Well, during the last month I constructed in my mind all sorts of exciting, witty & inspired posts which didn’t happen because of the broken blog. I have now forgotten them all. So here’s a summary of some of August’s happenings…
One swallow doesn’t make a summer. Yesterday I counted 75 on the telegraph wire and there’s still no summer. Over the last month or so, we have had only 4 days without rain. I know this because we have a highly accurate & scientific record of the daily weather – a poster of a tree with a leaf for every day which we fill in with coloured pencils. On the days when it hasn’t rained, there’s been a thick, heavy, grey cloud cover. Since I heard on the radio that the Chinese government had allegedly shot stuff at clouds to prevent rain falling at the Olympics, I have decided that we are Being Experimented On: Choose an area with a low population where it does rain quite a lot anyway so no-one will notice and play with moving clouds over it all the time to see how long it takes before everyone goes mad. Even the goats are in a Mood.
However, at the end of July there were two days of blazing sunshine, so we did this:
A very small patch of hay! Hopefully enough to see the chinchillas through to next year. It wasn’t dry enough to risk storing in the hay-loft, so we stored it on pallets in the entrance to the barn until it was aired enough. There is none for the goats though and very few farmers have managed to get hay in at all this year. A few made a little the week before we did, when there were four rainless days, but it wasn’t hot enough for us to do it without machinery. Perhaps if we get a nice week in September we’ll get the rest in, but it’s looking pretty much past it really. Years past, having had a season like this, farmers would have had to slaughter most of the livestock before winter because it couldn’t be fed. At least now there’s silage, but most around here haven’t managed a second cut and the barley is rotting in the fields. This coming winter will be bad for shortages. We have hay for the goats for another six weeks or so…
We had to get that hay in or it would have been squashed because a few days later Graham’s sister Stella arrived with her husband Arfon and David & Rose & Daisy the Dog and a Very Large Tent! They came with a mission & a knitting pattern. Arfon loves tea and orange, so wanted some orange wool for Stella to knit a tea-cosy. So while Graham took Stella & the kids to Ostrich World, we had fun with onion skins:
We did four different shades, so two contrasting ones could be chosen for the cosy, which was to have vertical stripes. I put some carded Blue-faced Leicester fleece in the exhaust, but managed to felt it. So, the next night we felted it more and made a tea-cosy for Arfon’s other tea-pot. I say we, but Graham & Arfon decided this was Men’s Work and spent a happy evening pummelling, using bubble wrap, a rolling pin and a few big plastic knitting needles to achieve friction. Here it is, with the skeins which were chosen for the knitted one:
We’ve had lots of visitors in August, including my old friend Laura & her family, the children armed with their latest Warhammer miniatures for a massive battle on the kitchen table, organised by The Bat. My friends The Laal Bear and Mr Laal Bear, who are on World Tour of Cumbria while they do the shows, joined in my Monday Night Wooliness at the beginning of the month. We met up again the next week on a Quest to find the Keswick Knitting Cafe, along with Yogicknitter, whom I knew from Ravelry and who was just as lovely as I expected and a very talented knitter – I was overwhelmed by her enormous pink knitting bag, full of amazing work in progress! She also came with her delightful sister-in-law, whom she has initiated into the Art, to the shop on the following Thursday when I was working there and enlivened my afternoon. It was a shame that, due to some illness, they weren’t able to come here to meet the goats and indulge in some spinniness, but hopefully next time! Various cousins & old family friends have been coming & going too, which has helped lift the Gloom caused by the weather.
Johnby now has its very own Book Club! Our neighbour Sarah has started it and Graham & I went to the first meeting last week. This month’s book is Kate Atkinson’s One Good Turn which I’ve been wanting to read. Sarah, meanwhile, wants to learn to knit, so I foresee some evenings of knitting bookishness…
There has been a lot of spinning. And I keep forgetting to take photos before it goes in the shop. I should store my yarn labels under the camera. I got all inspired in July by Interknitter when she visited the shop to do a range of more natural colours. But with the Gloom at the moment, I’ve felt it better to stick to multi-colours, because they are Good For You. So I have been spinning the gorgeous fibre I got from Freyalyn at Woolfest. If it’s still in the shop next time I’m there I’ll get a picture.
Meanwhile, I ordered some rovings from Artis-Anne‘s Etsy shop Mam a Mi. LOOK AT THE COLOURS!!!!!
This really cheered me up! They have such lovely names too. The one still plaited is Breuddwydiol (Dreamy), Shetland roving. Lower right is Blodeuedd, Falkland roving – although I usually stick to British breeds, I’d never spun Falkland before so was intrigued. It spun nicely, rather like Shetland, and is very soft. Blodeuedd, in the Mabinogion, was the woman made out of flowers, one of which was Meadowsweet, which means the goats would’ve made short work of her, I’m afraid (they seem particularly keen on anything containing salicylic acid – perhaps they always have headaches). On the right is Cringoch (Russet), which I have on the wheel now. I had thought when I ordered it that it would make nice sock yarn. However, when it arrived it was so gorgeous I couldn’t help but spin it laceweight. This might be a Plan: If it’s very fine & miles long, then I will really have to charge an awful lot for it. No one will buy it because it’s so expensive. Then I can bring it home again!
