Another load of fleece....

I have purchased another load of fleece this weekend. It came from Miller's Ark, a fab farm that takes the animals out to visit schools and nursing homes. I contacted them a while ago after attending one of their open days and asked if I could take some of their fleece coming shearing time.

Elizabeth, who runs the place, very kindly agreed to let me take some for the princely sum of £5 each.

I went over to collect them on Bank Holiday Monday at about teatime. They were stored in British Wool Marketing Board bags in the barn....all bundled up and ready to go. There were quite a lot of them and it was hard to choose, it took me forever. It would have been easy to go mad and take more than I could process but I had to be realistic...I also have to store them somewhere.

The first one that caught my eye was a black fleece, which I suspected to be the Balwen but when I got home and checked against my breed book turned out to be the least likely. It is a fairly short staple but is very crimpy. I think it may be a Shetland. I am really not sure.

Next I chose a grey one with a long staple but next to no crimp, that I thought may have been a Jacob but again that seems unlikely and may be a Herdwick...I really am not sure.....again!

I picked up a white fleece next with a long staple but quite crimpy. It is so soft. This may be the Portland.

I have taken some photos of the fleece and I think I will have to ask Elizabeth if she can identify the fleece. I would love to know what I have come away with!

As the fleece have been freshly shorn they are quite greasy but the grease is so much more pleasant when it is fresh. They were also quite damp as it had been raining a lot and then may have been sweating in the bag. I have since aired and dried them a bit, they still feel damp but I think this may be down to the grease. You certainly know when you have handled it! They have now all been put into old duvet covers until such time as I can get around to picking over them and processing them.

Stuff I have been making with my handspun wool

Ladie's Cable Beenie

Basket of wool in various stages

Black Jacob Cable Cuff

White Jacob Cushion Cover-Work in Progress

'Batt Beards'

You may be wondering what on earth a 'Batt Beard' is...as you can see from the picture above it is when your nearest and dearest has a few beers and takes a batt (that you just happen to be walking around with in your bag) and decides that the bloke standing in the corner of the pub with his rather splendid home grown beard needs some company.

I think I may have a run on at Christmas for Santa Beards!

First Fleece

 

Raw Ryeland Fleece

  I have been a very busy girl just recently. A few weeks ago I turned 40 and Alex bought me a drum carder for my birthday. I don't like to let things sit idle and had previously done a bit of homework on smallholders in my area who keep rare breed sheep, so I went off to source a fleece.

It was a little bit too early for shearing to start so the best I could come up with was a year old Ryeland fleece. I went off to Arborfield to collect it and although I know that sheep live in fields and have a propensity to keep poo (amongst other things) in their fleece, I was quite shocked at just how smelly and claggy they really are. I haggled on the price and got it down from £20 to £15....just to cover the cost of the shearing.

I had done my homework albeit on a computer and reading various books so I knew what to look for in theory. I wish I had had the benefit of having my tutor, Carol, with me as she would have known what she was doing.

I got it home and decided to start processing it there and then. I read the advice from my drum carder and ran some very hot water to soak a small sample in. I left it there for a while and then tipped that water out and ran some fresh with a small squeeze of washing up liquid (literature all suggests 'Dawn' dish detergent but we don't seem to have this in the UK so I opted for Waitrose's own!). I left that again for a while and rinsed it. It was a small ball of pristine white fluffiness....such  a difference from the mucky, stinky thing I started off with. I did a larger batch in the same manner which I then had to leave to dry before I could start playing. The drying had to be done inside as it has been raining non-stop the last few weeks...apparently this is no bad thing as drying outside could felt the wool if you aren't careful.

The next morning I started to card the dry wool. Still more bits coming out of it....bits of straw and twigs. What I was left with was a rather lovely fluffy batt that was ready to spin. The wool had greyed a little when it had come off the drum carder but I put this down to it being new and the metal of the teeth staining the wool (it came out in the wash thankfully).

I have now washed the whole fleece...I couldn't have it sitting around in the house plus I really wanted to get cracking with it. I have spun a good five skeins thus far and they are coming out OK but seem to have a good few lumps and bumps which could be down to second cuts being processed with the bulk of the fleece. I should perhaps have been a little more meticulous in my pre-wash preparations. I didn't really do anything to them apart from the one batch that I picked the chaff out of. Other cardinal sins included agitating the water with the wool in it (impatience on my part) which again would have resulted in felt had I not been handling Ryeland fleece which is aparently reasonably tolerant of such things.

The keeper of the sheep, a lady called Lorna, has said that I could reserve this year's fleece from the same sheep and also that she has some Soay Sheep that will need rooing in July time. This is very exciting!

