24 December: Cactus

On the kitchen window sill is is a Christmas cactus -


Probably not really a cactus, and doesn't often flower at Christmas. But this year...

21 December: Bored

So I thought I'd change some colours. Spring ones are good. There might be more changes. Will anyone notice?

20 December: Cold

Round here the temperature has barely crept above zero for days. This morning the thermometer in the conservatory (unheated since last winter) showed just above zero, when it has been hovering at 4 or 5 degrees. The windows were pretty, though -


Fortunately I have just finished a lap blanket which has been in progress for a couple of months.


The grey Shetland is handspun from a fleece bought at Woolfest, and the coloured squares (because there wasn't quite enough grey) are knitted from handspun Shetland yarn, home-dyed, from the stash.

Another cold-beating item is this cowl or neckwarmer knitted from some handspun merino. The drop-stitch pattern makes it stretchy and extra warm.

15 December: Ice wave

The snow and ice are gradually melting away (except on the pavements locally).

The heap of snow in our back garden is making some strange shapes as it thaws. This one is rather interesting -

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!

6 December: Silver (well, more skewbald*) surfers

My brain hurts.

My Dear Husband has got a new laptop, and we have been learning lots about transferring files and applications. And there's a lot to learn about asking the right question - tricky when you only have a vague idea of what you want to do, and not the correct words for it in computer-speak.

Although we have a big fat instruction book about the OS, it is still very difficult to find the bit that refers to the problem you are trying to solve. And of course, there's the side-tracking; like the hour or so spent trying to find out why the book refers to, and illustrates, a mailbox called "Junk", and there isn't one on our computer. And, apparently, no way of finding out why.

He's got the laptop connected to the Internet OK, but there's still the problem of how to use it to access the e-mails that are on the desktop computer.

Anyway, in the end we got the Family History programme onto the laptop, along with the file of his FamHist. And I managed to retrieve several weeks' worth of work on my own FamHist file from the Trash .....


(*one grey head, one brown.)

29 November: Snow

Another snow picture.

Our garden bench, in the sheltered corner. I knocked some snow off the shrubs and trees in the garden and topped up the bird feeders, while my Dear Husband dug the car out and cleared the front drive.

Our estate is always difficult when it's icy and snowy, so I waded up to the main road to see what conditions were like there. Just about passable, though there was an abandoned vehicle. The were buses getting along OK but cautiously.

Very few cars have even tried to go up our street, but there are plenty of people out, all cheerful in adversity. And a day off work, from the look of it.

Plenty more to come. How fortunate that we have a large supply of woolly hats, mittens and scarves.

24 November: Another marker

Have you had your first Christmas card yet? We have.

Any minute now the neighbours will be out with their stepladders, hanging up the outdoor Christmas lights.

All together now - Bah! Humbug!

22 November: Winter draws on

Just as the first lawn-mower indicates spring, so the first snow-plough indicates winter. There was a snow-plough going along the A167 near Croxdale this morning - be warned!

16 November: Botanic Garden

Happy Birthday, Dear Son!

A trip to the Botanic garden in Durham, in brilliant sunshine. An early lunch in the cafe - new sofas since our last visit - then a wander round. We passed a man with a camera on a tripod, photographing a hat and coat artfully arranged on a bench. He could have been anywhere.

I took a few snaps - white birches along the stream -


Underfoot, some seeds, shoots and leaves -


Lichens on a rope by the path -



Oh look ! There are some rare breed sheep grazing in the arboretum -



Manx Loghtans and Hebrideans. This Manx Loghtan ewe let me take a closer view -

15 November: Batts now skeins

Those deeper dyed batts are now skeins of yarn. This time the colour combinations were varied, so that half the skeins are the more obvious blends, and half are different mixes.


It might take some time to get round to knitting them, though, as I've just started on a shawl, and there's little time to knit anyway when you're playing with colours.

November 8: More yarn

The batts that were dyed recently are now yarn. They were carded together in pairs, spun and then the different coloured singles plyed together to produce interesting coloured yarn -


The resulting colours were not exactly as might have been predicted from the original batt colours; a demonstration of how much colours affect each other when put together! There's a skein of undyed yarn from the same fleeces, and yes, all of them are full of slubs and nepps, or "texture".

Anyway, that was so much fun that I've done another batch, slightly deeper colours this time -

They will sit for a while to be contemplated before a decision is made about colour combinations.

1 November: Apple Ginger

After drying out clothing and equipment from yesterday's Roving Mark and Novelty Clout shoot (aiming arrows at pumpkins about 150 yards away across a deer park), I spent the morning slaving over a hot stove trying to reduce the huge quantity of apples from our 2 little trees.

There was a recipe in a 1940s booklet of my mother's which looked interesting, so 3 lbs of apples have become 5 lbs of Apple Ginger.

Having plenty of ground ginger and none of the root ginger listed in the recipe, I substituted, guessing the amount. Well, even if there's too much for other people, I like ginger.

