Spinny Winny Doo Dah

As Gower Wool Week is drawing to a close (it ended today!) I have learned a lot, in a very short space of time. Firstly I learned that a woolly event in the Gower will not be well attended if the weather is really good....people would rather go to the beach if it is sunny, and given that it has been on during May half term- it was very likely to be sunny.  I am in two minds about whether to put myself through organising the event again, I probably will, but for now I am in great need of the next 9 days off on paid leave!  I also learned that quite a few craft sellers are not willing to show up / pay for their table space if takings have been poor.  Whenever I have attended craft fairs I always assume that the organiser has done their best and what will be will be, I have never had the guts to haggle about table prices etc, maybe I should start?

On a complete PLUS side though, I have had an amazing day meeting some people who live very near to me and a LOT of new doors have just opened in regards to running workshops and future woolly/crafty events. I can't wait to see how these new ideas develop.

The main thing that has come from today is the idea to set up a skill swap / swap shop type of organisation for the valleys where people can trade what they have for what they want etc....More on this as my brain works out the plans.....

On another note, I have been spending some time spinning and replenishing the shelves at work, and really getting to grips with our new drum carder from Classic Carders.

http://classiccarder.co.uk/

I ordered a general 72pt ash carder, which Paul made for me very quickly and arrived in no time at all!

I have used it every day since it arrived and it is SO much nicer than the ashford one I had borrowed previously! Very chuffed!

Here is some art yarn that I spun yesterday (that sold today right after I put it on the shelves!)

This colourway I have named 'Tropical tide' and there is a 50g ball of it for sale at work for £5.00

100% ryeland with a tiiiiny amount of angelina fibres mixed in.

I had to make some more of this colourway 'Candyfloss Chaos' as my first ball of it was very popular- I crocheted it up in to handwarmers to see what it would be like and several people wanted to buy them OFF MY HANDS!

Handwarmers.....

They fit me perfectly...I will have to get making some more as these don't take me long at all!

 Yesterday a good friend of mine had a stall at the craft fayre part of Gower Wool week and I couldn't help but buy some of her lovely handmade goods....

The Father's Day card is just perfect and the 'Goth sheep' card is to raise money for charity'.  

My favourite thing of all though is the notepad which reads 'this notebook is protected by an angry sheep!'  I'd love to see a Zombie sheep version!  You can see more of her work here:

https://www.facebook.com/LiviluDesigns

On a random subject change (my brain has had enough of sheep for a little while (only a little while though!)

My garden is coming along nicely, with my radishes starting to plump up....This little one was VERY peppery, I liked it!

Mini radish and mini lettuce.... Doll's house size!

I have also been making dandelion vinegar and oil and garlic oils and they are almost ready to be filtered out....

My only concern that the pickled garlic went turquoise blue and is now very green....can anyone tell me if this is meant to happen or should I throw it away???

http://blog.cherylsdelights.com/2012/10/medicinal-pickled-garlic/

Above is the original post I used for a recipe.....

TTFN, My brain is now thoroughly in need of a relax before I start my manic 9 days of FUN!

Garlic Foraging

So the wild garlic is in full bloom where I work....and there is just so much of it!  Driving down the road with the window open results in a very strong waft of garlic air every time!

As I have been going to work really (REALLY) early every day this week (for Gower Wool Week), I took the opportunity on Tuesday morning to stop for some photographs, this generally involved scrambling up a stone wall and getting knee-deep in garlic and bluebells, still wet with morning dew....

The view up the road from the Gower Inn

Bluebells!

Lots and lots of Garlic!

AND MUSHROOMS!

And now on a completely separate note, I am running an 'upcycled clothing' workshop on the Sunday of Gower Wool Week and I have just been to the charity shop to get enough garments to make wristwarmers and hats!  There was a lot there so I bought pretty much everything that could be used! And now I have a rainbow!

