Woolgathering

Today, instead of spinning, we dyed raw fleece. Between cake-eating and chatter, we managed only one experiment - but there is plenty of dye powder left.  I have photos of the wet dyed fleece, but failed to take photos of the process. I’ll be trying more experiments in the next couple of days, to use up the dye powder before it gets damp. I’ll take photos and post up the method once I have them all ready.

In brief: we rainbow-dyed, using red, blue, and yellow shades of Dylon all purpose dye - plus hot water, washing up liquid, and vinegar, and we used my preserving pan. The fleece was a local white fleece, thought to be Shetland (or part Shetland.) More later, right now I have a migraine cranking up.

Here it is

It’s not perfect by any means, but I do have a recognisable granny square made at last.

Photo later. I spent all morning packing craft stuff for tonight’s craft club meeting, and now I have to walk the pup and make risotto. Life is full and rich, eh?

I took my crochet into the sitting room yesterday afternoon while I sat with puppy doing her cage training. I’m making some kind of progress…

So much progress that I have now practised a few rows of double, half treble, treble, and double treble. My tension is still appalling but things have gone slightly better otherwise, since I had a small epiphany on the matter of turning chains. I acknowledge that learning the stitches is easy enough - the difficult part for me is deciphering instructions and actually seeing where the hook is going in.

Undaunted by these problems I launched into my first granny square. Well, I think it is easy enough to tell what it is meant to be and that I did get close to it. Clearly I got several parts of it wrong, but I think this was only because I was distracted by other things and got my counting wrong. I got a bit annoyed but still tried a different type of square, a St George’s Cross. This also went quite badly.

I’m going to try again today. This time I plan to write out the instructions in a more readable layout and also to write down my counts as I go. I intend to have a near perfect granny square made by tonight! However, I have much work to do in my craft room. I need to think through what to take to craft club tomorrow evening and make sure I have everything packed that we might need. Plus puppy watching, of course.

OK. It may not look like much to you, but to me? It’s like Everest scaled! I’ve tried so many times over the years and got nowhere near as far as this.

Mood=Pleased

Mostly double crochet but one row of half treble added… not very well, I hasten to add.

I know the tension is all over the place but I frankly have no idea where I should in fact be aiming. I am pretty much a crochet virgin.

I almost feel like attempting a granny square now. But I want to practise a few more basic stitches. I did this in bed last night - I may do the same again today. Mmmmm. Must  be getting old.

I’m missing my needles. I hope pup settles down soon and allows me time to knit. I’ve been hankering after some Yarn Yard yarn tonight and I really want to clear my stash a bit soon… I love to knit. It soothes me and makes me happy. I miss it.

I gave my Cat’s Paw Scarf to my MiL for her birthday, so I need to knit myself a scarf before the winter bites too hard. I still have loads of the Cashsoft 4ply left - plus the grey BFL. I don’t want to do Cat’s Paw again, though. I’ll do a different Shetland lace pattern this time. But which one?

I didn’t fill my bobbin yesterday but I did finish the first bag of BFL and began the second. Getting there by degrees. I am impatient to see it plyed.

Then there is the crochet challenge to be met. One day…. one day, I’ll get to grips with this craft. For now, it drives me crazy.

I’m trying to get a daylight “true colour” lamp - in the hope that I can make progress on some projects during the darkness of winter. My cottage windows are very small indeed and we live in permanent gloom through the winter, with totally inadequate lighting. I am reliant on Mr L’s sniping abilities to snatch me an eBay bargain soon.

Oh- I need to knit a watch cap for Mr L. Anybody got a URL for a pattern for this type of knitted cap?

Spinning day today and I feel that I really don’t want to go. Socialising feels like too much effort right now. In fact, everything feels like too much effort at present - I think I must need to up my medication. I’m hoping to get sufficient of the BFL spun up today to allow me to ply my first two bobbins. Between having no time/no interest and it spinning up so fine, this feels like a marathon effort. I did manage to spin half a bobbin last Wednesday, maybe I’ll complete it today. Maybe not.

I’m a bit worried that my first bobbin is far more finely spun. Clearly, with getting so little time to practise lately, I’m losing the knack that had been developing quite well. Still, it’s all a learning experience. - isn’t it? All the same, I’ll be far happier once the pup has settled down sufficiently for me to immerse myself in my spinning and get some real work done.

