Author Archives: Heather

Unravelling

On the 21st of February Farnham Maltings held their first Unravel, festival of knitting, handspun yarns, talks, workshops and more! It is lovely to have a yarny event so close to home! Since this is the first time they have held this event it was on a fairly small scale, but was such a success that they are going to run it for 2 days next year (next year I think it is going to be the last weekend in February).

The Ash knitting group I go to, and the West Surrey Guild of Spinners, Weavers, and Dyers (which I am also a member of) had a display area and were showing people different knitting, crochet and spinning techniques. I brought along my Trees shawl, Supercook socks, and concertina socks for the display and helped out in the demo area showing people how to work a sock on one long circular needle.

Here is our display with demo area in front.

It was a really fun day. A great chance to meet a lot of other yarny people who are actually local to me! I had a fabulous time and am looking forward to it being even bigger and better next year.

Devon Fine Fibres

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Here is a start to filling in the gaps over the last month! Last month I went to the Yarn Tasting event at Stash Yarns in Putney, to sample the yarns from Devon Fine Fibres. This is a great idea since it lets you have a go with yarns from small producers who you otherwise wouldn’t come across. There is even wine and crisps!

Our little goodie bag contained samples of 4ply weight cashmere, DK weight cashmere, and DK weight Bowmont wool. Enough of each to knit up a sample trying a few different ideas.

I think my top favourite was the 4ply cashmere. Gorgeously soft, and lovely to knit with. It worked well for lace, but was equally beautiful in moss stitch. It reminded me how much I like moss stitch, and that I really should use it more.

Next I tried the DK cashmere. Again it was a pleasure to knit with. Not quite as incredibly soft as the 4ply, but definitely a lovely yarn. As you can see I am quite keen on the moss stitch 🙂

Then lastly I sampled the DK bowmont. As expected the character of this yarn was quite different, since it comes from a different type of animal. A much bouncier yarn, with an almost felted look to it. I went with simple garter stitch with I-cord edging.

I really appreciated the opportunity to try these new-to-me yarns. They were certainly selling well too! I didn’t buy any on the day apart from my samples, since they were all in rather subdued colours. I will definitely bear them in mind for a future dyeing project though.

Yarn separation anxiety

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Well, there have been quite a lot of goings-on here lately. The latest of which is having our (rather ancient) boiler replaced. To add to the excitement they don’t make the kind we had before (a back boiler behind the gas fire in the lounge) so the new one (which should be loads more efficient) is going into the utility room, but it does mean having new pipework to connect it to everything else. Hence, due to concrete floors downstairs, and therefore having to put the pipes through the ceiling, the floorboards have had to come up in both our spare bedrooms, although luckily not all the boards, just about half of each room.

Up until last week both of the spare rooms were fairly full of yarn (and other assorted bits and pieces), which has now all gone for a nice holiday to a storage unit a few miles away. It is rather distressing not to be surrounded by all my stash, although I did make up for it by having a load of undyed yarn from Bluefaced arrive on Tuesday, which is now sitting in its box in the middle of the lounge 🙂

Luckily we have 24hr access to the storage unit, so if it all becomes too awful I can run down there and stroke it all. I am going to take the opportunity to have a bit of a sort out when it all comes back again too (it went there in rather a rush so I didn’t get much sorted on the way out). I have managed to give away 8 cones of chenille to people at the Reading knitting group on Saturday, so I am making a start!

We are currently on our third day of no heating, and second day with no hot water. The kettle is getting a good workout! It has been a bit cold over night, but I am wearing my warmest knitted jumper and it is ok. I am missing the hot water a lot more. It took me 20 mins this morning to boil enough kettles and saucepans to have a not-terribly-warm bath about 4 inches deep, and then another couple of kettles to wash my hair in the washbasin. I have learnt from when we had our bathroom replaced that it is more comfortable to wash your hair in the bathroom washbasin than the kitchen sink, since it is a better height, and you don’t run the risk of bashing your head on the kitchen cupboards 🙂 Hopefully all being well it should be finished later today.

While it all goes on I have been doing a bit of City and Guilds sample homework (although with frequent breaks because the latest couple of samples have been hurting my hands) and sorting out some of my photos. So hopefully more blog posts with actual photos soon!

Time

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Dear World,

The number of hours in the day appears to be inadequate, please adjust the rotation of the Earth accordingly.

Love Heather

PS. I have tried using the hours usually reserved for sleeping to get things done, but the results weren’t pretty.

Thinking

More cuteness

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I actually finished these over Christmas but have been very slow at taking photographs.

When I finished the knitting part of the Baby Surprise Jacket (I still need to find some buttons, so it doesn’t count as properly finished yet), I had nearly a whole ball of yarn left and thought it would be rather nice to have matching booties.

