws for the furniture but those are easy to pick up), and Al’s parents’ Christmas gift to us was to cover the cost of a cleaner to keep it shiny for as long as possible. Now that is an excellent present!

And thanks to some impressive subterfuge and perfect gift-arranging abilities on the part of Al, I am now the proud and very, very happy owner of a spinning wheel.

Here’s my spinning spot, in our newly-*done* downstairs (not that you can see too much of the latter!):

Squee!

And yes, it’s near a radiator, by a window, and with a good view of the tv. *Grin*. I have already discovered that there’s something satisfyingly contradictory about making yarn whilst watching Voyager

I’m finding the wheel easier to work with than spindles, now that I’ve got a little more used to it (helped enormously by guidance from Linzi, the very lovely Alpaca Spinner, whom we went to see on Monday - and with whose help Al smuggled a wheel into the car boot while I was playing with some of her wonderful alpaca on her Traddy and Traveller to see which I was more comfortable with!), though the lighter spindle I got recently helped a lot. I seem to lean towards quite fine singles, so it makes sense that I got on a little better with a lighter spindle and more so with a wheel.

Gary The Gas Man finally prevailed against the oddness of our previous central heating system, so that we are now basking in the warmth and efficiency of a new boiler and the knowledge that we no longer need to put the water on hours before we might possibly want to have a bath. Yay!

The kitchen is looking much closer to being done - floor and wall tiles are down and up respectively and just need grouting, and then it’s cupboard doors, repairing the bit of wall from which Gary The Gas Man removed the (wonkily fitted) original heating controls, and not really a huge amount else.

By way of celebration, earlier I gathered what ingredients and equipment I could ferret out of the smaller spare room (where the surviving contents of the kitchen cupboards that were water damaged went) and conducted a coconut-related experiment:

Yum. Coconut experiment declared a success to be repeated.

I made more yarn, too:

Extremely soft and squishy merino this time, plied into a result that looks remarkably pudding-like.

Cold Feet. I currently have them. This is because as part of the general works going on in the house at the moment we are taking the opportunity to replace our deeply unattractive, old, and not very efficient back boiler with a hidden-in-a-cupboard combi boiler. The heating is therefore off while Gary-the-Gas-Bod affixes one system in a new place and removes the old system from its current lurking place on the downstairs wall. It should be fine to use it when he’s not actively buggering about with it, it’s just not ideal while he is working and since I am here in a supervisory capacity (ie I opened the door, showed him where stuff was now and was supposed to go, and pointed him towards the kettle and teabags before retreating to the bedroom to work) that means I’m a tad chilly despite my several layers. Feet, though, only have one layer of clothing. Must knit some very thick socks that are large enough to go over other socks…

Things are coming on, though. Once Gary-the-Gas-Bod has removed the old boiler the last remaining bit of wall can be plastered and once that’s dry we can do the painting thing downstairs. I’m hoping after we’ve all developed arm ache doing that it should move relatively quickly - installation of new fire & flooring & skirting being about all that will be left after the painting. The kitchen is usable (shiny oven! shiny hob!) and just needs painting, tiling, doors affixing to cupboards, and the floor putting down.

Incidentally, debate at work the other day - what is the room with the sofas in it in known as in your house? A lounge? A living room? A front room? A sitting room? I always struggle because our living and dining areas are open plan so to me it’s just ‘downstairs’, since the only other downstairs space is the kitchen which is clearly functionally distinct. My parents always had a front room, though.

On another note, I have managed to successfully ply the pumpkin-coloured Corriedale with some more of the same, to make the very small but very squishable skein of yarn at right. No idea what I am going to do with it, but for now I am keeping it as evidence of how far I’ve come in the event of me getting sufficiently far for that to be measurable!

It’s an interesting thing to learn, really - it’s a bit like driving a car, in that when you first start you understand theoretically what you need to do with your hands and feet but it takes a little while before the movements flow properly from one another and become automatic and feel natural.

