Cledry_Yarner

New Gallery Outlet

2007-09-06T11:16:00.000-07:00

I've been very excited by the amount of contacts I've received from doing the Art Fair at Godolphin House a couple of weeks ago. Most exciting was a call from this gallery asking me to call in with some of my work. I went to see them yesterday and they've taken loads of it. They have some of my very favourite artists in that gallery so I'm chuffed to little mint balls to be in there as well.

That, as they say, is all :)

Selling my Ashford Country Spinner

2007-09-04T09:27:00.001-07:00

I keep telling the kids that if they get new toys they have to get rid of some old ones to make room so by the same token I have to get rid of one wheel to make room for Vicky Lou :D

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260156616228

The Country Spinner drew the short straw because I can still use my Traditional with the jumbo flyer for plying. It's a fab wheel - ace for making chunky yarn and I'll miss it. Look at that bobbin - 2.2lbs capacity!!!!

Anyway - there's lots of interest, an opening bid of £40 and 6 days to go so if you want it bid quick!

Pricing!

2007-09-03T10:24:00.001-07:00

Got back from Fibrefest last night. After an initial feeling of doom regarding the lack of signage (which meant we couldn't find the place and ended up driving around for ages looking for it) it turned out to be a very well organised event with lots of people attending. It was great fun and as usual a joy to meet other traders and tutors etc. Chrissie from Brightdyes was there with her lovely mum and her gorgeous and really cute boys and Woolly Wormhead was there teaching a workshop. It was so nice to see them and the three of us ended up camping next to each other. Our camping set up was only marginally small than the entire camp for climate change but I thought if we're going to be camping we may as well do it in comfort!

The two days trading wasn't so lucrative for me and I actually broke my mantra of 'The Customer Is Always Right' and was a bit rude to a couple of women. It really pisses me off when people claim that my work is unreasonably expensive. It's hand made, it's well made and it takes a hell of a lot of time and a measure of skill. Would we expect someone doing a 9 -5 to be paid less than the minimum wage? Would we heck as like - there's endless campaigning to make sure that employees rights extend to a decent, living wage. Why then are craftspeople expected to do it for love and buttons? I had this discussion with someone at the last fair I did in Cornwall. She'd massively underpriced her ceramic pots and she claimed that it was acceptable to so that because 'She enjoyed making them' By that logic if someone enjoys working behind the till at Tesco they should be paid less than someone who doesn't! Doesn't work like that does it? As designers, makers, whatever we have a responsibility to price our work realistically, ensuring that perceptions of value regarding hand made work don't stay skewed. We have as much right to a decent living wage as anyone working for an employer. So, next time you see a piece of handmade work and think it's too expensive spend a moment thinking about how it was made, the uniqueness of it, the skill it took to make it. Then, if you still think it's too expensive bugger off to Ikea and buy the same mass produced factory shite as everyone else! ROFL!

Rant over.

I'd like you to meet the most recent addition to the Cledry household

She's called Victoria - Victoria Louet! She's the newest folding wheel.

Could I afford it? No.

Am I head over heels in love? Hell Yeah!

Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated!

2007-08-29T02:17:00.000-07:00

As usual blogger has done some extremely weird things with the spacing of this post - I hate blogger)

Should I bother apologising for my extended absence? Would anyone believe it? Is there anyone still bothering to check this blog? lol

I have been so unutterably busy for the last few weeks that I've been having to check my diary to see if I've booked in any time for sleep!

Last weekend saw me trolling my wares at the Hidden Art Design Fair at Godolphin House. It was a lovely venue with a very professional layout and a proper shell scheme. Although I can't claim to have made my fortune I now have a massively extended database of potential customers, a new gallery to supply and a couple of enquiries from magazines wanting to feature my work. I also managed to secure 2 dates for providing workshops for some local textiles groups. All very positive. The stand looked the best yet - here's a pic

And my new 'ranges' of work seemed to attract lots of attention (and a couple of orders)

Here's the new style bags

And a random shot of a stripey coffee cosy and mug cosy set :)

I'm off to Fibrefest on Friday - no rest for the wicked eh? There's 11 weeks between Fibrefest and the next show (Eco Design Fair in London in November) so I'm going to treat myself to 2 weeks off to catch up with some much needed design work and finding out if my friends remember who I am. Buying them coffee and cake usually does the trick - lol.

There's a very exciting development potentially in the offing which (if it happened) would mean lots of spondooliks and quite a bit of recognition but I don't want to talk about it in case I jinx it (rolls eyes @ self)

So, my lovelies - if any of you are coming to Fibrefest please pop by and say hello (Faerynuff - looking forward to seeing you there :) )

Fabric hair Clips

2007-07-14T05:41:00.000-07:00

Much as I love making things from 100% wool I also really like dabbling with synthetics - bad cledry! I have a penchant for bondaweb and all things shiny. I've got various shows and exhibitions coming up and I found myself rummaging through the 'sparkles' box instead of getting down to making felt. I really love messing with the sewing machine and the iron and it doesn't feel like work at all. I can often be found totally absorbed in my workshop when I should be cooking tea or something! Anyway - here's a hair clip. The pic doesn't show the sparkle off to it's full effect but you get the gist

I'm in the middle of making some blue ones. They'll also be brooches and the offcuts make really nice cards. Result!

Big Green Gathering and felted soap workshop

2007-07-13T08:35:00.000-07:00

Just a quickie to say I'll be at the Big Green Gathering this year. I've never been before but I've agreed to do a felted soap workshop for Brigit of It's not Easy Being Green Fame. She's started a charity with the aim of buying land in the UK for community projects etc - this is how she describes it

"The aim of the charity will be to raise money to buy land in the uk. This land will be used in a number of sustainable ways...to encourage biodiversity, for local communities to grow produce, and to set up areas where people can run and attend courses on low-impact living. The land use would in time generate more cash to be ploughed back into the fund to buy more land."

So, I've offered her a felted soap workshop to be held at The Big Green Gathering. It'll be by donation and it should be great fun. If you're going or know somoene who is pop by and say hello or jump in and do the workshop. Details of times etc have to be finalised but at the monment we plan to have it on the Thursday around midday.

Hope to see you there.

Hand felted handbag and some Gotland curls

2007-07-07T08:59:00.000-07:00

I made another bag from the Oldmill batts. It was just as lovely to work with as it was before so I've ordered some more

Again, it's stripy on the inside

I also washed some Gotland lambskin curls that Dave bought me at Wonderwool. We can shear the Gotlands twice a year - once in December but I couldn't wait that long to find out what the fleece wil be like.

Look at that! Isn't that just gorgeous? It's like the colour of storm clouds and feels like gossamer. The plan is to spin it to a DK and knit it up with some Dorset into a winter hat each for me and him. I can't wait. Sometimes I think I need to get out more as I get so excited about wool. It's the cat in me - lol

Oldmill wool batts

2007-07-05T08:03:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting to try these out for ages but being a skinflint I'm always put off by P&P charges and the fact you can't see the colours/textures properly online. Woolfest was an ideal opportunity to see them in the flesh so to speak and I bought three from Wingham to be going on with. I also bought some hand made oak handles from Textile Art The end result is a couple of bags. One of them is still drying but here's the one that's finished

Dotty on the outside, stripy on the inside! The colour combination reminds me of fried eggs and ketchup.

The one that's drying is a purple/grape type colour with yellow dots and stripes. I really like it as a wool - apparently it's a gotland/merino blend and as I'm in love with all things Gotland right now it seems appropriate. I'll definitely be buying more - also more of the handles if I can get hold of them.

Woolfest, a rant, some good news and looking for a lost customer!

2007-07-04T01:34:00.000-07:00

Woolfest - what can I say? It was a very mixed bag for me. The absolutely best bit was meeting fellow bloggers and 'internetista's' who were all so lovely and re-meeting some who I'd met before who were still just as nice as they were last time - lol. I was lucky enough to have a stall next to Chrissie from Bright Dyes who I 'knew' from the Dropped Spindle forum. Chrissie and her mum were great fun and it certainly helped to be next to them both for the 2 days. Meeting Badger and seeing some of the places he'd had his picture taken made me hoot with laughter.

I knew it wasn't going to be the right marketplace for me but I'd booked it before I decided to focus on the felt so we treated it as a holiday. As it happens I did much better than I thought I would and I managed to more than cover my costs. Coming from a rural setting I didn't expect to be so affected by the overwhelming smell of sheep pee that pervades the whole of the auction mart but by day 2 I was definitely happy to leave that behind - lol.

The most negative aspect of the event for me was the amount of people who openly said they were going to pinch my ideas. People would come past and say 'Wow, that's a great idea, I'm going to pinch that' and then look at me waiting for me to smile. One woman even took photos so she could remember how to do it when she got home. Now, at an event like Woolfest I fully expected people to look around for ideas and inspiration but to openly tell me in such terms when I'm trying to make my living making and selling the stuff is crass, rude and ignorant. Someone has said they take pictures to remind them of the event, just for personal use, and I don't have a problem with that at all (still nice to be asked first)- another woman came past and said 'This is lovely, very inspirational, I'm going to go home with lots of ideas' and I don't have a problem with that either - it's quite flattering. However, it is very disheartening (and fairly insulting) to have people just tell you outright they're going to steal your idea. So, if you're tempted to tell a craftsperson/designer/maker/artist that you're going to copy their work - DON'T!!! It might lead to an increase in cases of stall rage - lol. The ideas behind stuff like the soaps, bags etc are all out there in various places - free for anyone to find - I even have free instructions for felted soap right here on the blog. However, if I find anyone has pinched my 'design' ideas and is reproducing them for sale I will hunt them down and give them a spinectomy! Be warned :D

And breathe - lol.

Cumbria is a very beautiful place and, despite the torrential rain, we enjoyed camping. This was the 'view' we woke up to most mornings

That's the rain on the tent. I really liked the pattern the rain made so I'm going to try to use it as an 'inspiration' lol

We were just down the road from Castlerigg Stone circle and we had a potter round there on the friday night - very lovely

Now for the good news! Remember the fuss with the cow and the lost calf? Well, the farmer whose bull and dodgy fences were responsible has given us a 3 month old heifer as a replacement. We still won't have any beef for a year but she certainly goes some way as a recompense and she'll be excellent company for Rusty. As soon as she arrived she tried to escape but within half an hour she was cuddled up with Rusty and a couple of sheep

It's a dreadful photo but I had to take it from miles away so as not to scare her. She'd been licking the sheep just before she settled down - strange girl. They're in a huge field but they picked a tiny place to make a sheep sandwich - lol.

So! Now for the lost customer. When I got back from Woolfest there was an email from a customer who had bought some stuff and wanted to order more. I think she's called Pauline Onley? She's definitely called Pauline anyway. Unfortunately the email she gave me bounces and I can't get in touch with her. I've left a message on the site and on a couple of yahoo groups but I can't really do much else. If anyone reading this knows her or indeed if she's reading it herself could she email me at cledryyarner@dsl.pipex.com many thanks :)

Made I laugh!

2007-06-19T00:59:00.000-07:00

stacey guthrie --

[noun]:

A lewd street performer

'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

I saw this on Knit Wits Anonymous and thought I'd have a go - made me laugh out loud it did!

The felt jewellery is up!

2007-06-15T05:02:00.001-07:00

I've put it on the site today. I hope people like them but I think it'll be the sort of thing that needs to be seen face to face. Anyway - they're here.

I've pinched this from another site but it really made me giggle. I look at the rules and regulations surrounding any kind of farming/rearing livestock etc and I wonder what planet I'm on. Here is a funny letter that someone has written:

Letter to Rt Hon David Miliband MP Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Nobel House 17 Smith Square London SW1P 3JR 15 June, 2007

Dear Secretary of State, My friend, who is in farming at the moment, recently received a cheque for £3,000 from the Rural Payments Agency for not rearing pigs. I would now like to join the "not rearing pigs" business. In your opinion, what is the best kind of farm not to rear pigs on, and which is the best breed of pigs not to rear? I want to be sure I approach this endeavour in keeping with all government policies, as dictated by the EU under the Common Agricultural Policy. I would prefer not to rear bacon pigs, but if this is not the type you want not rearing, I will just as gladly not rear porkers. Are there any advantages in not rearing rare breeds such as Saddlebacks or Gloucester Old Spots, or are there too many people already not rearing these? As I see it, the hardest part of this programme will be keeping an accurate record of how many pigs I haven't reared. Are there any Government or Local Authority courses on this? My friend is very satisfied with this business. He has been rearing pigs for forty years or so, and the best he ever made on them was £1,422 in 1968. That is - until this year, when he received a cheque for not rearing any. If I get £3,000 for not rearing 50 pigs, will I get £6,000 for not rearing 100? I plan to operate on a small scale at first, holding myself down to about 4,000 pigs not raised, which will mean about £240,000 for the first year. >As I become more expert in not rearing pigs, I plan to be more ambitious, perhaps increasing to, say, 40,000 pigs not reared in my second year, for which I should expect about £2.4 million from your department. Incidentally, I wonder if I would be eligible to receive tradable carbon credits for all these pigs not producing harmful and polluting methane gases. Another point: These pigs that I plan not to rear will not eat 2,000 tonnes of cereals. I understand that you also pay farmers for not growing crops. Will I qualify for payments for not growing cereals to not feed the pigs I don't rear? I am also considering the "not milking cows" business, so please send any information you have on that too. Please could you also include the current Defra advice on set aside fields? Can this be done on an e-commerce basis with virtual fields (of which I seem to have several thousand hectares)? In view of the above you will realise that I will be totally unemployed, and will therefore qualify for unemployment benefits. I shall of course be voting for your party at the next general election. Yours faithfully,

No pics today - maybe tomorrow - cheerybye!

Meet the new arrivals

2007-06-13T00:32:00.000-07:00

This is Sixpence, Octavia and Sally our new Gotlands. We got them yesterday from Sue Blacker of the Natural Fibre Company. They're very sweet sheep and I'm really looking forward to using their lovely fleece. We've had so many things die this year that we're struggling to keep up with the grazing. Hopefully these will help a bit.

It wouldn't be a normal Cledry post if there wasn't some doom and gloom though. While we were picking up the sheep yesterday the dog was at the vet. The night before he came in from having a pee unable to use one of his back legs. The emergency vet said wait until the next day to take him in, so we took him straight after the kids were dropped at school. We had to leave him there and when we got back from North Cornwall there was a message on the ansaphone saying he's fractured his hip and needs an operation. Estimated cost in excess of £300. We already have an outstanding bill of nearly £200 with them for the palaver with the cow. It's fair to say that it tipped me over the edge a bit as it's been nothing but bills, rising costs and bad news for what seems like the whole of this year. They won't let us pick him up unless we pay half the bill. My mum has offered to give us £100 towards it - it's like bail! I'm starting to wonder if life is trying to tell me something. Every day seems like a battle right now and it's exhausting. Yesterday felt like I was back at square one with the M.E/Fibro. People will still come round and tell me how lucky I am though. Idiots.

