I finished my Tour de Fleece spinning at 5am this morning!

I'm shattered and I've totally overdone it because I hurt now, but I really enjoyed doing it!

Here is everything I spun!



Top left: 70% Alpaca/30% Merino, 500g, 37WPI, 2468.432 meters or 2699.166 yards.
Top right: I added about 30g of Shetland to my Trindle
Bottom left: I purchased and learned how to use a Russian support Spindle, I spun about 15g of merino.
Bottom Right: Cheviot, 200g, 54WPI, 1992.757 meters or 2179.30556 yards!

As you can see, I've recently purchased a support spindle due to the back problems I told you about before.

It's lovely and today, my Spindolyn arrived too! I really want to practise on them both, but I haven't knit a stitch in 3 weeks and I'm desperate to get on with my shawl!

Back problems strike again

As you already know, if you read my blog, I have a bad back. I am basically in pain 24 hours a day, it never doesn't hurt and if I overdo things (stand too long, walk too far, carry things, etc) the pain increases.

Due to this, I often walk with a stick - but not all the time; only when the pain is worse than my norm before I go out (I should really use it more, but as anyone who has to use a stick will say 'I hate that f**king stick!)!

A couple of days ago, I discovered that Isis will walk quite happily if I hook her leash to my belt. 'Great!' I thought 'This means I can knit or spindle while walking (if I'm not using my stick, that is)!'

So, I tried it today! I walked from my house to Mel's house.

Co-incidentally, one of the Tour de Fleece challenges is to spin a mile - that can be a mile long piece of yarn, or you can spin while walking a mile.

It is one mile from my house to Mel's house!

So I did it. It took me ages to get there! I couldn't walk too fast or I'd kick the spindle and holding my hands in front of me really caused my back to ache!

I do enjoy spindling, but I can't spindle while sitting down (makes my arms ache holding them up like that!) and I obviously can't stand too long and do it and now I know I can't walk and spindle.

I can't sit 'properly' on a chair for very long. I think the whole being upright with my spine straight must put pressure on somewhere because it hurts in exactly the same way as standing does. Anyone who knows me well, knows I fidget a lot!

When at home, I sit with my feet tucked up beside me. I know this means I am sitting twisted, but it really is the most comfortable position for me!

After watching this video by Lisa, I realised that I would be able to use a supported spindle in any position! So I sent her an e-mail and ordered one!

I'm quite excited to learn something new and I'm hoping my new spindle will arrive in the post tomorrow. I don't know what wood she's used, I told her I liked walnut and Mexican Bocote but couldn't decide which I liked more so I told her to surprise me!

The weird thing is that I can sit at my wheel for hours though - maybe the treadling shifts things enough that I don't get quite so sore?

ETA: I've just ordered a Spindolyn too!

Exhaustion at the End of Week 2!

I am absolutely shattered! I haven't knit a stitch since this tour started and I'm really missing it.

But, I have finished my first Tour de Fleece challenge!

I have spun approximately 500g of 70% alpaca/30% merino into 2 ply laceweight!

I haven't measured the 3rd skein yet (it's just having a soak), but once it's dry I'll come back here and let you know the final yardage!

While I am sick of spinning the same colour for two solid weeks, I am also incredibly proud of this gorgeous, soft, fluffy yarn that I created!

Now, I just want something bright and garish to spin for a change LOL


OK, I'm back! I've measured the third skein and it's a biggun! Skein 1 was 781.812 metres/855 yards, skein 2 was 772.16 metres/844.44 yards and skein 3 was a mahoosive 914.146 metres/999.722 yards - that makes my total length: 2468.432 meters or 2699.166 yards!!!

Look what I got!

My first TdF Skein

This year I am participating in the Tour de Fleece. I decided to spin up the 500g of alpaca/merino tops I purchased at iKnit last year.

The fibre is gorgeous - well it would be at 70% alpaca and 30% merino, wouldn't it and naturally, it wanted to be laceweight.

I started spinning on Saturday, but only managed to do five or six hours over the entire weekend as I went out clubbing with Kaz and got very drunk on Saturday night LOL.

