My Canine Family

This is dad 'Dylan' - an exceedingly fluffy Chihuahua - taken the day Poppy came home - a handsome little chap - laid back and very cuddly.

This is mum 'Poppy' - wire coated Jack Russell with really cool tufty bits IMHO - looking a little forlorn whilst the babes are suckling fiercely out of shot!

Number four cuddling up to mum between feeds

Number two - we call her 'the little girl' (people seem to think calling her number two is somehow wrong)!- she's the weeist baby - but has metaphorical balls - definitely a strong mind of her own.

This week all their eyes have opened and they're just starting to try and stand (more fun to come when they're totally mobile) - I think at least some of them can hear now - they're ears have certainly flopped forward and become more fluffy.

I've been trying to coax them to lap - with mixed success - Number three is keenest - one, four and five have had a little bit of a go - but the little girl is adamant that this is not for her (yet).

We have puppies - 5 of them - 4 male, 1 female. Born last night.

Poppy had a bit of an ordeal with number 1, who took 3 hours to arrive, but then two to five arrived within the next 3 hours. She's proving to be an excellent mum - but is now pretty much exhausted - as are we!

These are the first four - safely ensconced in a heated box while number five makes his entrance!

We have puppies - 5 of them - 4 male, 1 female. Born last night.

Poppy had a bit of an ordeal with number 1, who took 3 hours to arrive, but then two to five arrived within the next 3 hours. She's proving to be an excellent mum - but is now pretty much exhausted - as are we!

These are the first four - safely ensconced in a heated box while number five makes his entrance!

Dunmow Christmas Tree Festival and Craft Fair

This weekend there's a Christmas Tree Festival being held in my local town and a friend & I were invited along to demonstrate hand spinning.

Yesterday we went along for a day of spinning and chatting - all very enjoyable. We started at 10am and were immediately surrounded by children from the local schools who were fascinated by what we were doing - especially when we told them we were spinning dog fur!

In fact we were both spinning Samoyed fur which spins into a beautiful white fluffy yarn. We had a selection of samples on the table - including German Shepherd hats, Newfoundland scarves and little samples of Poodle, Labradoodle, Bichon Frise, Border Collie and others.

We were there for 6 hours - spinning fairly continuously - when I got home I measured the 2ply yarn I'd spun and plied, and it was 82m in length, and weighed 30g (approx 1 oz) which means it would be approx 328m per 100g or roughly a 4ply weight yarn.

I took photos of the chrismas trees on my mobile - if I can work out how I'll post them here later.

The Bothered Owl Christmas Yarn Party

Last weekend Sophie of Twist Yarns got a late invite to The Bothered Owl Christmas Yarn Party and wanted some help with her stand, so Monday evening after work I headed into London to give her some support.

It was a fun event with several Indie dyers and a selection of other knit related stalls - oh and lovely mince pies and nibbles.

Twist Yarns were set up just as you came in through the door, and next to Fyberspates - (what temptation). In fact it was a room full of temptation (and I didn't spend a penny!) with luscious yarns in every hue and combination of hues - there was silk, alpaca, merino, bamboo, angora and more - dyed as semi-solids, random dyed, hand painted, kettle dyed, naturally dyed and probably some other methods as well.

There was a lovely hubbub around the room with people chatting, and eating, and buying soft, colourful, wonderful yarns and fun knitty cards and patterns and stitch markers.

WOOLLY WEEKEND

Last weekend (19th/20thNov) was a good woolly weekend - on Friday evening a new experience - I'd been invited to a Yarn Party held by one of the knitters in the 'Stitch in Bishop's Stortford' knit group. I was one of the first to arrive - well I was very excited by it all - I'd been saving my pennies and was really looking forward to a night out with knitters and loads of wool. I wasn't disappointed - when I arrived there was yarn everywhere - in soft, colourful, squishy piles. A heap of knitted & crocheted samples on the table, a bag of zauerballs here, a basket of Natural Dye Studio there .....sigh

The lady running it all was Sophie of Twist Yarns - she entertained us (it wasn't very difficult) with talk of yarn and then showed us all how to do Tunisian (afghan) crochet and then let us loose on the bags......sigh

I bought 3 zauerballs and a crazy zauerball, a NDS precious and angel, and a skein of Louisa Harding Grace.

The photo below is what one of the zauerballs and the crazy zaurball look like now ;-) nearly finished - one row left plus blocking - look for the finished version soon on Ravelry. it's called seraphina and is a free pattern by grumperina - there are a few hiccoughs in the pattern but once you get the hang of it - it's really straight forward.

Then Saturday

I went to a workshop at the Middle Essex Guild of weavers, spinners and dyers. The speaker was Tricia Holman talking on the Elizabeth Zimmerman way of knitting - Tricia is Elizabeth Zimmerman's niece so is well qualified to talk on the subject, and indeed was extremely informative and very approachable. She talked about (in hushed voice) cutting your knitting, knitting with different coloured yarns in each hand, and a host of other techniques aimed at speeding things up and making them less complicated - very inspiring.

Then we had a little go at stabilising the edges and then cutting a piece - I'm really up for learning more of this - hopefully a workshop or two next year - I've always wanted to knit with more than one colour at a time, it's so easy in crochet, but I get in a complete pickle with knitting - I have one project that's been hibernating for over 20 years because it became such a nightmare.

If only all weekends could be this much fun.

Spoonflower Fabrics

This is a slight divergence from the things I normally talk about - It has nothing to do with fibre - although there is a crafty link in that I can use the fabric I design for finishing/lining other knitty/crochety/felty projects.

To the point - for years now I have been playing around with different programmes to make repeat patterns. I used to use a lot for 'teabag papers' and backing papers for card making, but I'd always wanted to be able to use some of the designs to create fabrics - I had a little dalliance with crafty cumputer papers where you can buy fabric backed with paper which goes through a home printer - but the biggest you can do is A3 (unless you pay a lot for a fancy printer) and in reality not many printers go bigger than A4.

Recently I discovered Spoonflower an American company that will print your designs for you - and even better sell them to other people - hurrah my dreams were answered :-D I couldn't wait to set up my own shop.

I've been playing around and I now have my first handful of designs for sale - first you have to order test swatches to check how they print out - I've had a few surprises. Often the designs about which I'm most confident surprise me by not printing as I'd imagined and the ones about which I'm not sure turn out better than expected! Ho hum.

Any way yesterday I took all the swatches I've received so far outside and photographed them - so here they are.