January's Fibre is here - National Trust

A few days ago I received the emailed letter giving details about this months club fibre and today it has arrived.

Its not something that I would pick up if I were at a fibre festival, I wouldn't be attracted to it, but it is nice and is very close in colours to the paint that was her inspiration.

The fibre content is 50% Merino Wool, 37.5% Bluefaced Leicester Wool, 12.5% Swaledale Wool, so a pure wool blend of 3 different breeds of sheep.

January's Fibre Club Letter

January's fibre club letter has arrived.  Its about the founding of the National Trust, of which myself and my family are members.  We have been to Dinas Oleu, which sits above the town of Barmouth in Wales.  We had a camping holiday there, which you can read about here.

The letter reads:

2020 marks the 125th Anniversary of the founding of The National Trust. They’re one of the UK’s largest charities and care for many historic buildings, places, and areas of countryside. 

One of their founders was a woman called Octavia Hill. Throughout her life she campaigned for social reform, and worked to improve the lives of people in the ever growing urban parts of the country. She believed that accessing nature was vital for good well being. 

She campaigned to ensure that public rights of way remained open and also wanted to stop the destruction of the old buildings that form part of our cultural heritage. She was born in 1838, the granddaughter of Dr Thomas Southwood Smith. A leading early Victorian public health campaigner, he spent his life working to give the urban poor access to better housing. Her parents were also social reformers and were followers of Robert Owen (who was born in Newtown near to where I live, more links to him in the further references). When her fathers business failed her mother took charge of the household, and encouraged all her daughters to take jobs. Octavia ended up running a workroom at a Christian Socialist cooperative managed by her mother. Octavia organised middy meals for her workers, visited them when they were sick, and took them on nature study walks around London Commons. 

As she grew older her socialist connections grew, she developed friendships with the pioneering Christian Socialist minister Frederick Denison Maurice, radical thinker John Ruskin and the anticapitalist critic and author Charles Kingsley. Ruskin purchased properties in her name, and Octavia ran them as a friendly landlord. She still expected the rent to be paid, but was willing to take a lower return on the investment in order to improve and maintain the building (very unusual amongst urban landlords at that time). As time went on she stepped outside her own property interests and joined a campaign to save Swiss Cottage Fields in London from development. Even though that campaign failed, later campaigns to save Parliament Hill Fields, Vauxhall Park and Hill Fields were successful. In 1895 she became one of the founders of the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty. The Trusts aim- “so that green spaces could ‘be kept for the enjoyment, refreshment, and rest of those who have no country house’.”

In 1895 the Trust acquired it’s first piece of land, Dinas Oleu in Barmouth, a section of the Welsh coast where we walk regularly. It was donated by Mrs Fanny Talbot, a widow who had inherited land and money on the death of her husband. She was a friend of Octavia Hill, believed in her vision of making sure that open spaces remained accessible to all. From these 4.5 acres the Trust has become Europe’s largest conservation charity, and the views are spectacular. Looking out over the 58,000 acres in Snowdonia owned by the Trust and some of the 196 miles of Welsh coastline also in their care.

Another woman, Beatrix Potter, was another major donor to the Trust, and worked alongside them in her lifetime. When she died she left much of her Lake District estate to the Trust, Beatrix Potter featured as the inspiration for the January 2016 club fibre. 

Octavia did much good in her lifetime, but by modern standards she would still be regarded as conservative in her politics. She believed that social inequality was best tackled by private enterprise and charity rather than by the government. She was against the welfare state, free school meals, council housing, and a universal old-age pension. 

Your colour inspiration this time comes from a paint company who used to work with the National Trust; Farrow & Ball took colours that had been found during the restoration of old houses and turned them in to a modern paint range, but one that could be used sympathetically in old houses. Their collaboration with the Trust has now ended, but the inspiring range of paint colours remains, and has carried on expanding. You can find the list of 7 paint colours that match your fibre in the Further Reading section. 

I’m going to end the letter this month with a quote from Octavia, which is still perfect for our modern world.

‘We all want quiet. We all want beauty … we all need space. Unless we have it, we cannot reach that sense of quiet in which whispers of better things come to us gently.’

After looking at the links and the list of colours she details I am expecting it to be quite colourful, in a toned down kind of way.  I've made two colour palettes below of the colours she has listed that are used in this fibre, one shows the names and the other shows them arranged closer together so its easier to see how they might work as a fibre.

From the spoilers chat she has revealed that its not the softest blend, does contain some kemp, which was falling out during packing and contains some BFL to make it a little more hardwearing for more high-wear items such as mittens.  Once again, as its a colourful fibre, spin from the fold if you want to keep the colours more defined or spin from the end for a more muddied blended effect.

12 Days of Christmas 2019 Part 2

Back in October I wrote about the 12 Days of Christmas "Advent Calendar" for 2019.  All packages have now been opened and I've had chance to take photos and do some fancy work with them to add the names of the colours of the fibre to them.