Anyway, I kept spinning and spinning and by last night; I had finished two bobbins worth. So today I got to plying.

My god, it went on forever! It took me all day to ply (minus eating, taking a break, playing with my new iPhone 4 {birthday gift from Kyle!} and taking Mum to B&Q).

Finally at 1am, I finished. So I wound it off onto the skeiner and I got 855 yards/781.812 metres, and 37WPI over 168 grams!



I am so proud of it and it's gorgeous. I reckon when I've finished the whole lot, I'm going to have over 2500 yards!

The winner is.....

liveotherwise!

You can choose absolutely anything you like from the shop, or if you don't see something, let me know and I'll do you a custom dye job!

Congratulations!

So, let's see how many people really read my blog LOL

Today - 3rd July - is my bloggaversary. This year it's been two years since I first started blogging.

So much has happened since then!

My knitting has really taken off, I've learned to spin, I've learned to dye, I'm trying to get my business off the ground.

Today I came to the realisation that fleece prep is just beyond me! It makes my back hurt far too much! Now I'm going to have to decide whether to slowly prep what I've got here, or sell it on!

So, to celebrate my bloggaversary and to cheer myself up; I'm doing a giveaway!

Go and have a look at my shop - see anything you really like? Do you have any suggestions? Any requests? Any comment to make at all as long as it's something better than 'pick me pick me!' (which is all I can ever think to comment on giveaways LOL). Post your comment here and after 24 hours, I will chuck all the names into a hat (unless I can find and figure out a random number generator) and pull one at random.

The winner will get to choose one item from my shop absolutely free! No obligations, I will not follow you around the internet moaning that you took advantage but then didn't buy anything more, it will be absolutely 100%, no obligation free!

Go for it!

A competition

I've just heard about this competition over at Creative Crafting magazine. Creative Crafting is an excellent idea, it's an online magazine by crafters for crafters.

Anyway, the competition is the chance to win a free quarter page advertising slot!

I'd love to win, but don't know how I'd fill quarter of a page LOL.

Go check the competition out here

Hmmmm, I've been quite quiet lately, I haven't posted since the 12th.

OK, so since then I have celebrated my 35th birthday, remembered my dad who died 3 years ago on the same day - it was doubly hard this year as my birthday was also father's day.

I also did a lot of discount in my shop that day and much to my disappointment I only sold one braid of fibre - shame, I've recently started stocking merino/bamboo fibre and SW merino yarn - both are really fluffy and soft!

I've had an ongoing battle with my squeaky wheel - the squeak was awful and I just couldn't get rid of it. Majacraft were adamant it was the treadle hinges, I was just as adamant that it wasn't. Sometimes the creak would completely disappear, but within minutes it would be back. It got louder and louder and the creaks were longer and longer.

In the end - just to shut them up - I followed Majacraft's advice and disassembled my wheel. I took off the foot plate - no difference. Then I removed the crank assembly from the drive wheel - no difference. I put talc on the green sponge things that attach the rods to the treadle - no difference. I took the treadle hinges off, cleaned them and put them back on - no difference. The noise was definitely coming from somewhere around the crank assembly!

I removed the nut that holds the drive wheel in place (I've had trouble keeping that sucker on too - it has a bad habit of coming undone while I'm spinning!) - it still squeaked, I removed the crank assembly (again!) - I turned the wheel by hand and it still squeaked, I took my little felted bag off the knob on the front and removed the wooden knob on the front - the squeak stopped!

I triple checked and then got Alex to listen, there was definitely no squeak. I put the wooden knob back on, rehung the bag, put the nut back on, reattached crank assembly and still no squeak.

Yay me, I thought then decided to spin some of the corriedale fleece I've been carding lately. It spun absolutely fine then the drive band popped off. I got up to check and - sure enough - the nut was undoing itself and the wheel was coming apart as I was spinning. I tightened the nut up and started spinning again and the squeak was back!

