May's Fibre club letter has arrived. An interesting read. Seeing that the inspiration is an owl really narrows down the colour options to neutral and natural shades and will be very different from last months dreadfully coloured braid. I expect it will look a little like this Bramble Path fibre I spun up 4 years ago. This will be the last braid I receive from this club as I will be cancelling my subscription.
The letter reads:
Your fibre this month is named called Athena, who was the pet owl belonging to Florence
Nightingale. May 12th is the 200th Anniversary of her birth. She is most famous for being “The Lady
of the Lamp”, a Victorian paragon of womanly virtues, and for modernising nursing and turning it in
to a profession. Even now nurses in the USA take a Nightingale Pledge as the equivalent to the
Hippocratic oath taken by doctors.
Nightingale announced her decision to enter nursing aged 24, which was met with opposition
from her family. She came from an affluent, well connected family where daughters would have
been expected to marry well and go on to have families of their own. As a young woman she
travelled widely in Europe, and it was in Athens, Greece where she rescued the little owl who she
named Athena. The owl became her constant companion for the next 5 years. However during her
preparations for her departure to the Crimea the owl was placed under the care of a family
member, and the story goes that neglect, and pining for Florence led to Athena’s death.
In 1850 Florence went to Kaiserswerth-am-Rhein in Germany, and spent time with the Lutheran
community. The work of the Pastor and Deaconesses in caring for the sick began her nursing
career, and whilst there she received 4 month of medical training.
In 1853 she was appointed Superintendent at the Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in
Harley Street, London. She remained there, training nurses until October 1854, at which point she
left, along with 38 other volunteer nurses and 15 Catholic nuns, to take up posts nursing soldiers
who had been injured in the Crimean war. She was deployed to Scutari (in modern day Turkey).
Conditions in the hospitals were appalling. This is the point at which Florence's class and
connections came in to play. She wrote a letter to The Times highlighting the problems faced, and
the British Government were shamed in to action. Isambard Kingdom Brunel was commissioned to
design a prefabricated hospital, that could be put on a ship in England, sent to the Crimea and
quickly constructed. The death rate in this new hospital was 1/10th of that in the pre-existing
hospitals.
With the Victorian trend for creating women heroines (Grace Darling receives similar treatment in
the press and public consciousness), Florence was lauded for revolutionising the nursing care and
conditions in hospitals in the Crimea. However, she simply played a part in improving the
conditions. There was a limit to improvements of hygiene with nursing care when the sewers and
other aspects of the hospitals were hopelessly overwhelmed. The Sanitary Commission arrived in
the Crimea 6 months after the arrival of Florence and her team of nurses, and this team of men
flushed out sewers and improved ventilation in the hospitals. In fact the death rate at the hospital
where Nightingale and her nurses work was far higher than in many of the other field hospitals
because the hospital in which they worked was built on top of a sewer so the men were
continually drinking contaminated water. Until the sanitation and ventilation was improved nursing
could do nothing other than provide comfort to men dying of Cholera, Typhus, Dysentery and
other diseases.
After she left the Crimea she established the first Nursing school in 1860, and by 1865 trained
nurses were now being employed as staff in the workhouse system. Prior to this the standard of care in the sick wards of workhouses was extremely variable, with nurses usually being widows or former
servants who were unable to find work elsewhere.
Nightingale’s greatest skill is probably that of a statistician, however that was an area of
knowledge which was seen as a manly pursuit, so not publicly acknowledged at the time. She
excelled in creating visual representations of data, which she used to convince the politicians
and public to fund her reforms. In particular she created a form of pie chart called the polar area
diagram, which illustrated seasonal variation in patient mortality due to different factors.
Florence lived to the age of 90, and she’s a complex woman to try and understand. She was
often difficult, hard to work with, demanding of her staff, and could be downright rude and
offensive. She was snobbish about the work of Mary Seacole, a British Jamaican nurse who also
worked in the Crimea. She must have been very strong willed, because she truly defied all public
conventions about how a woman from her class should live, this drive and ambition may well colour
contemporary accounts about her personality, to many of the people who she came in to
contact she would have been a true maverick.
I'm actually looking forward to receiving this one, and she has already posted an image of a sample of how it looks spun up from the fold and from the end. I'm not entirely happy that she has done that on the day that she posted it out to all members, as this has kind of ruined it for everyone to some degree, but given that it obviously consists of a blend of natural colours there really isn't that much to spoil, but even so, not a good idea in my eyes.
