Fibrefrog

An update on progress at the allotment

2011-02-22T07:22:00.000-08:00

Picture taken February 27th 2011

It has been a while since I posted to my blog, but here is some pictures taken at the end of October 2010

as you see Derek has been busy creating some raised beds and has put in a small pond and I have been busy digging, I have dug out all the couch grass and weeds, we've weed suppressed the paths and put some wood chippings down, now most of the beds are are covered over to suppress the weeds coming back (yet). I have planted some onion sets, garlic and a couple of gooseberry bushes.

We have an allotment

2010-09-20T14:55:00.001-07:00

We have in the last two weeks acquired a half plot on an allotment, it was a bit over run with weeds, but we're spending quite alot of time there and it's taking shape, I feel good progress is being made, the photo was taken on "day two" of digging. Derek is busy constructing new raised beds and I am busy digging the weeds out!

Gaywool Dyes

2010-08-17T11:49:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday was the SpinDyeWeavers meeting, I decided to dye some Falkland roving using some Gaywool dyes which I purchased at Wonderwool Wales back in April.

The results are pleasing enough, but strangely two tone, I think I should have used more dye powder in the solution.

Shropshire

2010-07-21T04:58:00.000-07:00

I have started to prepare my piece of Shropshire fleece, It's an 8th share(i think) in a fleece that Spindyeweavers fibre group bought to share. I have soaked it in cold water for a few days then washed it with some Unicorn power scour. I'm now in the process of carding it by hand, it seems quite a short fibre and has little nupps in it, it's difficult to tell which part of the sheep I have, I'll carry on regardless though, I seem to be discarding just as much as I have carded.
Well, I have a basket of rolags (150g) that are ready to spin, they look just like lambs tails, so lovely, I hope my spun yarn will look and feel just as nice.

European Tour!

2010-07-08T00:57:00.000-07:00

The View over
"No Mans Land"

Just back from a Road trip across Europe, set off for France via the euro tunnel, arrived to meet a 4 hour delay!, so we arrived in the Somme region of France a little later than expected.

We spent a day visiting "No Mans Land" and dozens of memorials and a couple of museums on the first world, very interesting and moving. On Sunday we hit the road again and made our way down and across to Germany, to Heidelberg arriving again late afternoon.

On the evening we Popped into the town in the evening to stretch legs get our bearings and get something to eat.
The next day we visited the Castle which seemed to be the High spot of the town, in the afternoon we took a boat trip down the river, it lasted about 1.1/2hrs very pleasant and interesting, had a bite to eat then back to the Hotel to watch the football along with the locals and other visitors.

Tuesday morning we hit the road again, this time driving down to Italy, to stay on the banks of Lake Maggiore, It had started to rain by now, so having planned to relax and sit in the sun, take a boat trip on the lake we were a little disappointed. On Wednesday as it was still raining, so we decided to drive to Milan, It poured all day, We visited the Cathedral and the Opera house and museum, very impressive. On Thursday we drove down and around part of Lake Maggiore onto a smaller lake, Lake Orta which we found was more tranquil and relaxing than Maggiore, we sat beside it and read our books for a while taking advantage of the break in the rain, On Friday the Sun blessed us, so we were off for our boat trip to the Islands on Lake Maggiore, we had a glorious day, very relaxing, both Islands were small and beautiful, the bigger of the two had a palace and gardens that you could go into, (for a fee) these gardens were terraced and quite tropical.

On Saturday we were on the road again to driving to Austria, "Bad Gastein" an Alpine village which is a ski resort in the winter months and a spa town with its thermal waters, it's about 930m above sea level, perched on the side of a hill, very pretty, it has a river/come waterfall right through the middle of it. Unfortunately the rain was still with us, and because of our height there was plenty of low cloud. On Sunday we drove to Salzburg, visiting the castle. Tuesday we drove and visited Zell am See, took a walk by the lake, then onto Kaprun, we went for a walk above Kaprun, tried to follow a little map from the tourist office, but it wasn't clear at one point so we took the wrong turn and ended up a little "off piste", we ended up coming down steep banks following the river into the valley, a little hairy in places but we managed to laugh about it.

Wednesday and Thursday the Sun shone all day, we made for the hills at "Sport Gastein" which is about 2000m above sea level, it was beautiful, there was cows with their cow bells everywhere, they randomly wear different size bells and as they move their heads to eat they ring out from all over. On the very tops it still had snow, which meant on our climb up we were walking in melting snow, seemed very strange with the sun shining as well.

On Friday we started our mammoth drive back, Friday we drove for about 7 hours and 600 odd miles, we stayed the night in Aachen which is on the Belgium/Germany border, this left us about 3 hours the next morning to Calais, then another 3 hours from Dover to Bristol. We were both a little tired but pleased to be back home.
All in all a very enjoyable holiday, I wasn't looking forward to driving on the Autobahns but it wasn't as bad as I had imagined, and I wouldn't think twice about doing it again, I was thankful for Derek's automatic car as I'm sure this made for a more relaxing drive than a manual car, a total of about 2300 miles!.

