Check-In Post March 13th 2021

[badly_knitted]

Hello to all members, and welcome to our regular daily check-in post. Just leave a comment below to let us know how your current projects are progressing, or even if they're not.

Checking in is NOT compulsory, check in as often or as seldom as you want, this community isn't about pressure it's about encouragement, motivation, and support. Crafting is meant to be fun, and what's more fun than sharing achievements and seeing the wonderful things everyone else is creating?

There may also occasionally be questions, but again you don't have to answer them, they're just a way of getting to know each other a bit better.


Today's Question: No question today.


If anyone has any questions of their own about the community, or suggestions for tags, questions to be asked on the check-in posts, or if anyone is interested in playing check-in host for a week here on the community, which would entail putting up the daily check-in posts and responding to comments, go to the Questions & Suggestions post and leave a comment.

I now declare this Check-In OPEN!

Comments

[annofowlshire]

I did a bit of time at my spinning wheel last night after the child went to sleep (I’m not yet ready to try spinning with him in the room, he’s way too interested in the spinning wheel). It’s making a bit of a knocking noise when I treadle, so I emailed the lady I bought it from (who said I could email her if I had questions) to see if it was a problem she was familiar with.

I’m about halfway done with the first ply now (it’s planned to be a 3 ply yarn).

Then my Mr wanted to watch some TV with me, so I did more work on the socks—have finished the cuff, now on to the heel flap.

In craft-cooking, I made a lamb hot pot for dinner. (Also called Lancashire Hot Pot.) I received my parcel with 40 different types of seeds in it! But the child is still quite sick, so it’s been an indoor kind of weekend.

Musing about crafting:

I’ve currently looking at UK suppliers of handdyed (variegated) wool, as my own stocks are quite lean and picked over. The color aesthetics here is much different than it was in the States XD (UK handdyers tend to be a bit more subtle, while we American dyers tended to go for rather LOUD color schemes.) It does make me wonder sometimes if there’s room in the market for me over here. I used to run a handdyed spinning wool/handspun yarn business when I lived in the States, but packed it in when I moved to the UK for various reasons. (About 1/5 of my business came from the UK, so there’s clearly interest here in the louder colorways.) I had been thinking about restarting it again now that we’ve moved to the countryside and I have space for it and the child is getter nearer and nearer to school aged, but then I unexpectedly got a job in my other love (writing) a couple of months ago so I think fiber arts will stay a hobby for now. One should have a hobby.

The Mr bought me a blending board for Christmas that I haven’t even assembled yet. I think I may use it to blend some solid dyed wool I have (once I can find it... it’s in a box somewhere in the stables which is where all the garage/loft things ended up from the old house), and I think I may also use it to make blended batts of natural dyed wool once I get to that.

Speaking of which, I’ve also started researching doing natural dyeing with garden/foraged plants, because goodness, why not? XD

[smallhobbit]

Natural dyeing would be interesting. Would you need a lot of plants to make a small amount of dye?

[annofowlshire]

I’m still learning the details, but I think I could do a few lots of wool in the same dye batch (although the color may fade after a while). So if that’s half a dozen onions or one red cabbage, that’s not terrible. And I’m not exactly going to run out of access to nettles around here XD I think using things like lichen would be more sparing since that’s a bit rarer.

[badly_knitted]

Lichens would be difficult to gather in any quantity, I'd imagine, they're so small and finding enough of the same kind might be tricky, but being in the country you'd presumably have the space to grow some of the plants you'd use. Could you make a dye out of grass, I wonder...

[annofowlshire]

There’s a fair bit of lichen in the woodland, but lichen takes so long to grow that I’d feel a bit bad harvesting it in any great quantity. There are other things I can grow or forage or even buy—like onions, red cabbage, nettles, blackberries, lavender, etc. that are plentiful and available in sustainable quantities.

And once I’m done I should be able to lop them into compost (or feed them to the chickens when we get them, which is currently looking like next year) for secondary usage ^_^

[badly_knitted]

Waste not want not! I compost all organic waste, but I'm still trying to wrest my garden back from the overgrowth that took over while I was caring full-time for my late mother. I didn't have the energy for gardening for a long time. The last two or three years I've made some decent progress but there's still a lot to do.

My neighbours have rescue chickens and I love hearing them clucking about the garden.

[annofowlshire]

I had chickens about 10 years ago and loved it. Mr was a little skeptical, but we have a lot of wild/semi-tame pheasants around here and one has become particularly friendly to us (will eat out of our hand, let us stroke him, hangs out within a meter of us while we’re outside—even my 2 year old! We think he’s an escapee from a shoot site) and so he’s getting more keen on the idea of having a flock of outdoor birds (we’re also talking about quail, ducks, and guinea fowl). I want to get on the rescue chicken list once we get/set up a coop, but again we’ve got a lot on right now so it’s not high priority this year. I check places like FB marketplace once and a while for good secondhand coops when I think of it but so far haven’t seen what I want.

Good luck with reclaiming your garden. We’re also wrestling an overgrown garden into shape—the folks who had owned this place before us had let it go for a few years. Bamboo and wood geranium and brambles everywhere. I think it’ll be a few years before we feel like we’ve won the war.

[badly_knitted]

From personal experience, quail aren't the easiest of birds to keep. My sister tried a few times but they kept dying. We did have a couple of ducks for a while, or at least mum did, but dad disliked the mess they made and his word was law, so Topsy and Turvy had to go. I can vouch for having ducks though, they're wonderful, although ours were escape artists.

Brambles are a large part of my problem, they're everywhere are the roots are really hard to get out, especially if they're close to something you want to keep. They go down really deep. I took to twisting those lumpy knuckles that the shoots grow out of until the roots finally snapped. Dug down a foot or so, then just kept twisting until I could pull a good chunk of root out, but I've only done two small areas, there's a lot still to do, and it's hard work. I'm not as young as I used to be.

