Author Archives: Heather

Saintes

Last night we went to Le Scorlion at St Jean d’Angelys (the spelling there may be a little wonky), and had a lovely meal.

Here is my starter of langue de boeuf (ox tongue):

And this is Avril’s salmon

For main course I had steak:

And pineapple cut incredibly thinly with a red fruit sorbet for pudding

I did discover that my camera has a food setting! But the pictures I took on that all seem very dark so I’m not sure I will bother with that again!

This morning we were knitting. Sandra finished her beret

Ruth has finished a lovely phone cover using strips knitted together, and a button bought during our trip to La Rochelle.

Joanne has also finished her beret, in a yummy shade of purple.

This afternoon we went to the Roman town of Saintes.

We visited a nice little knitting shop in the town centre.

And another one on the outskirts.

On the way home we stopped at the hypermarket and I have stocked up on chocolate (though I have eaten some already 🙂 ). We are now sitting outside (in my case in the shade) doing a little bit of knitting and admiring our purchases before dinner. This is the life 🙂 I shall also definitely miss being chauffeured around in an air-conditioned Jaguar when we go home!

Bavarian twisted stitches

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Today luckily started with less panic than yesterday. Yesterday my alarm clock didn’t go off, and I ran round like a headless chicken trying to get ready to go out. This morning the alarm clock seemed to have got over its tantrum, and I set the iPod alarm too just to be on the safe side.

The weather today has been beautiful, hot and sunny, but with a bit of a breeze. We have been back at base working hard (in amongst enjoying the sun). Today has been continuing with the patchwork knitting, and also starting some Bavarian twisted stitches. Here we are concentrating hard.

Some people have been making patchwork knitted slippers, some patchwork cushion covers, some have started a twisted stitch beret, and some have been experimenting with samples of different twisted stitches. Everyone has achieved a huge amount, I have been very impressed. Here is some of the knitting so far.

We are going out for dinner tonight so I had better prise myself out of my prime wi-fi-ing spot on the covered patio outside our cottage (it’s a hard life!) and put on my (moderately) posh togs.

La Rochelle

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Today we went to La Rochelle, our nearest large town,immortalised by the French books I learnt from at school. Luckily Fiona had a map:

So we all followed her to the yarn shop 🙂

We managed to find three yarn shops selling a variety of French and foreign yarns.

We also managed to fit in a bit of sight-seeing. It is an interesting old town, beautiful on such a lovely day. There were quite a lot of people around, some locals but quite a lot of tourists, particularly English. Here is the harbour:

And there were several interesting buildings. The lines on this aren’t timber but are actually slate tiles, which seems to be a local style.

Here we all are at the harbour side, looking very pleased with all our new purchases.

Speaking of purchases, I bought two balls of Bergere de France Sport, which is a DK weight washable wool and acrylic mix. I am planning a hat for my niece for her Christmas present (or possibly her birthday in September if I am fast enough!) I hope she will like the colour.

In the Phildar shop I bought four balls of Terre Neuve, which is a chunky wool, and will be a hat for me. I think the colour is fantastic!

The third knitting shop sold Pinguoin and Anny Blatt yarns but I didn’t buy anything there. I was saving my cash for a very nice creme brûlée ice cream, no photo I’m afraid, I ate it too quickly 🙂

La Roche Courbon and some more Patchwork knitting

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Yesterday afternoon we had an outing to La Roche Courbon, a local chateau.

The weather cooperated and stopped raining just as we arrived. The guided tour was very interesting but did make me realise how rusty and primitive my French is, I must look for a class to join again soon.

Today we have been doing some more patchwork knitting. Here are some of the samples everyone has been working on.

Before dinner Mummy and I went for a little walk up the road. This is the view back across the wheat field to Le Vieux Monastere. The three right hand windows on the ground floor before the corner are the workroom where we are having our workshops. My bedroom is the first window round the corner upstairs. It is pretty idyllic as you can see 🙂

Bienvenue en France

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We arrived yesterday in a slightly damp Charente-Maritime region of France for a week’s knitting on the French Treats holiday at Le Vieux Monastere. I am Fiona’s little helper for the week.

I am not sure which order the photos are going to come out (oh the technology!) but there will be (in some order) the view from the front of our cottage, the view from the back of our cottage, and some of our knitting workshop this morning. This morning we started with patchwork knitting, which we shall continue tomorrow. This afternoon we are going for a visit to a local chateau. Hopefully the rain will let up a bit!

Mini moebius waistcoat

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At the end of April Tricia Holman (Elizabeth Zimmermann’s niece) came to the Ash knitting group to do a workshop on Elizabeth’s moebius waistcoat.

Here is Tricia (on the right) wearing her waistcoat, and with some of her other yarns and patterns.

During the day we knitted (or at least started knitting) our own little mini waistcoats.

