Clevedon Pier

Spurn Point

Endpaper Mitts

Yesterday I finished my Endpaper Mitts (by Eunny Jang). As I said in an earlier post I wanted to learn to knit Fair Isle carrying one colour in each hand and I seem to have cracked it.

 

Once I got into the rhythm of it it's not that difficult so I'll probably be doing some more Fair Isle in the not too distant future. It also has the added advantage, like knotting socks, of astonishing non knitters. 

Which is nice.

The Power Of Introverts

My colleague Emma is currently reading a book called "Quiet: the power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking" by Susan Cain and she recommended that I read it too (on the grounds that, like her, I am an introvert too).

She's promised to lend me the book when she's finished reading it but in the meantime here's the presentation Ms Cain made to the TED conference.



TED is a nonprofit organisation devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design.

Meet the Family

At the moment I have five wheels as I sold my Haldane Orkney to a fellow Raveller last year.

We said our farewells at FibreEast. The Orkney was the second wheel I bought. When I originally started looking at spinning wheels on Ebay many moons ago, I saw a castle wheel that I loved the look of but I didn't win it.
 
The first one that I did win in the end was an Ashford Elizabeth.  I took my sister who was already a spinner with me to Leamington Spa to pick the wheel up; she pronounced it okay and I brought it home.

The Elizabeth is pretty much the wheel I learned to spin on and I took her to Wingham Woolwork for one of Ruth Gough's two day spinning courses (a very worthwhile £50) and various other places. She's quite a lot of wheel to shift though and I still had a hankering for a Castle Wheel, hence the Orkney which I picked up from Ebay and collected from near Holmfirth  which is just up the road from where I live.  I bought a second hand jumbo flyer for the Elizabeth and now I use it as my wheel for spinning art yarns.

So I now had two spinning wheels but over a period of time I began to hanker for a Timbertops. I'd read about them on the internet and my sister had been looking for one for a while. In the end someone who followed my blog contacted me; she had a Leicester for sale, was I interested? Well of course I was interested so a couple of trips to Derbyshire (one to try, one to buy) later and I was the proud owned of my Timbertops Leicester.

 

Now  I love my Leicester which is one of the nicest wheels I've spun on so I thought my wheel buying was over, but when someone on Ravelry was selling a Louet Hatbox I thought I'd have it simply as a novelty because they look so cute. It took some getting from South Wales to Huddersfield but she had a friend who was coming to a conference in Sheffield and he dropped it off at my place of work. So then there were four.

 I have to admit that though the Hatbox is a cute little thing I don't use it. I find that  the direct drive means it's too low geared for anything except softly spun bulky yarns and the bobbins are too small for much of those. I also find that the orifice is so low that my right knee gets in the way of the yarn between my hands and the wheel. So the poor hatbox sits in a corner waiting for someone who will love it to come along.

My next purchase was a Timbertops Mowbray which someone advertised through the Bradford Guild newsletter. It'd been unused for some time since his wife had died of cancer. He'd not known where best to find someone who would be interested in the wheel but luckily he contacted the Guild.  I decided that the wheel was too good a thing to pass up so I rang him and picked the wheel up from him in the car park at Sainsbury's at Aspley in Huddersfield.  Like the Leicester the Mowbray is a lovely wheel to spin on and it's the wheel I take to fibre festivals with the Longdraw Guild as it's sturdy enough to put up with beginners but it's reliable too.

 As I said at the start I passed my Orkney on to another spinner so I was once again without a castle wheel. This changed when I saw a Timbertops Lonsdale for sale on ebay.  Thinking I'd put in a bid but not really expecting to be successful; much to my surprise I won it. I had to drive down to East Sussex to pick it up and it needed a bit of TLC as it hadn't been used for a while but I soon had it cleaned up and spinning nicely.  

So that's the family. Some of them will move on and some will stay; there may be a few new additions. I was tempted by a Columbine not long ago but didn't succumb and a walking wheel would be jolly nice. I've a couple of spindles and I've even attempted spinning off the tip of a bobbin winder.

There're lots of spinning adventures out there to look forward to.

Saturday 20th April 18:56
A quick edit to tell you that I've just waved goodbye to the Lonsdale.  Someone on Ravelry had said she'd always wanted one and I offered to sell as I hadn't really got the hang of the tensioning system, which is a bit finicky. If it'd been my only wheel I'd probably have persevered with it, but when you have a couple of wheels that are as easy to get on with as the others you just don't get round to it.  I know it's going to someone who will love and appreciate it so I'm quite happy. (Just a shame the Columbine's been sold).

Fair Isle

Today I've been learning to knit Fair Isle holding one colour in each hand and weaving the floats in as I go along.

Someone on Ravelry posted a link to the Philosophers wool tutorial on the two handed stranding technique.  

In order to do this properly you have to be able to knit one strand "Continental" and the other "English". It's a bit of a learning curve but I think I'm getting there, slowly.

I think I need to find something a little more inspiring than this sampler to get my teeth into though.  I don't particularly care for the colours and it's be nice to have something to show for it at the end.

I really like Jill McGee's "My favourite Things" Infinity Scarf but not sure I'm quite ready for that yet so maybe just a little purse or something first.

Cold but beautiful

I was reading The View From The Hill where Hilltop Katie had posted some pictures of icicles in a frozen waterfall. This reminded me of some more of the pictures I took whilst on holiday the other week.

 As we drove from Exmouth down to Lostwithiel we noticed something hanging from the hedges at the side of the road which turned out to be icicles. 

As we had the heater on we hadn't even noticed it was cold enough for icicles; there was no snow and apparently it hadn't rained either. I had to stop the car and take a picture it looked so beautiful.

Further on, whilst driving over Dartmoor we stopped again to admire the line of frost edging a distant plantation and the frosted tips of the moorland grass when I noticed the tiny flags of ice clinging to the tips of the blades of grass.

It must have been so cold that the moisture in the air had frozen onto the grass and the prevailing wind had formed it into these tiny tags.

Steaming

I really want to start blogging again but alas I feel I have too much to catch up with or nothing to say. That being the case I'm going to start off with little snippets of very little and see if it comes together. 

Bear with me.

Ro and I went down to Devon a couple of weeks ago; we went to watch the Tigers play Exeter but as it's such a way to go we decided to make a week of it.   On the Saturday before the game we went to The Anchor Inn at Cockwood on the southwest side of the  Exe estuary for lunch. The pub specialises in seafood and I had Gurnard which came with it's head on had a face only a mother could love; it was very tasty though and I managed to remove the bones rather skillfully (I thought).  Ro had the salmon I believe (memory not what it was I'm afraid).

After lunch we took a stroll along the road and were lucky enough to be there as a rather lovely train steamed past.