I have also been experimenting with some of the ryeland fleece I have been dyeing with acid milling dyes at home.  Most of it has ended up carded as batts ready for spinning, but I have not spun any before now to see what it is like.  On Tuesday I spun some really random batts up and then plied them with coloured grey ryeland (as Self-plying was going to be OTT and I was too impatient to wait and find something else)

I really like how the yarn has turned out...more pictures later of what I decide to do with it!

Creativeness, and a bit of sad news...

So, another update this month, I suppose I'm getting used to this blogging regularly routine....

Since my last post I have now filled the shelves at work with stock, ready for 'Gower Wool Week' which starts on Saturday (eeek!)

I have been very busy washing, dyeing, carding and sorting wool into batts, rolags and scrap bags...

Dyed weaving yarns (ryeland wool - 2 ply)

Handspun Ryeland wool

Dyed ryeland Knitting wool (some of the twist from the weaving yarn was removed to make it soft enough for knitting!)

Today, among other things I have been dyeing some more fleece frantically trying to increase stock levels for Saturday, I have one more set of shelves to fill as well as a whole separate shop!!!!

Rinsing exhaust dye from the fleeces, I like mixing them in together because you get a little bit of dye transfer and it makes the colours less 'sharp'  I don't do this with yellow though as it can make it a bit 'dingy'.

Double dip-dyeing jacob wool locks, these will be left as-is for people to felt or comb or spin as they wish.

I also undertook some projects the other day and have not yet shown people the results....

I followed two recipes from here:

http://tastykitchen.com/recipes/homemade-ingredients/homemade-essential-oil-air-fresheners/

and here:

http://thankyourbody.com/make-lip-balm/#comment-68082

This is the result of the gelly air-fresheners, the definitely work and my house now smells lovely! Shame I only had pink food colouring at home though....

Secondly, this is the lip balm recipe.  I did not have any cocoa butter and have ordered some on ebay, but was desperate to give it a go anyway so left out the cocoa butter and made up the difference in beeswax and coconut oil.  I cooled them in the fridge and they seem to work really well, I like them but I will see what some other people think before I make another batch.  I did try and use powdered beetroot for colouring but it didn't seem to work so I will try hibiscus or alkanet next time.

Here are some more jacob locks drying in the sun after being double-dip dyed today

and more photographs of the 'art yarns' I have been experimenting with, this was the 'ravelry' batt with coloured ryeland and green rayon plied with it

And this is one I dub 'foxglove' in which I used lime greens and purples, with dayglo green and purple sewing cotton plied in.

Now on to the very sad part of this post.....our little orphan lamb Frodo passed away last night, 1 week after I was given him.  He seemed to be getting fitter and healthier, but suddenly went off his bottle and was unable to stand up.  Within 20 minutes of bringing him indoors, he went to sleep and stayed asleep.  We are all a little shaken and upset at the moment, and I can't help but feel I did something wrong, or that I could have done something about it, despite being told that I couldn't have.  Part of me desperately wants another lamb to try again, but another part is still not willing to accept he is gone so I don't think I will for now.  So I will leave you with a photograph from Saturday, where we played in the garden in the sun together (with my husband's ATAT).

Gower Wool Week Prep

 In preparing for the upcoming FIRST EVER 'Gower Wool week' I needed to take some photographs for the newspaper advert etc so decided that Arthur and Merlin could earn their keep a little and POSE!

Merlin inspecting my wool....

Arthur looking very bored....

Adorable pair that they are, they are most definitely getting very heavy now!!!

As well as preparing wool etc for the wool week, I have been experimenting with spinning art yarns, without any tuition!

I am quite pleased with how this has turned out.  The wool used was a batt I bought and had carded while at Wonderwool Wales in April.  The Ravelry stand had a brilliant setup to raise money for the Air Ambulance where you could pick your coloured top and scraps etc and have them carded into a nice big batt.  I typically chose greens, with a small amount of pink....