29 October: Dyed batts, and a close encounter?

First, Happy Birthday to OGS (Older GrandSon)!

Remember those carded batts piled up in my work-room? Well, some of them have been dyed -


The orange shades are particularly yummy. Each batt is quite small, about 30 gms, so I am now wondering whether to card several together to make a bigger skein of yarn; if so, which colours should I blend together; and then should I spin different coloured singles; and then how should I ply them together. So many options.

To change the subject completely, a couple of evenings ago, this vapour trail appeared over nearby houses -


Perhaps the pilot changed his mind about where he was going, or practicing the air equivalent of a handbrake turn, or perhaps the satnav was throwing a wobbler - or was it Visitors from Outer Space?

24 October: Carding - done?

So now there's no bits of fleece all over my workroom, but a huge pile of batts.

These batts are a blend of the 2 fleeces I started with, and the plan was to blend the batts together further with another pass through the carder (they've been through twice so far), then dye some or all of them. But the amount is rather more than expected.

And there's still another fleece to be dealt with ....

Perhaps the next step will be clearer after a cup of coffee.

22 October: TV knitting

That is, knitting which is simple and straightforward, and requires no thinking or working out the pattern while it's being done.

First are these simple mitts -


Handspun Shetland yarn, helical stripes, easy thumb shaping; they're a bit big for me, but a gorilla might like them.

Then there's that good old stand-by for simple knitting - a scarf -


Handspun merino/silk in Old Shale pattern, sometimes called Feather and Fan (I don't know if there's a difference). It worked out eventually about 6 inches wide and 57 inches long, but isn't as soft as I would have expected. Perhaps it's the garter rows.

The mitts weigh 42 gms and the scarf 100 gms - so not even a small dent in the stash.

And there wasn't much TV involved either, as few of the the programmes recently have appealed.

19 October: Carding

Had to stop for a moment - slight carding mishap, don't want to get blood on the fleece. Now there's a sticking plaster on my thumb, I can take a photo of the work in progress -

Three-legged stool at the back to sit on, drum carder on low stool, tray on table with current pieces of fleece and doffing needle, remains of fleeces on floor behind stool, and on jersey-drying trays at the front, carded batts in big paper bag, small bin for rubbish. The fleece on the floor is whiter and more Shetland, the one on the drying racks is more BFL and very light fawn/silver with brown patches. The aim is to blend them. The BFL one apparently liked rolling in sand, judging from the amount of it left after washing.

Must speak to Dear Husband about lack of coffee mug.

I'd like to dye some of these batts, but can't find any information about dyeing fleece before scouring and spinning. It must be possible, as I have spun some Estonian batts of varied colours that were still greasy.

The only thing to do is try it - when the carding's all done, of course.

17 October: Yarn problem

There's so much of it. The new wheel seemed a bit strange, with a tension device that works (the Little Gem had grown a bit slack), so it has taken a few days to get used to it. And 500 grams of black Shetland tops that happened to be in the stash. Now 500 grams of yarn.

Now there's still that black Shetland fleece, all carded and ready to be spun, in a bag. And since Tuesday's Wool Event at Lanehead, there are 3 more fleeces waiting in line.

2 have been washed; they are Shetland/BFL crosses, maybe white eventually, but one has a patch of brown in it. Perhaps they will be dyed. The third is a pale moorit Shetland, which hasn't even got washed yet - waiting its turn while the bathroom is still full of damp Shetland/BFL.

Meanwhile there are 6 plastic crates packed with yarn (and the odd bit of roving), still not yet worked up into anything. I'm knitting like mad, but there's years' worth of yarn to get through. In fact, I'm in a good situation if I can't afford to buy more yarn, thanks to our dear government.

And just a note to them - instead of messing about with Child Benefit (one of its purposes, if you remember, was to put some cash into the hands of mothers whose husbands hold tight to the purse-strings, and that problem can affect all income groups), and replacing it for the rich with some tax complication, why don't they just take more tax from the better-off? Or even get the money back they gave to the bankers.

9 October: New wheel

My new Suzie Pro arrived yesterday tea-time. I wasn't expecting quite so much assembly to be needed, but it didn't take long (and there were only a few screws left over!).

Here she is -

I spun a very small skein from Shetland tops as soon as everything was together. In comparison with my Little Gem, the new wheel is much smoother, and the draw-in is more sensitive - it'll take some getting used to.

And there just happens to be a whole Shetland fleece freshly drum-carded, waiting in a bag on the other side of my newly tidied and re-arranged work-room - or should I say play-room.

4 October: Kingfisher!

As we walked across the road bridge over the River Wear at Sunderland Bridge this morning, my Dear Husband and I watched a kingfisher repeatedly darting across the river and diving into the flow (deep, fast, and brown after all the rain at the weekend).

We were delighted - the first time he has ever seen a kingfisher alive and flying, and only the third time I've seen one. I saw one many years ago near the Uni playing fields in Durham, and one last summer at Low Barns, a Durham Wildlife Trust place.