My Poor Neglected Blog

So I had every intention of using my blog and I've posted twice. Well done me!

Considering my last post was about how I'd re-learnt to knit by finishing my first project I guess I've got quite a bit to update. I think the biggest news is that myself and Nik learnt to spin! now we can make our own yarn! Yippee! And this brings me to my current news.

While having a lovely four days camping in the west of scotland I noticed an awful lot of sheep about. I pointed this out to my friends who informed me that was because we were stood in the middle of a sheep farm. What knitter doesn't love a sheep farm? So when the campsite owner/farmer came round to ask if we were ok I asked if he sold fleeces and he went away to check prices and came back and informed us (my friend who is also ginger, I would have thought Scotish farmers would be one of the few groups of people who can tell the difference between gingers but i was wrong) it would cost me 10 pounds. I've never bought a fleece before but I think 10 pounds must be a right bargain. I spend that on a single ball of yarn! And there is so much of it! The farmer told me to pick out whatever fleece I wanted, i found one with nice long hairs or fibres or whatever I'm supposed to call them and pulled out a fleece the size of a medium to large sheep skin rug and smiles at the man all happy with myself and he said 'no, theres more' and pulled out more fleece about twice the size I pulled out. I dont think I've ever seen a whole sheep as big as the size of this fleece.

So anyway, me and Nik have now spent two night washing fleece, soapy wash, vinear wash, hot wash repeat and we are both now immune to sheep poop. We have three laundry baskets full sat in her spare room and a set of carders waiting to be picked up from Chester le Street post office.

The next step will be teasing the yarn. All I can think about when I hear this term is the episode of The Good Life where they make their own clothes. In fact, thanks to that episode I already new the basics of how to spin my own yarn before I started reading about it. Looking back now I am amazed with how quickly the managed to spin enough yarn to use on a giant loom.

And once we've done that all thats left is carding, spining, washing, plying, washing, dying and kniting. We'll probably have it all done in about a week and a half. pfft yeah right!