The pattern is Multicoloured Sockies by Maude Smith from Socks Socks Socks: 70 Winning Patterns from Knitters Magazine, but I tinkered with the pattern a little. My yarn was thinner than that specified in the pattern so after a trial run which ended up as a Christmas tree ornament, I decided to cast on 12 sts and work 22 garter ridges for the sole, using 2.5mm needles.

I also didn’t work the holes for the drawstring, and decided to go straight into 2×2 rib for the leg. Hopefully this will make a good practical cross between a shoe and a sock, which will be easy to get on. They are so cute!

Snowiness

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Like the rest of the UK we have had unaccustomed snowiness over the last few days. It started on Sunday night:

and by Monday looked like this:

This is definitely the most snow we have seen here since we moved in. Paul’s work had emailed and told everyone to work from home unless it was critical that they made it into the office so we put on our warm clothes and stayed indoors. At lunch time we went for a walk around the village to assess the situation.

The station was closed:

But there was some surprisingly industrious snow enginnering going on. Unfortunately I failed to photograph the large igloo in progress on the village green, but did photograph the snowman on the common (for reference Paul is about 6 feet tall – that is one tall snowman! Click the picture for the full effect).

It was very beautiful but a bit cold, so after a circuit of part of the common we came home and dried off and had hot chocolate 🙂

The snow is definitely on its way out now although I am surprised by how well it has lasted.

And now to justify the knitting blog part – well not actually knitting, but ingredients for knitting at least. I mentioned that I had been doing some more dyeing while my parents were visiting. Here are my latest efforts. They are for some more experimenting for my next City and Guilds project, which is coming along, although slowly.

I am very pleased with the oranges, they have come out pretty much as I planned. The green was a bit of an experiment. This is the first time I have had a go with Kemtex acid dyes, and this is their green. It is quite a bit bluer than I was expecting, and too blue for this project, though it is a lovely colour. I have also been playing with the acidity again (me, obsessive, heaven forbid!), and I made the solution for the green a little more acid than my last experiments. One of the reasons for this was the discovery that if you make up dye solutions and then leave them for 3 months, the less acidic ones go a bit mouldy (although they do still dye the yarn fine). However since the acid fixes the dye to the yarn, and the stronger the acid the faster the fixing (this means that the colours don’t run as far), in this case the colour has hardly had a chance to get onto the yarn before it is being fixed to it, resulting in the inside of the yarn if you unply it being considerably paler than the outside. It is an interesting effect, and makes the yarn look slightly heathered which is pretty, but I think I will reduce the acid next time and aim for a more solid colour.

Happy extra Christmas

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My parents have been visiting for a week and we have had a very nice and rather busy time. Amongst other things we celebrated Christmas again, complete with roast chicken, stuffing, etc, crackers and party hats 🙂 We have done this several times now, spending Christmas itself with Paul’s parents, and then having mine to stay at the end of January. More Christmases can only be a good thing, any excuse for lots of eating and some board games 🙂 Also everything seems so frantic in December. It is rather nice to have something to look forward to at the end of January and by then you can face the idea of turkey again (although admittedly this time Tesco’s turkeys looked a little tired so we opted for chicken). As always with having people to stay there is a great temptation to cram in as many exciting things as possible. We had a lovely time but are now rather exhausted! I have just about got caught up with the washing and cleaning, and am making inroads into my email inbox. My parents have gone home equipped with possible holiday travel options to work on, information on restoring some of their furniture, and in my Mum’s case some newly dyed wool for a capelet – we managed to wedge a lot into a week!

In completely unrelated news I have reached the dizzying heights of You Tube, though not in a knitting related fashion. The dance class I go to is run by the University of Surrey, and each December they put on a show where each of the classes does a piece. I am on the far right, luckily the camera angle means that you can’t see me most of the time 🙂

Some more thoughts on dyeing

Snow!

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We woke up this morning to a light dusting of snow!

It is definitely starting to melt now, but was exciting while it lasted. Sadly I wasn’t quick enough to dash out and make a quick snowman – not sure there was enough snow for it either, and I may possibly have frozen to death attempting to do it in my pyjamas.

All in all I have decided it is safer (and definitely warmer) to be inside today. I am going to catch up on some work, and hopefully also have time to do a bit of knitting. I am still fiddling around with possible colour combinations for my next City and Guilds project. Here is my sample so far:

On the black and while photograph it is easier to see which pairs of colours don’t contrast enough to really show up a pattern. Although I love the reds and greens together, and the dark reds with brown I think they are perhaps a little too subtle (you can stop laughing now about the idea of me being too subtle). More playing to go I think. I want to try out all the colours against the dark red next, and then all the colours against the lime green. Then I think I will try putting the darkest colours in one pile and the palest in another and trying them out against each other. After that I will have another assess of the situation and see whether I think any of the combinations have potential, and whether there are any obvious colour gaps. Then possibly a bit more dyeing, or time to try knitting some actual patterns. I think this should keep me busy for a bit 🙂