Earflaps

Tags

aging, clothing, green, hair, handspun, hat, weather, winter, wool, yarn

I finished my colourful hat over the holidays, it was a quick and easy knit. Now I wonder if we’ll get any frost so I can try it on without boiling my ears! I normally wear fleece headbands in the cold because it’s easier to fit with long hair; what usually troubles me is wind hurting my inner ear, not so much the temperature, and knit fabric tends not to block the wind. But they are also very boring – so what else to do with all that chunky, funky handspun? (yes, I’m asking!)

My failed nettle-along

Tags

crafts, fiber, fiber prep, nature, nettle-along, nettles, plants, yarn

The lack of interest last year allowed me to slack off on the subject, and the nettles I gathered are in fact still on the rafters in bundles. I partially blame blogging as a difficult forum for debates and sharing, as well as my lack of expertise obviously.

As luck would have it, I’m now off the hook – Motherowl invited me to a Facebook group a little while ago, created by Allan Brown who has considerably more experience in the matter as well as a lovely video describing his process. In a very short time thousands of people have enrolled from all over the world, quite a few Danes too! So the interest is clearly there and I look forward to learning more. (even though I detest FB)

Hard work, even less talk.

Tags

exercise, fatigue, health, inner conviction, intention, life, yarn

Spinning chunky yarn on my Elizabeth has proven quite an ordeal, since I can’t get the ratio low enough and still make the wheel wind on the yarn, but my back is ready to give it another go for my little rug test project. And if the future I’ll have to figure that issue into yarn designs.

Getting there: Carding

Tags

dorset, fiber prep, fleece, scouring, wool

Had I known how many years it would take to completion, I might never have accepted those first 5 dorset/suffolk fleeces, but here we are closer to completion than not, at last.

Every time I do a post about these, I also look for the original post, the very beginning of the project, and once again realize that it’s nonexistent. I got the first 3 fleeces before the blog began in 2012, so I never recorded the scouring etc. in here, the next two landed the year after, where I probably thought I’d already recorded it so thought nothing of it.

Untimely

Tags

acceptance, blogging, clothing, colourways, handspun socks, health, intention, life, pain, relax, seasons, time, weave drafts, wool

a day ends

I’d like to begin this week with a warm welcome to all the new subscribers that seem to be adding my blog these past few weeks, whether you’re actually here to read or just hope to make somebody read yours. I’m afraid you’ve chosen to join me for the slow season, as my back has been out of commission again and my head then needs to adjust to sitting tasks only, with not much to show or tell just yet. I hope some of you will stick around for later antics!

This also coincided with planned weaving, carding and spinning work, which means I spend an inordinate amount of time just sitting here thinking about them, making endless weave drafts and colour samples. I need to find a plugin/app/whatnot that makes swatches from photos because just using the sampler in PS does not give me the vibrant shades I see with my eye/mind and it takes too long. Any suggestions? I prefer one that is installed, rather than having to upload single photos to a website each time, as I tend to work in batches. Oh, and it needs to be for Windows – I found a really cool one, Mac and i-things only.

A little spin

Tags

autumn, colour, colourways, dyeing, spin data, wool, woolly wednesday, yarn, ypp

Did you begin to think I’d given up on all the yarny stuff? Not so – just part of the cycle, a bit of this, some more of that, and on it goes.

It’s been so long since I’ve made yarn, because building the studio, because sciatica, because kittens vs. wheel climbing. Nearly had to give it a miss this time too because of a “sprained” wrist, but luckily it resolved itself with a day on ice.

Nettle harvest

Tags

country life, crafts, mad science, nature, nettle-along, nettles, plants, ramie, video, weaving

Welcome to the next installment in our nettle-along.

This is what I managed to harvest in July, and it’s time for the next batch. I saved some of the leaves instead of feeding them to the horses, because while I don’t have time for a separate study of how to use the stalks for paper making, I do want to try to make paper and thought, why not add the dry leaves to my mixed materials bin? I’m drying my stalks inside because of the wet weather, I don’t know it that’s really necessary, but I didn’t want them to mold.

Dansk fiber blog

Tags

blog, blogging, butik, crafts, dansk, garn, håndarbejde, Shop, stof, strik, uld, vævning

Jeg har leget med tanken om at sætte en dansk blog op sammen med en lille netbutik til mit overskudslager. Det bliver ikke en kopi af denne blog med alt mellem himmel og jord, den vil heller ikke blive opdateret så ofte med mindre det vælter ind med brugere(!).

Det hele ligger lokalt på vores egen server som et lille eksperiment, så svartiden er måske ikke hvad man er vant til ude på det store WWW, vi ved det ikke! Så jeg inviterer hermed til test og feedback: www.farvehytten.dk

Egentlig ville jeg vente med annonceringen til der lå lidt mere indhold, men så sker der det ene, og det andet og tiden går, og så får jeg heller ikke lagt noget på fordi jeg jo ved at der ikke er nogen som ser det.

Så nu ser vi!

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This is an announcement of my new Danish website with a small shop for surplus production. You’re welcome to have a look, but I won’t be translating it. Possibly I’ll put up stuff for sale in here as well unless it grows enough to reopen my Etsy store. Any suggestions on that front? (when I began the draft for this post I probably knew what I meant by that question, now I don’t, but I’m going to leave it in case somebody else does)

Save

Save

Nettles in July

Tags

crafts, nature, nettle-along, nettles, plants

Welcome to the next installment in our nettle-along. This is mostly just a reminder, as I haven’t had the time or head for more research yet. Anyone else find interesting information they’d like to share?

MotherOwl beat me to it and wrote a nettle post yesterday.

I’m going to harvest my next batch one of these days if it will stop raining at odd times.

Nettle-along project page

Tags

crafts, nature, nettle-along, plants

I’ve only added a few things to the Page due to health issues, next post will appear in a couple of weeks.

I’m beginning to suspect that the info about saving stalks for a year is incorrect. Looking through an old booklet suggests that “people of old” processed their nettles in the fall. I’ll try to write a summary and translate it because there is a lot of interesting information in there, including a few chuckles:

In Swedish from Carl von Linné 1749: “Nätslor voro här plåckade till grönkål, såsom det allmänt sker i Sverige om vårtiden, så længe denna nätsla är späd och ännu ej en fingers lång… Somliga lägga till denna sin nätsle-kål bladen av ängelöken eller körfvel, at kålen må få en angenämare smak; andra bruka plåcka bladerna af sqvaller-kål … och åtskilliga andra växter, utan åtskillnad, hvarigenom ofta händer, at folket, som äta kålen blifva vimmerkantiga.”