spinning

If I’ve been a bit quiet this week…

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…it’s because I’ve been going flat out trying to get my Web Shop open. I’m not 100% there yet, but I’m very pleased to say that it is now online, at VintageCraftStuff, although there are only about 11 “products” up there so far & you can’t buy anything yet! There’s quite a lot of work left to do; everything has to be weighed & measured for the postage calculator, for example, and I have the best part of 100 books to list, not to mention everything else! But at last I feel I’m getting somewhere. I’d love to open a real shop, but rent & rates round here are too high for the sort of turnover I’d anticipate, and I don’t want to get bogged down with commuting.

Otherwise, there’s been another attack of freegan raspberries, but this time I nearly left them too long (about 10 hours) before picking them over and sadly lost over half to mould, so only ended up with 4 smallish jars of raspberry jam. Last week, I was given a big box of celery, which has kept my dehydrator busy all week and will flavour our soups throughout the winter.  We enjoyed our day at the Pavilion hugely and gave away over 50 Morsbags; I came away with lots of ideas and hoping against hope that I might finally be able to do a Permaculture Design Course in the not-too-distant future; there’ll be one running locally before too long. Twice I’ve signed up for them elsewhere, only to have them cancelled when there weren’t enough students.

And I’m over the moon with my latest lovely acquisition from the Tip; I had to part with my lovely Willcox & Gibbs “Silent Automatic” treadle as I didn’t use it enough to justify the floor space it took up. But now I have a handcranked version, even earlier (mid 1880s?) which is tiny so I can keep it! They are really good with “difficult” threads; something to do with the tension mechanism, I suspect, so it is genuinely useful as well as “cute” in Jo’s opinion. I’ll post a pic tomorrow.

And the skein of scrap yarn has become a cosy fingercrochet hat, which I love & will wear. There’ll be more in the pipeline; it’s great fun to spin so I’m on the hunt for genuine scraps now!

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear….

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Spin your scrap yarn into something beautiful & useful!
Spin your scrap yarn into something beautiful & useful!

Well, what a totally irresistible idea. I’ve never been that interested in producing “Art Yarns” but when I saw what Grace’s husband had spun up out of scrap roving, I couldn’t help admiring it and thinking, well maybe…

I had a bag of fabric scraps to take down to the Tip yesterday; more than I could store or handle within the foreseeable future. And I’d poked some scraps of commercial yarn in there too, two colours of Zanzibar and some tangled pink & black eyelash from the gothic sweater that never was; yarn too saggy for pattern. Perhaps I could do something with those and the very lumpy batt of mixed pink sparkly mohair and Dorset Down? Not to mention some tiny scraps of lace and ribbon…

So off to my trusty computer, via several blogs, Ravelry & YouTube, I sat down at my wheel and span up my scraps! Then wrapped/plied them with some leftover cotton perlé from the knitting machine; this was a step too far in some ways as there wasn’t quite enough twist where I’d used the lace and ribbon. So I needed to wrap & tie it by hand in a couple of places, but it’s not bad for a first effort.

I can see I’ll have to set myself some rules, if I do this again – and it’s a lot of fun, so I probably will – like only using genuine scraps that would otherwise be of no practical use. Or it’ll get very expensive & I’ll end up creating scraps instead of using them up, which would defeat the object rather.

Now, what to do with 42 yards of “Art” Yarn? A finger-crochet hat, maybe?

Ideas, please! What will I do with this?
Ideas, please! What will I do with this?

In praise of the amateur…

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How often does perfectionism stop us from achieving worthwhile things? Or even trying to do them?

I’m thinking of one lady who earnestly said to me, “Oooh, you are brave! I’d never have dreamt of spinning in public for at least the first seven years,” when I volunteered to help out with something. Now, I could interpret that as a warning that I’m only going to make a fool of myself if I try to run before I can walk, though I really don’t think she meant it that way. But I don’t actually mind making a fool of myself, anyway; I’ve had a lot of laughs and met some lovely people that way. And whilst I admire hugely the consummate craftsmanship of those who spin the finest laceweight yarns to knit stunning, gossamer-thin ring shawls, I’m not sure that that tempts many people to try their hand at something new; I know that I was terrified I’d spoil what they were doing, the first few times I tried. Of course, I duly did. But then a kind lady spinning rough & ready rug yarn let me have a go, and it didn’t matter that I overtwisted, then undertwisted, then got my jumper tangled up in it, because we were both laughing so hard. I then went home, sat down with my own wheel and made mistakes perfectly happily until I’d got into the swing of it.

