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.

Fiberholics - Disapointed

Before I start, I know this is a pretty crummy photo but it was the best my phone could manage (the camera's battery is currently flat and I'm not sure where the charger is... darned moving house!)

Since learning to spin I've been following the Phat Fiber boxes/blogs/Ravelry postings with no small amount of envy.  Each month they seem to post out little bundles of themed deliciousness but a) the chances of snagging a box are small and b) postage from the US can be long/expensive, so I thought I'd give the UK based Fiberholics a go instead.  Now as I buy my fiber almost exclusively from indi-dyers based in the UK I had high hopes but I've been left feeling rather uninspired, which is really disappointing.

Ok first up colour.  I was never expecting to get 5 out of 5 samples that I fell in love with, but a theme I suspect may have helped here.  We've got the Sunflower sample from HilltopClouds clashing horribly with MandaCrafts fushia offering.  The Crafty n Clothy braid is lovely but is made to look utterly washed out by the rest.  It wasn't a great look as I opened the parcel, which is sad because colour-wise actually I really like 3 of the 5 and one falls into my "that's not bad even if I've no idea what I'll use it for" category.

Next up is the fiber content.  Now my reason, and I suspect a lot of people's reason for buying samplers like this is just that, to sample new stuff be that colour or fiber.  Out of these five we have:

• 2 x 20g Falkland roving
• 20g Merino 64s roving
• 20g BFL roving
• and kudos to HilltopClouds 20g hackle blended BFL, Merino & Bamboo

In other words, one non-bog-standard type of fiber out of the five :(  Part of me gets that the staple for indi dyers is going to be the Falklands, Merinos and BFLs, that this is the stuff that they can get in bulk dye beautifully and make a decent profit on.  That I don't mind, heck I buy a lot of it.  But for a sampler pack?  I want to be enthused, I want to see something different.  If I want pink Falkland quite frankly I'll go to one of the big suppliers because I know it'll be a lot cheaper.

So overall:

• its confirmed that I still love the stuff that Katie from HilltopClouds produces, even when its not in a colour I would ever have picked.  I can't wait to spin up this sample but at the same time its one that has me really thinking how to get the best out of it.  Perfect :)
• ok for £11 plus P&P it didn't break the bank and it has introduced me to 2 dyers I didn't know about before (Crafty and Clothy and Cariad Fiber Arts)
• on the downside though most of the samples were pretty uninspiring and as a whole they hung together really badly.

I'm glad I ordered it at least this once but I think it will be just that, just this once.  The Fibreholics team do do a great job, but this one just isn't for me sadly.

Video night, Samye Dzong style

So Lama Zangmo is away at the moment meaning the weekly "Way of the Bhodisattva" classes are on hold. Namjal though has organised a lovely alternative of watching HH Karmapa's teachings from this year's Kagyu Monlam. Now I've followed the written reports for the last couple of years but have never really watched the teachings. I have to say that I'm glad I went and I will be back next week, but I think I prefer the written. My monkey mind wanders too much between translations and I'm struggling to engage with what's being taught. Some background reading may be needed I think!

As a blogger I offically suck...

... or at least I really am struggling with that time management thing!

Very quick update on where I'm up to with projects etc (and how they appear to be mushrooming out of all control at the moment!):

Knitting:

• Mum's shawl actually has made a lot of progress.  I've finished the L side, and am part way up the R (just past the pocket) but I've got to say I'm hating this knit.  I'm not sure what it is but Mum seems to be a curse on me knitting stuff for her.  I never get the pattern/yarn combination to work out well.  I don't know why because it's not a problem I have any other time, but this and the lace shawl I did her are less than brilliant.  Both are/will be warm and what she wants but there are few things more demoralising that spending a small fortune on yarn and a lot of time, knowing you're not going to be in love with the FO.  Ho hum I live and learn.
• In Dreams is well erm dreaming at the moment.  Leaving the house at 0730 and getting back at 2100 each day is not leaving a lot of braincells for complex lace at the moment... and this pattern needs brains!  Hopefully in some of the bank holiday weekends we have coming up I might get some more progress made on this but till then it is sadly languishing which is making me feel rather bad :(
• 3 into 2 Black Magic socks are spun up but mothballed due to other multiple WIPs being on the needles - I refuse to cast on yet another project till I've got some of these finished!
• Midnight under the Waterfall socks are again mothballed while I spin up some more yarn for them... when that's going to happen I'm not sure.  The original was spun on my IST turkish so they're probably going to wait until I've finished the Unsimple Simple Socks and can spin while commuting.
• Speaking of which, the Unsimple Simple Socks are in the final stages.  The heels have been turned and I'm just working on the legs until I get bored now.  I've got oodles of yarn so that isn't a limiting factor, my love of 2x1 rib on the other hand might be.  A good lesson in patience methinks.  Oh and beware, this pattern knits up long in the foot.  I started the increases where suggested but they're still a little long.  Hopefully they'll block/felt a little shorter :)
• My current panic though is a stole for a formal dinner on the 22nd.  What possessed me to decide to knit it with just less than two weeks to go I'm not sure but I am, and apparently I'm designing it from scratch... in a yarn I've never used before... and I've started on the knitting before I've finished the designing... what could possibly go wrong!

