I am greedy....

...and would really really like to win one of Mariannes fantastic prizes. In order to qualify, I need to promote the giveaway somewhere, and here is somewhere :)

 

Picperfics Actual Giveaway!!

 

 

Marianne is the wonderful lady who custom dyed the fibre for my Manly Man Hat and has plenty of gorgeous gorgeous hand painted fibre in her shop:

 

I find this one particularily breathtaking:

 

 

But I wouldn't say no to someone else doing the hard work on a quilted project bag for me either:

 

 

so pick me, pick me!! :)



Gentle food

The weekend was a little quiet. I am impatiently waiting for lots and lots of new base yarns to arrive so that I can finally revive the shop a little, now that we are essentially out of Gower Wool until the autumn. I really can't wait to play with some luxurious, squishy yarns and introduce them all to you!

Poppy is also waiting...

In the meantime, I've pottered round the house, tackled those bigger jobs I've been meaning to deal with for months, like laying the new bathroom floor (not a happy experience, but at least it's done) and finally had the weather to sow all those lovely veg we're hoping for this summer.

As Mark felt unwell in the night to Sunday, we weren't about to have ourselves any experimental cuisine, but it did give me the opportunity to finally use up all the odds and ends of currants and 4 different kinds of raisins I had left from the Christmas cake and bake him a nice Welsh Bara Brith.
Bara Brith means "mottled bread". It is a simple loaf made with tea-soaked fruits and not much else. In fact, Mary Berrys recipe seemed so simple that I had to look it up online to make sure there wasn't a typo in the book!
(it may seem like cheating to use Mary Berry for a traditional welsh cake - I did check my Welsh cookbooks but they all called for lard or wholemeal flour or other such gruesome things! Also, I haven't failed at a Berry recipe yet, so I'm just going to stick with those.)

 

 

Since Mark was busy scoffing hot buttered cake for his dinner, I took the opportunity to crack open the rosehip soup someone kindly brought back for me from Sweden last year. This may sound like a complete oddity, especially as its sister dish is blueberry soup, but this is what we were fed up and down the country on cold winter days when I was little. Schools served it, scout camps served it, blueberry soup is even the official drink of the Vasa cross-country ski race every year.
I'm always amazed at how evocative smells are - I had barely opened the packet when I immediately recognised the smell as that of cold winter afternoon, and of my after-school club. I even had a bag of the little miniature macaroons to scatter on top.

 


Only one thing I think might have changed in the last 20 or so years: I think some E-numbers got banned along the way, I remember it as a rather more vivid red colour. But the taste is definately the same!

What I did in my Easter Break....

This weekend I met someone wearing the Inga cardigan by Rowan - the lady wearing it was working in her slightly chilly haberdashery, and looked so fantastically cosy in the thick, crocheted, multi-coloured tweedy fabric that I longed to wrap myself up in something similar then and there.

As it happened, I was visiting my mother at the time - a lady with a formidable yarn stash and a short attention span: she knits in a completely opposite manner to mine: where I like huuuuuge, cosy endurance knits, preferably in a single shade of grey or dirty green, my mother produces delicate little multicoloured delights, the more shades the better, but as long as it reaches around her neck once, that's all she needs.
Luckily for me, this means lots and lots of left over yarns! A trip to her basement is as good as visiting any yarn shop but without the paying part, and on this occasion it did not disappoint: probably a nearly complete set of the amazing Holst colours in a mix of qualities, but all the same thickness, perfect for my take on the cardigan.

I didn't think that the original shape would suit me and we didn't have the pattern at home - patience has never been my strong point and I was itching to cast on - so I devised an idea for a straighter, kimono jacket with a similar shawl collar. I am working it with the fine yarn held double - at the moment it does feel really very stiff and itchy, but I have every faith that it will soften and relax with washing and wearing. I'm really enjoying the actual stitch, a very simple 4 single crochet, 4 double crochet pattern which creates something so much more interesting than a plain stripe whilst still only working one colour at a time. 

 

Manly Man Hat

Here's something I should have posted a while back but didn't quite get round to taking pictures of 'til now:

Marks Manly Birthday hat.

It was spun from this gorgeous, custom-dyed Bluefaced Leicester and Silk fibre from the endlessly helpful Marianne from Picperfic who put up with me changing my mind back and forth about fibre contents and exact shades of grey and amounts of blue acceptable for a perfect stormy sky and all my other pettiness.
The braid was so pretty when it arrived I barely dared to start spinning it in case I muddled up all the colours.