I am enjoying the process of making art yarns, hopefully I will get some time to spin some more really soon (once wool week is over and done with!)

Enough dilly-dallying, back to preparing for the big event! (WHY did I think it was clever to try and run an event all by myself?!)

Baa Baa....

So I have been planting lots of things over the past few weeks, starting with dye plants indoors and 

vegetables outdoors.....

My Madder is finally starting to break through!

Veggies

Radishes!

Weld, Coreopsis and Chamomile...

I am really looking forward to being able to use the dye plants/ eat my veggies as I have never had a successful garden of my own before!

As well as all of the greenery going on I have also been acquiring new books again....as if my library isn't full already!

his encyclopedia of superstition was in the bookshop down the road from my house and makes for some very interesting reading!

I would also like to take this opportunity to introduce my new (and very unexpected!) pet - Frodo!

I went to collect two lambs from a friend, as we wanted some more bottle-fed lambs at work to go in the animal park over wool week (more info on this coming up!) and this little guy would have been left on his own, so I decided (which took all of 2 milliseconds) to have him as well.  And as work only wanted the two, I very quickly decided to have the third lamb as my own (and that I should call him Frodo)

All of the way home I was thinking 'oh hell what is my husband going to say'...

Needless to say he has now fallen in love with the little critter, as have I.  He is 8 weeks old, but the size of a 1 week old lamb.  He eats and drinks and does his business just fine, but he is a little slow.

He has started getting more active every day and really likes going out in the garden (which I have a holding number for) in the sun and munching on the newly cut grass (which is still pretty dead at the moment).

We even managed to save some pennies on bedding by using the cut grass- which he seems to love!

Here are some cute photos of little Frodo enjoying the sun, and exploring....all together now 'aaaahhhhwwwww'.........

Watch this space for more updates on my cute little pal...as well as some exciting woolly fun!

Getting back into it

After a very long break from blogging and maintaining an internet presence, I am finally finding more leisure time to start and sew/create and blog about it again.....

I have a very large backlog of things I want to share with the world and hope to start working through them slowly.....

Rather than starting in a backwards fashion, I may as well blog about my recent escapades, namely this past weekend at Cilgerran Castle to begin with as it is the freshest event in my mind right now.

This past weekend (11th and 12th May) involved lots of fun, (despite the typical British weather intervening) taking part in a Living History weekend at Cilgerran Castle, Pembrokeshire.

http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g2316134-d3983917-Reviews-Cilgerran_Castle-Cilgerran_Pembrokeshire_Wales.html

We arrived early on Saturday morning to unpack the war wagon (our tiny Fiat car) and set-up the display.

I then left the men to play hitty-fighty while I zipped up to my Weavers, Spinners, Dyers Guild meeting in Celaeron.

I missed the main talk of the day, however there were some amazing woven braids on display and some Kumihimo braiding kits for sale.  I also bought myself a wooden warping frame, which I am particularly pleased with!!!

After a very brief catch up with my friends at the Guild, I zipped back down to the Castle to finish setting up our display.

We chose to spend the night nearby, rather than get totally soaked camping overnight (a good call I think as our ground sheet was sodden!)

Anyway...I digress...this post is all about the 'Celebrating William Marshall' Day at the castle...

We were all set up and fully costumed up by 10am, after spending the damp morning oogling and drooling over the 4 beautiful birds of prey that were brought to the event by Pembrokeshire Falconry.

There were also several members of the Pembrokeshire WSD Guild present, providing a spinning display and selling their wares in a gazebo opposite our camp - due to the poor weather they left rather early, meaning I was not able to purchase any of the lovely manx loughton yarn they had for sale (sad face!)

Chainmail and Pewter

Frodo the whitefaced owl

Lord Rhys (aka Sean) with Scarlet the red kite

Castle chocolate!

The view from above

A very fun day was had, along with many discussions of future events, I really hope to be able to take part in this event again, and that the plans people have for other local events come to fruition.