Inspiration comes when you least expect it

Visitors Centre map

So life is pretty up and down at the moment. Change is always difficult and we are trying to move at the same time as dealing with the passing of my Mum. The house is in chaos with car loads of extra stuff coming in from the clearance of her house in Stevenage. I think it is important to get away from it all and the opportunity came last Tuesday with the monthly meeting of the East Essex Smallholders Group as a farm visit to Lauriston Farm in Goldhanger, Essex. 

Having got lost on the way despite having printed out directions, the place is quite remote and down an unmarked gravel road well off the beaten track. Among the first of the group to arrive, we donned our trusty walking boots and we duly sprayed against bug attacks.

Essex salt marsh

Lauriston Farm is a bio-dynamic organic farm. ??? It was explained to us, I think, but basically the owners are operating a permaculture. ??? Operating organically, they do not bring in any fertilisers or pesticides. All the manure is recycled on the farm. They had North Ronaldsay sheep and Shetland cows. North Ronaldsay sheep typically live on the rugged coast line of the island with the same name, so it is ideally suited to grazing the Essex salt marsh. Cool! After the chat in the 'education centre' we were taken for a trek around the farm. This led us past sheep and cows, then up to the sea wall. This is a scene that I am familiar with but usually from a different direction. The farm has 225 acres which includes an ancient decoy pond and a salt extraction site dating back to Roman times. It was all very educational! 

Happy, friendly sheep

The final part of the walk took us back into a field where we were met by some very nice sheep. Their fleeces were starting to shed and were coming off in big chunks. The owners shear the sheep themselves and then send the fleece to be processed. This is a costly undertaking and always a gamble as they then have to sell on the resulting balls of yarn. We were shown some of these upon our return to the education centre. There were 50g balls of double knit at £3.50 each and 100g balls of double knit at £4.50 each. We were also told a story about how they had sent 75kg of their fleeces to be processed which had been lumped in together, rather than sorting for similar colours, resulting 75kg of grey wool. They weren't impressed with this so the processors over-dyed some of the wool in heather (dark purple) and plum. Upon closer inspection, the grey is more of a fawn/brown colour, which I liked. They also sell sheepskin rugs and meat boxes from their farm gate and run courses on getting to grips with a bio-dynamic farm. A brilliant evening enjoyed by all.

It wasn't really until the dog walk the next day that the idea came to me that my husband will be celebrating his 50th birthday in 6 months time. What could I buy him? He had commented that he didn't have any warm outside jumpers. I have made him a beautiful, intricate aran jumper which took years and he is too afraid to wear  . . . so I decided to make him a jumper from this North Ronaldsay wool. After a quick email to the farm, a few days later I was back down the gravel track to purchase 10 x 100g balls of the fawn/brown wool. Six months seems plenty of time but with all the current upheaval going on, it will soon fly. Better get busy knitting!

The North Ronaldsay wool is a little courser than the typical double knit that I'm used to but it does have the rugged quality that I was looking for. It knits up well and isn't so dark that it is difficult to work in the evenings. Lauriston Farm only seem to operate a farm-gate sales for their produce but they offer a friendly welcome via their website. www.lauristonfarm.co.uk

A lifetime of craft

Ann Wheeler (1st July 1936-7th April 2014)

On April 7th 2014  my Mum lost her short battle against cancer. She was my teacher, my inspiration and my friend. She introduced me to knitting, crochet, cross-stitch, dressmaking, photography, flower arranging, cooking, cake making and cake decorating. With a family of six children, making things was infinitely cheaper than buying them. I have fond memories of christmas cakes and trays of bread pudding. Dresses were made for special occasions and I was delighted when she agreed to make the cake, bouquets and some of the bridesmaids dresses for my wedding 25 years ago.

One of the crafts which remained unique to my Mum was that of egg decorating. I was still living at home when she began this craft which involved using real blown eggs with doors cut and hinged, then smothered with beads and pearls. Each child as we were married were happy to have a special egg for the top of the cake. As her skills improved, the eggs become more and more delicate and complicated. 

The family have had to clear her house and it struck me that the world has lost a crafts person of great skill. Her vast stash of crafting materials will be sent to the egging guild for redistribution and the collection of eggs that she created have been divided between the family. Its all very sad. I did manage to salvage the photographic record of all her decorated eggs which fills three photo albums. 

As a footnote to this blog I would like to say, share your craft as widely as possible. Teach, display and distribute. It is a gift which may well leave when you do. 

Just enough ....

Blue cable jumper

There is some fabulous yarn out there and one of my favourites is Sirdar Snuggly Baby Bamboo Double Knit. It is 80% Bamboo sourced viscose and 20% wool. It knits into a beautiful soft, sheeny stitch which is perfect for young skin. I had bought some balls of this yarn, knitted a baby jumper, sold it on eBay, but still had some yarn left.  I decided to make the same jumper again to sell but wasn't sure that I had enough yarn. I started to look around on the internet to find more in 'Sail boat' and nice, mid-blue colour only to discover that the yarn had been discontinued and I probably had the last few balls left in the world. The pressure was on to finish the yarn with what I had left, or I could undo what I had done and make something else. I decided to plough on and hope for the best. Making the jumper in 0-6 months, it should take the least amount of wool possible.

In the end, I did have enough, just. It is a shame that Sirdar have decided not to continue this colour. The trouble with many of the baby yarns is that the colours are a bit pastel. 