I am currently tackling some merino, about which I have been told both that it’s supposed to be tricky for beginners because of its slipperyness and that it’s ideal for beginners because of its staple length. It’s a good job, really, that I am not listening to ‘what it’s best to start with’ and just having a play with a variety of fibres on the theory that I’ll likely want to learn how they all behave at some point anyway so I might as well dive in! All animal fibres so far, though - I think I’ll leave slippery silks and bamboos until I have played with a blend and/or generally got the hang of the basics. I feel as though I’m making progress, though, and starting to draft a bit better.

Ah, that looks a bit more like actual yarn! The contents of that spindle represent half of that particular roving, so at some point I might end up with enough yarn to attempt plying. I’ve yet to measure properly, but it looks like it’s coming out as a dk/aran weight overall as a single, so I’m pondering seeing if the yardage is sufficient for it to actually be turned into something - it’s not perfectly even, but it’s certainly knittable.

Of course, it would have to be a something I don’t mind being bright orange - it’s a rather more virulent shade than that picture suggests (think ‘Halloween decoration plastic pumpkin of the sort that’s all over the shops at the moment’ and you’re probably about there). Very not like me, but I deliberately picked something very not like me and had huge fun all the same! It’s Corriedale, purchased from Scottish Fibres whose service was excellent, friendly and quick.

We have an oven again! It was installed yesterday, so I came home from work to find it looking all sleek and silver and like it had the ability to bake things. After a couple of months of not being able to do so this is really very welcome! The kitchen has yet to be painted, tiled (both wall & floor) and have doors attached to the cupboards so we can’t really put back everything that previously lived in cupboards on that wall but we can at least use it like a proper kitchen provided we don’t mind having things in slightly odd places.

The rest of downstairs is similarly coming along - we’re still rather plaster dust-y, but everywhere that can be plastered (we also took the opportunity to skim the oh-so-charming textured ceilings) has been (including all the way up the stairs and the landing - the joys of open plan and the continuous decor resulting therefrom!), so we’re waiting for that to dry so it can be painted. We’re also taking the opportunity to replace our back boiler with a combi boiler in a more convenient place than slap-in–the-middle-of-the-living-area, so we are waiting for that to happen before we can really finish off in there. We’ve bought the flooring ready for putting down post-painting (local B&Q refurbished itself and had a 10% day to celebrate, whilst simultaneously having 15% off flooring, so we ordered it before we really needed it), though, so fingers crossed it won’t be a horrendously long time before we are back down there.

I escaped the chaos for a little while this weekend, though. Friend Sarah came up on Friday evening for dinner at The Lambley for excellent food with excellent service since entertaining in home is a bit tricky right now, and then Al very kindly dropped us off at the train station at 6.30 on Saturday morning so that we could go to the Knitting and Stitching Show. 

We got to Alexandra Palace slightly after 10 and managed to meet up with a few online friends beforeand shortly after venturing into the fray. I think Sarah and I had more or less oriented ourselves by the time we met Becky a couple of hours later, so were able to lead her astray as quickly and efficiently as possible. There is an incredible amount to take in - Ally Pally is vast, and absolutely filled to the rafters with stalls, exhibitions and thousands of people. I can see why some people go over two days, as it’s exhausting and you do feel like you’re missing bits in the course of one day. I managed to make a few purchases, though:

Yes, amongst two skeins of sock yarn, one of laceweight and a lovely shawl pin from Purlescence that’s a spindle and some fibre. I have never attempted it before, but have been tempted by some of the wonderful spinners on Ravelry to give it a try!

When our feet, and possibly our bank balances, could stand no more it was back to Becky’s, where we met her gorgeous 8 month old twins and generally spent the evening chilling out with the family. Sarah and I knitted a toy each for the babies which seemed to go down well (i.e. both were in mouths within minutes!).

Here’s a slightly blurred shot of the Elijah I made:

I would have taken a better shot avec baby, but as he was christened in pretty short order that would also have involved baby-sick so I decided against it. Good job we made them washable

And back to that spindle… Well, my first ever attempts at using it yesterday evening have resulted in a small amount of decidedly rustic looking thick-and-thin sort of yarn, but it is yarn rather than fibre nevertheless and I am assured that as with anything it pays to persist. It was fun to be learning (well, trying to learn!) a new skill, too, so we shall see how it goes.