It seems everyone loves cup cakes, there are pattern books to knit your own so when a friend suggest I make some woolly ones I thought, why not? I’d made balls, Christmas puddings and fish so thinking cap on. pinny on, mixing bowl out (just kidding) and bag of coloured merino & off I went. To date I have probably made a couple of dozen, all different colours, French fancies, mini chocolate swiss rolls, coffee & walnut…… They make fab pin cushions and the glass headed pins look like hundreds & thousands!May 30, 2010
cup cake pin cushions
It seems everyone loves cup cakes, there are pattern books to knit your own so when a friend suggest I make some woolly ones I thought, why not? I’d made balls, Christmas puddings and fish so thinking cap on. pinny on, mixing bowl out (just kidding) and bag of coloured merino & off I went. To date I have probably made a couple of dozen, all different colours, French fancies, mini chocolate swiss rolls, coffee & walnut…… They make fab pin cushions and the glass headed pins look like hundreds & thousands!May 30, 2010
Heathfield Show
Once again the weather was a disappointment with wind and heavy rain spoiling the day for many visitors to the show. I managed to spin quite a bit of dyed fleece and Navajo plied it.
Been trying to get as much of last years’ fleece washed & dyed ready to sell at the South of England Show. We will be spinning some of the Romney fleece from one of the boys in the back garden. Despite still having one or two fleeces left over from last year I still bought another from the shearer when he was here last Monday. It’s a rather lovely Texel X which I have already started to wash.
May 25, 2010
More alpaca shearing
Was back at the farm on Friday to help with the bagging of fleece from the remainder of the alpacas. This time the shearer was Australian with a female assistant, the poor girl was in the firing line of all the green spit & by the time we were done I think we’d all had share. Instead of a sandbag on the neck to hold them down the assistant straddled the necks and helped turn the animals for the shearer. Such beautiful fibre & so much came home with me!
May 20, 2010
Sheep shearing and fox cubs
Last night the 2 Romney sheep in my back garden were shorn, they are so huge the shearer has his hands full trying to move them around to give them a decent hair cut. They bleated for ages after with sheer (shear) joy. It has been fun watching their reaction to the fox cubs over the past couple of weeks, they just dont know what to make of each other. 
May 19, 2010
Tree peonie in Hove
I’ve been keeping my eye on this peonie over the past couple of weeks & they are absolutely stunning, a wonderful perfume greets the nose as you walk past
stunning tree peonie
May 17, 2010
Open House
I have been invited to take part in “Strictly Colour” an open house in Woodingdean from 28th May til 31st May.
Here is a link to Theresa’s web site with more details
May 17, 2010
Spinning at Nymans-National Trust Garden
Last Thursday & again yesterday I had the opportunity to spin in this beautiful garden with other members of the Guild. The weather wasn’t brilliant but bearable & visitors were in abundance & very interested in what we were doing. The volunteers took good care of us and it is wonderful garden to visit all year round. Lots of tree peonies in flower about now as well as rhododendrons. The Handkerchief trees are quite stunning
Tree Peonie
May 14, 2010
Shearing at Spring Farm
Today I was able to see some amazing alpacas being shorn at Fletching. It may look cruel but this is a tried and tested method of calming the animals while removing their fabulous fleeces. The dont produce wool-only sheep are wool producers-we call their coat a fleece when it’s entire but its a fibre rather like hair. I have spun many of the colours from Vicky & Chris but today I managed to bring home some fibre from the dark grey male which is all shades of grey with some black thrown in for good measure. I have been trying to collect all the natural colours over the years & want eventually to knit something in fairisle.
I wish he'd hurry up I've a pain in the neck!
May 14, 2010
Best yarn shop in South East
Shortly after Caroline opened the Wool Bar, I took a trip to Worthing to find the shop. Looked everywhere but couldn’t find it. Disappointed I returned home, looked again at directions & a couple of weeks later I was off again. This time I found the street & a delectable patisserie. Drooling over the pastries & tarts I mentioned to the owner that I was on a mission to find the yarn shop-’it’s next door’ she said! I’d walked past it! It’s so tiny but the welcome was huge. Caroline is so welcoming that it makes you glad you’ve travelled for 3 hours to get there. My visits are frequent as I now sell my hand dyed sock yarn in the shop & we are planning some workshops in June & July.
May 5, 2010
Robin Hood and me
As a spinner you are asked to do lots of strange things, recently the Guild were asked to spin some Siberian Husky fibre for their rescue charity and of course I had to volunteer to do that. I’m waiting for the package to arrive!
Last year the Guild were asked to spin a number of very large skeins of chunky natural wool for a production of Robin Hood in which my hero Russell Crowe stars in. Many of our members & other local guilds took part so I’m now looking forward to seeing the movie which is due out later this month.
Another claim to fame was a production called Sewn, this was produced by University of Sussex students and loosely based on Rumplestiltskin. I had to teach 2 of the actresses to spin and in the end a close up of my spinning was filmed as the students couldn’t spin continuously for the camera.
You never know what will come your way!
