A very crafty jubilee weekend!

For reasons various I'd invited my little sister to come down to visit me over the jubilee weekend and wow did we ever get some serious crafting done! Having been very close as kids, but now living almost at opposite ends of the country, crafting in its various forms is the one thing I can guarantee we can both enjoy whatever life may be throwing at us.

So first up was a visit to Millers Ark farm for their jubilee party. I'd volunteered to demo spinning weeks before but little sis was ok with a day of chilling out surrounded by very cute baby animals. Brilliantly a couple of ladies from the Hampshire Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers joined us so we had three wheels running plus my drop spindles. By the end of the day I'd mostly got my carding technique more or less there, and my longdraw was getting reasonably consistent.... bobbin one of I have no idea for the Kelmscott Throw

The only down side of the day was that the Shetlands being sheared really didn't want their fleece to go. It was still a little early for them, the lanolin hadn't risen, and the shearer was having to really fight to get the fleece off. All in all a recipe for lots and lots of second cuts so I sadly passed on asking to buy one. Beautiful to touch but life is too short to mess about with poor fleece.

After a full day on the farm, demoing, spinning (little sis even managed to get some viable not too think and thin by the end of the day), eating cream tea and generally chilling out, we headed home for white wine and general late night chatting.

 

Having done our patriotic bit on the Saturday we elected for a lazy morning before a quick google brought up a free hand-piecing class just outside Andover. A fast lunch etc and we were in the car and ready to go. As luck would have it we managed to squeeze into the class which was fantastic (who said you need to plan these things!). I'll post up details for where/when etc when I have them to hand but for now I can say we worked on an Ohio Star using scraps of material that Meg (the teachers/shop owner) provided. Little sis went for a complicated jubilee themed square, carefully lining up the patterns on the material provided. I really wasn't that fussed so plumped for a simple teal and grey...

Not bad for a first attempt I thought. Each of the squares is about 10cm across and I got it to mostly lined up. Now me being me I'd a) bought a bunch of fat quarters with the intention of making some more project bags as the one I made a month back is proving very useful and b) I promptly bit off waaaay more than I could chew on a new idea for a project. My cunning idea is to make a hand pieced project bag, a little more sophisticated than the one I'm currently using, with pockets for a couple of spare DPNs, a pattern, stitch markers... oh and my Oyster card given I normally end up shoving it in with my knitting rather than put it away somewhere sensible. With that lot in mind I came up with the following hand-pieced section:

Don't ask how long that has taken me up to now, but to give an idea of scale etc the squareish sections are about 3cm across and the whole thing is only 16ish cm tall. Now I just need to make it 50 cm long before I can start turning it into a bag! Should be ready about Christmas time at a guess...

Monday sadly saw little sis have to head back home, but not to miss a crafting chance we swung by the Beadworks in London to get some embelishments for her now new hand-pieced cushion! Three days, three technically different crafts can't be bad :)

On a separate but important note though, I got the Ostara Twisted Flower socks finished :D

Here's to having a crafty weekend!

A Perfect Saturday in Spring

Last weekend my DH and I had hoped to get over to Miller's Ark to see the lambing but the weather was absolutely horrendous so we stayed in with a nice log fire instead :)  This weekend though the weather was beautiful so we thought a couple of hours looking at the lambs before a 5 mile walk was a good plan, and boy was it ever!

First up, Miller's Ark.  These guys are based a couple of miles away from me and have a brilliant setup for kids and adults alike.  The volunteers are all amazingly helpful and evidently really care about the animals.  The animals themselves are utter characters!  It is very evident that they've all been raised being used to being handled and as such they are very friendly especially if you have a cup of feed in your hands.

The area you're allowed into as visitors is split up into a couple of well marked areas.  The first is a series of pens with sheep, lambs and goats in them for you to feed.  In these ones are the Angora goats (very nimble at climbing up the fencing to snaffle feed from your cup when you're not watching!) and some very placid Oxford Downs with their lambs... the latter not being half as smart as the goats!

How could you not want to feed this cheeky chappy?!?

You can just make out the second pen in the top picture which has some Devon(?) Longwools in it.  Their fleeces really are amazingly heavy and I was lucky enough to get chatting to one of the volunteers about them.  Turns out the fast way to get the whistlestop tour is to ask about the breed then say you're a new spinner :)  I'm sure I didn't remember half of what I got told.

The far pens had the real characters in them though, a bunch of Herdwick Shetland crosses!  Yes you did hear me right on the mix.  The reason being they only had ewes of one breed but no ram (sorry I can't remember which way round it was).  As a farm that specialises in hands on kids stuff they try to breed so they have new lambs for as much of the year as possible, and breeding the Oxford Downs with anything else just wouldn't have worked due to the size difference of the animals, so a Herdwick Shetland cross it was :)  From what I remember it also means they get a good sized lamb early on which again helps with them being handled a lot by non-experts.

These guys were utter hooligans, running from one end of the pen to the other whenever they got so much as a sniff of feed.  You can see how they've managed to wear down the wool on their necks by shoving their heads through anything that they can fit through!  When you look at them they have very Herdy'ish faces but the wool is surprisingly soft, very much more like what you would expect from a Shetland.  Funny how the genetics works out isn't it.

Prize for most chilled out sheep though has to go to this little guy...

whilst the "how far down is that?!?!" prize goes to this one...

The award for utter Awwwhhh though has to be split between this bunch of baby rabbits...

and little guy who was less than a day old...

My DH took great delight in stroking, cuddling and petting everything small and furry within sight :)  We'll definitely be back for the sheering though... now I just have to hope that they'll be willing to sell me a fleece or three rather then sending them all off to the Wool Board... Angoras and Herdy crosses I have my eyes on you :)

A five mile walk, several pints of cider just before the end whilst watching the sun go down, then takeaway in front of a crackling fire at home and the day was complete.  Not a bad way to spend a Saturday I think you'll agree.