Friday, 15 May 2020
Wednesday, 22 April 2020
April's Club Fibre is here!
Alrighty then, so this months fibre has arrived and I have to say that I don't like it. I had got this idea in my head about how it might look and its nothing at all like I envisioned. My dislike for it has nothing to do with me being disappointed with the fact that its not like I hoped or envisioned but purely to do with the fact that its just too bright and colourful for me and I know that the colours will muddy and make for a very "barf" colour if I spun it as it is. My plan will be to split it into small chunks and spin it with some black or dark grey fibre so it will be colourful, black, colourful, black all the way along one ply and just black for the second ply. Not sure what breed yet, but definitely a natural black or dark grey wool, possibly Zwartbles but most likely to be Jacobs.
The fibre is 55% Merino, 30% Zwartbles, 15% Sari Silk
Shortly following the delivery of this fibre and discussion within the fibre club group I had yet another disagreement and fall out with the woman who runs it and I got put "on the naughty step" for having an opinion about fibre that I have paid for.
I've been having fibre from this club for 2 years now, as well as buying directly from her online shop, and this is certainly not the first time that I have had a disagreement with this woman over something but it certainly will be the last as I have now had enough of the attitude and have initially put my subscription on a two month holiday as the payment for my next month has already gone out of the bank and if I tell her now that I want to cancel she is likely to take the huff and either not send the next fibre and then give me grief about getting a refund or she will block me so that I can't get the spinning hints for the next months fibre. Once I have the next fibre and the hints I will then cancel the club subscription properly.
The quality of her fibre is brilliant and I will miss it, but seriously, I really can't be doing with the self-righteous, only my view and opinion matters attitude any more. Its a funny way to speak to customers and there are plenty more worthy fibre sellers who would be welcome and appreciative of my custom.
The fibre is 55% Merino, 30% Zwartbles, 15% Sari Silk
Shortly following the delivery of this fibre and discussion within the fibre club group I had yet another disagreement and fall out with the woman who runs it and I got put "on the naughty step" for having an opinion about fibre that I have paid for.
I've been having fibre from this club for 2 years now, as well as buying directly from her online shop, and this is certainly not the first time that I have had a disagreement with this woman over something but it certainly will be the last as I have now had enough of the attitude and have initially put my subscription on a two month holiday as the payment for my next month has already gone out of the bank and if I tell her now that I want to cancel she is likely to take the huff and either not send the next fibre and then give me grief about getting a refund or she will block me so that I can't get the spinning hints for the next months fibre. Once I have the next fibre and the hints I will then cancel the club subscription properly.
The quality of her fibre is brilliant and I will miss it, but seriously, I really can't be doing with the self-righteous, only my view and opinion matters attitude any more. Its a funny way to speak to customers and there are plenty more worthy fibre sellers who would be welcome and appreciative of my custom.
Wednesday, 15 April 2020
April's Fibre Club Letter
April's Fibre club letter has arrived and I have an idea of what I think the fibre will be like, especially given that it has an amount of Zwartbles wool in it, which is naturally black and such a dark black that it is pointless trying to dye it. I hope that I am right. We will wait and see.
The letter reads:
April 13th marks the 450th anniversary of the birth of Guy Fawkes, the most famous of the Gunpowder plotters. The plot was organised by a group of English Catholics who wished to assassinate James I in order to put a Catholic on the English throne. James I was already the reigning Scottish King when he inherited the English throne. He was the son of Mary Queen of Scots, whose Grandmother was Margaret Tudor, a sister of Henry VIII. On the death of Elizabeth I he was her closest male relative, and more importantly was a Protestant. He was not popular with many English Catholics, and they wished to put his daughter Elizabeth Stuart on the throne. Aged just 10 she would have been little more than a puppet Queen, allowing Catholic nobility to make all the decisions about the ruling of the kingdom. Eventually Elizabeth’s grandson inherited the throne on the death of Queen Anne in 1714.
