B517 - A new design full of diamonds and purls...

My youngest went back to school on 7th September and my eldest started her 'A' Level Maths along with her specialised course that is the equivalent of 3 'A' Levels at her chosen place of further education on 16th September and I wasted no time in getting on and getting back to being creative.

To begin with, I kicked off with some lovely bulky soft 55% Cotton/45% Acrylic yarn from Rowan.  I think I need something that will work up quickly and provide me with new stuff to add to my shop as quickly as possible.

I chose a new design, that means one that I've not made before not one that is newly published, and as I realised that I was running out yarn I had to leave one row off the end and I still had a very panicky game of yarn chicken and you can see in the photo below that I had less than 6 inches left as I done the final cast off stitch.  

And now for the final product photos...

A Big Experiment

Back on 6th June I announced on my Facebook page I was combing some Jacob fleece in preparation for a large spinning job. The first part of the fleece was combed back in March and was the darker grey fibres of the fleece and I got 183g of combed fibre from it. The second part of the fleece was combed at the beginning of June and was the lighter grey fibres of the fleece but I selected the darkest of these fibres in the first instance so that I could make the bag of darker fibres up to a nice round 200g and the lighter grey fibres produced about 320g of combed fibre. Keep reading to discover my reasoning for doing that.

I've made no secret of my dislike of a couple of the fibre braids from the monthly fibre club that I was once part of. I did ask other members of the group if anyone wanted to buy the braids from me on the sale/trade page but despite several of them saying previously that they loved the colours of these braids there were no takers for my braids of fibre. I brushed it off the cold shoulder and I came up with the idea of spinning it in a similar way to a yarn I spun way back in 2013, the last skein in this post but this time using grey rather than black.

Now, the reason for me wanting to make the dark fibre bag up too 200g is because if I add that amount to one of the 100g of braids it makes 300g and then I have about 320g in the other bag with the light grey fibres and these two amounts will make two separate plies to then be spun together. So this would give me a total of around 600g broken down into 6 skeins of approximately 100g each with a fibre content of approximately 66% Jacob wool/34% Merino wool.

I split the braid up into 6 equal parts and then the dark grey into 6 equal parts and put each set into their own little bag. I then took one bag and broke the two lots of fibres down even further into the same number of little bumps, although the dark grey bumps were twice the weight of the rainbow bumps. I then spun it finely one part rainbow followed by two parts grey, rainbow, grey, rainbow, grey, rainbow... and this made one ply.

The light grey I didn't split up or weigh out into 6 parts as this will make up the other ply and I will just use it with each 100g of the grey/rainbow mix until it runs out and it makes for a very interesting barber-pole effect even in just the grey on grey sections.

I've not finished this spinning project yet but I have spun two skeins so far, each approx 100g, but the heat got the better of me last week and I felt it was too hot to be handling fluffy fibres that could felt in my hot hands.

I have another 4 skeins worth to spin and I am surprised by how much I like it. Its not nowhere near as garish as I thought it would be when I planned the project with the view of over-dying it blue, in the knowledge of how the blue dye would react with the original colours so the grey Jacob would become mottled and the yellows would become green, the pinks would become purple etc etc just like mixing paint. I need to do a bit of a test knit to see how it knits up before I decide whether to over-dye it blue or not. It may be that I decide to over-dye half of it blue and leave half as it is as this would supply me with enough yarn in each colourway to make something substantial.

Wensleydale X Texel Fleece

I follow a Facebook page for a local-ish farm, according to Google Maps the shortest route is about 31 miles, and they posted that they had some Wensleydale, Texel and cross-breed fleeces for sale and at a really good price.  Obviously, because of Covid-19, a visit in person to check out the quality of the fleece is not really practical so most transactions were taking place online.  After a little deliberating, mainly me wondering if it would be a case of "you get what you pay for", i.e. pay a low price get low quality, I decided to take a punt as at such a great price I would be stupid not to take the risk. 

