A Prize for Perseverance....Please?!

It is finished (at last):

It's now blocking. Proper photos and stats when it is dry and I have enough light to bring the scarf's true colours out!

Of Wood Peonies and Butterflies

My wood peony has just bloomed for the very first time since I planted it (about 7 years ago or so, I think):



The plant itself is huge and because it has never flowered before, I have always thought of it as a 'leaf interest' plant. It was interesting how delicate and fragile the flowers appeared to be in comparision with the strong presence of the rest of the plant.

In all honesty, the flowers did not last very long (perhaps a week at the most) and, as my garden is so small (very little room for fleeting or non-performers), I am very glad that I have other reasons for enjoying this plant and keeping it as a permanent feature in my border.

Now I did not spot this lovely creature in my garden, I caught sight of this Peacock butterfly fluttering happily around my parent's garden.

It made me realise that I had not seen a butterfly in a very long time. In fact, worryingly for a woman with a house full of yarn, my garden seems to be a haven for moths and other slightly less than desirable creepy crawlies. I suspect that my honeysuckle may help to explain this but surely it is possible to have a garden that will attract both?

Hmm. Now I do have a variagated butterfly bush but it has never really thrived in my garden, which is (North East facing). Does anyone have ideas for plants that would do well in a very small, part shady garden that are attractive to butterflies?

Wonderwool 3 (Mid Wales Mouthful)

Sunday at Wonderwool was much quieter than Saturday. This gave me the chance to stroll around the Mid Wales Mouthful part of the event with the Fella.

Last year, Wonderwool was paired with the Smallholder Show and somehow, I suspect that this might have offered families a little bit more to see and do than the Mid Wales Mouthful?

While there were a couple of fun, food things on offer, I did not really think that there was very much for younger visitors. The two things I did spot were:

a bicycle powered smoothie maker

the fruit art lady contemplating...her fruity layout?

So, gently putting families to one side - what counts as a gourmet, Mid Wales Mouthful then?

You know, I am not sure. The food fair part of the event was a sort of large farmer's market. There were plenty of preserves, delicious cheeses, homemade cakes, nuts, chocolate, cider plus other British alcohol on offer alongside produce from organic butchers and veg suppliers.


There was also a stand selling excellent bread and a patisserie stand where we picked up some apple strudel and brownies as a Sunday afternoon treat. Yum, yum, yum:


Then, there was a stand selling 26 of their 37 varieties of scotch egg. I hate scotch eggs...shudder.

There seemed to be a lot of stands selling large packs of sausages and there was also someone selling Welsh jerky, including vegetarian jerky. Yes - Welsh jerky. Don't look at me like that, I have no idea why one would need jerky in Wales - for the long arduous hikes between home and the village pub, perhaps?!

Now the Fella led our purchase of jerky yet I notice that he did not take any of it home to Canada with him! Actually, writing this has reminded me that it is sitting in my cupboard, so I have just taken a photo, opened a pack and now I am sitting here, writing this and chewing long and hard on something which describes itself as "Blackbeard's Buccaneer Jerky".



I take it all back - I have no idea why I am chewing on something that looks like it's been hoiked out of an Egyptian tomb or why it is being made in Wales but d'you know what? It's not bad - salty, spicy and it tastes totally of that welcoming wood fire smell you get when you walk into a good pub with an open fire, on a bitterly cold winter's night.


During the course of the weekend, the Fella did some wandering about on his own. Once he returned triumphant with cider. However another time, he returned with a bottle of Elderflower wine - um, not so successful! However, on Sunday we did pick up a trio of Herefordshire wines which were...


...alright! I was surprised as I am not a fan of British wine at all. To be honest, I thought that those might have to quietly exit the house via the same route as the Elderflower wine.

To finish off my account of the food fair, there were stands selling Bara Brith and Welsh cakes. Now these are both very bright memories from my childhood (warm and buttered) and this photo may tell you why we thought that this man deserved (and got) some of our business!



Otherwise, here are my Mid Wales Mouthful photos and below is our food haul!

In terms of Wonderwool on Sunday, it got very quiet towards the end of the day and, despite one very wonderful 'pick me up' moment when I got back to the stand to find that Dee had popped by with a present for me (grin...more on that another time), our energy had completely flagged and there were signs that, at least for some of our party, some of the excitement had started to wane:

Um, perhaps it was time to go?!

It seems only right to wrap up my account of the Wonderwool weekend with the main protagonists for the weekend - Anne, Tony, Aria and that sort-of-new business venture, Artisan Yarns.