James was more open to religious freedom than Elizabeth I, his wife was Catholic and he appointed “known” Catholics such as the Earl of Northumberland, Thomas Percy, to important government posts. This led to many Catholics being more open about their religion, which in turn led to religious friction with extreme Protestant groups like the Puritans. James was stuck between the 2 groups, and following the discovery of 2 Catholic plots to depose him reintroduced strict laws against Catholicism. Some Catholics returned to living their double lives, but others decided to take action. Over the course of 1604 and 1605 a group of men gathered together and concocted a plan to blow up the King, and many of the Protestant nobility during the state opening of Parliament on November 5th 1605.
The lead plotter was not the more well known, Guy Fawkes. Robert Catesby had already made sacrifices for his faith. His father had been arrested for sheltering a priest, and he had left university without completing his studies as he refused to swear the Protestant Oath of Supremacy. He put together a group of friends who all wished to take action, and they were joined by Guy Fawkes. He was an English Catholic who had fought for Catholic Spain against the Protestant Dutch Republic. The group later grew from 5 to 10, with most of the subsequent plotters being relatives of the original 5 by blood or marriage. Many of the men were known to Robert Cecil, “spymaster” of the British crown, but the plot would have remained undiscovered were it not for William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle (and secret Catholic) showing Cecil an anonymous letter warning him to stay away from the opening of Parliament. That clue was enough to lead to a search of the cellars under Westminster. They found a large amount of firewood in one cellar, and in the other Guy Fawkes and some barrels of gunpowder. The remains of the plotters had already fled London, and the plan had been for Fawkes to light the fuse and to flee the city by boat to reach the safety of continental Europe. Meanwhile the other plotters were to lead an uprising in the Midlands to seize power. Eventually all the plotters were arrested, and either died in a fight whilst resisting arrest, or were captured and executed. The failed plot caused many further hardships for British Catholics, leading them to being scapegoats for events such as the Great Fire of London. Placating the Puritans also had limited success, in turn many ended up fleeing Britain for America, to escape religious persecution.
The plot itself was uncovered on November 5th, and by Parliament decree became a day for celebration. In London bonfires were lit, and by the 1650’s they were accompanied by fireworks. To this day 5th November is know as Bonfire Night, or Guy Fawkes Night. Effigies known as “guys” are burnt on the bonfire.
This one, I imagine, could contain a large amount of black with the addition of splashes of bright colours and if it does then it could be reminiscent of this yarn, the last one in the post, that I made several years ago
April 13th marks the 450th anniversary of the birth of Guy Fawkes, the most famous of the Gunpowder plotters. The plot was organised by a group of English Catholics who wished to assassinate James I in order to put a Catholic on the English throne. James I was already the reigning Scottish King when he inherited the English throne. He was the son of Mary Queen of Scots, whose Grandmother was Margaret Tudor, a sister of Henry VIII. On the death of Elizabeth I he was her closest male relative, and more importantly was a Protestant. He was not popular with many English Catholics, and they wished to put his daughter Elizabeth Stuart on the throne. Aged just 10 she would have been little more than a puppet Queen, allowing Catholic nobility to make all the decisions about the ruling of the kingdom. Eventually Elizabeth’s grandson inherited the throne on the death of Queen Anne in 1714.
James was more open to religious freedom than Elizabeth I, his wife was Catholic and he appointed “known” Catholics such as the Earl of Northumberland, Thomas Percy, to important government posts. This led to many Catholics being more open about their religion, which in turn led to religious friction with extreme Protestant groups like the Puritans. James was stuck between the 2 groups, and following the discovery of 2 Catholic plots to depose him reintroduced strict laws against Catholicism. Some Catholics returned to living their double lives, but others decided to take action. Over the course of 1604 and 1605 a group of men gathered together and concocted a plan to blow up the King, and many of the Protestant nobility during the state opening of Parliament on November 5th 1605.
The lead plotter was not the more well known, Guy Fawkes. Robert Catesby had already made sacrifices for his faith. His father had been arrested for sheltering a priest, and he had left university without completing his studies as he refused to swear the Protestant Oath of Supremacy. He put together a group of friends who all wished to take action, and they were joined by Guy Fawkes. He was an English Catholic who had fought for Catholic Spain against the Protestant Dutch Republic. The group later grew from 5 to 10, with most of the subsequent plotters being relatives of the original 5 by blood or marriage. Many of the men were known to Robert Cecil, “spymaster” of the British crown, but the plot would have remained undiscovered were it not for William Parker, 4th Baron Monteagle (and secret Catholic) showing Cecil an anonymous letter warning him to stay away from the opening of Parliament. That clue was enough to lead to a search of the cellars under Westminster. They found a large amount of firewood in one cellar, and in the other Guy Fawkes and some barrels of gunpowder. The remains of the plotters had already fled London, and the plan had been for Fawkes to light the fuse and to flee the city by boat to reach the safety of continental Europe. Meanwhile the other plotters were to lead an uprising in the Midlands to seize power. Eventually all the plotters were arrested, and either died in a fight whilst resisting arrest, or were captured and executed. The failed plot caused many further hardships for British Catholics, leading them to being scapegoats for events such as the Great Fire of London. Placating the Puritans also had limited success, in turn many ended up fleeing Britain for America, to escape religious persecution.