The finish article is now available on my ebay store via the following link:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Babys-blue-cable-jumper-for-age-0-6-months-in-Sirdar-Snuggly-Baby-Bamboo-dk-/231178971575?pt=Baby_Clothing&hash=item35d35729b7

The next big step

Scallop baby blanket pattern

I was reviewing the initial idea that was Layette Knitting recently which was held as a file on my computer. One of the things that I planned to do was to sell the patterns as a pdf download to save on the postage. This was something that I initially tried with eBay only to be instructed that eBay don't allow pdf downloads because of the risk of malicious content. So for the last couple of years, selling my patterns involved printing out the pattern on quality paper, printing out the buyers address and an invoice, putting them in an envelope, paying for postage and getting the board-backed envelope into a post box that could take it (not many of those around here).

So my options for selling downloadable pdfs seemed to lie with my own website. After a bit of research I attempted to create one on 1&1. This did not go well and was soon abandoned as a bad idea.

Cable baby blanket pattern

I have been a member on Ravelry for a short while and recall that it is possible to sell downloadable pdfs from that site but the problem that I have with Ravelry is that it would tend to be the hardy, more experienced knitter who would frequent the site and my patterns tend to be for the novice knitter. My patterns have had quite alot of success on eBay with buyers recognising that they are helpful and easy to follow. Within 12 hours of uploading my patterns to Ravelry, I am pleased to say I have made a sale and been paid. Hoorahh!

Ravelry.com is an excellent website with many downloadable patterns, some of which are free and I have used the patterns available to achieve some excellent results. It is a free log in website and then you can search for me under Designers to find my Easy to Knit patterns.

www.ravelry.com

These patterns are still available on my ebay shop as before but you can save on time and postage by downloading them from ravelry virtually instantly.

Sweet success!!

There is NOTHING more rewarding that starting a new hobby (spinning) and creating something new, then to put it available for sale, have someone buy it and give you good feedback on it. 

My very nice yarn

Last month, I spun some Dorset/Hampshire fleece to create two 100g skeins of hand spun yarn. I have advertised them both on my ebay shop, only to have someone buy one of them. Ebay does put pressure on its sellers to offer FREE postage. That's all well and good but Royal Mail won't deliver it for free so the costs have to be absorbed somewhere. I advertised the yarn at £6 each with free postage and packaging. So when I did managed to sell one skein, just how cheaply could I send it and be happy it would turn up at its destination?

The normal postage for first class small parcel signed for is £4.10. That is a BIG chunk of £6. If I could get it down to large letter size I could send it first class large letter signed for at £2.30. One of the new toys that I have is a vacuum packer. It takes out the air from the package and heat seals it to create a vacuum. Brilliant for home made bacon but how would my yarn fair? It was worth a try. I squished it down as much as I could while the air was being extracted until the yarn looked like it had melted in the pack. I recalled someone else sending me some yarn like this and my feeling of horror as I opened the package to see the contents. I parcelled it up and took it to the post office. Yes, it would go through the large letter slop on the counter top gadget, and it was sent. I hurriedly emailed the buyer to let her know what I had done and how she should pierce the package to let the yarn reinflate back to normal.

She has received the yarn, reinflated it and left feedback .... very nice yarn.

Wow!! That's something I created! Brilliant. 

The other skein is still available for sale in my ebay shop.

www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Handspun-Dorset-Hampshire-fleece-Natural-100g-chunky-yarn-/331113021654?pt=UK_Crafts_Knitting_Crochet_EH&hash=item4d17dfc0d6

Spinning in the grease

Spun Jacobs yarn

So for February I have been spinning Jacobs fleece. When it arrived it came in a big bag and was transferred into a hessian sack for storage. Jacobs fleece is interesting because it comes in a variety of colours all on the one fleece. The fleece would have been picked over for big bits of straw but other than that, it is pretty much as it came off the sheep. As it had not been washed, it is called in the grease. This can make it easier to spin as it 'glues' the spin and smooths down any wispy bits. As I planned to ply this yarn, I weighed out two lots of 50g of grey/brown fleece and spun each lot as evenly as possible. Once both lots have been spun to the right, it is spun (plied) together to the left. Hopefully if all goes well, the two lots should be the same length, which they were almost.

The next job to do is to wind the yarn onto a niddy noddy to create a skein. This is tied in several places to prevent tangling and it can now be washed to remove the lanolin and grime. It is then hung to drip dry in the garage and after a day or two, it is dry enough to weigh. Amazingly it had lost 23g of grease and grime and now weighs in at 77g. 

I have listed it in auction on my ebay shop starting at £3 for this skein which I can wind into a ball on my ball winder if required.

www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Hand-spun-Jacob-wool-77g-plied-chunky-natural-browns-and-greys-skein-/331129481628?pt=UK_Crafts_Knitting_Crochet_EH&hash=item4d18dae99c

And now its February!!

Jacobs Sheep

January seemed to fly past, again. Now we are into February and so I need to choose another sackful of fleece from my garage. For this month I have decided to spin a fleece from a Jacobs Sheep. This breed has special fond memories for me as I recall first spotting them in a distance field and boldly stating that they were cows, Fresians probably. The people who were with me were far more knowledgeable than me and corrected me staying that they were, in fact, sheep. Now prior to that moment, I didn't know that sheep came in multicolours. I had previously thought that they came in either cream or black (we've all heard about black sheep!)

Hmmm. Jacobs Sheep. I was therefore delighted to purchase a fleece of these mythical creatures last year and it duly became the last addition to my stock pile. 

Wiki has this to say about Jacobs Sheep .... 

The Jacob sheep is a rare breed of small, piebald (coloured with white spots), polycerate (multi-horned) sheep. Jacobs may have from two to six horns, but most commonly have four. The most common color is black and white. Jacobs are usually raised for their wool, meat, and hides. They are also kept as pets and ornamental animals, and have been used as guard animals to protect farm property from theft or vandalism and defend other livestock against predators. Cool!!