The countdown has begun!

At 2100 tonight a hush will descend across the land as knitters, crocheters and fibre crafters all across the world pick up their tools of choice and jump into a frenzy of project commencement... oh and apparently the telly should be pretty good too, some sporting event or something starts :)

Well I might not quite have won my maillot jaune during the Tour de Fleece (life won on two days that weren't the rest days, though given I spun on both of those I kind of did spin the right number of days?!?!) but I did achieve my first goal of finishing spinning the silk I need to knit Tethys.

I've got two of the skeins caked up and ready go. A quick note on which, I decided against using the ball winder for these as they are just so slippery. My winder is in fairness a cheap one, with a tendancy for the yarn guide to collapse resulting in the yarn getting caught in the mechanism. Not so bad when it is commercial yarn, or even hardy handspan sock yarn. My nice soft silk though, not on your life was I going to risk that!


In the spirit of both preparation and procrastination I also decided that this really did need a project bag of its own too. I'm going to be dragging this everywhere I go for the next two weeks and it is a pale colour so it needed to go in something, and I'm enjoying making the bags at the moment. This though was going to rapidly outgrow any of my little sock bags. A new plan was needed.

I don't think I've mentioned it, but a month or so ago I bought a Namaste Monroe bag for work... and now general life! It is perfect! The front zip pocket holds my valuables (iPad, phone, purse) while the back non-zip pocket has everything else in it (pencil case, notebooks, hand gel... you get the picture). This leaves me the middle half height pocket for whatever projects I'm schlepping around that week. Normally I have a spindle and a set of socks in there, in bags of course, and I tend to throw the iPod in too as it is zipped up but still really easy for me to get to. The obvious answer to my bag problem therefore was to make the largest bag I could, whilst still enabling it to fit in the Monroe.

As you can see it is a bit of a wierd size when it is on its own, about 37cm long, 14cm tall and 9cm deep. This though fits that centre pocket of the Monroe perfectly when I have all my other stuff in it too. As you can see from the next picture, this also perfectly fits full cakes of yarn.

The cakes on their own fill maybe 2/3 of the height, so I've still got plenty of space on top of them to put in the WIP itself when I get started. Given it was daft o'clock when I got this finished last night I stopped when I finished the seams. I kind of feel that I want to go back and put some extra pockets on the inside of the bag though. Initial thoughts are a longish pocket on one side to hold a folded pattern out of the way, maybe some tip sized ones on the opposite side so I can have a couple of different ones with me, for those patterns that change part way through, and maybe some little bar type sections that I could hang some stitch markers on. I'll have to see how I get on though before making any decisions.

In other crafting news, I still need to ball up some the "This one's Ewenique" Footsie I bought from Yarnscape two separate 50g cakes. That will be my tiny carry project for the Games and will hopefully live in the pyramid bag. I'm also heading off to my parents for a weekend at some point soon and would really like to have made a spindle project bag for the top whorl that Dad made me. It'll probably be very similar to the box bags, though a little smaller in height and depth, with a carry handle but also a loop for a carribina to clip to. That way I can clip the bag to my trousers etc pull the zip down a little and use it as a fibre storage while spinning. I get the feeling I should have joined Team Hopelessly Overcommitted rather than Team Yarnscape for this one!

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Useful side effects...

Of course the positive side effect of all this new sewing is a) a whole bunch of rather nice scraps and b) a good excuse to buy fat quarters, and who doesn't need more of those in their life? :)

I am though, at heart, a knitter. So what's a knitter to do with all this fabric? Make project bags of course :D

My first was the one on the right made from two fat quarters, some very thin batting and a zip. Total cost, about £5. Not the cheapest thing in the world but it is perfectly customised to me. It fits one full 100g cake of yarn with space for the inevitable pair of socks, stitch markers and an A4 pattern folded in quarters. I tend to magic loop but it also fits a set of 15cm DPNs if needed. Just inside at the zip end are a set of loops that I'll eventually be able to hang crochet style markers on. What really gives this one it's strength though is the quilting. I'm most way through quilting all around the coastline of the pattern and have been amazed the difference it has made.

The second bag was almost completely made from scraps. The only 'new' materials are the zip and again the batting. I've not quilted this one as it's pretty robust in its own right, especially as the inner is a smidge too large. Personally I've always doubted the use of the pyramid bags as they seem to waste a lot of space. This one was constrained by the size of my scraps but I think it should prove useful for 50g cakes of sock yarn, for those Cookie A patterns where each sock is a mirror of the other :)

 

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And now for something completely different!

A while back I (think I) blogged about spending a very crafty weekend with my little sister, incorporating spinning, hand-piecing and beading into about 48hrs of crafty fun. Well it seems that it has had a slightly longer term impact than originally anticipated, namely I seem to have added quilting to my list of burgeoning skills.