[m_findlow]

Gosh you have a lot of kit! I hope you have a good go of it because it sounds like you've got all the skills to make it work.

[annofowlshire]

Oh gosh, not really. At least not compared to what I used to have XD

When I left the States, I sold or gifted two weaving looms, a spinning wheel, a drum carder, a sewing machine, and enormous quantities of wool/other fibers, fabric, abandoned cross-stitching kits, and other crafting supplies (like beads and beading tools). All of the tools and supplies related to the dyeing business from my studio. And lots of other things I’ve forgotten about by now. My crafting supplies are growing on this side of the pond, but it’s still a fraction of what I used to have and if I’m not running a business I’ll keep it under some semblance of control.

But of course, back then I was running a full time fiber arts business, so it made sense that I had these things.

[badly_knitted]

It must have been a wrench to have to part with so much kit, but necessary I guess. Transporting it all from one continent to another would have been impossible.

[annofowlshire]

I haven’t regretted parting with it, to be honest. I needed to shed that part of my life for a while and build a new relationship with it. I knew I wouldn’t be running a fiber business on this side of the pond, at least not for some time.

I think we would have had space in the shipping container, but we were moving from a roomy American house to my husband’s bachelor pad in London and we knew space would be at a premium on the other side.

Now we’ve moved out of the city and have a roomy house again, I feel like I can start to rebuild a new collection of crafting supplies that fits my needs and desires now ^_^

[badly_knitted]

Now you can get just the things that you know you;'re going to use. It must be good to have the space again, and exciting to shop for your crafting supplies!

[badly_knitted]

You have so many exciting projects to look forward to! I hope there will be pictuires. I have no idea what a blending board is or what it does, but it sounds intriguing.

I'm sure there would be a market over here for the louder colour mixes in hand-dyed yarn. I like variregated yarns myself, and while I do think the subtle colours are pretty, sometimes I just want something brighter and more eye-catching that makes a statement. Not that I can afford hand-dyed, handspun yarns, but I like to look and admire. I should use up all the yarn I've already got.

So true, we all need hobbies, they're relaxing and keep us from getting bored.

[annofowlshire]

Do you know what wool hand carders are? It’s like that but the board is one big bristly thing and then you use a smaller comb to blend loose wool (and other fibers) into a blended thing you can spin wool or do felting with.

I don’t really want to have two jobs (plus looking after my child plus looking after our small holding), so I think I’ll hold off for now. But we’ve moved to a touristy area that attracts a lot of people for artisan/crafty goods, so it will always be an option if I want to dip my toe in later on. A neighbor was apparently REALLY excited to find out I’m a spinner because her mother weaves and can’t get enough handspun yarn. There’s also an alpaca farm about a mile away—I’m sure they already have an outlet for their alpaca hair, but I may talk to them at some point down the road to see if they have any I could have/buy ^_^ (We’ve also talked about getting our own sheep, but again, that’s not for this year or even the next.)

[badly_knitted]

Yes, I've seen hand csarders though I've never tried carding myself. Do you need to card wool fleece before it can be spun?

It all sounds very exciting, and something that you can keep in mind in case you find time for it at some point in the future, even if just in a small way. You've obviously moved to the ideal area, with the craft tourism and the local alpaca farm. What a wonderful place to live!

[annofowlshire]

You don’t *have* to card fleece to spin it, some folks like spinning from locks. But the different ways your process wool before spinning it leads to different yarns.

[badly_knitted]

That's so intersting! I'm learning all kinds of things I never knew! So, if you don't card the wool first, is that how you get the lumpier textured yarn? I could be wrong, in fact I probably am, but I'd think the spun yarn would have a smoother texture if it was carded first.

[annofowlshire]

If you didn’t card the wool first, you would likely end up having to do a lot of the processing with your fingers while you’re trying to spin—carding gets out bits of dirt and vegetive matter that will be left behind even after washing it and pulls the individual wool strands apart. I think it’s possible to get a smooth yarn with raw fleece (and ancient spinners probably did so), but I think it’s a lot more work than if you’ve processed the fleece first. Various forms of processing are best at getting certain kinds of yarn, but one can compensate for some of the processing at the wheel (or spindle).

[badly_knitted]

Yes, I imagine certain foreign matter would have a habit of clinging to fleece even after washing. I watched sheep shearing at a country fair while on holiday one year and the fleeces looked quite matted after being 'worn' for so long.

Spinning sounds like quite a complex craft. How did you learn? I'm not thinking of taking it up or anything, I'm just curious.

[annofowlshire]

I think like a lot of crafts, spinning starts out fiddly and impossible and then you get into your “zone.”

I learned about 10 years ago by watching videos on the Interwebs (starting with a drop spindle and moving to a wheel about 3 months later), and then after few months (and injuring my hand later), I went to knitting/spinning retreat with a master spinner (who I didn’t know at the time was like The Spinner That Everyone Knows in the US) and in about 5 minutes she had me sorted out and my spinning improved dramatically and no more hand pain and that was that. Literally life changing. To learn new techniques it’s been a lot of videos, books, the occasional in person class, and experimenting.

[badly_knitted]

There's nothing like getting help from an expert to improve your technique. Kudos for learning so much first from videos though, that's very inspiring!

[medievalrosalie]

So many exciting things going on here! Hooray for spinning and hooray for seeds!

Absolutely do some natural dying because there are a ton of really great forage plants which will give you great colours! It sounds like you won't be stepping on toes for business anyway, so that's a plus! I have made friends with some incredible dyers through facebook and re-enactment even though my own efforts are small and mainly for my own amusement.