That sparks a thought that perplexes me from time to time. What is it about people that they are convinced that everyone else is better off than them? Either financially, emotionally, whatever. When I first got M.E and everything ground to a halt I had people saying 'Oh but you've got this lovely house' as if that negated the fact that my body had decided to stop working. 'This lovely house' is rented - for an extortionate amount and just finding the rent each month is a full time job. It doesn't seem to matter what happnes to me, someone else has to be worse off. I don't know if it's a Cornish thing or a general 'people thing. My husband noticed it the other day. The butcher asked him how he was and he explained about the cow and his broken ribs and the fact that it seems something is dying on the holding on a daily basis and the fact that we're clearing out the penny jar to buy food and the butcher said 'Oh I know what you mean, I've had terrible trouble with my van'. WTF?? It seems like a competition to see who's the worst off. I'm not one for sitting back and wallowing - if we have a problem I try to sort it out. Trouble is people see that seeming ability to cope as 'being lucky'. I work fucking hard to get us through one day/month to the next and occasionally I could do with a bit of support. All I get is people telling me I'll be alright/I'm lucky/I'm not as badly off as them. Sometimes you just want someone to say 'That sounds like shit'. Tbh that's why I spend more time on the internet than I do with 'real' people. The internet community is much more supportive than my real life 'friends'. People. I've had enough of them.

Now for something completely different. I've knitted some tiny socks for my Grandson to Be. They know he's a boy and have decided to call him Tiernan. Lovely name isn't it? They live in Dublin so I'll be posting these off soon.

I haven't knitted any baby stuff for years and the realisation that I have a tiny person to knit for again is slowly sinking in. I'm really looking forward to it. The socks were a 36 st cast on and I think they may be a bit big. I might try a 30 st cast on and see if that's better.

On the felt front, I'm struggling to find any eyelets to put in the jewellery that don't just fall straight out. I could embroider round the holes but that adds time (and consequently ads to the price). I dunno - anyone got any ideas?

Felt Textile Jewellery

2007-06-06T06:04:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to make some felt jewellery for a while and started a little prototype necklace yesterday.

I intended it to be just felt but my love of mixed media kinda crept in and this is what it's like so far. The two little tags say 'Charm' and 'Grace'.

Here's another from this afternoon. think I like them but I'm in such a strange frame of mind right now that maybe they're pants really - lol. I'd welcome your feedback.

Bad news on the Ruby cow front - she developed infected wounds from lying around for so long and yesterday she died. Mr Cledry had just got back from the vet with some more antibiotic injections and found her dead in the field. The little bullock that's left (Rusty) is very cross and has been put in with the sheep for company. He's been bellowing all night and is still going at it today. The only time he shuts up is to run full pelt at the sheep. We're going to phone a famer friend and see if he has a cow and calf that we could graze alongside him so that he has company. Poor old Rusty :( Someone recently said to me 'Ooh lucky you - it must be like the Good Life' - I replied 'Yeah, just not so funny'

Anyway - I'm off to play with more jewellery. Laters :)

Phew!

2007-05-31T07:53:00.000-07:00

Well, Wonderwool was fun. Not the most lucrative outing for me but it was lovely to meet so many people and put faces to names at last. On arriving I was a bit overwhelmed at the amount of space I was expected to fill. The stall looked a bit sparse but it was a learning curve and I'll know to take backdrops etc with me in future. Still, it was quite pretty - if not as eye catching as I would've liked.

It was nice enough and for a first proper 'outing' I was quite pleased. It was extremely tiring and by the end of each day I could barely speak. So, if you were one of the millions of people who came by to say hello and I was a bit doolally then there's your explanation!

We got back on the Monday night, unpacked and then Sarah's funeral was on Tuesday. It was a beautiful service and the wake started off at her mothers house, which is a beautiful Mill. The weather was spot on and it was lovely to see so many old friends from so many years ago. It was one of those very strange situations where it was lovely but heartbreaking at the same time. We all went to her favourite pub afterwards and toasted her health in true Sarah style. Messy, but I think she would have approved. It galvanised for me that I don't want any full on mourning when I go. If there's any money for my funeral I want the cheapest burial/cremation and the rest of the money to be spent on a proper Cornish Hooly.

Friday saw us winging our way on a tiny Skybus (god I hate those planes!) to Scilly for Emily & Jim's wedding. On Saturday we nipped over to St Agnes for a pint and some quiche and chips ( a Stacey tradition) only to find that the pub has been taken over by someone who thinks they're a bit of a chef and it was all coulis and jus. Crap menu and it took me an hour of sulking and pouting to pick something and then I hated it! Lol! Why people have to ponce about with pub menus is beyond me. Decent quality grub, well cooked is what I want - not some poncey thing I can hardly pronounce and which tastes of nothing. Never mind - the view kind of made up for it.

The local consensus seems to be the same - which is a shame as the pub has built up a hefty reputation over the last 20 odd years. Still, never mind - things change and we'll just go to the Coastguard Cafe next time instead which is supposed to be really nice.

On Saturday night the wedding party all met up at The Mermaid for dinner which was lovely. Trouble with Island eateries is that the chefs change so often you never know which is a go-er or a no-er. Luckily whoever was cooking on Saturday night did a fab job and we all ate, drank and got merry before staggering to the downstairs bar for the entertainment. Unfortunately I fear that the entertainment was sometimes me - nuff said.

Sunday was spent watching the boats sinking in the harbour and hearing tales of people's roofs blowing off in the fiercest gales I've ever experienced on Scilly. I usually enjoy extreme weather but I was properly scared by that wind.

Monday and the weather had, thankfully, calmed down considerably and we dressed up in our finery and helped Emily & Jim celebrate their wedding in fine style. It was the best wedding I've ever been to and I think that was mostly down to the excellent organisational skills of the bride. It went without a hitch and they looked stunning and so in love. I'll ask their permission to post a couple of photos when they get back from honeymoon. The speeches were another highlight as we laughed and cried in equal measure. It was such a special day and - again - so lovely to see people we hadn't seen for years. We keep meaning to go back more often (I lived there for 3 years and made some really good friends) but it's time and money as usual and getting to Scilly is prohibitively expensive.

So! My eldest stepdaughter is celebrating the wedding she had in Florida last week with a large family 'do' on Saturday. Barely time to wash my Magic Knickers and we're off again!

If I'm in one piece for Woolfest it'll be a bleedin miracle. I'll leave you with a plant piccie from Scilly

That's it for now - if I don't see you through the week I'll see you through the window as my Nana used to say.

Is that it?

2007-05-14T11:52:00.000-07:00

Well, they say bad things come in three's but to be honest I'm starting to lose count! It's been a weird and unsettling couple of weeks and I can't wait for a turnaround to something much more positive. The following report contains scenes which some readers may find distressing :)

It started when our next door neighbour looked at our cows and commented that the eldest female looked pregnant. Now, (apols to veggies etc) she's due to go to slaughter in November so she's only 2 and a half and nowhere near old enough to be pregnant and she hadn't been near any bulls - or so we thought. Our last heifer got pregnant when the cows and bulls belonging to the farmer at the top of the hill broke in through his shoddy and totally inadequate fencing on several occasions. It seems it must have happened again because last Saturday week my husband went to look for her and found her in a really inaccessible croft on next doors land (they let us graze them there because they are lovely people :) ) with a dead calf half hanging out of her. Panic ensued and my husband and next door neighbour managed to get the dead calf (which just happened to be the same breed as the cows from the farmer at the top of the hill, surprise sur-bleedin-prise) out of her. She'd sustained significant nerve damage and couldn't walk so my husband gave her something for the shock , some hay and water and left her to see if she'd 'come to' on her own. By midweek she still wasn't walking and, even worse, had manoeuvred herself further into the inaccessible croft. On Wednesday night I was sitting wondering what to watch at 9pm and thinking it was bit late for my husband to be out and about when there was a kind of shuffling banging at the door. I opened it to find my husband on all fours, unable to breathe and in complete shock. I managed to get him into the house and waited for him to tell me what had happened. In between gasps he managed to tell me that the cow had slipped into an awkward position and that he'd gone up with an iron bar and a rope to try to move her. The rope had slipped (it was poring with rain) and he flew backwards and landed on his back on a granite boulder which had a sharp point. So, off to A&E it was (my mum came round and looked after the kids) and 4 hrs later he was transferred to the big hospital with suspected broken rib, lacerated liver and punctured lung. I followed the ambulance and eventually left him at 5am. By the time I got back there was no point going to bed so I waited for the kids to get up. We struggled through the farm chores and I got them to school. By this time I was so tired I couldn't see so after making some phone calls I went to bed at about 11am. I'd just got the covers over my head when the phone rang. It was my husband, 'Where are you?'. Turns out the consultant had done his rounds early, decided it was just the broken rib with no tissue damage (hoorah!) and he could go home. So, I had to do the almost 60 mile round trip again! By the time I'd got him home, been to the agricultural merchants, picked up the kids, cooked tea, bathed the kids and got them to bed it was about 8.30pm. Thoughts of a bubble bath, a large whisky and bed had been looming large all day but I thought I'd just check the cow first.

I got my husband to show me where he'd last seen her but when we got there we saw that she'd moved and was now stuck in a weird kind of pit made up of 4 huge granite boulders. It was howling wind and pouring rain and getting dark. The pit was filling up with water and was already up to her neck. After checking with next door (she was still on their land) I decided to call the fire brigade to see if they could offer any advice. 20 minutes later three fire engines came screaming through the village, all blue lights and sirens and 3 crews of fire fighters carried all sorts of lifting gear and lights up to the croft. They couldn't get the fire engines up as far as the house and the croft was a further 300 yds away and they didn't complain once as they lugged all that heavy gear through mud and over fallen trees to get to our cow. The emergency vet arrived and they got to work trying to get her out. It took them about an hour and a half of utter determination to lift her out and they did it with spectacular professionalism and such good will that I was totally humbled by the whole process. It was a proper Cornish hooly blowing that night and the rain was torrential so they certainly had their work cut out. I think they got a little bored of my exclamations of, 'Oh my god! You're Fantastic!!' but after a couple of hours she was out and they'd carried her to a safe place and they just packed up their stuff and went. No fuss. They truly are utterly dedicated and we are extremely fortunate to have such extraordinary emergency services in this country. Te cow still isn't walking and the farmer who's responsible has been told in no uncertain terms to keep away from me until further notice. The vet is checking in on her and he seems to think there's still a small amount of hope for now but the situation is under daily review.

So, you'd think that would be enough to be going along with but yesterday I received a call to be told that an old friend has died suddenly. It's such a shock and we all have that slightly surreal feeling of dealing with the fact that someone who was there a minute ago no longer is. We're at Wonderwool Wales until Monday night so I'm hoping upon hope that they'll manage to have the funeral on the Tuesday as planned as I would be devastated to miss it.

Everything feels very strange right now so if any of you are coming to Wonderwool and find me a bit distracted forgive me :)

Sigh

2007-04-24T11:56:00.000-07:00

That was lovely! Northern ireland is so beautiful and everything went so well. Another day would have been ideal but we were lucky getting the time we did. I didn't think to take a picture of the outside of the hotel but I've pinched one from somewhere else

It was lovely, the staff were friendly and efficient, the room was nice, the bed was huge! This was the view from our room

On the first night Mr Cledry treated me to the best dinner I've ever eaten, truly delicious and not to be forgotten. Then we sat in the bar, where there was a roaring log fire.

Next day it was off to the Giants Causeway. Luckily there's a shuttle bus that takes you down to the stones or I wouldn't have been able to make it. I pootled about round the edge and Mr Cledry scampered about the stones like a 12 year old - belying his 50 years - lol. Thank goodness for the zoom on my camera as I was able to get some nice shots of him. Here he is looking somewhat bemused (I was so far away he wasn't sure if I was taking a photo or just spying on him!)

Next it was off to Bushmills distillery. You could smell it from as far away as the car park - gorgeous! It was an interesting tour but I just wanted to get to the bit at the end where you get a drink. The tour guide asked for 2 volunteers at the end to do a tasting and as 90% of the people doing the tour weren't from the UK they had to take a minute to work out what he was asking for - by which time I'd put my hand up and volunteered! I got to taste 5 different types and got a healthy shot of 12 yr old single malt at the end. Oh, that was awfully hard work - lol! We treated ourselves to a bottle of that to take home - strictly for very special occasions.

We drove back to the hotel the long way ( enabling me to have a quick doze behind my sunglasses to sleep off the whiskey) and found a little pub a few hundred yards from the hotel where we had a really nice and very reasonably priced pub meal. Then it was back to the hotel for a quick whiskey in the bar and then bath and bed. Next morning we enjoyed the sumptuous Irish breakfast in the lovely dining room overlooking a beautiful walled garden and, with slightly heavy heart, checked out. We were both quite sad to be leaving but it's always good to leave somewhere wanting more of it. The last time we felt like that was when we went to Skye. We were crying as we packed the car and the kids kept asking us what was wrong! Silly sods.

Anyway - we live in such a beautiful place that sometimes it's hard not to feel a little disappointed with other places but Northern Ireland truly didn't let us down. It's a stunning place and we would definitely love to go back someday. Now it's nose to the felting grindstone as it's only 3 weeks till Wonderwool - eek!

Off to Co Antrim

2007-04-18T00:11:00.000-07:00

So excited I could pee! We're off in an hour. I'm just trying to pass the time while Mr Cledry feeds goats, chickens, pigs, geese etc and milks the goat (poor him - I really wish I could help). We'll be back on Friday - hopefully rested, refreshed and with a suitcase full of Bushmills whisky! In the meantime I'll leave you with a couple of pics of my first attempt at nuno felting.

Before

After

I like it. I'd pick a more open weave silk next time I think. I used habotai which I space dyed first and it's a very fine weave. Took bleedin' ages and hasn't stuck down everywhere. When I've got time I'll embellish it with some hand sewing and maybe some beads. I've got some nice silk thread that I spun and dyed so maybe I'll use that. I have no idea what to do with it when it's done. It's too short for a scarf, maybe I'll get over my fear of art for arts sake and hang it on the wall!

Anyway, Northern Ireland beckons - just got to see if they'll let me take my Rescue Remedy on the plane with me or whether it constitutes a terrorist threat - lol. Bye!

Cornish Talent

2007-04-15T08:12:00.000-07:00

The marketing course I've just finished was populated by a wide variety of people. There were only about 16 of us but we ranged from Visual artists to musicians to silversmiths. I thought I'd just do a quick post with links to the people who have sites or some kind of web presence so you can get a taste of the kind of talent we have down here.

