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My own little Hatfield (and other things)

I may not have a stately home, but sometimes the garden looks OK - or at least bits of it work at different times. Here are a couple of portions that are looking good at the moment.

 

A pink hardy fuchsia, lady's mantle, a viticella clematis and a red/pink persicaria (knotweed).

I've been enjoying my daylilies on the other side of the garden. I have two different yellows and this lovely red:

 

As you can see, these photos were taken last week when we had all the sunshine!

I mentioned a few posts ago that I bought a nice niddy noddy at Woolfest. Here it is, with some rather special laceweight yarn on it that I have dyed.

 

The unusual thing about the niddy noddy is the handle. Usually you hold them on the central shaft and that's perfectly OK, but it's just a little easier to have a handle. Now for the yarn. I've found a source (strictly hush hush) of undyed Uruguayan laceweight merino which seems to me to be indistinguishable from M*******o. I'm experimenting with dyeing it at the moment.

I have nearly finished the Baktus scarf, but it has been relegated to commuter knitting. At home I'm knitting the Lily of the Valley scarf from Nancy Bush's book, using the cashmere I bought at Woolfest. I'm finding the pattern about as hard as I want to attempt. There are quite a few mistakes in my knitting (including some nupps not quite knitted through properly), but overall it's very pretty. I think there may be an error in the chart, too.

Hatfield and allotment

On Thursday (hottest day?) a friend and I went to Hatfield House (Herts - home of Marquis of Salisbury) to see the private gardens which are only open on Thursdays. Lady Salisbury (now dowager I think) designed them and included an organic kitchen garden. She also designed Prince Charles's garden at Highgrove. We walked round very, very slowly. The garden did look a bit hot and dusty but beautiful nevertheless.

Meanwhile, the allotment is getting on well. I've started pulling Little Gem lettuces (below) even though they haven't properly hearted up yet, to give the others more room to grow. Behind them is a row of leeks, then a row of onions, and potatoes at the back.

The beans are really climbing now: (Lady Salisbury's were much taller than mine - sniff)

The white tunnelly thing is protecting my cavalo nero from pigeons and butterflies.

Progress on many fronts

Woolfest was wonderful. I was lucky enough to be able to go on both days due to the generosity of my friend Helen (who lives over my back fence, lets me use half of her allotment and is generally a good pal), because she has a little house up near Carlisle where we could stay.  I'm sorry to admit to any readers that I didn't take any photos, however!

I did a bit of shopping: a cone of undyed lambswool, a cone of fawn undyed cashmere (only £20 for about 500g!) and a 500g hank of superwash 4-ply merino. I aim to dye most of those. I also bought a lovely niddy noddy.

Shopping was fun, but the best thing was being able to talk to people about things close to my heart:

Why is the brake band on my wheel slipping?

How do you choose a good fleece (whoops, yes, I bought a fleece too)?

How do you wash said fleece?

How do you blend fibres on a drum carder?

How do you spin long-draw?

All great stuff. Pictures to follow very soon (of purchases, I mean).

The other news is that I have successfully applied for voluntary severance from my place of work and from late August I will be self-employed! I'm aiming to get back into freelance editorial work, which I did for about 12 years when the children were small, in preparation for our move to Monmouthshire some time in late 2010 onwards. I just can't wait to be independent again.

I did lots of knitting on the Baktus scarf on the train down from Carlisle on Sunday (delayed by one and a half hours, too) and am so nearly finished that I have allowed myself to start one of the scarves from Nancy Bush's Knitted Lace of Estonia (and, by the way, I met Nancy Bush at Woolfest!).

Off to Woolfest tomorrow

I have to go to work first, boo hoo, but tomorrow I'm heading up to Cumbria for Woolfest, which takes place on Friday and Saturday.

I did some more dyeing yesterday and today. I dyed some Colourmart cashmere 4-ply (4 cobweb strands wound but not plyed together. Originally it was a pale grey. First I overdyed it yellow, which didn't really work. Next I used Landscape Desert Orchid on it, and I like the flame/pinky orange that has emerged.

