Hello again…

My poor old craft blog has been rather quiet, whilst my body is refusing to provide me with enough energy to do very much beyond the essentials for home and work. But, I have been doing a few bits and pieces over the past couple of months, so here’s a little update.

In a spirit of optimism I have been buying materials that I can look forward to making full use of in the (hopefully) not too distant future. I bought a Jacob fleece last year and added some Valkyrie combs from The Whorl’s End to my tool cupboard to process the fleece – they are fearsome looking things:

I combed some of the Jacob fleece and they did a great job of detangling the fibres, loads of bugs and leaves fell out (I didn’t realise quite how much mess it would make, next time I will put something on the floor underneath combs) and it blended the colours well.

I used the combed fibres to experiment with some fine spinning. I would like to make a circular shawl using laceweight yarn, but that project might be a while away yet. I only knitted up a tiny amount, but I was pleased with it:

I accidentally bought a 20″ Ashford Knitter’s loom and stand. It was too good a bargain to pass by and weaving puts less pressure on knee and hand joints so I could sort of justify it to myself. I have completed one project on it so far, not particularly exciting to look at as I just grabbed some plain coloured yarn to see how it worked. As always, the first project taught me quite a few things to avoid in future, but it resulted in a functional scarf:

I am hoping to still be able to enter something into the annual show at the Weald and Downland Museum this year. I bought this shetland/silk blend fibre from Hilltop Cloud and have grand plans for it. I am a sucker for rainbow blends and have had a spiral pattern in my head for a couple of years and this looks like the perfect fibre to use for it: