Weather - bleugh!

As the title of this week's blog suggests, I'm less than impressed with the weather this weekend. All week the sun has been cracking the flags and it's been gloriously warm. Now, when I'm off for the weekend, torrential rain! Big, fat, heavy rain. Where I work the only daylight comes from 2 frosted glass windows. These window are barred for security reasons. They open at the top, just enough to post a large letter through. So, all week I've put up with people coming into the pharmacy complaining about the heat, while I sweat in my pharmacy with no air, looking out through my barred letter box at the glorious weather! Now, I'm not bitter!!! MUCH !!!!!!

Still! Onto nicer, happier thoughts! This weekend saw the last Diddy League gala of the season. I'm so proud to be able to say that the Penrith Piranhas came 4th. There were 8 teams in the competition, and this was our best performance for many years.

In other matters, it dawned on me that next weekend is Woolfest. Now, that's not to say that I haven't been counting down the days for the last 4 months, because I have; but I realised that time was ticking by for me to make my entry for the Woolycultural show. So I've been wracking my brains trying to think of what I could enter. The categories are flowers, vegetables, gardens, and fruit. I'm not that inventive truth be told, I'm not an arty type. My cogs have been turning, and in the end I decided to have a go at felting.

My cunning plan started to formulate as my latest attempt at spindle making became an epic fail. I used Fimo to make the whorls. I've done this before and it's been a success, this time though, I used a pasta machine to roll out the Fimo and I think this made it just a little too thin. I've managed to break 2 of the 4 whorls I made already. Now this is a shame because I was so pleased with the stems of the spindles. I found some walnut doweling and I sanded it to a gorgeous finish and waxed it. I was so disappointed that these stems would be wasted. Hum, I thought. What if I could make a wooly whorl? So I knitted roses and felted them. I'm happy with the results. They even spin reasonably well! Don't get me wrong, they'll never make award winning yarn, but I'm really pleased with the results.

Ready for felting

I think I will felt again. As first attempts go, I'm reasonably happy. I think I washed them too long, so next time I'll be a little more cautious. 

Feeling the love this week - 

The most love has been felt by the Rejected socks. I've finished the first one, and I'm onto the second. I tried to make them match, I was happy with were in the colour repeat I started the toe, but it seems that the repeats aren't exactly the same length! So my pink bit of toe is slightly longer than on the first sock, this will impact where I put the waste yarn on the second sock. So now the heels won't match. At the moment I'm ok with that, but I'll wait and see how I feel when I get to the heel. Having said that, I don't think there's a whole lot I can do about it! Hey ho! 

I've done a couple of rows on Jean's scarf, but not enough to warrant giving you an updated photo. 

I've also been spinning. I've worked a little on the Cornflower polwarth. I'm still enjoying it but I just don't seem to want to get my teeth into it. I've done some drop spindling on one of my homemade spindles. I've shown you a picture before, it's the black and dark purple BFL from Jan&Cecelia. It's spinning really thin, and despite working on it quite a bit, the length of roving just refuses to shrink!  

I seem to have had no staying power this week, my mind won't focus on any one thing so I also prepared my Nunoco batt-dropping in the Ragged Robin colour way. It's devine. I would expect nothing less from the Nunoco girls. It's merino, mulberry silk and silk filament. The silk filament is proving problematic to me. Now may be a good time to explain that I'm fairly convinced that I have some leanings towards OCD! Now, I'm not wanting to make light of this condition, but I do think that at times my need to get things 'just so' bother me. So this filament is bothering me. When I spin, I long to get the singles perfectly thin and even. The filament refuses to play ball. Sometimes it twists beautifully into the single, sometimes it sticks out at crazy angles! I'm going to take my time with it, it's so lovely to spin. I'll keep you posted

On the horizon -

Next week, I'll still be slogging away at Jean's scarf. I'd like to be nearly finished with the rejected socks too. Spinning wise, I'd love to say I'll be done with the polwarth, but in my heart I know I'll have to set it aside for Tour de Fleece.

Next week is also Woolfest weekend!!!! So the blog may be a little different depending on what happens there. I'd love to take some photos and video and share them with you, but we'll see.

So have a great week x