Wind Turbine Birthday Cake

Alex's First Wind Farm

The 25th of December, apart from being Christmas Day is also the day on which my partner, Alex, was born. As this year's birthday was a bit of a landmark (30th birthday) we decided that we would have a party to celebrate. Only problem is that it being on Christmas Day, no one is likely to come.

After long discussions we decided that it would be best to have it at the beginning of December in order to maximise the attendance! Moving the party away from Christmas meant that I could finally bake Alex a birthday cake....which meant it had to be special.

I was chatting on Facebook with one of Alex's colleagues when the birthday cake subject came up. I asked him what he thought I should do. Alex works in Wind Power and Matt thought that making a birthday cake featuring wind turbines would be a great idea.......as did I. The only problem now was I had to make it.

I thought long and hard  about how I was going to achieve this, bearing in mind I am no sugar artist.....I can't even bake an even cake! The first idea was to make the cake in the shape of a wind turbine. That would be too easy.

Then I thought about making wind turbine shaped candles.......too difficult.

Then I thought about making 30 model wind turbines out of bakeable modelling clay and making a dent in the top for the candles.......so I went to the craft shop to buy some clay.

Brushstrokes at Holme Grange Craft Village, just outside Wokingham, is a little treasure trove containing bits and pieces for all sorts of crafts. I mooched about in there for ages, primarily looking for the modelling clay but stumbling across all sorts of things before I got to them. 

I picked up some food colourings for the icing, some model boats and tractors, some edible glitter (quite where I was going to put that I have no idea, I just had to have it!) and some silver candles but I still couldn't find the clay.

I asked at the counter and the lady pointed me in the right direction which is when I found they only had 4 packets of grey modelling clay which I didn't think was enough. I started chatting with the lady, who clearly thought I was bonkers and thought I didn't have a clue what I was doing....and she was right. It was then that she had a brainwave.

Make the blades and the nacelles (the twirly bits) and make a hole in it for the candle to go through. 

This could work......I could do this!

A short while later I was back at home and making the various components I needed. It took a while because the clay is quite hard to get into a workable state. So hard, in fact that my hands were in quite a bit of pain by the end of it! 

Each nacelle I made had to be skewered with the candle to make the hole for the candle to go through. I couldn't bear to have to drill holes in them all once they had been baked so this seemed the easiest option. All I had to do then was bake them.

The 'blades' and 'nacelles' prior to baking. Note the holes for the candles.

The next task was to stick the 'blades' onto the 'nascelles'. I did this with superglue gel. Some of them stuck easier than others. Once those had dried off I put the candles through the holes.

The cakes were the next job. We were expecting 30+ people to come to the party, so there were a lot of mouths to feed. I wanted to create a landscape of both sea and land to represent the onshore and offshore aspects of the wind industry....also Alex was about to move from onshore to offshore.

I baked a very simple round vanilla sponge to make a Victoria Sandwich and a square chocolate cake that I filled with buttercream and chocolate sauce.

The square cake was then covered in a blue buttercream to make the sea. The Victoria Sandwich was cut in half and covered in green fondant icing (the ready-to-roll stuff) to make hills. The hills were placed behind the sea and to cover up the area between land and sea I crushed some ginger biscuits to make a sandy beach. Then I erected my 'wind farm'. the 30 turbines went in anywhere and everywhere although I did try to make it look orderly!

Finished Wind Farm Cake

OK, it's not the best looking cake in the world.....but it was a bit of fun and raised a laugh or two! It even tasted good!

Setting the twist

I have now spun at least one of the rovings that I bought from Etsy a few weeks ago and I have decided that today is the day that I am going to wash that, and all the other skeins that I have made to set the twist in the wool.

Once the roving has been spun and then plyed, the next step is to wash the wool in order to 'set the twist'. I guess this is so it doesn't come undone and can be worked with. I understand that this is also the stage where the wool can be 'balanced'. I haven't got into all the techy side of this yet. I am just doing as I am told!

I ran a basinful of hand hot water and added a sachet of Eucalan which is a no rinse wool wash that repells moths and removes any last traces of grease.

Apparently one should just place the wool in to soak without agitating the water or roughing the wool up otherwise it is liable to felt, which is not good. I left it to soak for 15 minutes and then took the wool out one skein at a time, squeezed the water out and lay it on a towel. I popped out to post Christmas Cards and had a chat with my neighbour and when I returned I hung the wool out on the clothes horse.