In terms of Artisan Yarns, I think that my mother was pleased with how the weekend went - raising both profile and awareness of what she is doing, not to mention everything she learned about having a stand at this type of event. (I know that I learned a lot too.)

Actually, if we hadn't all been so tired, I think that I would have been sad about packing away the stand at the end of Sunday. As it was, once it was all dismantled and packed away, the Fella and I headed the 3 hours home, where we pretty much collapsed.

Anne and Tony, on the other hand, did something far more sensible. They loaded Aria and headed back to their campsite to conclude their weekend together in the peace and quiet of rural Mid Wales.

A sunny Monday morning near Builth Wells!

Wonderwool Weekend

The End

Wonderwool 2 (Yarn-Fibre-Stuff)

My camera battery died at Wonderwool, so my photos all became a bit piecemeal. I have played with photo time in this post, just to keep topics logically together (with thanks to my mother for some of the photos in this post and in my Flickr set).

Usually, I go to knitting events on a yarn and accessories stalking exercise. Two weeks ago though, I was at Wonderwool as an exhibitor - a lot of fun and a completely different experience to being at a show as a consumer. Naively, I thought that:

• being there before the show opened would give me the chance to get in quick and make off with all of the best yarns and bargains. Nope, it didn't...
  
  


• I would have some calm, structured time away from the stand to potter about, meet people, take photos and study carefully everything that was on offer. Um nope, that did not happen either...
  
  
  
• About ten minutes into the show, I would emerge from my virgin exhibitor show chrysalis as a confident doyenne butterfly of yarn stand holding. Nope, I was terrified. Every time someone asked me a question (invariably one that I could not answer), I half froze and found myself opening my mouth, to squawk inarticulately, 'Mu-uum...'

In fact, the whole weekend seemed to be one mad rush of set up, poking a camera about, rearranging the stall to give things a chance to be seen and fill gaps after sales were made plus trying to keep an eye on whether my parents and the Fella had coffee, water and occasionally, food or a chance to sit down. It-was-all-pretty-much-non-stop!

The very first thing that I did after the Artisan Yarns set up on Saturday morning, was race over to see Posh Yarns. I had hoped to get there before the show opened to take photos of their stand before the hoards descended. I was too late...

...a bunch of knitters had beaten me to it! Yarn purchases were in full flow and here's Starry Starry Knit (right), with her hands happily full of yarn:

Now just in case you have not met the very lovely Dee and Tony, here they are demonstrating their clear mastery of twisting hanks into neat skeins – I think that the movement in this image makes it look like they are twisting in time to music!

Here is a close up of some very splendid, posh and soft yarn:



Dee and Tony won't realise but it's actually very lucky for them both that I had a couple of close calls with a trestle table while setting up my mother's stand. This taught me that their table would never take my weight.



Well, I had never seen so much posh yarn in one place before, nor in such a wide array of colours. I just wanted to throw myself onto their table, into the middle of all that glorious colour and just sort of, you know, cuddle all of that gorgeous softness. (Phew, another faux pas fibre moment avoided!)

Below is a mosaic of some images of some other stands and familiar faces from yarn, knitting and craft companies that you may recognise - I need to say that a nicer bunch of more tolerant people (of me with my camera) you would be hard put to meet:


There were so many things to see that I didn't manage to take pictures of it all. However, here's a little bit more yarn eye candy from the long established Natural Dye Studio:

Now, for those of you who prefer their fibre in a less spun state, I came across these in my travels around the show and I thanked my lucky stars that I have not yet been bitten by the spinning bug otherwise my bank balance would have been in serious trouble:

Opps, how did Gerard and Craig from IKnit end up in this section...?!

Well there's a lovely link, handed to me on a plate - fibre mixed with two of London's most fashionable knitters and knitting shops owners?

Well, it might not be the catwalks of London but Wonderwool at Builth Wells did have a sheepwalk and a fashion show for people to show off their exhibits and wares to the gathered crowd:


On Saturday, Anthony Worrell-Thompson (celebrity chef) headlined the fashion show. However, I was too busy freaking out about walking onto a platform dressed like a weirdo to take any photos of him in action. You see, I am not exactly sure what my mother had in mind when she volunteered me and the Fella to represent her Saturday - personally, I think that we could have doubled as extras from 'Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em'!

Scary! Others managed to pull off their outfits and accessories with a lot more aplomb:


Suffice it to say that we did not volunteer to do the sheepwalk again on Sunday!

Now in reality, this next picture belongs in the stall holder section. However, this lady had two coats, both of which should definitely have graced the sheepwalk. One was green and gold but this is the one that stood out from everything else that I saw at Wonderwool:


This, ladies and gentlemen, is a peach, eyelash, fashion yarn version of a Kaffe Fassett coat pattern. Now - just who among you would have had the knitting balls to make that, eh?! I am completely and utterly awestruck - what a completely inspired, gutsy, free from convention project.