I've loosened the nut very slightly, I shall have to test it to find that spot where the nut doesn't undo but the wheel doesn't squeak when in use!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Late last night - well, 2am this morning actually, I went on one of my mad cleaning binges and blitzed the kitchen because the mess was doing my head in again. It was spotless when I went to bed and I was very pleased with myself. This morning, I got up, dyed some yarn for Kerry and decided to have a shower while that was cooking.

Naturally the shower was clogged - it's always clogged! I went at it with a plunger, cleared it as much as possible then had a shower myself.

I came back downstairs to get dressed and get on with the day. I was sitting here in my chair listening to the drain outside and moaning to Alex about the amount of time it takes the shower to drain (personally I think there may be a kink in the waste pipe, but the plumber disagrees!).

I went out to turn the steamer off to find a flood in my kitchen! There was water literally pouring through the kitchen ceiling, it was all over the floor and the breakfast bar. I ran straight back upstairs thinking that my enthusiasm with the plunger had somehow caused the waste water pipe to disconnect, but the shower was empty. There was also the sound of running water coming from behind the shower!

I panicked, I've never had to deal with anything like this before! I ran next door and woke mum up (she works nights) and we ran round the house trying to find out which stopcock would shut off the torrent. In the end I went outside to turn the supply to the entire house.

I couldn't turn the tap and ran to the pub to drag a man back to do it for me in the end LOL.

We had called Graham, but he wasn't around although we were assured he would be told immediately on his return home.

I surveyed the damage; my lovely clean tidy kitchen was absolutely swimming and I had no dry towels! I had washed some the night before and had another load in the machine, we found what little we had, raided mum's house too and mopped up as best we could.

I suppose it's really a good job I blitzed it last night - imagine how bad it would've been if there'd been stuff all over the breakfast bar like there normally is!

* * * * * * * * * *

Alex and I walked the dogs tonight and we saw these strange lights in the sky, there was no discernable sound of a motor and they were really shifting. Unfortunately, I only had my iPhone but I did try to record them!

What do you think? Are we being invaded?

A First FO with Fluffosity Yarn!

My friend, Rita, has bought yarn from my shop and has made a gorgeous little shawlette with it and I just had to show you all!


It's modelled by her beautiful daughter, Charlotte, who refused to give me a shot of her pretty face too! Shame, it looks lovely on her!

Creaking

My beloved Rose has developed a creak!

It's awful and sounds like a door in a really dreadful horror movie!

At first I thought it was the hinge (which is a recurring problem), but the problem didn't go away after I oiled it.

After some investigation; we discovered that the squeak is coming from the bearing in the crank assembly.

One of the ladies on the Majacraft forum on Ravelry - fleece4me - and her husband have both listened to the video below and they think there's a problem with the bearing.

So I've had to e-mail Majacraft and I daren't use the wheel until I've heard back from them!

Advertising on Ravelry

Last month, I applied for an advertising spot on Ravelry.

My ad went live today! Look!

Not sure what to look for, let me help you!

Things I have learned...

...when preparing fleece.

I have managed to acquire quite a bit of fleece over the past six months. First I bought some Corriedale and some Merino from James, then at Wonderwool; I bought Ryeland, BFL, BFL X Corrie, Alpaca and so on.

I decided this week to start cleaning the merino fleece - anyone who has worked with merino knows that it is incredibly greasy.

I did a lot of research and asked a lot of questions. Unfortunately, I got a lot of vagueish answers. Such as 'put a bit of fleece in a laundry mesh bag' - erm ok, but how much is a 'bit' and what size laundry bag??

Eventually I decided I would just have to jump in with both feet and have a go!

Well of course, I stuffed far too much into the bags and then didn't use enough hot water and so on and so on.

So, I got some of the small laundry bags - they're about the size of a standard laptop - I separated the fleece into locks and arranged the locks in a row along the bottom of the bag, with the tips all facing the bottom of the bag. I then folded the bag over (with merino locks; you can fold it twice!) and secured either end with a pin.

