18 February: New toy

As well as the "string" connected with spinning, knitting, weaving, and so on, I have another string to my bow, literally, as I do archery as well as all the fibre stuff.

I really only started to encourage my Dear Husband to take up a new interest in retirement, but of course the bug has bitten me as much as him, and we are both trying hard to improve. He replaced his first recurve bow a little while ago, but it was only recently that I felt the need to have a better bow.

My new riser arrived this afternoon, from Italy via a company in the Midlands - it's beautiful. I'll try it out this evening, and make any adjustments needed. I'm very much hoping I'll shoot more accurately with it, as well as more stylishly.

12 January: You can't have your joys ...

...without your sorrows, as my mother used to say.

So yesterday I lost a pound and a half of that extra Christmas weight, set a new personal best in archery practice, and had a violent attack of sciatica.

Oh well, it makes life more interesting, I suppose.

11 December: Recent knitting and a small success

The snow has meant we haven't been getting out much. So a fair amount of knitting has been done. A couple of larger projects are still in progress, but here are some small finished items -


This is a scarflet (short scarf), knitted as a tube, in one-row helical stripes, with the ends closed to make it double thickness. Handspun BFL - super soft and silky.

And 2 sideways short-row hats knitted from the recent batches of spinning and dyeing -


Nice texture, soft yarn, and lovely mixed colours. The plainer green one was done first, but if one colour's good, then 2 are better, so a quarter of the second hat is done in a yarn with colour in common with the larger yellow section.

And, finally - last Sunday's 18M FITA archery competition gave me a winning gold medal -


Not exactly a huge victory, though; I was the only archer shooting bare-bow. And that's the bow that's bare, NOT the archer!

12 September: Busy

It was a hectic week - 2 long journeys in search of archery equipment, then for me a day demonstrating spinning; and yesterday I went to a Guild workshop, while my Dear Husband went to an archery competition.

The spinning demonstration was fairly quiet, and I got plenty of spinning done - I had dyed 3 pieces of fibre and they were spun randomly, then plyed and wound into this ball of yarn -


It's 121 gms, with a further 3 gms in the small skein, all about 19 w.p.i.

This morning I was doing some trimming in the garden, and decided to use some of the leaves to experiment with solar dyeing. There are leaves from the rosemary bush and a Japanese acer in this jar, along with about 30 gms of wool fibre. The jar is on the sunny windowsill in the conservatory, and will remain there for some time - don't hold your breath!

24 July: Catching up

Recent projects have mostly been rather uninteresting to photograph - spinning fleece mostly, but there have been a few small items now rounded up into a picture -


There are some inkle bands - two narrow ones done on the old loom, and the green/blue one done on the new moon loom. The ball of off-white yarn is spun from an Estonian batt from Wingham at Woolfest (I spun that one evening when bored with Le Tour), the dull purple sock yarn is from the Yarn Yard - a plain sock in progress for my Dear Husband - and the beaded row counters were made very quickly, after seeing something about them on Ravelry, and finding the instructions on eHow; I tried out various wooden and glass beads, and several different types of yarn.

Then yesterday I was reorganising my archery stuff, and decided to make a cloth bag for my recurve bow, so that I can carry it in one piece, rather than keep on taking it to bits and re-assembling it every time I use it. The piece of fabric in the box that was large enough also happens to be bright red, and made of microfibre. It is, therefore, very tough. It had also been in the fabric box for about 25 years, since I bought it in Peterlee when I was working over there.

Anyway, last time the sewing machine was used, there was a problem with the tension, so I decided to sew this by hand. It was hard work, but at least there's the feeling that it's done satisfactorily.The tie is a narrow inkle band, originally an experiment for shoelaces, but I failed to get the ends narrow enough to thread them through the lace-holes. Still, it's just right for this purpose!


One and a half fleeces have been spun, and some of the resulting yarn has been woven and is now waiting to be made up into the planned bags - more experiments.

13 June: World Championship

Today we competed in the Fifth World Wand Championship at Raby Castle, a longbow competition. It rained. The morning was taken up with the Championship itself - 13 ends of 3 arrows each, shot from various distances from 20 yards to 50 yards.

This is the set-up before shooting started -


The wands are 4 inches wide and the scoring area is about 40 inches top to bottom. The winner scored 18 hits, and was presented with the magnificent silver trophy. My Dear Husband and I did not distinguish ourselves, nor did we disgrace ourselves; we enjoyed both the shooting and meeting friendly archers from other clubs, some of whom we met at the last shoot at Raby.

The Castle made a scenic backdrop to the event, and the staff laid on an excellent lunch for us.


After lunch we had first a proper wand shoot, with everyone trying to hit inch wide and about 3 feet tall sticks stuck into the ground, from a distance of about 25 yards; there were a surprising number of hits.

Then it was the sudden death competition, in which everyone shot an end at 20 yards, then non-scorers dropped out and scorers went on to shoot at 30 yards; repeat at increasing distances until there is only one archer left. This took a while, as it reached a point where the few left in the competition all missed, and then there were several more ends needed to decide the second and third places.