I used 4mm needles, and some Manx Loaghtan handspun I had left over from my Handspun Leaves Waistcoat, and some red merino handspun for the edging, again another left over from my waistcoat.

It was good fun, and I am keen to make a full sized one at some point, although I think I may need to fiddle with the pattern a bit to get it to fit me. I am not very pleased with the way my icord edging came out. You can see the background colour through it, so I think I need to experiment with other ways of doing the join. Usually I do my icord from the inside, but this pattern with only one surface doesn’t have an inside and outside so both sides of the edging need to look good.

Colour blending in Stourbridge

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Back in the middle of April I took myself off up to Stourbridge for some woolly fun organised by wrigglefingers (aka Jill). There were a small but select bunch of us, and we all brought what we were working on at the moment, or things we were keen to learn more about. I bent Jill’s ear about drum carding for colour blending, and she was kind enough to let me use her carders and lots of her lovely coloured fibre for two days, and give me lots of helpful info in the use thereof.

As you can see Jill has a fair bit of fibre:

I had a fabulous time playing with it all, and was definitely getting better by the end of the second day, fewer lumps and feeding the fibre in more smoothly. I made 8 little skeins – they are each only abot 10 – 15g.

They are mostly merino, but a couple have silk in, and a couple trilobal nylon sparkle. My favourite is the green 3rd from the right. This is an optical illusion (which I dreamt up at 6am on the second day of the workshop!) and actually contains no green fibre, only yellow and cyan.

I loved it so much that I have ordered a drum carder as a birthday present to myself and am eagerly awaiting its arrival.

The mini skeins are all around 4ply weight, and I am planning on using them as the contrast colour in mittens.

Cathedral Socks

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Back to a spot more catching up 🙂

In the blog silence I have been doing a bit of knitting as well as being busy generally.

I fnished these socks back at the beginning of April and am now finally sorting out photographs of them.

The yarn is some 70% merino, 30% silk blend from Wingham Wool Works, that I handspun, I think it was last year. The pattern is Cathedral socks from Knitty a few years ago. I used 2.25mm needles and about 92g, 350m ish of my yarn which meant I have plenty left over 🙂

I tinkered with the pattern a little bit, removing some of the internal ribs on the leg pattern:

And I fiddled with the toe pattern to make the cables flow into the stocking stitch:

I love the way the cables continue down the back of the heel:

They fit really well too:

Please excuse the slightly odd photo. This was taken by me standing on the windowsill of a B&B in mid-Wales while we were on holiday. The other half thought my antics were hilarious.

A really nicely thought out pattern which was fun to knit.

Some more alpaca merino

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Those of you with long memories may remember that a couple of years ago I bought some lovely 70% alpaca, 30% merino fibre in colour Cappuccino from John Arbon on one of our jaunts to Devon, and spun it up to about a DK weight during last year’s Tour de Fleece. I had intended to knit the Sleeves in Your Pi cardigan / shawl, but when I finished the spinning I realised I was woefully short in the metreage needed. So last November on our latest Devon jaunt I bought some more fibre when we dropped into John and Juliet’s shop and I have finally finished spinning it.

It has come out a bit different to the first lot. I think the second batch of fibre included a darker brown and also the fibres were not as blended together as the first lot. My plan is to use the second batch for the edging of the cardi and hopefully make the most of these differences, as the two yarns are close enough to tone together but different enough to add interest. I have 920m and 531g of the second batch, so I think that should be plenty for pattern. It is a 2ply construction, approximately DK weight, and I used the 10:1 ratio on my Majacraft Suzie Pro.

I am looking forward to casting on!

Wingham sample day

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Back on the 11th of March I went along to a Wingham Woolwork sampling day near Didcot being organised by the Kennet Valley Guild of Spinners, Weavers, and Dyers. The idea is that you bring your spinning wheel and your lunch, pay £6 entrance fee and then can try out as many of their fibres as you would like during the day. It was great fun!

I find it quite hard to know how the colours are going to change from the fibre, to the yarn, to the knitted piece, so my plan for the day was to spin a little chunk of a variety of their blends of merino, and merino and silk and see how the colours blended together.

Here is the finished tube, with a little bit of the fibre next to the knitted fabric it became:

Some of them were fairly predictable, but others were surprising. The more different colours in a blend the more difficult I found it to predict how it would come out. A very useful exercise, and I am very keen now to have a go with blending more colours myself rather than just buying pre-selected blends. I do love colour!

Of course no day of this kind would be complete without a bit of stash enhancement. I bought two bags of Rainbow Merino fibre, this one is actually two shades of navy although they are quite close together:

And this one is a bit less subtle 🙂

And some Rainbow Merino Silk too:

I bought a bit over 100g of each, the measurement is a bit vague because I was weighing it rather than them. It should hopefully be enough for a pair of socks in each colour. I am looking forward to seeing whether I can make socks that are soft but also will wear reasonably well.