Spinning:

• I've got 400g of Herdwick that I'm currently spinning on my wheel to then knit into a felted bag (hopefully in time for Wonderwool!).  The first couple of skiens are done and its looking surprisingly good.  I've gone for a bulkish 7wpi 3ply that is fairly loosly spun and loosly plied.  Whilst that itself would normally impact on the strength of the yarn I'm hoping it will give me the wiggle room I need to be able to get it to felt properly.
• My tibetian is enjoying the delights of a HilltopClouds buttery yak/merino/silk batt being wrapped around it at the moment.  No 1 is spun, No 2 has just got started on my purpleheart Russian and I have no idea when I'll get round to finishing them :)  That's a nice, slow-time project as and when I get a moment... who am I kidding :)

So all in all utterly manic.  Time short, project rich and with deadlines I can't possibly meet.  Situation normal then :D

Random acts of kindness.... and the somewhat odd result

The other week Lama set us some homework.  We were to pick one day in the week, write down five kind things we were going to do that day, and do them.  Well it turns out that I suck at organised kindness! People I'd planned to do stuff for were out and circumstances generally messed with my plans.  All in all a B- for achievement.

One act that did kind of work out though was buying a homeless guy dinner.  If you spend any time near Waterloo station in London you've probably seen him.  He tends to sit under the bridge opposite the fish and chip shop, on his rucksack, quietly watching the world go by. I've never seen him ask for money and he's there no matter the time or weather. I must have walked past him a hundred times.

For some reason though I couldn't get him out of my head during meditation last week. It is my Thursday night treat to get some chips on the way home and for some reason I couldn't stop thinking of him.  Anyway this night I plucked up the courage to talk to him (half nine at night and talking to an utter stranger in London is not the done thing for nice young ladies!) and offered to buy him fish and chips for dinner.  What I didn't expect though was the reply of "thank you, but I'm a vegetarian". I've got to say that I was honestly blown away. That even when he wasn't sure when he'd eat next or sleep that night, he was still able to stick to something important to him was humbling. How often do we compromise on the things we "believe" in for an easy life?  Yet here he was holding out.

We compromised on chips but I suspect I was the one richer for the encounter.

The bonkers things I get asked in interview!

I've had a couple of interviews recently ranging from the funny to the downright rude, with a small detour through mad en route...

"If you were a chocolate bar, what would you be and why?" ... erm really?

"If you were stranded on a desert island who wouldn't you want to share it with?" ... where do I start!

And my favourite...
"so you live three hundred miles away, what would you do if you got this job?" .... "Move!"

This is why I don't do socks cuff-down!

I've finally got the house more or less sorted, mostly deep cleaned and starting to feel like home :)  My DH has declared that on the basis that our living room is very cosy but not very big, my knitting and spinning projects are confined to one wicker basket next to my end of the sofa.  I've veto'd keeping the spindles in it (that's what we have a very nice vase on a corner table for!) but actually having all my projects in one place is rather nice.  Oh and it keeps me from having too many on the go at once :)  At the moment I have my Mum's shawl in there, though only two spare balls of yarn for it down here, the part done Cachoira socks and the tops to be spun for the rest of them, a couple of hexi-puffs and the 50g of BFL I'm just about to start sampling with.  The Back to Basics socks are my commuting project at the moment so live in my rucksack.  In other words, plenty to keep me busy.

Speaking of things keeping me busy, here is why I don't normally do socks cuff down:

I'm almost out of yarn with blatantly still most of the feet to go.  On the positive side I had the good sense to buy two braids of the tops, slightly less positively this was one of the very few projects where I didn't keep notes on the wpi of the singles etc... drat!

Kindness in the oddest of places

I was having a bit of a bad time of it at the beginning of this week, what with the somewhat disastrous house move and generally having a frustrating time of it at work (I swear the computers knew it was not a good time to mess me about!) but it's also been a week where I've appreciated those random acts of kindness.

Alison of Yarnscape definitely deserves a thank you :)  Not only did I get into work on Wed, feeling dreadful from the house move, to be greeted by a lovely comment on the blog but we ended up in a mini-chat via Twitter too.  Small things maybe but it really did make my day.  Thank you :)

They're completely anonymous but the couple of London Bus drivers that have been both cheerful and helpful really have made my week that bit better.  The city often seems a cold and hostile place, with people more likely to barge into you than smile.  A cheery hello, a willingly given set of directions or just letting me on when my Oyster card decided to play silly beggars really do make the world a happier place.

Silly as it might sound though, almost the bit that made my week the most was making someone else smile.  For a while I've meant to take some tea lights with me when I head to Samye Dzong London for Lama's Thursday teachings.  I've always thought they must go through them by the bucket load and I love the warm light they give during meditation sessions when the electric lights have been switched off.  Anyway this week, having been caught in work meaning I'd missed most of the social get together before class, I figured I had time to call in and get a bag of tea lights rather than running for the bus as usual.  Turns out they had all but run out of them, so it was a timely gift.  I know the giving will improve my karma, but you know what, I be happy with just having seen the smile on Ani Drolma's face.

Moving on

I moved house today.  All in all I think I can chalk the experience up as "not good"... that being somewhat of an understatement.  I've left a house I love, where I can see my DH almost every night (well when he's in the UK at any rate), where the windows are double glazed, the central heating can be relied upon.  I'm now sitting in a house where I'll see my DH at weekends if I'm lucky, where I can already feel the cold whistling round the sash windows and almost everything that could go wrong with the move has done.  My fridge is 5mm to tall to fit in the only space it can, the washing machine is 1mm too wide for its space, it turns out our solid pine wardrobes don't fit up the crazy-assed staircase as it has a quarter turn in it and I'm wondering what the hell I've done.  I know work is precious at the moment and I'm grateful to have a job, I know living at my old house was unsustainable without me getting work nearby and I know this is a great opportunity for me... but tonight I just want to cry.

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Part of me would like to spin and knit a pair of socks a month in 2012... must be the affect of wearing these lovelies :-)