It's the large skein on the left. The variegated pink and yellow behind it and also the blue and green on the right are laceweight shetland - just 50g of each. The blue on the right is more of the Jo Sharp pale blue overdyed a deeper and more interesting blue.

Overdyeing

I don't mean I've been dyeing too much, although my son might not agree: he doesn't like the smell of vinegar! No, I been dyeing over some previously commercially dyed wool, in this case Jo Sharp DK. I had a  heap of pale blue which I've tried to use several times over the last five or six years without success because there was something not quite right about the colour. I had a whole jumper's worth of beige also, plus a good amount of natural grey left over from T's fatigue that I knitted about six years ago. Here are the results so far:

250 g of each colour. The purple, green and red are overdyed on the beige; the turquoise (it's a bit greener in real life) is on the pale blue. They're supposed to be semi-solids, but they vary in how much.

Triangles forever

Here is Swallowtail, as yet unblocked. I really enjoyed knitting this. There's lots happening but none of the patterns are too taxing on the poor old brain!

I finished her late last night and was immediately plunged into a state of anxiety: what would I knit on the train to work this morning? I would usually turn to socks in such a case, but my fondness for triangles won over. After my Weaver's Wool Mini Shawl came Swallowtail and I have in mind to make Aeolian from Knitty, but I need to get some beads for it first. While my bath was running I embarked on Baktus, using some sock yarn (with 10% cashmere) that has refused to behave itself when I have tried it with socks (really awful pooling). This is a really easy and yet interesting knit. It's a very simple triangle knitted end to end. Starting with 4 stitches, you gradually increase on one side only and then, when you're halfway through your yarn, you gradually decrease down again. I'm concentrating on making nice neat garter stitch edges.

Rainbows

It's not raining, but there are rainbows here!  I've been dyeing wool in really bright colours. First, I overdyed some pale green shetland dk: half in rainbow colours and half in a sombre graphite so that I can make Newfoundland mittens (Ravelry link). The colour changes in the patterned yarn are quite short, so the stripes round the mitten are only one row deep.

Next, I thought I'd like longer colour sections so that three or four rows would be the same colour. That meant skeins of 8 yards! Fortunately they're only 50g so they didn't take too long to wind using two chairs. When it came to winding into balls I first tried laying the skein out flat and holding the ball winder. It worked OK, but I felt a bit dizzy...

I used the chairs again for the second one. Here are the two long-sectioned rainbow yarns. As you can see they're slightly different. These were overdyed on some beige Jo Sharp dk and I'm very pleased with how clear the colours are. I'm thinking of doing more of these (I have about a kilo of the yarn) and selling them on Etsy. Mind you, I think I'll have to work out a more ergonomic way of winding and unwinding the skeins!

Monday morning

I haven't got too far on with the jobs I know I should do today. The sun is shining in fits and starts and I've been distracted by the garden. Here's a rather nice combination of hardy geranium and lady's mantle:

A large phormium has decided to flower:

Blue handspun shawl

My hand-dyed, handspun (and hand-knitted!) shawl is done:

I rather like the way the red edging ripples slightly because the wool is a bit thicker (and, ahem, bumpier) because it was the earliest one spun.

Next?

I've finished my handspun mini shawl and it's 'blocking' (really just drying, because I don't want to stretch out the garter stitch). I'm rather pleased with it and now I have the delicious dilemma of what to do next. It's so long since I properly finished something that I want to make something 'proper' - not just play around as I have been doing recently.

I'm taken with the idea of a lace shawl: perhaps Aeolian or Swallowtail. Then, browsing Ravelry, I came across the Featherweight Cardigan, knitted in Malabrigo lace.

I do love Aeolian and have some Malabrigo Lace that would do fine (Paris Nights) but I think it would be a pity not to include the beads and for some reason I don't really feel up to beads just now!

I've long admired Swallowtail and it would be fun to do.

The cardigan might be quite slow going, but would be really useful.

What to do next?