Abigail Brown - Silversmith

Paula Downing - Fired Forms - Ceramicist

Alexander Kennedy from Wai Yuk Textile Jewellery

Tanya Leech - Handmade Curtains & Soft Furnishings

Tamara Mazurenko - Visual Artist

Julie Murdoch-George - Ceramicist

Michaela Placzek - Jewellery/visual artist

Amanda Richardson - Textile artist

Feast your eys on that lot :)

That was Easter, that was

2007-04-11T02:43:00.000-07:00

Was it good for you? It was extraordinarily relaxed here. Lots of days in the garden with added alcohol and, of course, chocolate! Bit of a win win win really. My youngest can only eat white chocolate (made himself sick on normal chocolate once and has never recovered - definitely a touch of the Isadora Duncan's about him) so it was a bit of a struggle to find him anything he would eat in place of an Easter egg. Good old Sainsburies came to the rescue and I found him this

Isn't it cute? There were lots of protestations about how it was too cute to eat before he bit it's face off ! My husband got a really fabby chicken that My mum bought in Lidls for a couple of quid. It had a chocloate hen, sitting on chocolate eggs on a chocolate basket - he definitely came up trumps on the chocolate stakes. I ate the ones that my youngest couldn't so I can't complain - lol.

On the felt front it's all a bit of a panic. Only just over 4 weeks till Wonderwool and I'm not even really sure what it is I sell! I'll definitely get some rovings done for the spinners who'll be shopping/exhibiting there but I've realised that it's felt I want to make. The spinning is more of a hobby and something I think I'll do for the family. With so many designer/handspun looking yarns being churned out by machines I just don't think there's any way hand spinners can compete. It's a labour of love not profit and I don't have enough energy to expend on labours of love unfortunately. I might still treat myself to a new wheel at Woolfest, just as a treat for myself and not for business. I have a yearning for a folding wheel but they don't take jumbo flyers. I do like to spin a great long length - fiddling about with standard bobbins sends me a little nuts. I've got a while to think about that though :)

I felted a bag yesterday that I really like. I like it so much I want to keep it for me! I don't actually own anything I've made and that's something I intend to rectify very soon. We're going to a wedding on the Isles of Scilly in May so I'll make myself a bag for that. This one has to be sold.

Actually the photo doesn't do it justice (as usual) It's really deep purple with free machine embroidered spirals all over it and olive green side panels. I'll put it on the site but I think this one will sell when someone see's it in the flesh - I think a lot of the stuff I make is like that - has to be seen in the flesh to really appreciate it. That's if it doesn't find itself living in my wardrobe of course!

I'll try to get another post in before next week but for my husbands birthday present I'm taking him to see The Giants Causeway in Ireland. Neither of us has been and we both really want to see it so we're both a bit over excited. We're only going for 2 nights as that's all I could fit on the credit card and the lovely next door neighbours are farm sitting for us. Can't wait!

Mug cosies, confessions and people who know better than you

2007-04-03T04:31:00.000-07:00

Well, I think it's time I made a confession about my lack of blogging activity over the last few months. All the reasons I cited are valid but the nitty gritty fact is that I had something nasty happen to me that kind of put me off having a full on web presence. I fell out with someone quite close to me and instead of talking about it face to face she concocted a pretty vicious story which has meant that it's likely that we'll lose our home. It should have been obvious to anyone with half a brain cell that the story couldn't be true, and when we showed it to our solicitor he laughed but she somehow managed to get someone who matters to believe it. At the end of the day it's her karma and deep down I know me and mine will always be ok but we really don't want to lose the smallholding. I knew she was reading this blog because I could see her IP address and that put me off writing anything but the most mundane stuff. So, now I've explained that let's shove it behind us and get on :) They say the best revenge is to live well and I totally agree.

Sunday was my husband's 50th Birthday. Having spent the last year bemoaning the fact he managed to have a splendid time. We had an array of friends and family around to help him celebrate and ended the evening with a bonfire and some fireworks which were generously donated by our fantastic new next door neighbours. He had 50 candles on his cake and a friend of ours who plays the bagpipes played beautifully as I stumbled up the field ( I fell down the stairs on Tuesday morning and mashed up my ankle - rolls eyes at stupid self) to present it to him. All was going well until the cake was cut and handed back to me and I managed to drop the lot! Silly cow. Never mind, people just ate it off the ground - lol!

Three of our friends are in a band called Bagas Degol and they came and played for us and kept everyone entertained for hours. They really were the icing on the cake (the one that didn't get dropped) and we're so grateful to them for coming. I got a couple of pictures but the camera seems to have been as drunk as I was as they all came out blurred!

The second one is blurry because everyone was dancing so fast - honest :D

It was a lovely day and hopefully everyone who came had a good time.

Lots of people were asking how the business is going and I found it quite hard to explain. I look back over the last year and I've learned to spin, learned to make felt, learned to make myself a website and publish it, learned all sorts of other associated things - all whilst living with an illness that can pole-axe me and send me to bed for a week at the drop of a hat. I want to be absolutely sure that I can handle it before I 'launch' it properly and then find out I'm right back at square one. When you try to explain to people that you need to take it slowly you can see them thinking 'Yeah, right. What she really means is she can't sell it because it's shite'. In actual fact I've had such a positive response to my work when I've been brave enought to take it out somewhere that it kind of scares me. I started this business through a combination of boredom and bloody mindedness. My consultant told me that I'm nowhere near well enough to start a business so I did it to prove him wrong., There are times when it's all grinding to a halt that I have to admit he was probably right. My illness should have nothing to do with my business and what I fear is having more work than I can handle and subsequently letting people down. So, despite the people looking askance and thinking 'This woman hasn't got a clue' I'm treading exceptionally carefully in regards to where I sell, how much I can realistically produce etc until life is on a more stable footing. There will always be people who think they know more about your business than you do so I'm going to learn to nod and smile graciously and say 'Thank you'.

I'm doing a really interesting Marketing course which (despite my initial reservations) is proving to be really useful. In one way it's reassuring as it's reinforcing that I'm doing the right thing and in other ways it's opening up different avenues for me. I'm hoping to be much more confident writing/speaking about my work by the end of the course and then I can get on with some press releases and maybe entice a couple of mags to come and do a feature on what life is like as a craftsperson on a Cornish smallholding. The foundations of the business and my business practice are all there and they're nice and solid, I just have to be sure I don't try to run beforeI can walk (quite literally - lol)

Speaking of business, I got some feedback from the Marketing course that people really loved the tea cosies but don't use teapots. Someone suggested mug cosies so I bought some nice, plain whiteware mugs and had a go. This is what the 1st small batch came out like

They'll be on the site very soon but I'm particularly looking forward to selling them at fairs. I like them and I'm grateful to Ross for suggesting them - thanks Ross :)

I'm still enjoying doing the functional stuff but I really yearn to do something beautiful just for the sake of it. As you know I've struggled with this aspect of creativity for a while - hence my anti art-textiles rant last year but I have to concede that I really do love experimenting with techniques and materials just for the sake of it. I loved making that bowl and would love to make more, bigger ones. I've decided to keep on with the functional felt for a while to get settled and then see if there's room to expand into more fine art type stuff later on.

I've agreed to sell spinning tools for a a lovely craftsman called David Goddard. His stuff is lovely, hand carved/turned nostepinnes, spindles and various other spinning knick knacks. I'm looking forward to using his beautiful drop spndles in a spinning kit. They'll all be on the site later this month and I'll be talking them with me to Wonderwool and Woolfest. I know you'll love them as much as I do. Here's a nostepinne in action

So, I guess that's enough for the time being - lol. Hopefully I'll be able to get over the nasty taste left by last year's shenanigans and blog a bit more frequently.

TTFN

Tea cosies, slippers and spinning supplies

2007-03-09T08:21:00.000-08:00

Phew! It's no wonder I'm so bleedin tired. I can't stop at one thing - gotta take on more than I can cope with (rolls eyes at self) So, I've been dabbling with a new technique of feltmaking, looking at expanding my product range and learning about marketing. The jury's still out on the new technique - instead of laying down several layers of fleece and felting them all at once I've been trying semi felting one layer at a time. It's easier to lay down but I can't really get to grips with getting it fully felted. I've done three tea cosies with the new technique and a new shape to see how they go. Here they are:

I dunno - whaddya think?

I've also been playing with some polystyrene shoe lasts and making adult and baby slippers. I don't have a pair of adult ones finished to show you but some baby ones look like this:

I think they're cute so hopefully my customers will like them and I'll sell lots .

I've also decided to venture into selling spinning supplies. I've been dyeing and carding up some alpaca fleece I have and blending it with silk. I'm itching to spin it myself but I have to try to build up enough stock for Wonderwool in May and then Woolfest in June. Here's some of the Alpaca blend :

I've rainbow dyed some merino as well but I think I've overloaded this post with pics as it is - lol.

Some exciting news is that I've been asked to stock some extremely well made and beautiful hand carved spindles, nostepinnes and various other items. They are really special and I'm looking forward to taking them to Wonderwool to see how they go.

I've started a course, one day a week, on Marketing for Creative Practitioners. It's interesting but also scary. Hopefully at the end of the course I'll be a lot more comfortable selling myself and talking about my work. One excercise he's had us do is work out our living costs and calculate how much of our product we'd have to sell to reach that. That was extremely scary and it's clear that I'll have to be able to get off my capacious derriere and get on with it! I don't want to earn a fortune, I don't want to be famous and I don't want a Porsche, I just want 'enough'. We'll have to wait and see if that's possible doing what I'm doing

Deth Peran lowen tha whye

2007-03-05T00:35:00.000-08:00

Happy St Pirans Day

Kernow Bys Vyken!

Wool rovings for sale

2007-02-03T10:45:00.000-08:00

Here they be:

I've decided to sell the Poll Dorset rovings after all. If anyone's interested the details are here

Textiles Bowl

2007-02-01T10:33:00.000-08:00

I'm still doing the Textiles A level. My attendance has been sporadic for all the obvious reasons but I managed to finish the 2 first assignments. The first one was a cushion cover and a couple of A1 worksheets based on a piece of art of our choice. I chose a Georgia O Keefe piece as I loved the colours. It's all packed away in my portfolio at the moment so I can't photograph it but when it comes out again I will. What I can show you is the piece I finished yesterday. It's based on the theme of water and we had to develop our ideas and come up with a finished piece of our choice. I was intending to do a wall hanging but, best laid plans and all that, when I laid it out I wasn't happy. I took the central piece off and decided to turn it into this:

I'm still pining for ceramics (damn those pesky glazes!) so it feels good to still be able to make vessels. I'm very pleased with it. I've got a shot of the insides but Blogger is playing silly bloggers so you'll have to wait for that. The inside is really shimmery with sparkly fibres and the photo doesn't do it justice.

Anyway - just thought I'd share one thing I've been up to :)

Sale of the century?

2007-01-28T10:13:00.000-08:00

I'm thinking of getting rid of some of the ever increasing stash of raw materials that are crammed into my workroom. I have loads of alapca (white & caramel coloured) and several kilos of poll dorset wool from our own flock which was sent off to the Natural Fibre Co to be processed last year. It's a really interesting wool which (in my opinion) lends itself to socks etc. It's incredibly light once spun and has a springy feel to it. I really like it as a wool/yarn but don't have enough hours in the day to do justice to it. It's a lovely creamy white but obviously can be dyed. Whaddya think girls? Do you think I should sell some?

I'm at a real crossroads with it all to be honest. Going to the quilt show in Birmingham last year started it all off. I've always been drawn to textiles but never thought it was something I was good enough to do. Doing the textiles A level opened my eyes to new techniques and ideas and I rapidly realised why I make such a fuss about fine arts etc. I had the same feelings when I started the A Level Textiles that I had when I did the advanced GNVQ in art & design 12 years ago. I get absolutely swamped by ideas, colours, textures, techniques...... And when I say swamped I really mean swamped. It's totally overwhelming. It wakes me up at night and takes up my every waking thought. It is incredibly uncomfortable and I don't like it. I could feel my own discomfort when I was ranting last Summer. I kept wondering if the lady was protesting a little too much :D
It's as if my heart is with the crafts side but my head is drawn to the arts side. Luckily I feel that we're at a stage, as a culture, where Crafts are the new black - lol - there's certainly some schemes being set up to bridge the divide. I'm a member of a couple of them so here's hoping I can find my niche this year. Failing that I'll just ask if I can move in with Jan Beaney or Cas Holmes

So, it looks like this has been an entry entirely devoted to navel gazing - apologies for that. I'd like to say normal service will be resumed soon but I'm not sure I'd be being completely truthful ;)

Hello girls!!

2007-01-22T04:58:00.000-08:00

Just a little wave to the girls from the henhouse - hope you're enjoying the blog :)

I thought I'd show you the hat I made for myself, yes myself. I had loads of little blobs of handspun that all looked ncie together but weren't really big enough to do something with. I was admiring the wondrous hats on Wooly Wormheads blog and thought' Gosh darn it, I'm gonna make me a hat!' So I did. I made the mistake of trying it on when it was wet (duh!) so it's a little too big right now but I like it. (apols for the fuzzy photos)

It's from the Rollin' Beret pattern and it was fab to knit. Quick and easy enough for my addled brain. I would do it on a circular needle next time as I only had short dpn's and it kept falling off the pins. I meesed up a bit on the decreases (brain fog kicked in) so if you're looking Ruth don't look too hard at the back :D

TTFN

No excuses - not a one

2007-01-11T10:14:00.000-08:00

Sorry :(

No excuses - just sheer tiredness, christmasness and a strange mental block about blogging. I think it happened at the same time last year as well, must be a recognised syndrome - lol. I'll try to rectify matters but I fear that the situation will be the same as my huge laundry pile in the utility room (which Champagne Bohemian was utterly charming about!) I promise it'll get done but it never does. So, forgive me (or not) and I'll try to post something readable within the next couple of days.
Hope you all had a good Christmas and wishing you a happy 2007 :)

Christmas Craft Fair

2006-11-26T01:59:00.000-08:00

I've been so busy getting ready for the one and only craft fair I'm doing this Christmas. I didn't realise it was going to be so much effort! However, it's done and dusted now and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was at the local school and it's got a reputation as being a really good fair to get some decent handmade stuff at reasonable prices. There was so much nice stuff there that I had to resolutely stay behind my stall for most of it or I would have spent a fortune! Anyway - this is what the stall looked like on day 2 when a lot of my stuff had gone:

Here's a close-up of my brooches, a couple of pouches and you can just catch a glimpse of some hand made buttons I made at ceramics class. I might make some more if the tutor will let me use white clay. The teracotta is fiddly to get nice colours on.