I did remember to take a photo of the Blodeuwedd before it went in the shop, which is just as well, because half an hour later it was sold! Here it is, along with some Wensleydale – I got this fibre at Woolfest from Natalie at The Yarn Yard:
The 15th was our wedding anniversary, so we went on our Annual Day Out. We forgot the camera. This year we headed towards the Solway and explored Silloth, which is a nice little town. We found where potted shrimps come from (Graham won some at a work raffle recently which were yummy although I shouldn’t have eaten them because of the butter). We went to The Gincase for a delicious lunch: I had shrimps and Graham had something bacony called Fidget Pie. We wondered whether Fidget had been the name of a particularly obstreperous pig who ended up in the pie… We didn’t look around the animals but thought it would be a nice place to take visiting kids sometime and we bought some rare-breed sausage for the guests coming the following week. Then we went up to the Solway and explored the penisular. The farms all had massive iron gates across their entrances to protect them from the sea and we wondered about the herd of cows which had suddenly decided to swim the Solway a couple of years ago and why. Then we walked along the shore at Bowness and looked at haaf nets drying, but no fishermen were out. We found a little public garden which had been planted with the herbs & flowers which would have been in a Roman garden. There was a lovely bench (inspired by a haaf net) where we sat and looked at micro-birds on the flats. (We’d forgotten the binoculars.) Then we headed east in that narrow window of opportunity for tea shops but found none. (We’d forgotten the thermos.) Suddenly, just a few miles away from such seemingly-isolated, sea-thrashed farming & fishing communities, we found ourselves in Luxury Commuter Land – every house with a burglar alarm and all very trimmed, tarmacced & tidy. So, feeling we might be lowering the tone in our mucky old landrover, we went home to a nice cup of tea. If we ever managed to get out for a day more than once a year, maybe we wouldn’t forget as many things!
Graham took the following week off work to Get Things Done. He sealed the gaps in the conservatory – there’s been some shrinkage as the beams settle:
The rest of the week he has been clearing the barn, ready for the archaeologist & then the builders. This has been an enormous operation, because the barn & both stables are completely full of stuff – either dumped in there when we moved, or added when we renovated the house. Being complete wombles, there’s also quite a lot of useful things we’ve found, or at least things which might be useful one day when we can think why…
He started on the stables which are now a paragon of neatness. Everything is stacked in order, there are cupboards on the walls for things to go in and there’s a super storage rack for kindling, instead of a massive heap on the floor. So there is now space in the stables for everything from the barn, with the possible exception of a spiral staircase, acquired in a massive fit of wombliness, which we really, really have no use for; it will have to go on Ebay or something.
Back to wooliness and Jan & I have had some success with our sock yarn. We started this earlier in the month, because there were a lot of requests from customers for a 4-ply with added nylon for strength. So, we got a couple of kilos to try and Jan dyed it:
It’s nearly all sold out, so we’ve bought some more and yesterday Jan collected it to dye. At the same time, she brought a box full of this:
Our carded Blue-faced Leicester, ready for me to pack up into bags for the shop. The North of England Mule we did last year has been brilliant for felt-makers and has pretty much sold out now, so this will replace it, along with some BFL tops for spinners.
And she brought this for Graham:
A beautiful Wensleydale fleece! In a couple of weeks, it’s Borrowdale Shepherd’s Meet, where the Wool Clip always take a stall and some of us go along to demonstrate various wool-crafts. For the last three years, Graham has been working on Old Stinky. This is a peg-loom rug he is making, using the fleece from a pet North of England Mule who was kept because she had an adventure & ended up in lamb (& produced super twins, so is still part of the flock). My friend Marion spun the best bits of the fleece – some of the yarn has gone to the IKnit Great British Sheep – and Graham started making his rug with the leftovers. The trouble is he does it only at shows and therefore it’s been getting progressively stinkier over the years. It also makes Graham more & more popular with dogs. Last year, a labrador rested its head on the rug and spent a few minutes staring longingly into Graham’s eyes before its owner decided enough was enough. It is nearly finished, so he says he will tie it off soon and start on a new one for Borrowdale so that the whiff doesn’t put people off coming into the marquee. But meanwhile, here’s Old Stinky in progress. I am longing to give it a bath!
The Wensleydale fleece is so beautiful, it would be nice to spin it, but I do have plenty of dark Wensleydale fibre already and also a luscious Masham fleece in very similar colours and anyway, it’ll be nice for Graham to work on something soft and easy to manage after the Mule (which is now mostly the worst felted bits).
And finally for August, here’s someone who doesn’t mind the rain but would be delighted if there could be a bit of sunshine to bask in soon please before hibernation:
This is Plato!