You should now have a long thin mesh package. I filled up an orange B&Q bucket (12 litre bucket, I probably filled to 10 litres) with water from the hot tap and a kettle's worth of boiled water, then I added a squirt of Fairy liquid.

I gently placed the packages on top of the water and pressed them down ever so gently. I put 4 packages in one bucket. I left them in there to soak for about 20 minutes. Then I filled another bucket - again with the hot water and water from the kettle (no Fairy) and moved the packages into that bucket for a 20 minute rinse.

Do that twice!

Then I took them outside to dry.

They are still a little greasy, but I can live with that and once I've spun the yarn; I can gently boil them to get out any remaining grease.

They look gorgeous now I've carded them though!

I want to thank James, Jan and Sue - especially Jan (who spent an entire day answering daft questions via PM) for all their advice.

In between washing and combing/carding merino, I've been putting the Corriedale fleece through the drum carder. I've quite a few lovely floofy batts and the batts are getting better and better in quality.

I'm separating the locks, then I align them up in a row and just drum card them, but again I have learned not to do too much. A smaller amount cards a lot better than a large amount: it really opens the locks up and makes a much better batt - if you just chuck a load through; you end up with a batt that is just a lot of locks loosely held together!

When I've put enough through to fill the carder, I take the batt off and separate it into strips and put the whole lot through again! This gets everything that slipped through first time around and gives me a much floofier batt!

So what have I learned? Patience sigh and that you get further, quicker if you just slow down!

I felted a bucket and Fibreholics again!

A while ago, I decided to spin up all the samples I got from the Fibreholics and Phat Fiber boxes last year into one long single, then I spun up the fibre that I dyed months ago. I plied the dyed fibre with the single of samples until I got the yarn I mentioned in a previous post.

Then I got to knitting and I made a huge bag!

I threw it in the washing machine this morning and waited anxiously for it to finish spinning. This is what I pulled out!

It shrunk a lot more than I was expecting, but I've now got a wide bucket that will hold my fibre when I'm spinning!

See that bag? The plastic grey one in the laundry basket over there <--- huge, isn't it? It's stuffed full of samples for next months fibreholics boxes! I've enclosed sock yarn in the Sorbet colourway and fibre samples in a new colourway that I'll be calling Wysteria. It's very pretty and I'm very excited to be participating in the fibreholics fun as a dyer rather than a buyer! I also received an e-mail from the Ravelry PTB last week; they've approved my ad for the forums, so if you're on Rav, do keep an eye out for my banner across the bottom of the pages - thanks!

Tour de Fleece

The Tour de France is fast approaching which, for us spinner types, means the Tour de Fleece!

The idea is that you spin when they cycle and rest the days the cyclists rest. That is not a rule - it's a guideline and there are groups for all different types.

These are just some of the groups already up:

• Team Hopelessly Over Committed - got a lot on your plate? Then this is the team for you
• Team Rookies - new to spinning or your first Tour de Fleece, then join them.
• Team Sprinters - spinning something that will take a lot of work (lace?), then join them
• Team Breakaway - for the art yarn spinners
• Team Lantern Rouge - for those who just want to dip in and out and not commit
• Team Peloton - we're all in this to begin with!
• Team Stashbusters - spin some of your stash!
• Team Climbers - going to spin for a large project - join the climbers
  

Then there's the wildcard teams, if you like a specific fibre, check to see if they have their own team. If you have a local spinning group - see if they have a team.

We have Team Social. If you use twitter, facebook or any other social networking site, please feel free to join us!

The cool thing about the Tour de Fleece is that you can be in as many groups as you want and it's all good fun. The idea is to challenge yourself!

So far I've created Team Social and joined Teams Climbers, Rookies, Stashbusters, Hopelessly overcommitted and sprinters!

I'm very excited about this, I wasn't able to participate last year due to the fact that I couldn't spin on the Ashford Traditional and the Joy hadn't yet arrived.

Please come and join in the fun and if you join Team Social, you may even win a prize!

Phantom Story

A year ago, I took Mum to see Phantom of The Opera for her birthday. It was fabulous and I cried when I watched it!