With the imminent birth of a good friend of my DH's first child I oddly thought it would be faster and cheaper to stitch a baby blanket than to knit something. Wrong on both accounts but I am considerably less worried about the finished article being trashed in the wash so it is still a win in my book. I didn't think this was bad for a first attempt, took probably about as long in total to make as a good sized baby cardigan type thing, and probably cost in the region of £30-40 by the time it was finished.

Now the mistake I made the second time round was to utterly underestimate the cost of these things! The one above had used a lot of fat quarters for the tiny squares, and it turns out that the yellow polka dot which it is backed in is one of the cheaper fabrics that this store carries. Cue one heck of a shock when buying stuff for a second blanket that a) couldn't be done in FQs and b) featured very large amounts of the 'designer' fabrics. I almost fell over when I found out what I'd just asked to be cut. PUBLIC SAFETY ANNOUNCEMENT: check the cost before they start cutting!!!!! Anyway life being what it is, I've now been pulled off the expensive blanket project (which if I'm honest has yet to make it to the cutting stage... baby is much more distantly related, someone I get on with at work but don't have that much to do with etc) by my darling DH dropping into conversation that another set of good friends are moving back to the UK from places hot and sunny, and wouldn't it be nice to give their newborn a blanket to help her acclimatise to the rather cooler climes of the UK. Sure I agreed, when are they due back? Two weeks.......

Oh heck!

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What is a girl to craft?

I need to get this finished for friends of ours who have just had a little girl...

I want to get these finished as they're soooo close to done, and my feet want new socks :)

I should be spinning this for the Tour...

That sleep stuff is optional right? :D

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Tour de Fleece

This year (my first) I'm taking part as a member of Team Yarnscape. For those of you unfamiliar with this odd event the concept is simple, you spin every day that the Tour de France rides, attempting along the way to set yourself particular goals. Now in the run up to the start I had all sorts of wonderful ideas but very quickly realised that with life messing me about the way it is at the moment, that in a lot of ways just spinning every day was going to be a whole challenge in itself! That said in the first week I've got quite a lot done...

 

All three of these mini-skiens have been spun and plied during the Tour, I have about another half bobbin of the Tethys silk brick (one of my original goals) spun up and the other day I started messing about with some silk caps I'd bought at Woolfest.

Agh those caps! Now I've spun some samples of hankies before, learning the technique of splitting off a hankie, or more realistically two, before putting a hole in the middle and essentially pre-drafting the heck out of them. I don't know what it is with these caps but I'm damned if I can get only one or two separated at a time, which is making the drafting an utter nightmare. Put it this way, I now have matching blisters on the first knuckle of both my index fingers :( The yarn does look pretty though so pictures will shortly follow.

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Woolfest

Wow was that ever a wet weekend!!!!

Woolfest 2011 was the first fibre festival I'd ever attended, taking my Mum on a magical mystery tour involving much fluff and night in the Cockermouth YHA. 2012 though was a solo affair, partially due to things being utterly up in the air at work and the related last minute planning. Luckily for me, the latter included re-waterproofing my tent!

Well the drive up to Cheshire on Thursday was surprisingly dry, and I got to my parents a little before 2300. All thoughts of an early night quickly disappeared though as I don't see them that often and took the chance to have a good catchup. Managed to get a pretty early start though (fuelled by a very nice cooked breakfast that's to Dad) and promptly it started to rain. Hmm rain. That word really does fail to describe the sheer amount of water falling from the sky that weekend. The drive itself was pretty uneventful until about 10 miles from Cockermouth an idiot driving in front of me managed to kick up a huge pile of stones etc (breaks, accelerator, breaks, accelerator in quick succession on a semi-flooded road is the fast way to annoy those behind you!) promptly cracking my windscreen. Not impressed. Anyway I made it, got parked and started sniffing the wool fumes :)

The event itself was to me a little of a let down. That though is through no fault of the organisers. Last year it had been my first festival, I was a brand new spinner and I was deep in the "must learn all the things" phase :). This year I had a list, I know what I enjoy spinning and to be honest was just being a whole lot more sensible on the money front.

It was good fun though. Dinner wasn't bad and the spin in was lovely. Driving back to the campsite was erm interesting(!) and by the next morning I think I was the only camper on the site not washed out (see my remarks about the re-waterproofing!). For all the jokes the previous day I think what saved me was that I was in an ultralight tent. Was it small, erm yes! but that seemed to a) allow me to use the car to shelter it to an extent and b) the rest of the rain/wind just went straight over it. What I really could have done without though was breaking down on the way home the next day and having a three hour wait to be rescued. Ho hum an eventful weekend in more ways than one!

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When Indy dyers go bad...