Someone asked me if there was one particular thing which sold the best. I have to say that it was pretty even across the range of stuff I had with me. I sold a couple of shibori felted scarves, the felted soaps flew off the stall - I could have sold twice the amount - and the brooches and cards were popular as well. My husband and my eight year old turned up for a while and I took the opportunity to look at some rag rug brooches at a stall across from me. I couldn't decide which one I liked so I called my husband over. When I went back to my stall my eight year old was handing a woman some change - he'd only sold a hat for me! He's very chuffed and has decided that he's going to be my manager. I'll make it, he'll sell it. Seems like a good idea to me.

Anyway, I'm hoping to have a bit of time in the next couple of weeks to catch up on other people's blogs and find out how everyone is doing. Right now I haven't got time to scratch my backside. I have someone interested in stocking my brooches and I have Christmas orders for felted soaps and kits coming in. It's all gravy as they say but it means I've somewhat neglected my blogging duties and not had time to read what other people are doing. I mean to rectify that as soon as possible and will turn up at your blogs with mulled wine and mince pies very shortly!

How to make felted soap

2006-11-18T06:20:00.000-08:00

It's been a year since I started this blog so as a thank you to my loyal readers ;) I''m making the instructions from my felted soap kits kits available as a pdf.

HERE

I know the design isn't all that but it's taken straight from the leaflets that I put in with the kits. I hope they're clear enough and of course if anyone wants to buy the kits themselves they're HERE

Happy anniversary darling - rofl!

Felted soap kits

2006-11-16T04:01:00.000-08:00

Just a quickie. I've managed to get the soap kits together and I intend to put them up on the site today. Just waiting to clarify postage and go into town to get the lamination puches for the instructions sheets and then we're cooking with gas. This is a quick pic to show you what they'll look like:

The instruction sheets will have photos as well as written instructions and I'll laminate them so they can be reused. In the kits there's a bar of high quality pre-certified glycerin soap (various fragrances) enough wool to more than cover the soap, a pop-sock and the laminated instruction sheets. The soaps are labelled with ingredients and the packaging (muslin tied with raffia can be re-used if you want to give the finished soap as a gift. I'll also include a small info sheet on how to use them etc which can also be given to the recipient of the soap :)

Any thoughts?

I intend to retail them at £5 +p&p as they have so many bits and pieces which have totalled up.

Anyway - that's your sneak preview my bloggy faithful friends :)

Have you seen this tea cosy?

2006-11-09T11:06:00.000-08:00

It seems to have taken on a celebrity life of its own - lol.
It's in this months Craftsman magazine and also in this months Simply Knitting. As I said in the last post it's under my real name in Craftsman and it has no name attached to it at all in Simply Knitting so as a piece of advertising it's pretty useless. However, as a warm fuzzy glow of seeing my work in print it's priceless.

Felted flowers

2006-10-29T05:46:00.000-08:00

I've not been too well after ceramics last Thursday :( I did my first batch of glazing and by the time I left the class my face was covered in a horrible rash and I was dizzy, lightheaded and had chest pains and really weak muscles and brain fog supreme. Poor old me. Looks like ceramics might have to be struck off the to do list. I love it as well and am getting to grips with throwing at last.

Anyway some good news. My copy of Craftsman magazine arrived on Friday and blow me down if I wasn't in it! Well, my tea cosy that won at Wonderwool Wales was in it, to be more precise. I was very chuffed. Trouble was it's under my real name, not Cledry Yarner, so if anyone likes it and wants to buy one they won't be able to find it :( Never mind - it's my first time seeing my work in a magazine - I loved it!

Seeing as I haven't been well I've been trying out my needle felting stuff. It's easy, portable and doesn't need a lot of energy so it was ideal for this week. I've made some flower brooches which are needle felted then machine embroidered with shiny threads for a bit of embellishment. Here are the ones I've finished so far:

The flowers themselves are 2-3 inches accross with the leaf being about 3/4 of an inch so they're a nice broochy size. I've attached a safety brooch pin to the back.
They're not as complicated or detailed as some of the marvellous creations you can see but for a first attempt I'm chuffed with them.

Celtic Challenge 2006

2006-10-14T02:09:00.000-07:00

It was a lovely sunny day yesterday and armed with my Ashford traditional I trundled off to Tregenna Castle Hotel in St Ives to participate in the 2006 Celtic Challenge. Scotland were defending the title they won in 2005 where they were the quickest in the Sheep to Shoulder challenge to turn cleaned fleece into a jumper in a day. There were reports in the local press that the Scots jumper may have been more suited to a small child and at one point there were reports that the jumper had no back but these all appear to be unfounded ;) This year, however, there can be no doubt that we were well and truly beaten as Scotland finished their 63 square blanket in the allotted time whilst Cornwall produced only 42 squares. Congratulations to Scotland you beat us fair and square.

The Cornish spinners did sterling work, keeping the knitters supplied with more yarn than they needed at all times. It was a great laugh and I hope to be invited back next year, though I'll sit in a different chair as the press photographers seemed to hone in on it. I'm never keen on seeing photos of myself so here's hoping they find something else to put in - lol

The lovely Champagne Bohemian was there on the knitters table and at one point looked quite bemused as 6 of the knitters got up and wandered off to see what was happening outside! Maybe no-one had told them it was a competition - lol

It was a thoroughly enjoyable day with local schools coming in for workshops and a great atmosphere. There was a video link between us and Scotland with an MSN type chat going on. The banter going back and forth was very funny.

There were several other record attempts during the day. Knitting with the largest needles was one - apparently the gig oars they knitted with last year didn't count as they weren't needles so they had special, giant needles made this year by an oarsmaker in Henley or somewhere:

Beauties aren't they? Wonder what they'll do with them now?

Here's Frances Jago attempting to beat the speed knitting record. She knitted 251 stitches in 3 minutes which doesn't break the record but certainly ranks her somewhere high. Her hands were flying so fast I had to put the camera on sports action setting to stop it blurring!

The carding team kept us amply supplied with batts of organic Romney from a farm up the road. It was lovely wool and some it had been dyed with tea. That wool was a bit sticky and I mused at one point whether it was the milk and sugar which had made it sticky - fnar.

More pics below

Celtic challenge #2

2006-10-14T01:37:00.000-07:00

For some reason Blogger has messed about with the spacing of this post and I can't sort it out. Have I told you how much I hate blogger? :D

This lady had the prettiest wheel - she also sat in the same seat as I'd been in and was the one that press photographers and cameramen went to - lol

Photographing me photographing you aha! Audrey and me in cameras at dawn

Some of the lovely ladies of the spinning team being filmed by the BBC

Audrey talking bobbins - she plyed for Cornwall - quite literally!

One 'leg' of the knitting team

Well, as I keep saying, it really was a lovely day and very good fun. Temporary loss of the use of my right leg has been a small price to pay - lol. Thanks to Audrey for asking me and for her marvellous organisation skills. We had a spinning team to be proud of, though I think Audrey's whip may have been a little step too far ;)

What to call the felted soaps?

2006-10-09T12:06:00.000-07:00

I've seen them called Soap in a Coat, Soap in a Sweater etc and I want to come up with a name for mine. I can't think of anything apart from Jacket Suds. What do you think? Has that been done already? Is it clear enough what it is? Will Fred Elliot choose Audrey? lol

Commenting on other people's blogs

2006-10-09T01:37:00.000-07:00

My computer is playing silly buggers again. I've tried to leave comments on lots of blogs over the last few days but for some reason my computer won't open the comments box on most of them. I'm sat there clicking away but nothing happens. The only blog I've managed to leave a comment on is Piglotties.
Sorry about that :(

More pics #2

2006-10-07T02:22:00.000-07:00

If at first you don't succeed move to typepad :) I'm pretty fed up with the inconsistencies of Blogger but can't face another HTML fest so will stick with it for the time being.

When I looked at Cyndy's blog recently I saw she was knitting a lovely scarf. It looked like just what I wanted to make for my Mum's Christmas present and Cyndy said it was fairly straightforward so I thought I'd give it a go. Bearing in mind that Cyndy is a complete whizz at whatever she turns her hand to I was a bit trepidacious about 'straightforward' lol. However, after a few stumbling starts and stops I've got this far with it:

This pic shows the stitch pattern a bit more clearly

The more experienced of you will no doubt see mistakes in the pattern (for there are many!) but it's good enough for me and my mum won't notice. The only problem is that I'm making it from the graduated yarn I spun last spring and I didn't spin it all in one go. Big mistake. The second batch I've spun is nothing like the first. The maths has gone a bit wobbly and it just looks completely different. I'll soldier on and see what happens and call it a design feature :)
Anyway - thanks Cyndy for pointing me towards the pattern at Spindlicity. It's been my first attempt at following a chart and I think I'll definitely do it again.

Lastly, I'm halfway through my first attempt at shibori felting. I've wanted to do this for ages but didn't want to try with handspun. BSK have a sale on at the moment so I bought some cones of handwash wool. I made a long thin scarf on the knitting machine, scrunched it in places and tied in some glass beads. Then I bunged it in the washing machine. This is how it looks so far

I'm waiting for it to dry a bit more and then I'll take the beads out. I'm really pleased with it. I quite like chucking things in the wash to see how they'll come out. I never thought Mrs Pernickety Knickers was going to move out of my head and let me be more 'loose' but it appears that she's gone on her hols for a bit (probably haranguing Moroccan waiters about the cleanliness of the crockery) Wherever she's gone I'm happy :) I might embellish it with some needle felting and make a little fused pin for it. It's the ideal size and shape for a neckwarmer. Next week I'll definitely try some more.

Well, that's all for now folks. I hope to post a lot sooner next time. I'd like to say 'Hi' to my new readers. I love looking at my stats and seeing where people are posting from. I find the technology behind the stats fascinating. To be able to see peoples IP addresses, where they're posting from, what browser they're using and even what size their computer screen is is amazing, don't you think?

Cheery bye for now :)

Some pics for you to peruse

2006-10-07T01:56:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the absence. Life is full of 'stuff' at the moment. Nothing drastic, just really petty niggling 'stuff'. You knaw how ee is yourself :)

Here's some updates on the small amounts of creative things I've been able to squeeze in. First, still on the fusible stuff a la Margaret Beal, I made a small book:

It's about 4 inches square and very delicate. Definitely not something you could cart around in your handbag but perfect for pasting little treasures into and keeping somewhere safe.

Next up is a bag I made a while back and didn't like. The wool didn't want to felt completely so it's more fulled than felted and it just didn't feel right. I decided to use it to experiment with the felting needles I got at Exeter and I quite liked it again as a result. I've lined it with some really lush red fabric I've had for years, stuck red handles on it and now I like it !

Right - well, for some reason Blogger won't upload any more pics. It's uploading them but not to the blog! I'll publish this one and then try another post.

Another addiction...errr...hobby!

2006-09-25T08:16:00.000-07:00

As you know, I went to the Hobbycraft show in Exeter last week. Whilst I was there I saw a lady called Margaret Beal doing fancy things to sheer fabrics and synthetics with a soldering iron. It looked very nice and I found myself at her stand several times. I enjoyed watching what she was doing so I bought her book and took it off to look through it over a cuppa. Biggest mistake I made that day! By the time I'd finished my tea I knew I had to go back and buy all the stuff to get started - lol. Actually it wasn't expensive at all - I managed to get everything I needed for under £40. Anyway - this week I've managed to get it all out and start playing. These are a couple of the things I've made so far - blogger won't let me upload more:

The long, thin ones are hair clips and the square ones are broochesThe photos don't really do them justice - in real life they're really sparkly and bright and appeal to the drama-queen-magpie in me. I've put them on the site to see if there's any interest in them and if there is I'll make some for the Christmas Fairs I'm hoping to do later in the year. I've already got my eye on crisp packets and sweetie wrappers to use. I'm sure I can find reclaimed chiffons and organzas and other shiny stuff in charity shops and jumble sales. That'll offset my guilt about them being synthetics *rolls eyes @ self*

Natural bent

2006-09-19T03:36:00.000-07:00

That's the name my husband sells his hazelwood furniture under :) We've just been to the beach to take photos of a couple of pieces to put on the Cledry site. They came out quite nicely I think.

We had a few people come and talk to us about what we were doing and one woman who insisted on standing in shot to take her socks and shoes off. If we moved the chair she moved with it!
I'm off into the workroom to lay out some felt today. I bought some leather bag handles at the Festival of Quilts and I want to make some bags to use them with. I can't do much more than lay out fibres today though as I start my Textiles AS level at the local college tonight and I need to save some energy. I'm excited :)

I'm such a scrubber

2006-09-11T10:23:00.000-07:00

This week I are been mostly makin felted soap

I bought some nice, smelly melt and pour soap from The Soap Tub as they're pre - certified meaning that you can sell them. I bought Nag Champa, Hemp, Juicy Orange and Lavender and I'm attempting to cover them all in merino to make felted soap scrubbies. I've put one on Ebay to see if there's any interest (260030618171)and some more are on the main Cledry Yarner site. I've only got Nag Champa and Hemp on there at the moment but tomorrow I'll hopefully get some of the other fragrances done and posted up. I've got one for myself and they're brill. I'm trying to wean myself off those nylon scrubby things as I think they're a bit rough on my skin and not too environmentally friendly. I'm hoping to be able to do some kits for people to buy to do their own as you don't need very much wool at all so buying a 100g to do one soap would be a bit costly.

Anyway - better toodle off and finish tea - ttfn

ETA - If anyone knows how to get paypal to combine postage for multiple items I'll be your best friend forerever -well - until someone buys me some chocolate anyway. I can do it on ebay but it doesn't seem to be an option for your own site. Ideally I'd like to be able to calculate postage by weight but that would be too sensible.

It's a jumbo problem

2006-09-06T04:13:00.000-07:00

Some months back I bought a Jumbo flyer for my Ashford Traditional. It's never been right, the bobbins have always seemed a bit too long, it's noisy, you have to wrestle the wool as the flyer has a fierce pull. Yesterday I took it off to have a look at it and this is what I saw:

Cracked to buggery! I'm not a happy bunny. I was unhappy with the overall feel of this when it arrived. It came at the same time as my Ashford skein winder, which I'm also not happy with. The winder squeaks and judders and just feels quite 'cheap' even though it was the same price as the competitors. I've started wondering if Ashford are cutting back on the quality of their raw materials or are unable to keep up with demand in some way. I had the choice of an Ashford niddy noddy or a Kromski niddy noddy a while back and I have to say the the Kromski won hands down due to sheer quality. I'm buying myself a new wheel next year and I'm not convinced it'll be an Ashford. I've emailed the poeple I bought the flyer from to see if they have any suggestions. I won't name them as they're very helpful and friendly and I don't want this to look like negative comments about them. It's not, it's about Ashford. Ho hum - we'll see what happens.

I take it all back - of course it felts!