Gah!

I don’t know what got in to me today but I found myself deeply embroiled in housework[1]. I’ve scrubbed and tidied and generally worn myself out. The master plan appeared to be to bottom the utility room (yet again) in order to facilitate some felt-making, though I can’t honestly say that I consciously thought about that. Added to puppy duties and general lack of sleep, I found myself wishing at tea time that I didn’t have to go out tonight…

We had taken Nell out to play outside before tea, in some hope of addressing the problems that she has at present. There was a biting cold wind and all I really felt like tonight was a hot bath and an early bed.

I sat down at my PC for a while and noticed the available WP upgrade. So I whipped off a few “one click install” upgrades… only to find out that several of them had generated problems. Horribly, most of them were not my own installations, but ones that I host or take care of for other people. So, guess what I have been doing? Tracking down problems. Horribly, each installation appeared to exhibit different problems. Woolgathering went entirely blank! Fairhand/Demiurge sported horrible database errors at the head of each page… apologies to any readers who experienced difficulties with these domains today. My beloved’s MGB blog also broke, for different reasons to my own. And I had some other fractures to repair as well. It’s been a nightmare.

The upshot was… I was sat here, playing database detective, when the phone rang and a voice asked if I was coming to craft club tonight. I had completely lost track of time.

I’m still in my scruffy stained clothes, with what feels like an inch thick crust of dirt on my face, and still nithered to death from playing outside with the pup. I couldn’t face dashing out unprepared. So… I’ve missed my crochet lesson. Ah well, me and a crochet hook are never going to get on anyway :-}

At least the databases are fixed and everything seems to be working again. I’m going to run a hot bath and ponder whether to continue this rather late-in-the-year bout of spring cleaning tomorrow or to dig out some tops and some soap flakes and get busy lathering up some felty pieces instead. I still need to bring more organisation to my new workroom…. it’s a difficult choice.

Footnote [1]

1. Put bins out
2. emptied and cleaned 3 cat trays
3. emptied and filled dishwasher
4. emptied and filled washing machine
5. washed dog bowls
6. made breakfast
7. paired and balled an infeasible number of socks
8. put away dry laundry from weekend washing
9. vacuumed and tidied sitting room
10. hung out laundry load 1
11. put on load 2 to wash then hung it out later and washed/hung 2 more loads
12. cooked lunch
13. tidied utility room (mostly) (well, partially)
14. cleaned bench and sink in utility room
15. brought in washing
16. tidied office (somewhat)(a huge job)
17. stole bed from cat and washed it… she’s very annoyed
18. made tea

…but only just.

There is not much of anything happening around here at present. The puppy is proving a little more challenging than we would wish and requires constant watching while she is awake. That, and an attack of the shingles, means that I have done no knitting and precious little spinning in recent weeks. I did manage to spin at Wednesday group last week - hurrah - but nothing since, so no progress being made really. More like backwards progress in fact. The knitting hasn’t been out of its box for ages. I did go to craft class two weeks ago and start to teach myself crochet once more - but that hasn’t been out of its bag since then. Craft class again tomorrow night, so I hope to get a bit further with it - and I did get a library book on crochet from the van on Wednesday.

I desperately want to pick up the spinning again. But I also want to make progress with my knitting WIPS. And even more than that. I want to do some felting. Alas, all of it must wait until Nell can stop widdling on the carpet every thirty seconds… something has gone very wrong with her house-training, alas.

In the downtime that I do have when Nell has a little kip, I am trying to make progress on my visual journal. Why that comes first, I have no idea - but right now, that seems to be what my spirit craves. It’s all about colour and inspirations, so I expect whatever I am doing in the journal(s) will express itself eventually in the fibres - as I definitely want to move into a more creative direction with yarn and fibre at some point.

The journal work can be seen at Demiurge

The other thing that did get done was the swapping of my workroom and the storeroom. I now have a larger room into which I can fit all my paper-based and fibre-based crafts together. There is also room in there to sit and spin, once I have finished adding shelves and organising materials. I find it difficult to gain sufficient non-puppy time in which to get the job done but we’ll get there in the end.