As far as I remember, there’s some research out there somewhere that shows that people learn skills best when they’re taught by someone who isn’t (or doesn’t seem to be) too far ahead of them. So I’m a bit disturbed by the drive to professionalise everyone everywhere who might be in any danger of passing their skills on; I already know several people who have “crashed” out of courses designed to turn them into “teachers/lecturers” when all they wanted to do was help other people start up in a rewarding hobby. Not to mention some of the outrageous demands of excessive legislation; one friend, who could (and indeed should) be teaching patterncutting, isn’t, because she can’t provide disabled access. In her own home. How many people with the kind of disability that would make access a problem would want to learn patterncutting in someone’s home? So the rest of us are denied access to her skills too, and she’s denied a source of much-needed income… I wouldn’t wish for one moment to cause any offence or distress to anyone, especially not a disabled would-be pattern-cutter. But political correctness and “professionalism” run riot are having exactly the opposite effect to enhancing diversity and opportunity, both here and in other ways I can think of.  

However, mostly it’s our own innate shyness and anxiety about getting things wrong that stops us from “having a go” and that’s something that we can, and indeed must, get over. If we’re going to learn how to make the best of a warmer, more unpredictable world, with less conventional energy available, we have to turn up our sleeves and get stuck in, without fretting that no-one else is doing it, or that we might get it wrong somehow. So next time you see a lady of a certain age making a fool of herself with a bit of craft equipment and a big grin on her face, please come on over & join me! 

PS – please would whoever searched for “passap machine knitting course dorset” in the last couple of days get in touch? There are several of us out here hunting for one; I have a lead to follow up & together we either have bargaining power or the possibility of working it all out between us!

Baa baa, black sheep; yes, we have some wool…

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Last week I spotted an advert on the local “Waste-Not-Want-Not” group – similar concept to Freecycle, but allows lending etc. – for 3 black fleeces, in central Wimborne. I hesitated for a moment; the last local-ish black fleece I’d had wasn’t very good quality. But free is free, and useful is useful; off & on I’m making a big peg-loom rug, so even rug-grade wool is useful, especially dark stuff. So I dashed off a quick email, and was pleasantly surprised to get a phone call back within half an hour. I picked the fleeces up last Friday, and was delighted to find that they are gorgeous; mostly midnight black, so soft you want to curl up in it, not too oily, and so clean you’d think these sheep lived indoors. The locks are about 5″ long and have a nice gentle crimp so it’s blissfully easy to spin; I just pulled some out of the bag and spun away. There was only one problem; by the time I picked them up there were no longer three, there were five…

So I fired off emails to a couple of local spinners, Jill and Grace, and went round to see my spinning neighbour Linda. Luckily they were all interested, so I’ve rehomed most of it with them, as I’d never get through all of that myself before it started to go downhill, and I have a backlog of that lovely creamy Dorset too. Some also went off with my friend Annie, who is in the process of mastering the drop spindle, so I’m left with one and a bit fleeces. And an inkle loom!

Jill’s husband made her an inkle loom a couple of months ago, but had enough wood over to make a second. I’d said I’d be very interested in giving that a home, but as they’d just managed to produce a grandchild at the same time as putting their house on the market, I wasn’t expecting it anytime soon. However, when she came to pick up her black fleece, the loom came with her! So that’s kept me occupied for a few happy hours, watching YouTube videos to work out how to warp it up & weave with it, then actually producing my first few bands. I made myself a shuttle out of some driftwood that was just about the perfect shape to start with; all I had to do was carve a notch at each end to wind the weft thread round. It’s very smooth and one edge tapers sharply, ideal for beating the weft into place.

Thank you, Jill & Mr. Jill!
Thank you, Jill & Mr. Jill!

And I’d run out of KoolAid, so I asked on an American website I’ve belonged to for many years whether anyone would be prepared to send some over to me. It’s really expensive to buy over here, and there’s only a very limited range of colours available. Bless her cotton socks, a parcel arrived from Carolyn in Virginia this week with 50 sachets in, padded out with some lovely silver Mylar and some multicoloured silk waste for spinning. You should just see what happens when you spin a little Mylar into the black wool, which has a quiet gleam all of its own. It’s so lovely I’m almost afraid to do anything with it!

Black wool spun up with silver Mylar - thank you, Carolyn!
Black wool spun up with silver Mylar - thank you, Carolyn!

Then there’s the Jones Spool treadle that I rescued on Freecycle… my heart sank when I saw it; it had been out in their garden for quite some time, there’s a LOT of rust and the veneer on the table had bleached and started to lift. But half a pot of Swarfega, quite a lot of bike spray, and half a pint of Danish Oil and it’s starting to look & sound a little like the thoroughbred it once was.

All this has made the week pass very quickly & easily, which is just as well as I’ve spent most of it suffering – and I do mean suffering – with a horrible cold. And the weather’s gone downhill, so we couldn’t spend much time in the garden. All good rainy day fun…