2006-08-31T03:50:00.000-07:00

I've been blithely insisting for a couple of years now that the wool from my Poll Dorsets doesn't felt (sorry Champagne Bohemian) . Being the silly cow that I am I never really tried very hard. However, the other day I picked up a loosely knitted square that I'd made months ago to see how the thick n thin singles I was making at the time looked when knitted up. I ran it under the hot tap and with a squish of fairy liquid (saved only for yarn work - we use ecover for the dishes *blush*) mashed it around in my hand for a bit. Lo and behold it started to felt! I was so chuffed about this it was daft. I bored my husband rigid for 2 days saying 'Look, it's felted. No, feel it, go on feel it, it's felted, Look, it's felted!' The upshot was that I have some thick n thin singles on the site which aren't shifting so I 'borrowed' some to knit an ear flap hat to see if I could get it to felt. Trouble was I liked it as it was so I knitted another one! I stuck it in the washing machine on a basic 40 degree wash with a pair of jeans and waited. I forgot how scary it is putting yarny things in the washing machine but when I opened the door I was suitably relieved and pretty chuffed at how it came out. This is the unwashed one:

And this is the one that I put through the wash

And this is a close up of the felted one:

I really like the fact that you can still see stitch definition and it's gone all fluffy and furry. It needs a bit of work - the ear flaps are a bit small and a bit sticky outy now but I'm thinking of putting a row of single chain crochet round them for a bit of texture and to flatten them down a bit.

All in all I'm really pleased and excited to have something new to do - particularly with the thick n thins which weren't proving too popular on the site. The kids are going back to school next week so I'll have all day to mess about with yarn. Blissola :)

I owe an apology to everyone whose blogs I haven't visited in a while. School hols, feeling poorly etc etc - you know the score lol. Hopefully I'll be firing on all cylinders soon and we can all hunker down for the Autumn session :)

ETA - forgot to say that the pattern I used for the hat was loosely based on this one from Lion Brand. It has a pic of a crochet hat in it but is definitely knitted. It was the closest pattern I could find to match the wpi of the yarn but it still needed adapting :)

A bit of yarn and a bit of a rant

2006-08-26T02:01:00.000-07:00

Well, the knitting machine saga seems to be nearing an end. The seller has (reluctantly) authorised a refund so we'll see if it actually arrives or not. Meanwhile, the one I bought for a tenner in the local paper is going great guns.

I realised I'd better get on with some actual work as pretty soon there will be the usual rash of craft fairs etc held locally for Christmas. They may not be until October/November/December but it's going to take me a good while to build up enough stock to attend them (assuming I'll actually sell anything - lol) So, with 20 kilos of prepared dorset I thought the least I could do was dye and spin 100g of wool for socks. Dorset is an ideal wool for socks. When spun it's nice and springy and it's soft yet tough enough to withstand a bit more wear and tear than something like merino.

I dyed 50g of it in fairly standard blue, pink and brown and then spun the other 50g slightly different shades of the same colour. I spun it thin enough for a sock but strong enough to stand some wear and tear and this is what it came out like. The 5p piece is for scale.

There's a lot more green/blue in it than can be seen from that pic. I really like it and the trouble with really liking it is that my natural urge is to whip out some dpn's and get knitting! I find it really hard to part with yarns I love and this is going to prove somewhat of an obstacle in my chosen career methinks - lol.

This next bit is lengthy and a bit ranty/moany - you have been warned :)

I went to a textiles exhibition yesterday. It was a retrospective of students who have completed the HND at the local college. It was great and I enjoyed looking at the work and the sketchbooks etc but it really clarified something for me. I ended up being quite agitated that none of it was useable/wearable etc. It was all panels and framed pieces and as I walked round it clarified for me that I am absolutely passionate about textiles being functional. I know there's a big bone of contention as to whether textiles are art or craft and wordy battles rage all over the internet about the validity of textiles and whether textiles artists (and I would include all of US in that) are in fact artists at all. It's a debate that infuriates and facinates me in equal measure and yesterdays exhibition was really useful in helping me get to the crux of what I feel about where textiles are at right now. As I viewed these beautiful pieces yesterday I felt like I was in a zoo. It was as if the essense of these carefuly made and lovely pieces was trapped behind the glass. They didn't sing like they would if they had been wearable or functional - not for me anyway. I felt as if the energy of the pieces had been sucked out and that they were being made into something less than they could have been ( no I hadn't eaten any funny mushrooms before I went) It made me think of the 80's when women, in their struggle to be taken seriously in the world of business, started to talk like men, dress like men and behave like men as if they couldn't be there on their own merits. It's as if the textiles world feels as if it has to emulate painting and sculpture in order to be valid. It made me quite sad and I hope that as (and if) texiles are taken seriously as an art form that people realise that something doesn't have to be trapped behind glass or be 'conceptual' to be beautiful and desirable. In this months Craftsman magazine there was an article on a glass maker called Neil Wilkin who made me smile with his comment, 'There's not a concept behind my work. It's making something I like. It's drawing ideas from the garden.' More of the same please :)

Festival of Quilts

2006-08-21T03:43:00.000-07:00

It was fab. I wish I could have stayed longer. I'm tired and skint so you'll have to make do with some photos:

I loved it and it made me want to do the HND in Textiles at the local uni but no time dears, no time :(

Right, I'm off to try to sort out the mess that is a dodgy knitting machine and a seemingly equally dodgy seller. She's claiming that the machine has got damaged in the post and that as such it's nothing to do with her. I've never known anything go rusty in the post! Hey ho - I've never left anyone negative feedback in nearly a hundred transactions but I think I'm going to have to with this one.

Just the good news

2006-08-16T02:53:00.000-07:00

I applied a few months ago to be part of the Made In Cornwall scheme run by Cornwall County Council trading standards. I thought they'd forgoten all about me but it seems that my home inspection went ok and I found out this morning that I've been accepted onto the scheme. It means I get to be part of their events and I can use this logo on my products

Well, nearly all of my products. I can't put it on the self striping sock wool as they don't consider that there's been 'significant change demonstrated in the manufacture'. Rofl - maybe they should come round and try to do some themselves. No significant change! Never mind everything else passed muster so I'm happy with that.

The good news and the bad news

2006-08-12T05:49:00.000-07:00

I'll do the bad news first, get it over with. The knitting machine I bought from Ebay arrived yesterday and there was no way that thing was ever going to work. Bent and damaged needles were only the beginning of it. I emailed the seller and have recieved no reply. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they may be away from their computer until after the weekend but if they don't reply by Monday PM I'm going to get shitty. I only want something simple to knit some blanks for dyeing and get some of the huge pile of coned wool I have lying around shifted. There was a knitting machine advertised in the local paper so I'm going to see that on Monday. Wish me luck, this has been a saga that's been going on for about a year. I only want a bloody knitting machine for gawds sake!

The good news is that I was so stressed from the knitting machine saga that I got pissed last night, (no that's not the good news) and decided to treat myself to a trip to the Festival of Quilts next weekend. The Hilton are doing a really good deal (and I get upgraded as I'm a Hilton Honours member doncha know!) and I'm getting my train ticket this afternoon. Orf I bally well go. I asked my husband if he minded and he said that I don't bat an eye about spending money on them all the time so I deserve to spend some on me. Bless him. So, daunted but excited I'm going to pack my nightie and toothbrush and it's Brum here I come.

New tea cosies on the block

2006-08-10T10:22:00.000-07:00

I've finished the ones that were drying on the line in the last entry

I have to say I'm quite chuffed with them. They vary enough in style to keep me interested as I get easily bored doing the same thing. I'll be putting them on the site today or tomorrow.

Still no knitting machine - grrrr

Getting felt up

2006-08-08T08:37:00.000-07:00

Fnar. I've spent a few blissful hours making some felt tea cosies. The fibre from craftynotions really is fab. As soon as one order is delivered I'm back online looking to see what other colours I can buy.

Here's what I've made so far, drying nicely in the breeze

The green/red hearts one is my favourite so far and I'm trying to work out how to make a hat that actually suits me in those colours. I don't do hats normally - look a right twonk in them but I'm willing to give it a try for those colours.

It's a relief to be creative again. I don't realise how much I need it and how much not being able to do it twists me out until I've started again and I can look back. Double edge of it is that I can't sleep for designs and colours buzzing through my head. We're heading slowly for Autumn and they're my absolute favourite colours, gawd knows what I'll be like then.

Today I'm waiting for a new knitting machine (£30 off ebay - last of the big spenders, me) and then I'm going to try out Nancy Roberts' method for dyeing machine knitted blanks and unravelling them. I also want to try shibori felting and then I want to...........

Rofl - see you later.

2006-08-07T08:29:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the internet is just like being back at school - lol

Nuff said

Update on the site

2006-08-06T09:15:00.000-07:00

I've added a couple more bits and pieces. Our Lambskin rugs are back and they're beautiful so they've gone on the site for sale here. I found a bit of self striping left from Mazey Day, lurking at the bottom of the basket and I've put the coffee cosy up as well. I'm going to crack on with some felt tomorrow as middle boy is away for 2 weeks and small boy is at my mums for a few days. They're going shopping together - bless.

I've decided that the shetland/merino/alapca scarf isn't really my mums sort of thing It's way too chunky and not the right colour for her at all, so I've decided to add stripes of lovely dark chocolate brown dorset and sell it. It's looking lovely now. Isn't it funny how what you intend to do with something can change how you see it? I'll post a pic when I can.

Instead, here's a pic of our huge artichoke thistle thingy which has decided to flower this year

It's got about 6 flowers on it and the bees love it. It looms out of this half barrel tub we've put it in like a trifid. Beautiful :)

The shetland/alpaca mix

2006-08-05T01:41:00.000-07:00

I don't like it :(

I carded up the shetland with some bits of washed merino I found and then blended it with the caramel alpaca. It looked quite nice at that stage:

I wanted to spin it fine but the merino (although it had been washed 6 times!!!) still has little gummy nubs in it that refuse to card out (you can see them clearly in the photo) I thought I'd leave them as they might add some interest. In reality it just meant it was a bugger to spin. Once I'd plyed it, washed it and balled it up it was verging on chunky. I've never had yarn swell up on me so much after it was washed. Not a problem per se but not what I had in mind at all.

It's knitting up nice enough, chunky but nice enough. Our 'white' shetland is funny stuff, a beautiful dove grey on it's own but can look kind of chewing gum coloured when blended. The jury is out on whether this will actually make it into gift wrap for my Mum's Christmas present, we'll have to see.

I've had yet another instance of internet bad manners and someone thinking they can lift things from here and post it onto forums to 'make a point' and again it was a man (must be something in my scent)

TTFN :)

2006-08-03T03:14:00.000-07:00

I am a
Violet

What Flower
Are You?

"You have a shy personality. You tend to hesitate before trying new things or meeting new people. But once people get to know you, you open up and show the world what you are really all about."

I answered all the questions truthfully - honest.

What kind of flowere are you?

Here's a tea cosy to keep you going

2006-08-02T08:03:00.000-07:00

I made that a few weeks ago but didn't have the energy to finish it with the marabou along the bottom. It's actually a cosy for a coffee pot but we won't worry about mixing our beverages here.

I've been having a bit of a dilemma regarding the felt. It's simply too energy sapping to make it from raw fleece. I have to wash it, dye it card it etc etc and that means I can make about one piece every couple of months. That way madness lies :D However, I won't buy fleece/wool that has been mulesed (I've written about that before) So! I found a place today that sells merino cross, dyed tops from a chemical free farm in the Falklands. They're going to ask the farmers if they mules their sheep but it seems unlikely that they do . Maybe I can make a reasonable amount of felt pieces if I don't have to do it from raw fleece. Fingers crossed.

I found a bag of washed, pale grey shetland in my studio so I started blending it with some of the caramel alpaca to spin for a simple lace scarf for my mothers' Christmas present. It was coming along nicely and I got three 30g batts and then my cat (who is studio-bound with a broken pelvis) decided to do the smelliest poo she could muster so I had to leave the room - ROFL! I'll post some photos when the smog has cleared (of the batts, not the poo)

Tonight I am off to see The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain at Falmouth. I've wanted to see them for ages and I'm really excited. Hope I don't drink too much and wee myself.

See you all drekkly :)

So terribly sorry

2006-07-29T03:38:00.000-07:00

I really have been slack haven't I? I've just been exhausted and aside from a bit of posting on forums I've actually done diddly squat. No yarn work whatsoever. I've reallly wanted to and I need to start thinking about stuff to put on the website for Winter but it'll have to wait.

Wiltshire was good. We stayed in a B&B in Devizes called Rockley House and the lady who ran it was just delightful. She couldn't have been lovelier if she tried. On our last night she asked if we wanted to stay on the canal boat they have there. The boys were chuffed to rocks:

No. 2 son did well at the chess and won two games. I'm always relieved that he wins any at that level as the kids have generally reached an extremely high standard and have private coaching etc. My boy plays for an hour a week at school if he's lucky. None of us at home play chess so he doesn't get any practice here. There were 600 kids playing chess that day in 30 degrees plus temperatures.

I was glad when it was over and even more grateful that the hire car had air conditioning. Poor No. 3 son had a really bad sickness bug on the last night and spent the entire night throwing up but he bravely trudged round Stonehenge the next day.

All in all it was a good trip and the boys behaved really well. The biggest disaster was going to Longleat and leaving the camera on the bed at the B&B. Silly cow. I bought one of those disposable ones but the pics won't be as good as from the diggie - especially as it's got a sooper dooper zoom. Oh well, such is life when you've got the braincells of a half formed amoeba.

Hopefully I'll be back with some yarn content soon but today I'm going to lie on the sofa and watch DVD's with the kids. Dyw genes for now my lovelies!

Urgh

2006-07-13T07:34:00.000-07:00

I feel a relapse looming :( All the signs are there. Severely twitchy, weak muscles, my lungs hurt, my throat hurts, my head hurts and I'm not sleeping. I can't string two words together and the slightest noise is like having my head in a metal bucket. I have to have all the doors and windows shut because the noise of the birdsong is driving me nuts. Basically I feel like I've done 10 rounds in a boxing ring. Sometimes I only feel this bad for a weeks or so, sometimes it goes on forever. I'm sincerely hoping it's the former. I have to go to Wiltshire tomorrow for 3 days. My middle boy is playing in a chess tournament and I promised him and his younger brother we could go to Longleat. They're bouncing off the walls with excitement - I'm wondering how I'm going to get through it - lol. Maybe 'Doctor Theatre' will kick in just in time.

I'm rather short of portable projects so I dug out some yarn I made earlier in the year and have started some socks.

The greeny/orangey one is some cheviot roving I dyed and spun while I was waiting for our Dorset to come back from Natural Fibre. It's a hard wool so I may add some leather soles to the socks and make them more of a slipper affair. The brown is Alpaca blended with Shetland and if there was enough of this I'd make a pair of socks and never take them off - it's sooooo soft. But needs must when a yarnaholic has no projects on the go so a stripey mix of hard/soft it is :)

I'll be back on Monday evening and hopefully will have some pics from Longleat if I have the energy to actually go. Wish me luck.