After all, what would you do if you liked the shape of a coat but did not have 15 years to work your way through all that artistic, complicated colour work, in very expensive yarns? The answer to your problem has to be as simple as the coat on this lady's back: you shrug off any preconceived notions about a Kaffe Fassett design and then, whip up your own version of the Chinese Rose coat (just guessing), crocheted in a bunch of out-there fashion yarns, in a very unexpected colour. Why not?!

Frankly, the rest of Saturday whizzed past in a blur. By the end of the day, we were all dead on our feet and looking forwards to dinner and a good night's rest.

We trailed out and trooped back tiredly towards Aria and our car. At which point, I saw one of the nicest family scenes of the day:

A stand holding family, camping at Wonderwool and unwinding at the end of a very busy day with their knitting - now, just how cool is that?

Here are my Wonderwool During the Show photos!

Oh Good Grief!

Will this skein of yarn never end? Will this scarf ever be finished?

One skein of Handmaiden Sea Silk (400m)

Vs

One vampire of a pattern (life force sucking)

It's truly a race, what will end first?

This skein of yarn or my will to live....?

***

P.S. the attractive cling film yarn wrapper?

The only way I have found to keep this ball of yarn slipping apart into one large tangly mess.

Wonderwool 1 (Before The Show)

This post is really about two people called Anne and Tony, a camper van called Aria and a fairly new business venture called Artisan Yarns.

Now just in case this sounds entirely random, I should explain that Anne and Tony make up one half of my four parents. Here they are - Anne (Yarnartisanne), Tony and Aria:

Without a doubt, my mother is my family’s true textile artist. I do not fib - when she is not textile printing, quilting, embroidering, sewing, knitting, dyeing or possibly, spinning - you will find my mother at her textile gallery, The Small Gallery, in Hereford.

My memories of growing up in my mother’s house are rich with the inherent disorder of works in progress, art supplies, fabrics, threads, wool (as we called it then) everywhere (needing to be heaped out of the day so we could eat at the dining table) and the smell of natural plant dyes heating on the stove.

Opps, I digress as usual. Last Autumn, I showed Anne around the hand dyed yarn stands at Alexandra Palace (she was really there to see the exhibition work). It seems that this trip helped to crystallise some ideas and Anne started to introduce some artisan yarns at her Gallery, just before Christmas. Since then, the yarn collection has been expanding and Anne has started to dye yarns again as well. In fact, here are some of her hand dyes in a box (alongside a pink Knitwitches silk yarn scarf), ready to go off to Wonderwool:

Except not many people know about what my mother is doing yet, as a Gallery website and blog are still pending...

...so enter Wonderwool as an opportunity to start raising awareness about Artisan Yarns at The Small Gallery!

As an aside, just in case you think that Tony is the long suffering partner of an overtly creative person (he is, but still), I need to tell you that Tony holds his own on the creative front -he is currently the oldest Art Foundation student at Hereford Art College.

The third character in the photo above is Aria - a brand new camper van, manufactured in Brazil to the original VW specification - very cool on the outside, very plush on the inside and apparently, no power steering so a bit tricky to drive!

Now it turns out that taking to the open road in a camper van is something that Anne and Tony have always wanted to do, so they hired Aria for the Wonderwool weekend. Just on the basis that their accommodation for the weekend would double as a decent yarn transporter.

They were right too.

This is Tony’s study before the yarn was loaded into Aria:

This is Aria after the yarn was loaded for the drive to Builth Wells:

You will note that my parents were careful to provision sensibly for the weekend:

Aria loaded, Anne and Tony set off for Wonderwool. The Fella and I caught up with them at 7pm, when we helped them to set up the stand. By the time that 10pm had swung around, we were barely able to speak we were all so tired and the stand still had a few things left for us to sort out.

Now I haven’t been to a Knitting Event as an exhibitor before so I was very curious to see how things really looked before it opened its doors to the public.

You know, it really was a bit like, 'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse':

So we crept out quietly to collapse - my parents at their camp site, the Fella and I at our B&B (a pub). However, we were all back by 8:30am on Saturday to finish off the stand and prepare for the 10am opening - fanfare please...

...so this, for those of you who were not able to make it to Wonderwool this year, is Artisan Yarns, set up and sorted for the start of the show!

The rest of my Wonderwool Before the Show photographs have been uploaded to Flickr and I will post about the rest of last weekend in the next day or two!

Human or Fibre Machine?