So those of you who follow me on Twitter will be aware that I've had a bundle of fibre take rather longer than I'd hoped to turn up at my door, and indeed at the time of writing this it still hasn't. As I said to someone who asked I'm not going to outright name and shame (yet! This may change if I get messed about much more though) as the matter is now being resolved, or at least I hope it is.

So what happened I hear you ask? Through social networks various I became aware of a dyer offering a limited time deal, had a look on their site, liked what I saw and put in an order. Nothing much of a controversial nature there I thought. That would be my first mistake then. Whereas places like Etsy are only supposed to allow you to list stuff you actually have ready for sale, this dyer has their own site and it turned out that they a) received way more orders than anticipated and b) had consequently taken orders for stock they simply didn't have dyed and ready to send.

Grouch 1 - I don't mind waiting for you to dye my order but I do mind only finding out that is the case several days after placing my order!

Ok so they're dying it the Monday after I place my order, irritating but not a problem, and I duly followed the progress on Twitter. Kind of hoped it would turn up by the end of the following week as I would be demonstrating spinning, and face it nice bright stuff pulls people in far better than dull white fleece. No such luck. Ok must be the Jubilee weekend messing up the post methinks. I'll give it to later in the week. Wednesday comes and goes, Thursday arrives and still nothing. No parcel, no email, no nothing and from Twitter I know said dyer is now deep in Woolfest prep.

Grouch 2 - please don't broadcast to the world all the fun you're having doing other stuff when you have paid for orders still outstanding, it does not make your customer base feel loved!

Ok so by Thursday and knowing they were busy now on other stuff I finally cracked and sent a chasing email. By this point it had been 17 days since I'd put my order in. Now in fairness I did get a response, an out of office email obviously set weeks earlier and no longer relevant. Hmm gave that one about 24hrs, by which point they knew about the problem with the out of office and had stated on Twitter that they're working through their backlog. Ok I think, I'll get an email soon saying where the holdup etc is (to be honest at this point I was still fully expecting to be told that it had been sent and that Royal Mail were making a mess of deliveing it, how wrong was I?!?). Instead, nada.

Ok two seemingly ignored emails, no delivery and over 48hrs later I thought I'd send a slightly more direct email, this time not just asking for an update but pointing out how long I'd been waiting. Being completely fair etc that did get a response.

It will be in the post for you on Monday. It's ready and packed.

I will email when it's on the way for you.

Please accept my apologies.

That was it. No "Dear Mindfulknits" or salutation of any description which is frankly rude in my book regardless of the preceding events, unless being sent between friends etc... this person does not fit into that category. Now it could just be me being a miserable so and so but I was distinctly less than impressed with it as an answer. Ok I now know that it is being posted three weeks after I ordered it, but there is no explanation as to why, no reference made to the fact I had to repeatedly contact them to get this measly answer. I don't know how anyone else reads it, but to me it says they're glad to take my money, will get my order to me when they can be bothered and beyond that couldn't give a rodent's behind for concepts such as courtesy or customer service.

Grouch 3 - manners cost nothing and can go a long way to repair a poor customer experience

In short, unless (when) this stuff turns up it spins like butter and is dyed to perfection I won't be ordering from this dyer again. Life is too short for bad fleece and Indy dyers that don't have a basic level of respect for their customers!

Oh and if it isn't waiting for me when I get home on Tuesday I am naming names! You have been warned!

PS for the sake of clarity etc I am not talking about any of the fabulous dyers etc listed on the right of this site, you guys are all amazing :D

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!

Sunshine.... yay!!!

I may work in an office in central London but darn it I'm going to spend at least some time enjoying the sunshine!

Having lost quite a bit of weight since Christmas I've been in sore need of some new work clothes, yesterday proving I was in even more dire need of work clothes that I wouldn't slowly boil to death in. A quick lunchtime shopping trip yesterday and I have new linen trousers (that are somehow resisting the urge to crease like crazy) and a very lightweight new blouse thingy. All of which I am wearing today with the net result that the sun is shining, I'm wearing my favourite sunglasses, new clothes and feel a million dollars... oh and this was the view when I was eating my lunch...

And as if that wasn't decadently chilled out enough, I treated myself to sushi and a magazine too..

All told, not a bad way to spend 20 mins :) (oh and I might have gone and bought myself something fab to wear tomorrow for my hot date with my DH... well going to a sake tasting course in the evening... it's like a date but for married people :D )

A quick knitting update...

The Twisted Flower socks are finally getting somewhere. Having got as far as turning the heel before deciding the gauge was too tight, I've had to frog and re-knit the lot. I've now got both onto the foot though with both heels fully turned.

What is becoming rapidly apparent though is that I've not got enough yarn spun up. I'm not sure at this point how much short I'm going to be so the hope is that for the final bit I can pinch just a bit from the second braid of this, leaving me enough to do something nice for my Mum with the rest of it. Keep your fingers crossed for me please!