Natural Dyes - Pure Tinctoria

2010-05-17T13:14:00.000-07:00

What a lovely day on Saturday, I played with Fibre and yarn and chatted and laughed with friends for most of the day, truly relaxing.

I used some natural dyes that I had purchased at "Wonderwool wales, I mordanted the yarn at home with some COT, and pre-mixed the dyes to a strength of 5%, this meant I was well prepared for the day.

I used 2 skeins of sock yarn, 100% superwash merino, I reduced the dye strength to 2.5% ish, before painting the skeins.

It took the dye like a sponge, I painted them and set the colour in the steamer for 40mins, took the skeins home to cool down and rinsed later that evening, no colour rinsed out, it was great.

I think the colours are a lot brighter than I expected, maybe a will reduce the strength on superwash yarn? I think the hardness of the water can effect the colour too.

April Dyeing and spinning

2010-04-19T13:59:00.000-07:00

At the last SDW's meeting a fellow member Chris, did some spiral dyeing, I was so taken with this method and what she produced and spun that I thought to myself, I must give it a go, I do believe that mimicry is a sincere form of flattery.

So I decided to use a selection of blues, five to be precise, and dyed 150g of BFL.

I'm going with the name suggested by J, a friend from the SDW's group, "Volcanic Blue Sky" as J points out, the sky over the UK have been so clear and blue since the "No fly" decision, after the volcano eruption last week.

Here is the roving after dyeing but before rinsing.

And this is it after it had been rinsed and dried.

I can't wait to spin it up.

Spring into March

2010-04-12T05:34:00.000-07:00

The colours I used to dye my roving at the March meeting were very spring like, I named the painted roving polyanthus, although when I pre-drafted the roving I lost a lot of the bright yellow and the red looks more pink, hey ho.

The colours have merged whilst spinning, looking a little muddy, but I'll reserve judgement until I have finished spinning and have plied it.

Wow, it has come up lovely, I have now renamed it "Lovely Apples", because when I was pre-drafted it I dedcided to split the colours into 3 types, I wrapped them into little balls waiting to be spun, and they looked like a basket of rosey apples.
It's superwash Blue faced Leicester, I love spinning with BFL, it did spin up lovely, quite fine.

I decided to Navajo ply it to retain the colours, worked a treat.

Spun English 56's

2010-03-20T16:25:00.000-07:00

Here is my spun English 56's.
very pleased with it, navajo plied it to preserve some of the colours.

Gift from Chris - Thank you

2010-02-28T10:47:00.000-08:00

Further to dyeing the roving we went on to paint some Yarn that Chris had very kindly donated , it was Cashmere and silk 4 ply, we used the same primary colours as for the roving but I decided to go for the Burgundy and Gold that i mixed for the roving along with a caramel colour that Keith had mixed up, I was just using what had already been blended from around the table.

Love it!!

I have called it "On Fire"

27th February Spindyeweavers meeting

2010-02-28T10:26:00.000-08:00

I had a fantastic day Yesterday, for one is was my birthday and the other it was the monthly meeting of Spindyeweavers.

We had a "Monkey see Monkey do" Demo by Shani on how to use the three Primary colours and then by adding black and chestnut to them create secondary colours.

We all used the same prime colours then added/mixed them with the black or chestnut to create our own themes. My aim was for the colours of leaves from season to season, summer to autumn. I have to say that I was pleasantly pleased with the outcome, but would have preferred a little less brown.

Here is the painted roving 56's English Top superwash before setting the dye in the microwave.

and here is the finished roving.

booties

2008-10-22T04:56:00.000-07:00

My latest project has been babies booties, several different sizes, they have been fun as well as an education. I suppose they have been a bit of a cop out as i am putting off trying my first pair of socks.

Froggy

2008-09-16T01:54:00.000-07:00

My latest project is a knitted creature that i felted, i saw him as someone elses project on ravelry, and fell in love with the idea.

He knitted up very quickly and was finished in no time.

I have now started my 2nd and 3rd froggy making them slightly

different.

Pink baby bamboo cardigan

2008-08-12T04:18:00.000-07:00

Knitted for my grand daughter, she will be two in November, i knitted age 3-4 which is the next size up, so she will grow into this one.

It was an enjoyable knit, the yarn "Sirdar baby bamboo" was very soft, it split a little when knitted, but you just had to keep your eye on the stitches. I would knit this one again. I used 5 whole balls and a couple of meters of the 6th ball. so maybe a little hat will use that up.

My First Post

2008-07-16T05:29:00.000-07:00

Well, i've done it, i have finally set up my blog. I suppose it will take a while to get into the swing of it. It feels abit like talking to yourself at the moment. The inspiration to write this blog has come from other knitters blogs and the fact that i have found them a joy to read.

When i get some pictures of my knitting projects on the site, it will feel more familiar.

My current knitting project on the needles at the moment is a cardigan that i'm making for my grand daughter, it has a yarn forward holey pattern to it and is knitted in sirdar baby bamboo, iv'e chosen a very girly dusky pink, it's knitting up quite quickly, mind you it is only size 3-4 yrs, it has a really nice silky feel to it.