Busy doing nothing - it's a long one

2006-07-11T10:21:00.000-07:00

I've been so busy for the last week. I've been trying to sort out my mother in laws phone. She's 86 and lives alone in a detached property in a semi rural location. On 27th June her phone line came down - she discovered this when she tried to phone for help after falling and breaking her ankle. Luckily her neighbour called round minutes after she'd fallen and called for help and then called BT to tell them the line wsa down. On the 3rd July (!!!!!) a BT engineer called round and said that a temporary line could be put in and left. Then....nothing. On 5th July I called BT to find out what was happening and after being shunted from pillar to post I was told that they had a completion date of 14th July to reinstate her line. I said that wasn't acceptable and asked to speak to a manager. I was told that a manager would call me back next day to discuss it with me. Next day a manager ( a nice Welsh woman who is the only one who has been honest in 500 fekkin phone calls) called me back and said that the 14th July was actually the date that the plans were going to be recieved by BT engineers so that they could think about re-routing the lines underground and that the actual date we were looking at for my M.I.L to have her phone back was mid August!! That's 7 weeks for an elderly lady who lives alone, in a detached property (and has a broken ankle) to be without a phone. I started a complaints procedure straight away. Have any of you ever tried to complain to BT? It's a farce. I decided that I would follow their complaints procedure to the letter as, if you want to go to Oftel ,they won't even think about your case unless you've followed 'procedure'. It's been a total eye opener and a weeks 'work'. It's been like being back in mental health. All day on the phone trying to sort something out. I called them on 7th July and said I wanted to register a complaint about the way the situation was being dealt with and wanted to speak to a manager. I was told a manager would call me back. They didn't. After 3 days of constant phoning and constant promises of call backs which never materialised I decided my complaint wasn't being dealt with correctly I called the BT Complaints Review Team, I got through to Broadband customer services. I tried to call them again and got though to standard customer services. I said I wanted my complaint reviewed and they said 'But you have to regsiter a complaint in the first place' I told them I had and they said there was no record of it. I explained the situation and they said a manager would call me back within 2 hrs. They didn't. I called again. I got put through to a call centre in India and said I wanted to regsiter a complaint. They hung up. I called again and was told a manager would call me back within 2 hrs. They did! They said, 'There's an engineer at the property right now'. We drove round there, there wasn't. I called again and was told 'They're not beginning work until 14th July'. AAAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!

I've been told by two separate BT representatives (both of them managers) that to provide my M.I.L with priority care due to her age would be ageist (wtf?!) I've been told by one of the managers that she herself lives alone and doesn't expect anything other than standard service provision ( I assume she's not 86) I was old that my M.I.L could indeed recieve priority services but only if she registered and paid a premium.When I asked what BT's commitment actually was to older customers I was proudly told that BT promises to give them the same standard of service as any other customer. Good of them eh? It has been a nightmare but an education.

This afternoon I decided enough was enough and I called BT Head Office and asked to speak to Sir Christopher Bland (BT Chairman). They asked what I was calling about and I said 'I have concerns that your services are not being delivered within a framework of social responsibilty'. I explained the situation and the woman was very quiet and listened. When I finished she said that she completely understood my concerns and put me through to the highest complaints dept. Within an hour there was an engineer on site at my M.I.L's house attemtpting to sort out a temporary line and I have had 3 calls from 3 separate managers to aologise and thank me for my patience. Am I being cynical or is the standard complaints procedure designed to get the caller to lose the will and give up? How many people are stubborn enough to go as far as I did? How many people just believe the lies and give up?

I also contacted Age concern and my concerns about BT's customer care for the elderly have been passed on to their policy department. I've written a formal complaint to the BT chairman and said that(in a much more formal way) I think their standard of customer care for elderly cutomers stinks.

The irony is that I've gone into work mode. If it was about my phone I would have been screaming sort my &*(^%$£ phone out you )&^%$£" %$£*&^%!! Lol I am utterly exhausted and can't believe how mcuh energy this has taken. Still.....

Here's a pic of how the (unwashed ) alpaca is spinning up

As it's not washed and I'm pulling it out of a bin bag to spin in locks it's not wanting to spin particularly fine. It'll be interesting to see how it comes out.

Whilst I've got you there you can help me with a dilemma. have a look at this yarn.

I don't know whether to keep it or put it on the website. I really like it.

Decisions decisions :)

Message for stroppygob

2006-07-11T00:18:00.000-07:00

The name says it all eh? lol. Why don't you bookmark my blog if you're going to keep reading it? Then you wouldn't have to do blog searches from work.

For everyone else I've got a nice pic of my new ukulele :)

Look what I got

2006-07-10T01:10:00.000-07:00

One of our baby goats, Clover, has gone to live on a farm up the road. I knew the woman had alpacas but had never been up there. When we took Clover up there she asked me if I wanted some fleece and as I tried to remain nonchalant and not bite her hand off she gave me this

An entire bin bag full of top quality alpaca fleece! Isn't it lush? I spun some up on Friday night (being very careful of The Knee) and it's beautiful. Clean enough to spin straight out of the bag. I might try to prepare some just to see if I can get it really fine but I don't have any combs. I really want some combs but am loathe to pay out for the mini ones. I want big girl ones but I can't find any.

Anyway - best get on - the feedback form on my site has stopped wroking for some reason so I guess I'll spend the day staring at the screen again. I'm going to try to squeeze some spinning in if I have enough energy as I have extreme withdrawal symptoms :(

With regards to changing the name of the blog I've decided to keep it the same. I don't think it's a good idea to give in to bullies and he is a bully. He's not particularly liked on the forum, spends hours on there just winding people up and claims to follow me around other forums I use. I guess I should see it as a compliment but I'll try to dredge up some human compassion toward the bloke - he's obviously got problems.

TTFN :)

Bitter little people

2006-07-09T02:25:00.000-07:00

Yet again some saddo with personality issues has decided to post a link to my blog on an open forum. This person has the personailty of a dead sea slug and spends all of his free time on the net pissing people off - or trying to - he's a sad litle man. His wife seems quite normal though - maybe she's more of a carer than a wife. Perhaps I should make it clear that I am a user on the same forum as this arrogant tosser and he has posted the link to my blog on the forums without my permission and solely to have a dig. As I have already had problems with people on that site turning up at my house to freak me out and another one (who thankfully wasn't bright enough to post the correct link) posting the addy and slagging off my kids I'm sure you'll all understand that it's not something I'm particularly happy about. Posting anonymnous links to blogs on forums is one thing but posting the blog of a fellow forum member without their permission is quite something else in my book. The majority of members on that forum are very nice people but there seems to be a large percentage who don't know how to behave.

So, now the website is up I think I have to change the name of this blog so that I can keep it in the format is presently is - it has enough personal stuff in it that I don't want it advertised and if I did it would be my job not some arsehole with too much spare time and not enough mates.

I don't want to lose the readers I have so what's a girl to do? If I just change the name will people still find it via google? Will all your links to here still work?

Ideas on a postcard - lol

It's Up!

2006-07-07T03:32:00.000-07:00

Well the beginnings of it are - I have lots more to do to it :)

Cledry Yarner The Site!

Confoosed of Cledry

2006-07-06T10:58:00.000-07:00

I have a site (built on Dreamweaver) I have a hosting package - how do I upload it?
I'm sorry I'm such a luddite :(

You've got to laugh or else you'll drown in gin

2006-07-04T02:23:00.000-07:00

I'm not having much luck with the internet today - mind you I did vaguely hear on the radio yesterday that mercury has turned retrograde or summat so maybe any attempts at communication are futile - lol.

Anyway - a lady I chat to on the net came down to St Ives this weekend and I thought I'd drive her out to Sennen for a cream tea. So, it was all going splendidly, the weather was beautiful the scones were moist and warm, the chat was abundant and all was tickety boo. Until I decided to move my leg. Now, I have 'A Knee'. It does bad things and causes me much pain. Usually I can flick my leg out and whatever is going on clicks painfully but completely back into place. Not on Sunday. No amount of straightening, fidgetting, praying to the god of knees to not let me cry with pain in front of a stranger did the trick. I had to say to my companion that all was not well and that I may be about to pass out. Poor woman - she just wanted a weekend break and what she got was half a cream tea and a semi stranger being wheeled off into an ambulance screaming in agony. It being a sunny day casualty was chokka with tourists who had fallen off things and 5 hours later after an x-ray (which obviously showed nothing) I was at home and struggling to get up the stairs to bed. I had to stay in bed all day yesterday as I simply couldn't move without excruciating pain. I knitted a sock to take my mind off the utter boredom and stupidly (or not as it transpires) decided to try it on for size. Without thinking, I lifted my right leg and rested my ankle on my afflicted knee and with a huge 'THUNK' and a scream my kneecap shifted and clunked back into place. Since then I've had much more mobility and much less pain in it. I've even made it downstairs on crutches. I'm exhausted and all I want to do is spin but it's my right knee :( Nothing but ice cream and ginger nuts is going to help.

Didn't wanna go to woolfest anyway

2006-06-30T10:53:00.000-07:00

Lol

I'm so jealous of peeps going to woolfest. I've promised myself I'll go next year (mind you I did that this year).

I hope you all have a fab time and buy loads of yarn and sod the expense!

I also want to tell you that there is a new cyber meeting place for spinners/weavers/dyers and felters at The Dropped Spindle. It's a place for everyone, where there is no such thing as a stupid question. So, if you're a nervous newbie hopefully there'll be someone to answer your question no matter how daft you may feel it is. And if you're not a nervous newbie, pile in and have a natter! It's for people of all skill levels and there can never be enough spinning/weaving/felting forums can there?

I look forward to hearing all about Woolfest from people next week and I promise not to be jealous.

(uncrosses fingers, signs off)

Phew!

2006-06-28T06:44:00.000-07:00

And that was that! I did my 2 days on the stall and it was fun. Exhausting but fun. I sold enough yarn to cover my costs and I was really pleased about that. On Saturday it must have been about 80 degrees so, selling yarn then was a feat. It was very satisfying to hear people say 'Wow!' as they walked past and even if people didn't stop the managed to give the yarn a squish on the way. This was the stall on the Saturday early morning:

And a closer look at the goodies:

My husband was selling his furniture at the stall next to me so that was cosy - lol.

It was a long and busy 2 days but I really enjoyed it. There was loads of interest in the felt so I'm hurriedly making a webiste now as I foolishly promised people it would be up and running by the end of the week (words like, rod, own back, own worst enemy are bouncing into my mind for some reason)

I met some lovely people - Champagne Bohemian popped by with her family and very kindly bought some yarn as did Brigit from the It's Not Easy Being Green forums and Sunpuppy from Downsizer. So, exhausted but happy is the order of this week. I'll post a link to the website when it's done - back soon.

My new logo

2006-06-21T10:15:00.000-07:00

Meet gladys:

I took that picture of her on shearing day and the more I looked at it the more I thought I'd like it for my logo. It's years since I did any graphics but after much scribbling, photocopying, colouring in and more scribbling I came up with my new logo:

It might not be the most professional logo anyone has ever come up with but it's mine and I like it :)

Curiouser and curiouser

2006-06-21T00:25:00.000-07:00

Just a quickie to let you know I'm still in the land of the living - just. Interestingly (or not) I've been feeling pretty ok - tired with muscle weakness but generally fine. Yesterday I found some roving that I'd been practicing natural dyeing on and spun it up. It was dyed with logwood and had an alum mordant. Within an hour of starting I had full on M.E flu type symptoms I get when I've been in contact with chemicals. Today I feel like I have the worst hangover. Now, I've been sloshing the acid dye around like there's no tomorrow for about 3 weeks and haven't felt a thing. It interests me greatly that I can't cope with 'natural' dyeing as the M.E is usually a pretty good indicator of there being 'nasties' around. Are we being led to believe that natural is better when sometimes it isn't? Could it be that synthetic dyes are less damaging? I can't really find a definitive answer on the net but it's been interesting to find that many companies who are striving to lessen their environmental footprint use synthetic dyes. A dilemma show nuff!

They're back!

2006-06-14T05:15:00.000-07:00

My hat and tea cosy are back from their trip to Wales so here's a couple of pics:

I was a bit concerned that they'd suffer in the post but they appear to be ok - phew :)

Was I a bad person in a last life?

2006-06-12T12:04:00.000-07:00

I seem to be lurching from one low level crisis to another. Suffice to say there was an incident this weekend which pulled the rug from under my feet and made me question if I can trust people at all.

Anyway - good news. New baby goats came this morning, 3 of them. The mum gave birth to 2 boys and a girl, again. I don't have any brill photos of them as she was in a confined space and I didn't want to freak her out by climbing on stuff just to get a good view.

Two of them (girl in the foreground) :

The other boy:

A concerned Mum:

Mother and triplets are doing fine :)

Yarny stuff is piling up. I've been making some small knitted flowers with crocheted leaves to sell on my stall. I've also been doing some dyeing.

Some rainbow rovings:

Some yarn in the same kind of colours:

And a shawl I've started based on the oneI did earlier in the year. I'm hoping that it'll sell on the stall as I've had so many comments on the other one.

I'm in a strange state of mind about this imminent stall. I feel stressed to buggery but unable to get on with it. Fear I s'pect - lol. It's happening a week on Saturday - wish me luck :)

Even less to report

2006-06-06T02:54:00.000-07:00

I've got a breast abscess which (thankfully) burst last night.
Yuk.
Nuf said.

Not a lot to report

2006-05-31T12:38:00.000-07:00

The sheep have been sheared (shorn?) and I've found out that washing fleece knackers me. Still, I've washed half of Sunshine's fleece - she is the weirdest looking sheep I've ever seen but her fleece is lush. I'll post pics of how it's spinning up in a couple of days.

This is Didge

Smiling for the camera while he had his haircut - lol

'Normal' service is resumed

2006-05-27T00:00:00.000-07:00

Well, thank you to everyone who left sympathetic mesages yesterday. My plan was for this blog never to get that personal, more to just be a place to record my spinning and knitting. But seeing as my visitor stats went through the roof yesterday maybe having the occasional hissy pink bitch-fit isn't so bad.

Yesterday I had a good cry, a bath, a mars bar and a cup of tea. Then I set to spinning 125 grams of 2 ply dorset and a bobbin full of alpaca. I also finished sewing up the small bag I knitted on the way to the dentist.

It's made from some Gotland that I got from a stall called Moral Fibre and some of our own Polled Dorset. I spun singles on my new drop spindle

And then just knitted. There was no pattern, I just knitted. I pinched a pebble from next doors driveway and used it as a button - lol. I've never really 'got' why people bother with drop spindles - until I tried it. Now it's something else to add to the addiction pile - sigh.

