Well. from that one boll I showed you 2 months ago, the plants did pretty well.  I still have a small number of bolls that haven't yet opened, but I brought them into the warmth of the house so I'm sure they'll open up soon. In the meantime, I've been busy finishing last year's cotton.  I had a bit of a lapse whilst spinning this bobbin because of a problem with my neck (which turned out to date back to a car accident we had 27-28 years ago - the osteopath said my neck was out of position and probably had been for all that time!) but it finally got finished.  I'm not sure how mu ..read more

 Yes, it's that time of year again.  First boll of the year. Many more plants are opening their bolls now.  Hoping for lots ..read more

 I very rarely spin especially with a project in mind.  Usually I spin for the pleasure of it and then put the yarn away until I find something to do with it. Recently though, my sister bought a pattern for a knitted shawl plus the recommended yarn, enough to complete the project.  She was slightly disappointed when she'd finished in that the shawl was not as big as she'd envisaged.  The length was OK, but the depth made it quite a small shawl.  I have to admit that when I looked at the pattern and the yarn she'd used, I was a bit shocked that the yarn had cost £68! &n ..read more

After leaving you at the end of the second week, I managed to spin another two bobbins of white merino, making 4 in all (4th one isn't photographed here, but you can see the beginnings of it flick carded and ready to spin). The problem with spinning 4 bobbins of white fleece is that they all look alike, so I didn't want to bore you with endless photos of white yarn. Towards the end of the third week I rounded up all my yellow onion skins (there were a lot!) and made up a dye pot.  In the photo above the onion skins have already started to cook down, but when I first filled the pan t ..read more

After all the uncertainty this year with the Covid 19 pandemic, no-one was sure if the Tour de France would happen this year.  As it turned out, it was cancelled until late August. However, the Tour de Fleece organisers decided that the Tour de Fleece would go ahead in July anyway!  And there's an added bonus this year because we're having a second one starting at the end of August!!  What fun! This year I rooted through my stock of fleece sacks and found this very messy cria alpaca (baby alpaca's first shearing) which was given to me about 3 years ago by my friend who runs an ..read more

Remember this : Spinning Feathers I bought this art batt almost five years ago at Le Lot et La Laine Festival and spun it at the end of 2015.  There was a huge mix of different fibres in here, plus bits of ribbon and feathers.  I originally planned to use this for a weaving project, but never plucked up the courage!  I was afraid I'd make a mess of it. In 2017 I started knitting a blanket and used this yarn for the centre.  You can see how far I got here.  I'd picked out lots of individual balls of yarn, all double knitting thickness, and continued knitting a ..read more

. . . I love you.  Yes I do.   Well, enough of Tom Jones. In October I received 3 boxes of kitty-cat fluff from my 2 grand-kitties, Hugo and Maks. This is Hugo's fluff. I started off quite well and got the carding done pretty quickly, but then Christmas started to rear its head and I knew I wouldn't get much further for a while, at least until I'd finished all my presents. It never looked this tidy on the cats!I spun Hugo's without incident and thought the rest would be a breeze.  However, I'd forgotten I had a dodgy bobbin that needed to be glued back together, and sure enough it fell ..read more

September saw the start of a "Crochet-a-Long" by Sandra Paul (Cherry Heart on Ravelry) that had caught my eye.  I'd never done one of these before but thought that making this blanket would be a good way to use up some of my odd skeins of hand-spun yarn.  The pattern was free and comprised 8 separate patterns that were sent out weekly - 6 different squares, the pattern for joining the squares (they were crocheted together) and the pattern for the border. We started on 24th September when the first pattern was sent out.   We'd already received an introductory square for testing gauge.  This ..read more

As usual in our Ravelry TdF team (DIY and Dye), we have prizes.  Lots of prizes!!  But they have to come from somewhere, so quite a few team members donate prizes each year.  I probably don't donate one every year, but this time I wanted to send something. The easiest and most pleasant (to make at any rate!) for me is an art batt. So I gathered together lots of goodies and assembled three piles like this one : From the left we have merino/tussah silk, merino/trilobal nylon, 2 unknown - these were World of Wool pouches of luck I think they're called, soy silk, white bamboo, Gotland curls in ..read more

This post is a little overdue - I'm neglecting my blog again!!  Yes, I did take part in the Tour de Fleece again this year.  I think I'd find it hard not to.  I even managed to spin on my spindle when we were away in Switzerland for 5 days. This was what I'd managed to prepare before the Tour started.  At the top is a bucketful of my home-grown cotton, the purple on the left is a blend of merino/Falkland and kid mohair dyed with logwood chips, the tub in the middle is leftover kid mohair (logwood dyed), the yellow on the right is merino dyed with apple leaves and twigs, and the other two are ..read more