My ideal fleece would have been the pure bred Wensleydale but these had all gone by the time I had made my decision to just get one and see and so I chose the Wensleydale X Texel fleece, as my preference is for the longer staple fleece.  So I paid my money and waited for the fleece to arrive and I have to say that I was not disappointed.

It was a little lighter than I anticipated, as with the long staples of the Wensleydale and the sheer size of the Texel I was expecting a fleece in the region of 4 or 5 Kg at least but when it came it only weighed 2.65Kg, maybe it is a lamb fleece and not a full grown adult, but still a great bargain as far as I am concerned.

I didn't leave it long before washing this fleece and I noticed that in places there seemed to be a significant amount of "rise" at the sheared end.  This is the point where last years growth ends and this years growth begins and given the size of the rise I would say that the sheep were quite late in being sheared, probably had problems getting a shearer on site due to this pandemic.

Aside from the rise issues, most of which I pulled off as I separated the locks for washing, the fleece is surprisingly fine and soft.  So my starting weight was 2.65Kg and after skirting and washing I'm left with 1.52Kg, which will reduce further when it goes through my combs but I am hoping for around the 1Kg of yarn from this in the end.

This isn't quite the full fleece, I had already washed a small amount and the blue area didn't wash out and so was thrown away.

Despite the muddyness of the locks the fleece is really fine and soft.

Side by side, dirty locks and washed locks, this process still amazes me.

Design LF433 in Pink and Green

I started this way back on 4th March and just been doing a bit of work on this when I can and when I feel like it.  Covid-19 Lockdown is taking its toll on my crafting as everyone has been at home.  I don't have any issues with supplies, I have enough to last me for decades if need be, my issue is with a lack of motivation.

My colours for this one are Gold, Cerise and Pale Green Twilley's Goldfingering.

First up are a couple of work in progress photos.

And now for a couple of finished item photos.

Wonkey Donkey?

So, with being in National Lockdown due to Covid-19 I have everyone at home and can't concentrate on knitting or crocheting lovely lace shawls but I need to do something.  I hit on the idea of using up some of the scraps and left overs and knitting some donkeys for the Donkey Sanctuary, one of the many charities that I support, as they sell them to raise funds for the care of the Donkey's and these charities need our support even more at the moment as they are unable to have visitors and so their income has all but ceased.

They supply a pattern for both knitted and crocheted donkeys so that they are all made to a standard pattern but leave the colours up to the crafter so that each donkey will have its own personality.

I've had the pattern for some time but never got around to making it so I set off working on it and I have to say that, despite making many toys in the past in my teenage years  (all of them were Jean Greenhowe), this was the most horrendous pattern I have ever encountered.  My plan was to make several of these donkeys but I have to say that I stopped at one and sent it off to them.  I have since ripped the pattern up and binned it to make sure that I never get that idea again.  Maybe in the future I may try the crochet version but never the knitted version!

To me this does not look so much like a donkey as donkey-in-stein.  Even the feet were knitted separately on this one.  Why????  There really is no need to knit the feet separately, they could have been done in one piece instead of 3 pieces!

Anyway, I hope that somewhere there is someone who has fell in love with this ugly donkey at whichever Donkey Sanctuary it ended up at, bought it and is giving it lots of cuddles.

May 2020's fibre is here - Athena

I knew what this one would look like and I was totally bang on.  I do love this one and its such a shame that I have felt the need to give up the monthly fibre club that I loved receiving as I will miss the monthly surprises but I won't miss the other things that go with being part of that club.  For my own mental health I have had to leave the club and the chat group.

There are lots of shades of a similar colour in this one and I like that.  What I don't like is lots of different colours that, in my opinion clash, like last months fibre.  However, that is not saying that I don't like fibre with different colours in them altogether as I do like January's fibre, National Trust, and I think that is because the colours are more muted and do work well together rather than fight each other for attention.

The fibre content of this one is 40% Merino, 20% Alpaca, 20% Baby Camel, 20% Mulberry Silk and I have to say that is very nice to touch and stroke.

May's Fibre Club Letter

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.