I have been advised that special care also needs to be taken when hanging the wool out to dry. It should not be hung out in the wind as this could cause felting. I cut up some strips of material and hung the skeins out by popping the material through the centre of the skein and pegging the ends of the material.

Now I just have to wait for it all to dry so I can use it!

Why the need for change?

I think its about time I set out the events and reasons as to why I finished working.

In my previous life I was a Radiographer (technically I am still a Radiographer but I am not practicing) and I was working for a company that bought medical imaging equipment, installed it in hospitals, maintained it and then put new equipment in once it had come to the end of its life.

My job there was varied. I spent time looking at the equipment that was available on the market and writing technical specifications. It had moments of being stressful but on the whole it was enjoyable and I worked with a lot of good people....the only problem was that I felt I wasn't fulfilling my potential and I just didn't feel satisfied.

I am quite prone to depression and I caved in to it again in about April/May of this year. It has happened on numerous occassions but this time was different. I didn't feel sad at home. It took a while for it to sink in that this was a fundamental problem with work and not me (well, not entirely me anyway!). I was due to go back to work, I just had one more appointment with the Doctor when I seemed to take a big drop in how I was feeling despite having my medication increased. She changed my meds and signed me off for another month. I went back to bed and slept and cried and couldn't understand what was going on.

Fast forward one month and I am in a supermarket when I start to feel most peculiar....really nauseous. I realise that it has been a while since I have had a period and decide to buy a test. I took it the second I got home and the line appeared immediately. I was pregnant with our first child! I had an appointment at the Doctor's that morning so I told her straight away and we concluded that this was the more likely explanation for the sudden drop in mood.

I hung on all day to tell Alex, who was on a course that day. I managed to drive all the way home without saying a word. I wanted to tell him in a calm environment, not somewhere we were likely to crash! When I finally told him he couldn't be more pleased and immediately set about finding a prep school!

I returned to work where I told most people that I was expecting a baby. There was a fair amount of shock as it was always me who was denying I was going to be the next 'Mum-to-be'. I didn't think I could have children so I always made a point in public stating that I didn't want them. It got people off my back and prevented probing and me feeling upset if people thought I was against having kids.

The return to work wasn't the best. It started out alright but soon I felt like I had before. I was fed up. I had a chat with Alex who had a look at our finances......which needed doing if there was only going to be one of us working in 6 months' time. He said that we could manage, if we were careful and that if I wanted to leave then he was happy to support me. I had concerns about maternity pay etc not being enough and that if I were to leave at that point then I wouldn't get my maternity pay.

I went to speak with HR about this. They said that they would sort out my maternity pay if I wanted to leave. All they would need from me would be the MATb1 form that you get after the 20 week scan. We had only had our 12 week scan a few weeks before hand. It was a long way off. Eventually I decided to leave. I left there and then on a Monday afternoon, after clearing my desk.

On Wednesday, Alex was in Denmark or somewhere on business. On Thursday I had just packed all my gym things in a bag to go for a swim. I just popped to the loo before I went when I discovered that I was bleeding. I called the Midwife, she came straight away. She made me a scan appointment for the following day and said that if I stared to feel any pain or the bleeding got worse, to go straight to A&E. The bleeding did get worse, so I went to A&E only to be told that there was nothing that they could do. The cervix was closed and they couldn't get me a scan until the next day. I went home. Alex came home later that evening.

The next day we went to the hospital where the Sonographer couldn't find a heartbeat. I knew it. I guess I knew it right from the beginning, that all those weeks I kept saying that I didn't think I was getting any bigger I  wasn't imagining. The tears came for both of us. We tried to put a brave face on and it worked for a while. The Nurse told me that as it was a missed miscarriage, I would have to come in for a D&C on the Tuesday, that I would have to come in on Sunday to collect the drugs that would make it all easier. We went home. We cried. We held each other. We cried some more.

At 4am on the Saturday I started with cramping pain. It was coming in waves, I can only conclude that it was 'labour' starting. I watched the Wales v Ireland match before things started getting really bad. Alex then took me to hospital, back to A&E where the pain was just getting worse and worse. I had endless drugs and nothing was making it feel better....until they gave me IV morphine. Then it stopped and I couldn't have cared less about anything. It was a horrible day. I won't go into any further details because there is no need.

I told my employers that we had lost the baby. They offered me the chance to change my mind and go back. I chose not to take them up on their offer and finished on the 31st October.

I spent the first few weeks cleaning the house. Then I started making stuff. I wanted to sew and knit but more than anything I wanted to learn how to spin wool. I now have so many projects on the go I don't know where to begin.

I have spent a lot of money. I have learnt a lot. I have made stuff. I am happy. Finally.