My certificates came a couple of days ago - I took a picture of them.

Saddo ain't I? lol

I know I'm overtired and I've been really struggling to hear the alarm let alone get up when it goes off. I promised myself a good long lie in today. I've been awake since 6.10.

Anyway in the words of my fellow hysteric Scarlett O - Hara 'Tomorrow is another day' and tomorrow is today already so I suppose I'd better get on with it .

That's the beautiful rainbow that came out when we were packing away the tent in Wales. Nice innit?

BTW I found a supplier of ethical (and British) merino when I was at Wonderwool and bought two bags of fleece from her. They're called Chrysalis Alpaca and the fleece is beautiful.

Life

2006-05-26T01:23:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry I still haven't got round to posting any photo's - life is getting in the way a bit. I had my last mercury amalgam removed yesterday (200 mile round trip and near surgical procedures)and the trip to Wales has really kocked me out. Added to that I stupidly decided to book a stall for our local festival Golowan. It's in 4 weeks time which would maybe be alright but next week is half term and my friend is down from London for a week after that which means I have 2 weeks in actual fact to make yarn, bags, shawls, anything that'll sell so we can keep a roof over our heads. I know I'm not really well enough yet but my sickness benefits are about to stop and a girl has to make ends meet somehow or we'll be homeless by the end of next month.

Anyway, it's been commented on that I haven't really been around and I've been removed from the friends list of a blog I used to read. There haven't been many comments on my blog lately so I can only assume that I've broken some kind of 'bloggers code'. Fuck knows why I let the internet get to me so much but it does.

So, I'm sorry I'm ill.
I'm sorry I haven't got time or energy to post on everyones blog all the time.
I'm sorry I don't fit in.
I'm sorry I bothered with this blog

I'd like to thank my mother, my dog and Bod

2006-05-22T10:59:00.000-07:00

I'm absolutely shattered and have just got back but I thought I'd pop in to quickly tell you all that I won 1st prize with my tea cosy and my hat was exhibited in the winners section as well. I'm quietly chuffed, no-one laughed :) Total donk that I am I didn't get any pics of them. They should post them back soon (I hope) and then (if they aren't too battered) I'll be able to take some pictures and post them up.

I'll post pics of what fell into my shopping bag when I've recovered lol.

Batten down the hatches!

2006-05-18T13:03:00.000-07:00

We're off to Wales first thing and it's blowing a hoolie! I don't relish putting the tent up in a howling gale and pissing rain but it's a holiday, who am I to complain?

I'll be back on Monday with photees of the fun and hopefully all my new goodies. No, darling I promise I won't fill the hire car with smelly fleece *uncrosses fingers*

See ya Monday!

Silky Silky

2006-05-15T02:25:00.000-07:00

It was a weird day yesterday. We were driving down the track when I spotted one of the new lambs lying in the gateway. It wasn't well at all. We think it may have eaten something poisonous as it's mother and sister are fine but it wasn't good and it died. It's a horrible feeling - helpless. You do what you can but sometimes, despite your best efforts, nature takes its course. Anyway - within an hour of it dieing the ewe who we were waiting for produced her first lamb. A tiny black one. So it was bad news and good news. Ho hum such is life on a smallholding I guess.

So, back to all things fibrey. The silk sample skein has been burning a hole in me every time I walk past it. I tried hiding it in the stash bowl but it was no good - lol. At 10pm last night I caved in and knitted an amulet pouch that I first saw on acrylik's blog. I think I'll give it to my eldest son who is always stashing stuff in little bags - hippy that he is.

I've never knitted silk before and it was fun. I have to say I preferred it before I blocked it - are you supposed to block silk?

I did some more of the sample blends from the silk workshop at the online guild yesterday. It was fun and I really enjoyed just playing. Here is some Blue Face Leicester and tussah silk which came already blended:

I seem to have managed to make that look like a dog turd.

And some tussah silk noils carded with some shetland I found kicking about in a bag in my workroom:

I really like that one. I kept it as a single as I though it would look just too messy plyed. It's just the right level of random for me right now. I'll definitely be doing that again and will stock up on tussah noils when Wingham come to Praa Sands in June.

Today we're doing some shopping to make sure we have all the necessaries for our trip to The Smallholder Show/Wonderwool in Wales. I wonder if 'himself' is prepared for just how much I'm planning on spending? He hasn't questioned he fact that I've hired an estate car - rofl!

2006-05-13T05:52:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry I've been such a bad blogger :(
Every time I switch on the computer I think 'I must post on the blog today' but to no avail. I seem to have had some kind of mental block. Anyway - I'm forcing myself to post today so quality control may go out the window - lol.
So, what have the last 2 weeks been like? I've been busy, too busy probably. I bought a second hand Ashford Country Spinner from someone at the online guild. It's a beast with its 2lb bobbins

I'm getting the hang of it slowly but surely and am starting to crank out some thick n thin singles. It's a very fast wheel and very heavy so it's easy to overspin. I'm using the singles to practice dyeing things the same colours that have a semblance of regularity. I still can't recreate that bright skein I did a month or so back. The colours seem to be much tamer than my original attempts but I'm not losing as much excess dye. People who've seen them seem to like them so maybe it's just the critical beyatch who resides permanently in the front of my head who's unhappy with them.

Re: Wonderwool. I had a letter yesterday with a complimentary exhibitors pass for the Saturday so it looks like my hat and/or tea cosy are being exhibited at the show. There was no explanation in the letter - just the pass. Peculiar. I'll get some photos of them while I'm up there and post them when I get back.

What else has been going on? Oh yeah, I've been dipping in and out of the guild workshop which, this month, is Silk Spinning. I've never spun silk before and was expecting it to be trickier than it was. I've really enjoyed the little bit I've done (not the smell though - it stinks) It was easier than the soy silk or tencel that I've been playing with. I think I'll definitely do some more another time.

Last Saturday I took my middle boy, Murphy to another chess tournament. There were two competitions running concurrently. One for the UK Land Chess Challenge and one for the Penwith Cup (local schools competing for the cup) He was playing on the school team as well as on his own behalf and the clever little smorgler got a perfect score (won every game he played) which meant that he's under 10's champ and his school won the cup. These tournaments are always a mixed blessing. It's fantastic that he wins stuff and I'm so proud of him but when they get over that 4 point qualification score you can see the mums going 'Oh god I've got to take him/her to Manchester for the next stage now' lol. Anyway - here's a pic of his trophy. It's a beauty this time.

And here's just a gratuitous pic of my youngest playing with the young nanny Bracken while her (very pregnant) mum looks on.
He gets jealous if he's left out - lol.

I think I can definitely say I've been overdoing it. I just wish I was able to listen to the warning signs I get and not just plough on regardless. By the afternoon I feel like I've been sucked dry and am running on empty.

Still, it's almost Summer, the trees are in leaf and the meadowsweet is in flower. I love it when the meadowsweet and the campions blossom. I've made this years batch of Oil of Swallows (Green elder ointment) which gets used to help heal cuts and bruises of livestock and small boys and the elder flowers are starting to bud so it won't be long before I'm up to my elbows in elderflower cordial - yum. We've got one ewe left to lamb - a first time mum who we're concerned about lambing while we're away. Hopefully she'll have it tonight on the full moon or I don't know what we'll do. We're off to Wales early on Friday morning - so she needs to have had it by then. The other lambs are at their nicest stage. There's something about lambs at that age that just looks inherently naughty. They charge around the field looking for all the world like they're playing tag. There's always one who's more naughty than the rest. And for some reason that one's always my favourite ;)

Blogger being it's usual crap self

2006-05-13T01:01:00.000-07:00

I've typed a long post with photos but for some reason the photos won't appear. I'll try again later.

You can't shout at me - it's my birthday

2006-04-29T04:15:00.000-07:00

I'm 41 today. Not quite sure how I feel about that but I'm certainly having a nice day. I got a cup of tea in bed and some nice presents from Dave and the boys and my next door neighbour has just been round with a lush chocloate cake. My husband has also bought me a cake so never mind two - shags Prescott, I'm two - cakes Cledry!

I've been a bad blogger because I decided (in my wisdom) to enter a couple of pieces into the Wonderwool competition and I left myself 3 days to do it (rolls eyes @ self). I've entered a felted hat and a tea cosy made from some lovely Llanwenog wool bought from Garthenor Organic in Ceredigion. As well as super speedy delivery the wool was absolutely stunning. It's a relief to find a British wool that will felt as you all know my thoughts on merino. It took longer to felt and didn't shrink as much as merino so the hat came out different to what I expected. I actually prefer it to what I originally had in mind so it's all gravy! I have no doubt that the pieces I sent will be sent straight back but I thought it was time to step out of the comfort zone and 'put something out there' Anyway - it was all done in such a rush that I didn't take any photos. I'll take some when they come back and post them on here. So, dear bloggers this is a photoless post :(

Anyway - the sun is out, it's my birthday, I make that Pimms o-clock!

In which we review our behaviour

2006-04-21T07:29:00.000-07:00

Why did no-one tell me that my entire life was going to revolve around wool? I look out of the window and eye up the sheeps fleeces, envisioning them carded and spun into glorious skeins of woolly yumminess. I see colour combinations and think 'Ooh, that would look great on some sock yarn!' From the moment I get up until the moment I go to sleep (and then I'm quite often dreaming about wool) I'm plotting and planning colours, textures and how I can spend the maximum time in my workroom without anyone disturbing me.

It would all be well and good if I actually ever made anything! I just end up with loads and loads of sample skeins.

Look:

That was Easter. The plain orange roving and the plain purple skein at the front were my first attempts at natural dyeing, the rest are good old acid dyes in one guise or another. Am I destined to be a 100g wonder? I have enough raw/white wool to make a yurt theme park so why can't I pin myself down to making enough of one thing so I could at least make a garment?

Answers on a postcard please :)

Arse! Arse! And thrice Arse!

2006-04-17T11:27:00.000-07:00

I didn't want to be a dyer anyway :(

Yesterday I decided to try a new way of dyeing some skeins. I wondered what would happen if I sprinkled the dye in its powder form directly onto the wet yarn. So, I chucked it on, microwaved it and hung it out to dry. This morning I skeined it up again and fell in love! Here it is:

I've spent all this afternoon trying to recreate it. Have I managed? Have I buggery! I've used the same colours in the same order, the same technique and everything to absolutely no avail. Here's what the rest have come out like:

Arse!

Here's what they looked like as little sausages waiting to go into the microwave:

I will valiantly carry on trying to recreate the wonder that is my beautiful skein if I have to use the entire 20 kilos to do it!

Happy Easter everyone!

2006-04-14T09:50:00.000-07:00

I know I've been a bad blogger. I've had a cold, it's school holidays yada yada yada - lol.

So, to make it up to you all here's a pic of our brand new lambs born less than half an hour ago on Good Friday. Almost better than chocolate.

*Note I said almost *

Normal yarn-based natter will resume very shortly.
Have a happy Easter folks.

What a fab two days

2006-04-05T13:12:00.000-07:00

I am absolutely kernackered but boy was it worth it. I managed to do both days of the workshop despite it being really physical. I had a few hairy moments where I thought it was going to prove too much and the floor was going to come up to meet my head but thankfully I remained conscious throughout the entire two days! The first day we made a beret which could either be round or square. I chose round and added a bit of silk and a 'dreadlock' and it came out
like this:

It's a nice enough hat but I can't get it to look quite right on me. I think I need to make it a bit less 'puffy' and perhaps a bit smaller. Still, for a first attempt I'm really pleased with it.
Day two saw us moving onto much more adventurous territory and making 'fancy hats'. Everyones hats turned out beautifully but we were all wondering where we can wear them in Cornwall! I love mine and although I may never wear it I will definitely stroke it at least once a day - lol!

It was a fantastic 2 days and throughout the whole event I had to keep reminding myself that this was an artist of international reknown and she was in a tiny village in West Cornwall teaching a group of mad women. Here's the lady herself helping someone put the finishing touches to their hat:

The whole thing had a really special feel about it and it'll be a very happy memory for me for a long time to come.

A robin some socks and Chad Alice Hagen!

2006-04-03T09:08:00.000-07:00

First off, here's a pic of a British robin for Cyndy. I couldn't get a snap of our resident one as he seems to have gone awol for the tme being. Maybe he's flown off to his Summer pad, who knows? So, I pinched one off the Net :)

Re the self striping sock wool. They're coming on nicely. The colours aren't as subtle as I'd maybe have chosen but for a first attempt I'm quite pleased. It's stripey, it's sock wool, what did I expect!

Now, onto my exciting news. I picked up the local paper on Thursday and tucked away at the bottom of the 'What's On' page was a tiny article saying that a feltmaker was coming to town for a two day hat-making workshop on Wednesday and Thursday. I thought, ooh that looks quite interesting and read on. It's only Chad Alice Hagen!!! Coming to a tiny village up the road from me! I phoned up and asked if there were any places left but at less than a week to go I thought they'd definitely be oversubscribed. The lady said they had places left so I asked how much it was. '£85' she said. 'Per day?' asked I 'No' she said, 'for both days.' I sort of squeaked and she said 'Do you still want to book?' I said I definitely did it but I was expecting it to cost much more than that. She said 'Ahhhh, I take it you know who she is.' Apparently people have been complaining about the price! I dunno, people eh? lol

Anyway, I'm excited, can you tell?!

You are cordially invited.....

2006-03-30T11:09:00.000-08:00

To the official opening of my new studio/workroom! Here's the bottom end of it in all its glory. It's not quite finished yet, I want some fairy lights and there's a few bin bags of stuff waiting to go to charity but I'm able to work in it.

I needed a work surface and decided on kitchen worktop but couldn't afford it. A few weeks ago, in the local paper, somoene was advertising kitchen worktop off cuts for £25. It turns out it was 5 metres cut into 2 lengths and it was brand new!! When my husband brought it home it turned out that the largest length fitted the back wall exactly, he didn't have to trim it at all. I was meant to have that I think. The room looks quite small in the photo but it's 20ft by 10ft - loads of room for one demented spinner/dyer to rattle around in - lol.

I was in awe of the room for a few days but I got over that and christened it today by dyeing some self striping sock yarn. A friend of mines elderly mother needs soft top socks so I agreed to make some for her in pinks and purples. I hope they come out alright.

I also got round to constructing my rigid heddle loom that my husband bought for me 18 months ago. Better late than never eh? Something else for me to think about as I lie awake for hours on end in the night! I get some of my best thinking done in the night. Last week I wrote a brilliant song at 3 am. Could I remember it when I woke up? Could I buggery!