It took far less time to dismantle and pack up the wet equipment than it had done to set it all out in the morning, then we came home to dry out our own kit and have a nice lie down after all the excitement.

18 April: Spring

The lawn has had its first cut of the year. Some flower seeds have been sown in pots and trays, and two or three plants that seem not to have survived the winter have been threatened - start putting out shoots, or go straight to the compost heap, do not pass Go, etc.

There's been time for some inkle weaving -

These are all in handspun wool, 3 plain weave bands and one, the green and yellow one in merino, a very time-consuming pick-up pattern which makes it the same on both sides.

That one was still in progress when I went to the Guild's monthly workshop day; out of less than a dozen people there, 3 of us were working on inkles! Must be something in the air (apart from volcanic ash, of course).

And a parcel of fibre came from Wingham Wool Works, some merino/tencel blend, some wool/linen blend, and 3 little Estonian wool batts. So far I have spun up one of the Estonian batts and a bit of the wool/linen, which is quite heavily textured - that's "lumpy" viewed from the other side. Not sure what they might be used for, perhaps an inkle or two?

But with the lighter evenings, archery has moved out of the sports halls and onto the playing fields. After shooting at 25 yards all winter, it's wonderful to have a target a hundred yards away. And this week the summer schedule starts, with shooting 3 times a week instead of twice.

14 March: Family

After last week's roving mark, I decided to make some arrows that suited my light bow rather better. Well, not so much "make" as "assemble". All the bits came in the post from various suppliers, and hours were spent trimming and gluing. I tried them out - the bow-string needed a slight amendment, which was easily done - then spent some more happy hours painting them with odds and ends of paint found in the garage. At least I should be able to spot them in the grass!

Then most of today went in following up some recent family history research. At last I have found a trace of my Dad's "uncle who was a police officer", who appeared (with a tight collar and toothbrush moustache) at the back of a 1925 wedding photo. He had the same name as both his father and my Dad, and then the 1911 census revealed that he had given almost the same name to his son!

It was interesting to find that both a newly-discovered great-great-aunt and the wife of this newly-found great-uncle had the same first name as my Dear Grand-daughter.

Then this evening, just as I'd put the phone down from a nice long chat with my Dear Daughter, the door-bell rang, and my Dear Son was here for a nice long chat.

8 March: Roving mark

It was a glorious day yesterday for the first outdoor shoot of the season, a roving mark competition.

Here is a view of the shooting line; the previous target was the post with the banner on top, and the next target is a similar one some 100 to 150 yards away. Landing an arrow within a bow's length of the mark scored a point - landing an arrow in the mark scored 5 points.

Although we were shooting in a deer park, the herd kept well away, and no animals were inconvenienced in any way by our shooting. A good time was had by all, with a picnic on the grass at lunch time, followed by a second competition in the afternoon. Only 2 arrows stuck into trees, and one of those was (mostly) recovered.

A magic day - although I failed to trouble the scorer, I can't wait till the next one!

13 February: All hand-made

And here is the project that those dyed yarns weren't suitable for.

A bag for my longbow -


It is not the easiest object to photograph. This is the top end, showing the tie -


And here it is untied, with the bow -


The bag fabric was woven on my rigid heddle loom, with handspun linen warp and handspun wool/silk weft. Unsure how much take-up there would be, then shrinkage when fulled, I allowed plenty of length and width, weaving a piece 11" wide and about 8'3" long. After washing and pressing this became 9" wide by 7'10" long. The final bag is 4.5" wide and 7'6" long.

The tie is finger-woven from 8 strands of handspun (and home-dyed) BFL leftovers from previous knitting. Actually the weft is also leftovers, from a cardigan knitted last year. The warp took nearly 3 skeins of undyed linen, and the weft took nearly 2 big balls of yarn - much more than I realised would be needed.

This was the first project making a piece of fabric for a specific purpose; putting the warp onto the loom was very difficult, even with 2 of us working together; the weaving was simple and quicker than expected; and the final sewing up and finishing was much more straightforward than anticipated. I am very pleased with the result.

The bow's pretty brilliant too - hickory, lemonwood and purple heart, lightweight at 33 lbs at 28", made by a local bowyer.

3 January: Normality soon?

The regular suspension of normal life over the Christmas period, combined with weather that hampers outdoor activity, has led to a concentration on stash-reducing.

There's been another double cap made, plain brown with variegated yellow/apricot/green, and 2 triangular scarves, and a couple of "bags" - the first is knitted from Jamieson and Smith's millspun 2-ply Shetland yarn, and then felted, using a pattern called "Numbers" from knitty -


and the second is crocheted from yarn I spun a couple of years ago, from recycled plastic bottle fibre. I find the yarn is nasty to knit, but fine for crochet, and this little bag is just the right size to keep one of my bowstringers tidy -

The trouble is that this took only 15 grams out of the 200.....

(If you want to see the other knitting, pictures are on my Flickr page.)