As last year, I have organised them in the same way, the main braid is in the large photo and then each day thereafter starts with the small photo on the top right hand side, working down and then across the bottom towards the left.

Just in case you can't read the labels, they are in order: Lily of the Valley, Honey, Pearl, English Countryside, Shabby Grey, Hydrangea, Currant, Cocoa, Blossom, Nougat and Night.

The spinning tip for the main braid would be the same as last year due to the Yak fibres and that is to spin it over the fold as the Yak fibres are shorter than the rest and this avoids ending up with just a clump of Yak fibres in your hand.

I will probably spin them all separately and create something that involves all of the finished yarn in all of the colours.

I've made something for myself

I needed to make something for myself, I never make anything for myself so now is my chance.  I started this way back in September and it got put the side whilst I dealt with all sorts of family issues and you may notice a little bit of a line on the second work-in-progress photo.  This is where I stopped, left it for a while, and then picked it back up again and just shows a little bit of difference in the tension but it all washed and blocked out.  Blocking helps to even the stitches out.

I made it using this Whistlebare Yeavering Bell yarn that is 60% Mohair, 40% Wensleydale and I found that it shed like hell.  I was covered in Mohair every time I knit.  I have no plans to add this design to my range as the pattern designer does not allow you to use the pattern for commercial purposes, however small amount of sales you might have, so I won't be going there.  I will be sticking to patterns from designers and yarn companies that allow you to use their patterns to make items to sell.

I apologise for the variation of colour in the photos, I just can't get them all the same due to different lighting at the point of photography.  I have tried to edit them as best as I could to represent the actual colour but I'm still finding this almost impossible.

December's Fibre is here - Renoir

Oh my gosh, this is gorgeous, one of my favourite colours.  I love blue-greens, turquoise, teal etc.  This is really, really nice and its ohhh so soft too.  Its 80% Merino, 20% Ramie which means it will be soft but strong.  Can't wait to find time to spin this one up.  I love it.

December's Fibre Club Letter

December's fibre club letter has arrived. I'm pleased to say that it has nothing to do with politics or activism this month.  Phew!

The letter reads:

Colour theory and art go hand in hand, all the great painters have a very clear understanding of how to use colour to bring their painting to life. How we think about colour has changed over time (I wrote an article for Ply magazine, which was published on their blog, there’s a link in the Further Reading section.) But one of the key changes in recent history was the development of complementary colour theory. By arranging colours on a colour wheel, the colour that is on the opposite side of the colour wheel provides the greatest contrast. 

The Impressionists were amongst the first to notice that shadows are not neutral, but instead are the complementary shade of the object casting the shadow, eg a yellow object casts a purple shadow. By using this theory they created painting with great vivacity. The Impressionists were a group of painters, primarily based in Paris, who produced work from the 1860's. The painters tended to work in the open air rather than a studio, working quickly, with loose brushwork, and a focus on capturing the fleeting quality of light. 

One of the leading impressionists was Pierre Auguste Renoir, he died one hundred years ago on December 3rd 1919. Born in Limogies, south-west France in 1841, poverty forced him to finish his education early, and he became a painter in the nearby porcelain factory. As a young man he moved to Paris to begin studying painting, despite frequently not having enough money to buy paint. In 1869 he started sketching with Claude Monet, and the two men together developed the techniques that will come to characterise the Impressionist style. 

Over his lifetime he evolved to paint in many different styles, at one point almost completely abandoning Impressionism and going back to the style of the old masters and focusing on technical accuracy of draughtsmanship. The reception at the time was not enthusiastic, and he gradually went back to the looser style seen in his earlier paintings. 

One of the things I love most about Renoir’s paintings is their punchy use of colour. Our inspiration this month comes from the beautiful shades of blue he uses as shadows when painting trees, combined with the vibrant lime green he used for the leaves. At this darkest time in the year in the Northern Hemisphere think of this as a promise of spring to come. 

Blues and greens, I'm liking the sound of this one.

From the spoilers chat she has revealed that it is incredibly soft but as it contains Ramie it will be incredibly strong and will make great lace or cables as the Ramie will give good stitch definition.

Making a thicker yarn from a thin one

Many years ago I bought a big box of yarns on cones.  All sorts of colours and thicknesses, most of which have been used but I still have the fine yarns still on cones waiting to be used.  They're just sitting there, taking up space, it would take forever to use just one cone so what do you do?  You take one of them that you have two cones of and take an end from each cone and ply them together and fill two bobbins.  Then you ply those two together the other way to effectively create a yarn that is now four times thicker than it was originally.  I done this for the entire two cones, each of this size.

I made 7 skeins, each of about 145g-150g each, all of them are now sport weight.  5 of the skeins are Z-twist and 2 of them are S-twist.  They should have all been the same but I messed up and plied two of the bobbins the wrong way, meaning that the finished skein is plied in the opposite direction to the other 5 skeins.  It does mean that I will have to use the two different plies in different projects.