The plot itself was uncovered on November 5th, and by Parliament decree became a day for celebration. In London bonfires were lit, and by the 1650’s they were accompanied by fireworks. To this day 5th November is know as Bonfire Night, or Guy Fawkes Night. Effigies known as “guys” are burnt on the bonfire.
This one, I imagine, could contain a large amount of black with the addition of splashes of bright colours and if it does then it could be reminiscent of this yarn, the last one in the post, that I made several years ago
Monday, 13 April 2020
Spinning up Emerald City
My next fibre to spin up is from May of 2019 called "Emerald City". I'm working through them in order so as to catch up and spin the oldest fibre first as it does tend to clump together a bit and get harder to spin the longer it is sat there doing nothing.
I wasn't sure about this one when it arrived and now that I have spun it I know that when I knit it up it will need to be worked with something else, a lighter colour, to break it up as I think making a shawl out of this on its own would be very dark and unappealing. I spun this one up to sport weight and I got 368m from it. The fibre content is 50% Merino, 25% BFL, 12.5% Mulberry Silk, 12.5% Bamboo Rayon.
Monday, 30 March 2020
Combing the darker Jacob fibres
I've combed some of the darker fibres from the same Jacob fleece that I've been working on lately. I've made a couple of yarns already from the lighter coloured fibres that I dyed using Logwood and Carrot tops dyes. I'm trying to reduce the space that my fleece takes up so that I have more space for yarns and fibre. I'm not sure its working that well so far but it has to reduce the overall bulk and weight eventually.
Anyway, I'm waffling so I grabbed a bag of 372g of fleece and got combing it. At the end I was left with 180g of hand combed top ready to spin or blend with other stuff. I'm not 100% sure what I will do with this yet. It may well become a gradient but not necessarily left as a natural coloured gradient, I may decide to dye it and, because of the coloured fibres, it should produce a gradient in whatever shade I decide to dye it. There are also other options too like blending the lightest and darkest nests together to even out the colours to produce a more even coloured grey yarn. I will most likely go with the dyed gradient option.
Anyway, I'm waffling so I grabbed a bag of 372g of fleece and got combing it. At the end I was left with 180g of hand combed top ready to spin or blend with other stuff. I'm not 100% sure what I will do with this yet. It may well become a gradient but not necessarily left as a natural coloured gradient, I may decide to dye it and, because of the coloured fibres, it should produce a gradient in whatever shade I decide to dye it. There are also other options too like blending the lightest and darkest nests together to even out the colours to produce a more even coloured grey yarn. I will most likely go with the dyed gradient option.
Wednesday, 25 March 2020
Spinning up Gold
I'm getting on spinning my way through some of the mass of spinning fibre that I have building up around me. This time I have chosen one from last year, the February 2019 monthly fibre called "Gold". I really like this one as its pretty much a single colour, with varying shades, and sparkle. I do like a bit of sparkle as it adds interest and makes for pretty lace shawls.
There's not a lot to say about how this spun up really as I didn't encounter any problems with it so I'll just get on and show it off. I spun it to sport weight and I got 364m out of it. To re-cap the fibre content from the linked post about the fibre it is 58.% Merino, 25% BFL, 12.5% Mulberry Silk, 4% Stellina.
Wednesday, 18 March 2020
March's Club Fibre is here!
Happy little squeals could be heard from me this morning as I opened my little parcel from the fibre club. Just as I expected after reading the letter and little bit of research, this fibre is all shades of blue with a hint of green. I was having a little problem with light when taking the photos but the true colour is more like the larger photo. Its 70% Merino, 30% Viscose, with the Merino being naturally dyed in Italy using Indigo and Woad.
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