But spun it I did, and in secret too, as Mark was inconveniently off work that week so I had to try and squeeze it in whist he was sleeping, and knitted it up using the Exeter Hat pattern which was a very good, quick knit and makes for an smart manly hat.

Plug and Play Pembrokeshire

So the day finally came for the Plug and Play marketplace in Pembrokeshire, and our first experience selling yarn face to face, and what a lovely day it was!

Mark got dressed in all his best "knitted Viking" finery:

Young Mark is sporting a Wollmeise tunic, the Urban Aran cardigan
and Gower Wool fingerless gloves

 

I couldn't decide which shawls and sweaters to wear for both the freezing outdoors and potentially warmer indoors so just threw a whole selection in the car. I think I changed neckwear 3 times along the way.

After a swift drive and a fruitless search for an open tea room on the way, we arrived early at the Beggars Reach Hotel and were warmly welcomed by Amy and Brenda who made sure that we were swiftly fed and watered. We were also introduced to our fellow vendor - the fantastic Caerthan from Triskelion Yarns (whose sweater I intend to shamelessly copy as soon as I can get my hands on some more Lopi )

                      

Once the attendees where secured at the lunch table next door, we set up in the lovely bright room provided and were told not to tease the ladies as we carried our wares past the windows. After a valiant effort from Amy to keep the frenzied and clearly yarn-starved crowd at bay, the attendees were finally allowed in and an incredible blur of yarn and colours and oohs and aahs followed. It was such a joy to be selling to the converted, so different from the crafts markets I normally attend where you might get a confused look at most. I will be keenly following the progress of all my little yarns to fully grown projects from now on, I can't wait to see what these talented ladies will make of them! (and if you are one of these talented people, feel free to send me pictures and I will post them up)

The Gower Wool display - all the undyed
and the fibre are all gone!

All the new Lovely Linen colours

 

Amy Singer from Knitty with one of
her ill-gotten gains....I mean purchases:
a bright Periwinkle Linen Scarf.

We finished this perfect day by stopping off on the Gower to drop in unannounced on family and friends, ending the evening with an impromptu Sunday dinner for 5 complete with 4 kinds of roast veg, cooked, to my astonishment, in Marks mothers motorhome!

 

 

 

 

 



 





 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

There's hope!

After yet another unseasonably cold snap last week, I was amazed to come down to our allotment and find that things have actually been growing! They're only little, but they are oh so pretty...




 

tiny garlic shoots

red currant



black currant that we inherited with the plot

Some of you might notice that the shop is currently closed - many many apologies for this: I have had the great honour to be invited as one of only two sellers at the Plug and Play retreat in Pembrokeshire this weekend and am frantically skeining, weighing and labelling in preparation!
Normal service will resume on Monday the 25th.

News from the shop

Last year - the first time we produced our Gower wool - we sold out of it by February and had to sit around and wait for the sheep to be ready to shear again and with the terrible year that it was, didn't have any more supply until October. Learning from that mistake, I asked for an extra sack of fleece to keep for spinning later in the year and treasured it in our garage until the current stock started running low.
 Now, a 20 kilo sack of raw sheeps fleece is not a small thing. It stands about waist high and pongs of lanolin. The sacks from the Natural Fibre Company who spin our wool are also bright white. Nonetheless, the courier company charged with transporting this gigantic, white sack have somehow utterly and completely managed to lose it. They've looked for weeks up and down depots in the country but have now decided that the sack is, in fact, gone.
We've been reinbursed for the value of the fleeces of course, but sadly, it still means no more Gower Wool until after summer shearing. There are still a good few hanks in both dyed and undyed colours available but that really is it for now!

So I have been thrown into dyeing my other bases for now, and with spring hopefully looming, I have prepared a few fresh and springy colours in the lovely Lithuanian linen.
It is a heavy lace to light fingering weight and this year we are doing it in the smaller 50gr hanks to allow you to mix and match the colours.
As linen is very absorbent, it takes the dye very quickly and thoroughly, making for an almost solid colour with only minor shifts expected of a hand dyed product.

For those not used to knitting with linen, it may appear stiff and stringy att first, but it softens in your hands as you work with it and will continue to soften for the many years that you wear it. Fantastically hard wearing, once blocked it also holds lace patterns beautifully without curling back up on itself and drapes very well.

I will be adding many more colours as soon as I dye them, as well as long long scarves made from the commercially dyed version of this same yarn. Let's just hope it will be warm enough for these lighter knits soon!