A quiet week

I haven't got a deal to talk about today and no recent pictures, but I can't be doing with picture free posts, so I'm throwing in a couple from the archive.

I'm still knitting socks but for some reason seem to be finding them heavy going.

Omigosh, tired of socks, tired of life!

I'm using up the remainder of the Cherrytree Hill supersock that I knitted "Monkey" out of to do a pair of Dublin Bay socks. Now I have done this pattern before and I'm starting to think that I only have the attention span to knit one pair of each pattern of sock in my lifetime and I can't ever repeat them. Strange but apparently true. I will keep soldiering on but I haven't even finished the first sock and I'm already flagging.

I don't know if I mentioned that I decided to join the online Guild of Weavers Spinners and Dyers a couple of weeks back (on the grounds that I don't weave, seldom dye and haven't done any spinning since I bought the drum carder. Done plenty of carding though!). I've added their button to my sidebar and it takes you to their yahoo page. They're set up as a Yahoo group and they have some very interesting workshops as well as lively messageboard discussions and pictures of members work.

One of the useful pieces of information that I found on there was a pricelist for a company called Europa Wool; merchants and processors of wool, waste and synthetic fibres. They live in Slaithwaite up the Colne valley from Huddersfield, pretty much on my doorstep. I went to have a look round yesterday and although it's not fancy their prices are very reasonable. They've not been in the craft market very long being mainly a supplier to spinning mills. I emailed before going and was told that they prefer that rather than folk just turning up on spec. I was very good and didn't buy anything at all, just coming away with a price list and a shade card. A useful one for the future though and very convenient.

I did actually do some spinning last night after being inspired by an article by Lorraine Smith in Knittyspin about blending colour on hand carders. Now I know it sounds dull to be going back to the hand carders having bought the drum carder but the whole process was rendered more simple by the fact that I'd already carded the Cheviot that I used on the drum carder, making the subsequent blending more easy. This is a bit of an extension of what I was doing before, carding commercially dyed stuff with the fleece I'd prepared myself. Love that experimenting though.

I've just discovered that none of the links that I've put into this post are working, I think it's a problem with blogger as I had the same linking from some other peoples pages earlier this morning. I'll have another look at it later and see if it's working by then. Till then sorry.