Now I'm off to have a bubble bath and a glass of wine as I am completely overtired. But it was worth it :)

2006-03-28T04:33:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was looking at my euphorbia photo and thinking how I would like to represent the colours in it. Trouble with me is when I look at something like that my brain says 'Flower!' and that's all I can see. When I was at college they used to get us to deconstruct things and look at them in a different way, make photocopies, rip them up and put them back together a different way , focus in on one spot and enlarge it - standard art school stuff. I was wondering how I could do that at home and started messing with my photo software. My euphorbia pic ended up looking like this:

Now you may be saying, 'Pah! I've been doing that for ages - kids stuff' but I'm really excited. Look at all those colours! I certainly didn't see them before. I really want to use nature as an inspiration for my work and now it's going to be much simpler.

*sharp intake of breath* Is it cheating?!

Spring is sprunging

2006-03-27T05:12:00.000-08:00

My euphorbia is blossoming. I love the colours of it and want to dye some rovings in those colours. Blooming gorgeous!

You don't look old enough!

2006-03-24T01:17:00.000-08:00

Yesterday my lovely Jamie was 18. 'Eighteen?!', I hear you say, 'Why you must have been a gymslip mum for you surely don't look old enough to have a boy of such years!' I feel much older than my forty years today due to ~~a raging hangover~~ being up slighly late last night.

He's gone from this:

To this:

In just 18 short years. I think he's gorgeous but then I'm biased.

I made him a cake and we had balloons and streamers, I think I was more excited than him! Then, in the way of all good Cledry family gatherings my Mother and I got ~~absolutely blootered~~ slightly tipsy and started singing Katie Bairdie had a coo, black and white aboot the moo! This prompted my husband and Step-Dad to do their Queen Victoria impressions and be 'not amused' The cake soaked up some of the alcohol:

Anyway - I now have to attempt to get on with the day and clear away the chaos that is my kitchen. I may be some time - lol!

Hmmmm

2006-03-19T05:50:00.000-08:00

Well, here's how the 4 rovings on the right of the last picture have spun up:

Ironically they've ended up being the colours I originally intended. I've been looking at colours and landscapes around me and wanting to represent them in yarn. The photo shows the cololurs I've been looking at and tried to represent in the 4 dyed rovings on the right of the last post

Allowing for the spring-like day haze it's pretty much the colours that came out in the rovings. It seems that spinning them up has made them somewhat lighter. Something I'll have to take into consideration next time.

My dyeing day

2006-03-17T08:08:00.000-08:00

I can't say I'm happy with this batch. I'll reserve judgement until it's spun but I'm not too keen on the colours. I had a kilo of White Cheviot and thought I'd practice hand painting some rovings. For some reason the wool just wouldn't take the dye properly and the colours were different after they'd been set in the microwave. At least it was a productive day in that I got something done, even if I'm not immediately happy with it. Right now I'm going to see if i can ignore the feeling that I've been beaten round the head and neck with a sweaty, lead filled sock and try to spin some more soya. Vegan socks here I come.

Sunday

2006-03-12T08:18:00.000-08:00

Update on the Bond tank top

Nuff said?

In the thick and thin of it

2006-03-11T09:29:00.000-08:00

I'm ploughing on with my attempts to make thick and thin 'designer' yarn despite my ineptitude and sheer fear of colour. It's still not easy but I've found a kind of rhythm with it and it's becoming less frustrating.
Here's the latest effort:

It's actually quite a lot brighter than that but I've got a new camera and I'm not entirely sure how to use it. I've got an increasing number of small amounts of yarn from various spinning projects and I have no idea what to do with them. Maybe I'll get around to making them all into squares and making a funky blanket for next winter.

I don't really have much else to say apart from how impressed I am by Web of Wool . I've ordered 2 sock kits from them now ( can't get enough bamboo needles - lol) and they've both arrived so quickly and with really pleasant communications that it's a pleasure buying stuff from them.

Tomorrow I'm going to try to make my youngest boy a 40's style tank top from 3 balls of grey acrylic wool and my Bond knitting machine. He has a trip to the local museum on Tuesday where they all have to dress as 40's schoolchildren. I found out yesterday - I love that school - lol. If you hear me screaming just send wine.

The three S's

2006-03-08T02:06:00.000-08:00

Socks, Snow and Someone get me out of here cos I've had enough.

Well, the North wind did blow and we did have snow - we seem to get it once a year now for about a day and always roughly at the same time of year. The boys loved it and I gave them a couple of hours off school so they could play in it with the 'reason' being we couldn't get up the track becasue of the snow. Well, we couldn't, it would have made nasty lines in the nice white snow - lol.

I've had my first lot of mercury removed. It was ok - not as bad as I thought it was going to be and for a couple of days I felt a kind of clarity of thought that I hadn't experienced in years. I don't know if it's the stress of the builders and travelling to the dentists and the subsequent treatment or if it's a side effect of the amalgam removal but I've been completely poleaxed by the CFS/ME and an episode of depression the like of which I haven't experienced in many many years. It's been extremely scary and it's taken me to places I thought I'd never see again. I'm just trying to sit it out to see what it'll do. Still, moaning about it won't change a thing so let's talk about socks.

I finished OH's brown socks - I think he likes them. It's hard to tell with him - lol. I also finished one of Dougals' socks. He chose blue and he definitely likes them. I'm going to try to finish his 2nd one today so that he'll stop nagging me. 'If you want to finish them Mum, you'll have to start the other one'. Cheeky git :)

There's the ubiquitous sock pic. The really good thing is that by working out how to make it smaller to fit him, the pattern suddenly makes mathematical sense and I can knit them without a pattern now. I've been thinking about spinning some of the poll dorset (which should be back in a month or so) into sock weght and dyeing it to self stripe and I should be able to write a pattern that suits me now.

I've been trying to keep busy for obvious reasons and found some white merino in my stash. I bought it before I knew about the abhorrent practice of 'mulesing' in the Australian wool trade. I'll use up what I have but I will not be buying any more until I can be absolutely certain it's from a source that doesn't see their animals merely as a money making commodity. Some of the practices that are used for food production are bad enough but to employ such a barbaric practice just so that we can have soft wool for our sweaters and socks is indefensible.

Anyway - with the merino that I had in my stash I decided to have a go at dyeing. It was hit and miss and as I was so low in energy my efforts were pretty slapdash.

It was nice to see them drying in the breeze though, and it's given me a small amount of wool to try spinning some thick and thin yarns. This was my first effort

I found it much more difficult than I thought it would be. It seems ironic that it's all I could produce when I first started spinning and now, when I want to, I find it hard.

Such is life eh?

Nothing that a hot bubble bath won't cure

2006-03-01T01:59:00.000-08:00

Except this is where my bath should be:

When we moved in 4 years ago the landlord hadn't put in any carpets or lino in time. I looked at the floorboards on the upper level and said to my husband that they were rotten in places. 'Don't be so silly - they know what they're doing', came the reassuring reply. The bath has been slowly sinking ever since and when the tiles started cracking off the wall I asked my husband to take the panel off the bath. Surprise surprise, you could push a butter knife right through the floorboards as they were that rotten. Why doesn't 'I told you so' feel better?.

So, the builders have eventually arrived (it only took nearly 12 weeks for the landlord to get his act together) and with maximum noise, dust and upheaval we're getting a new floor.

Being noise sensitive and stuck in the house while they do the work I thought the best thing to do was find an activity that relaxes me. Out with the wheel and a few hundred grams of sheltland fleece and I managed to make this:

I'm very pleased with it as it wasn't the random grab and spin I've been doing of late. I thought about it properly and graded the fleece according to colour. The photo doesn't show it off that well but it graduates in colour from very dark brown/black through to the whitest of their fleece. I'm also pleased as I managed to cram it all onto a standard ashford traditional bobbin so I didn't lose any of the continuity of colour. That's 278 yards of plied yarn on one of those leeetle bobbins. Well chuffed. I have a bag of matching fleece to do another skein so hopefully I'll be just as pleased with that. No idea what to make it into though. Any ideas?

At least I got away from the noise and dust yesterday - by going to the dentist! I had 3 mercury amalgam filling removed under really strict conditions. I had all sorts of rubber stuff in my mouth, a mask, and my face and nose were covered. It's an expensive and controversial treatment but if someone told me that drinking the pee of a sick yak would make me better I'd try it. I've got 9 more fillings to come out - he's doing one quadrant of my mouth at a time. I was told there could be side effects but - touch wood- I haven't had any. I didn't know what to expect but I definitely feel different, as if my head is somnehow clearer. I won't talk about it much as I seem to have a habit of rubbing scientists up the wrong way - lol. Anyway - it was a 200 mile round trip to the dentists and I managed to finish OH's sock:

I started the 2nd one last night. I need to get it out of the way as I've bought a sock kit from web of wool to make the kids some socks. It seems like a really good deal. I can't wait for it to arrive.

We're all doooomed

2006-02-26T02:48:00.000-08:00

When I was training to be a counsellor I used to get told off for making jokes about serious things that had happened to me. 'You're laughing Stacey, but that sounds very painful.' No shit Sherlock, why do you think I'm laughing!

Anyway - something I may have to joke about or I'll start getting slightly hysterical is bird flu. The talk on the agricultural grapevine is that within 2 week it'll be here. It leaves us with somewhat of a dilemma. The reason we got into this lifestyle is that we needed to be absolutely certain that the meat we eat had lived as good a life as is possible. I abhor battery farming and feel that it represents the worst aspects of humans. We want it now, we want it cheap, we want it in excess and as long as we can shut our eyes to how producers are able to sell us chickens for £2.99 it's all justifiable. I was no longer able to shut my eyes to the methods used to provide cheap food and so, when we came to this smallholding, one thing we were both 100% agreed on was animal welfare. Our chickens are completely free range, the ducks have a large enclosure and a lovely pond and the new geese have a large enclosure ( they used to be out in the yard but the gander saw it as his personal responsibility to attack anything that came within a bus ride of him and the postman wouldn't get out of his van so into an enclosure they went - not the postman just the geese - lol)

The dilemma we have is safety versus animal welfare. We obviously have to follow any guidelines set down by Defra and are willing to do so. However, I'm not willing to compromise the welfare of our birds beyond a certain extent and if the only way to keep everyone safe is to keep them in conditions which we feel are too restrictive what do we do?

Anyway - all too serious for a Sunday morning

We apologise for the loss of service - normal sock related chat will resume soon :)

Now I know that Spring is just a round the corner

2006-02-25T07:57:00.000-08:00

Himself has got the rotovator out and is preparing the vegetable plot. Loads of stuff is growing away on the widowsills and I'm particularly excited that the seeds for my dyers garden seem to be doing really well. It's really a exciting time of year and we can start dreaming of new potatoes and butter, sweetcorn, peas, tomatoes and broad beans. I've never got over the joy of producing our own food. It's part of our lifestyle that I'm really proud of. Here's himself doing all the easy work while I'm doing the hard work of holding the camera

Hopefully next time you see the plot it will be full of lush, healthy vegetables and flowers

Hole in the sock

2006-02-25T05:16:00.000-08:00

There's a tiny hole in the sock I'm knitting and I don't know what I did to get it?

I don't think it's a dropped stitch as there's no laddering. Is it a slipped stitch? ideas on a postcard please.

I've found the ideal solution to having the kids back:

In actual fact it's the new ramp for the trailer that my husband has made but I'm sure it could double up as a 'playpen'

Sneaking one in

2006-02-24T06:43:00.000-08:00

Just sneaking a quick post in before my lovely boys get back. They've been at my mums for 3 days as it's the holidays and the M.E and Fibro have brought rags to my ass and tears to my eyes. It was exactly the same last year, I was quite well for christmas and then by February I was ill again. It'd be intereting to hear from anyone who has the same pattern. Anyway - they'll be back in a minute with all their noise, drama and muddy shoes. All the things which I love deep down but which is virtually impossible to bear when I'm ill.

I've started the socks for my husband and they're coming along quite nicely this time. I really do love knitting socks, especially now I've discovered bamboo needles. Hopefully I'll make some decent progress with them tonight so I can post a pic tomorrow.

While I'm here I'd like to take the opportunity to thank the lovely people over at Downsizer who are so incredibly supportive of anyone trying to set up a new enterprise (however small) They've given feedback, support and their technical know-how with such generosity and warmth of spirit. My thanks go to them.

We apologise for the delay...

2006-02-23T06:57:00.000-08:00

Blimey O Reilly. It's been all go here. I've been figuring out if it's possible to add a shop to a blog and it looks like it is - hurrah. I've only got 3 pairs of stitch markers in there for now as I find HTML exhausting. Hopefully I'll be putting more things in as the days go by. It's all quite exciting really.

I've been spending a lot of time looking at other peoples blogs. I love looking at other peoples blogs as I'm basically a nosey old cow and half a day can go by before I know it. I'm particularly interested in and envious of other peoples yarn stashes. As a smallholder who also spins I don't have a yarn stash per se. I know I shouldn't moan as I've got a free supply of wool but it also means that I don't feel I can go on a Noro splurge. Self inflicted yarn based guilt - whatever next! Anyway - this is my 'stash:

Don't expect many of you will drool over that lot! That mess is what we laughingly refer to as my 'workroom'. It will be one day, I hope. In the sacks are the 20 kilos of poll dorset waiting to go off to be scoured and carded. I'm still quite excited about that and I bought a couple of books in anticipation. I've been meaning to buy Deb Menz's 'Colour in Spinning' for ages and this has proved to be just the excuse I was looking for. Of course to qualify for the free postage on Amazon I had to buy another book so I got 'Yarns to Dye For' to go with it. Rude not to wouldn't you say? lol

I have to say that both books are gorgeous but Deb Menz has me going 'Phwoar! Look at that! about every half a page. I'm really glad I bought them and am going to buy some plain 4 ply wool to try the self patterning instructions on Kathleen Taylors book.

I've finished my other recycled yarn shawl. I've called it Mor Gwyr which means green sea in Kernewek.

I'm pleased with it. As usual the photo doesn't do it justice. What is it with knitting and cameras?
Still, I'm happy that it's finished. It's that psychological hurdle of having WIP's sitting there glaring at you isn't it? lol Tonight I'm going for attempt #2 of my husbands Opal socks. For some reason they didn't want to be knitted last week so I put them in a bag and hid from them.
Wish me luck!

What kind of tarot card are you?

2006-02-17T03:49:00.000-08:00

I just followed a link from ambermoggies site and this is what I got. I hope it's right - well apart from the new baby!

You Are The Sun

You represent the best of life - vitality, success, and and truth.You tend to have a strong, centered, balanced personality.Inspiration and discovery are your fortes. You are very mentally strong.A talented mind, you tend to excel at math, philosophy, and music.
Your fortune:
As well as you have done in the past, the future is going to be filled with more success.A new creative project is coming your way. Feed it, and it will grow into something huge.Great riches, recognition, prosperity, or happiness is coming your way.And it's possible that a fantastic vacation, or a new baby, is coming sooner than you think.

What Tarot Card Are You?