Late last year, Andrew Lloyd Webber released Love Never Dies, the sequel to Phantom, so Mum and I decided to splurge and go and see both of them in one day.

Yesterday was that day!

We drove up to London arriving just after midday. We went and had some lunch (we'd packed a picnic) in the garden at Leicester Square.

There were all these adorable elephant statues around (to do with saving the elephants as a species), so I took photos of the ones in Leicester Square.

The elephants were the idea of Coutts (which is, I believe a banking company?) and they had this gorgeous statue in their window.

After lunch, I went into the Cath Kidston shop in Covent Garden and splurged a bit more. I don't need a new purse or handbag, but....well....you know!

We saw Phantom at 2.30. It was the same Christine we saw last time, but the Phantom was played by someone else. I preferred the voice of the Phantom from last year, but the performance was so moving this time; I was practically sobbing at the end!

We had a couple of hours to kill, so we had a quick cuppa in this coffee house that sold these amazing cakes

We wondered around a bit and I did the whole tourist bit and took photos of the London Eye, the fountain at Trafalgar Square and the outside of Stringfellows nightclub (I was expecting something more...flamboyant!)

Then we went down to Trafalgar Square and ate the rest of our picninc before wondering along The Strand to the Adelphi Theatre to see Love Never Dies.

The story was pretty much what I was expecting, but the Rock and Roll aspect wasn't. It took a bit of getting used to, but the play itself was really good.

I find the whole story of Phantom so tragic and moving, he loves Christine so much - even through his madness.

Love stories always leave me melancholy sigh they remind me that I'm on my own!

Shop!

This week, fluffosity started selling hand dyed yarn.

I collected 10k of yarn from Andy at Wonderwool, 7 of sock and 3 of lace but I haven't felt up to dyeing anything until this week.

Well, I've had an absolute blast! It's so much more fun than dyeing fibre and I had 3 people nagging me for an entire day while I was reskeining and taking photos of the yarn to get it uploaded in my Folksy shop.

Within the first hour I sold 4 skeins and 3 braids of roving, I've also had a few custom orders and more fibre sold today!

I am absolutely over the moon!

My little fit about a crap banner was solved today by the most fantabulous Sarah, get a load of this!

Isn't that just great? I'm going to keep it to just the plain writing with my cat for my labels and business cards, but that banner will be used online!

I owe her a case of Strongbow!

Fun with my friend

My friend Rachel text me at some ungodly hour this morning to ask if I was at home today (as I was asleep at the time and didn't think to check my phone, it was lunchtime before I replied!). I told her it was fine even though I was still fighting with the migraine that's been bugging me for a couple of days now, especially as I knew she wanted to see how I dyed stuff and she was itching to have a go on a drum carder too!

She didn't waste too much time and arrived pretty quickly. She had a good rummage through my stash, oohing and aahing as she went. She showed me the results of combing out some dyed Teeswater locks I'd picked up at Wonderwool for her - it was pretty good, but she really wanted a go on the drum carder. So I told her she could do that while the yarn cooked!

We went out to the kitchen and I dyed 3 skeins of Sorbet for my friend, Marie while Rachel watched and asked lots of questions. Then I let her loose with a skein of sock yarn. She used pale greens and pinks and created a gorgeous skein - photos to come when it's dry - which we're calling Roses.

Then she got the drum carder set up and we got going with that while the yarn cooked.

She ran her teeswater through and we rummaged around and found some other stuff, blue, white, bit of green, even a bit of beige until we ended up with this:

I understand it's been shown to the whole family and that they're suitably impressed!

Frustration and Impatience

I am my own worst enemy! Well, anyone who knows me well knows that!

I have no patience at all. If I want something; I want it right now! If I can't do something, I get absolutely furious with myself and shout at everyone!

I get frustrated so easily too, which I guess ties it all in together.

Someone I follow on twitter summed it up perfectly, her twitter name is Bahtocancer and as you can guess she is currently going through chemotherapy. She said: 'It astonishes me that I can 'do' cancer but am reduced to tears by a problem setting up pages on my website.'.