Apparently there was something on TV recently about someone who was cultivating their belly button fluff to spin and knit into something? Now I missed this little gem of national tv programming but heck, if people are happy to collect, spin and knit up their favourite pet's hair, then why not use human lint too?

Warning: I suggest that you do not read on if you have just fallen off your chair, utterly revolted by this concept.

However, if you happen to think that it is safe to call into question the sexiness of your partner's knitting efforts and think that it is safe to leave said knitter unattended with her blog while you fly home on an aeroplane, please do read on...!

So, in the name of sustainable eco-fibre research for today's knitting community, I have been investigating the contents of the Fella's tummy button over the past two weeks. I have noted his unstinting and diligent ability to produce about an inch of fingering weight lint per day, in a variety of quite attractive whites, greys, blues and blacks. I find this oddly fascinating.

Yup, I have pictures of the output but I will save them - you know, just in case the sexiness of one of my knitting projects is called into question again? (Oh, am I going on?!)

So hmm. Let's think about this logically for a moment. There are 36 inches in a yard and it would take around 200 yards of yarn to make a nice pair of simple mitts, such as the Thank You Mitts?
Oh - unless my arithmetic is out, that is not good. Doesn't that mean it would take me 7200 days or 19.72 years to harvest sufficient Fella lint to make a pair of mittens? Let's round that up to 20 years to account for any fibre wastage during spinning.

It just seems like a lot of effort over time for a small project outcome. Especially when, a quick look on the net tells me that it is possible to pick up a skein of Pro Natura Zitron Trekking sock yarn for about £7.50. In my personal view and very limited experience of human lint colours, their range does seems to include certain shades that might be quite a close match?

So, almost regrettably, I hereby conclude that stashing human lint is not a worthwhile endeavour. (That is, unless someone starts up a Human Lint Cooperative. Where people who possess the astonishing ability to create belly button fluff sign up to make weekly lint deliveries?)

Personally, I think that someone would really have to be feeling very thrifty or love their partner a lot to collect their lint everyday, for 20 years, in order to make them a pair of mitts.

Mind you - a pair of handspun lint mitts would make a very novel and unique 20th Anniversary present from a knitter to their partner?

"Ohhh darling, thank you for the new china and this beautiful platinum ring. In return, I made these mittens just for you - from you - in celebration of the 20 marvelous years that we have spent together."

[Cue stunned silence and people studiously avoiding eye contact?!]

Hurrumph - my first ever socks, not sexy when worn in bed...? Pah! What'd'ya mean?!

Psst! Passion Crushing Socks!

Ok, I brought my girl her post alarm clock morning coffee today.

What can I say? I am a guy - it is included in my job description.

You know, I sort of hoped to find my lovely partner propped up in bed, bowled over with delight at the joint sight of me and the smell of coffee. Not quite – instead, I was greeted by this sight:

You know, this image did not quite match the one that went through my half asleep mind during the wait for the kettle to come to boil - I really was not thinking of this:

Or this:

So a very quiet tip from one knitter’s boyfriend - socks might be fun to make, they might be comfortable to wear but they are not necessarily a glorious sight first thing in the morning!

Signed B

(Gabrielle's Fella)

Home...but exhausted!

We are back from Wonderwool!

You know, 48 hours on (just as a stand helper) and I am still exhausted - in fact, I have spent the last two days at work wandering around work emulating a zombie!

My hat is firmly off to all those small businesses who do shows like this on a regular basis - good grief - you do this AND raise fibre animals, shear or clip them, create roving, spin, dye yarn, felt, knit and make spinning wheels?!

Okay, I will share my experience of Wonderwool, disclose what constitutes a Mid Wales gourmet mouthful (just for you Toni) and reveal the contents of these bags, as and when I can over the next few days!

However, please note that my deeply, very lovely Fella is still here and, as we live so far apart, I plan to enjoy every minute that I can with him until he gets back on a plane to Vancouver at the end of next weekend.

So please bear with me. I took lots of photos and will share as much as I can, when I can!

Not at Home to Visitors!

If things are a bit quiet on my blog for the next two weeks, it is because the Fella landed on Saturday for a business trip. Hurray!

Mind you, it's not all slushy, romantic stuff here in London because next weekend we are headed to Wonderwool Wales and Mid Wales Mouthful...

...the primary excuse is that I plan to help out my mother, Artisan Yarns, on her stall. (In truth, I hope to bury myself quietly in a mountain of yarn, taking timeouts only to sample the finest foods that Mid Wales has on offer!)

We plan to return from Wales with a quantity of good photos and stories for your virtual delectation and delight! Oh yes...