I know exactly what she means for I'm that way myself. I can cope with injuries to the kids, pets, emergencies, whatever - but stupid things drive me absolutely WILD!

I started selling yarn this week. I spent a happy couple of afternoons throwing dye around and ended up with 19 skeins (two of which were a custom order from Kerry). It was great and I loved the results.

I then spent hours uploading everything to my Folksy shop (Folksy takes aaaaaaaaaages!) and announced that the shop was ready to the masses that were waiting - ok....not 'masses' exactly....more like Kerry, Diane and Rita! But they were there waiting on twitter and it was all sooooooooo exciting!

Well, they each bought something - thank you, ladies, loves ya! - and I packaged it all up for posting this morning.

Then today, I decided I really should create a spreadsheet detailing my incoming and outgoing where the shop is concerned. I fought with the damn thing for two hours! Everytime I entered in the SUM formula thingy, I just got a red triangle!

I went and yelled at everyone on twitter and the troops rallied and we eventually got it sorted, but the fact that I swear I entered that stupid forumla countless times and it didn't work for two hours enraged me!

So, this afternoon, I sat down and did some spinning to relax. That all went well, then the announcement came out that advertising slots were available on Ravelry. I thought that would be a really good idea so went along to have a look.

I had to register for advertising and then upload my banner - it refused my banner because it was the incorrect size. I've finally managed to adjust it to a different size, but it didn't load as I was looking at it - I just had a box with grey and white stripes!

My banner is naff anyway. I can't design for toffee and I just don't understand how to manipulate the image for different websites - why the hell can't the sites just change the banner automatically for you? I can't even get the Folksy one to not look all warped and stretched!

I'd love to have my own site - but last time I even considered it, I got so angry at all the technical babble the 'build your own sites' sites threw at me, that I gave up with a pounding headache!

Someone said 'go to college and learn what you want to know' but it doesn't stay in my head! The kids think I'm hysterical; I'll sit and play a game on the x-box and I'll spend an hour going round in circles totally oblivious to the fact that I'm actually lost!

If I don't write it down, I forget it! Everything goes into my phone with an alarm to remind me. I've been known to look at my diary at 10am, see there's an appointment at midday and then promptly forget about the appointment.

I'm clumsy and I knock things over all the time!

But I get soooo frustrated at myself and my limitations!

It's taken me over a week to get over Wonderwool. I was so exhausted, then I had the vertigo attack and fell on the stairs. I finally recovered and got on with the dyeing. I spent a couple of hours at a time in the kitchen, but it still made my back ache!

Yesterday, I sat down to reskein the yarn. Unfortunately, Mum's skeiner didn't want to play and everything kept tightening as I turned it, so I gave up with that and decided to wind the yarn around the legs of my largest table from my nest of tables.

I wound 17 of the skeins. It took all day and by the end of it, I was exhausted and my back was in agony.

Some of the muscles under my shoulders are still in spasm today.

That's not right. None of it!

I'm 34 years old! Not 68 like my Mum (who is probably more physically able than I am!), I shouldn't have to rest for a couple of hours after running the vacuum around downstairs. I shouldn't suffer pain from standing for more than ten minutes.

I shouldn't spend a week or more recovering from being on my feet for a couple of days!

I'm amazed I remember how to breathe!

A different kind of spinning

Well plying actually!

Last year I bought a Phat Fiber box and a Fibreholics box. These are boxes full of samples from all different dyers and they're good fun.

I decided to spin each sample one after the other until I had one long single (3 bobbins long!). Then I decided to spin up the purple fibre from my first dyeing experiment.

Then I plied the two together!

I ended up with quite a bit! I'm going to knit this into a bucket sized version of my felted spinning wheel bag and it'll sit beside my chair and hold whatever fibre I'm spinning!

I have also been having a play with my supported spindle that I bought at Wonderwool.

This is a whole different method of spinning! I have a little go before bed each night and I think I'm starting to get it. I must admit; my wheel is still my preferred method of spinning!