New Studio

At long last, after living in this house for over 12 years, I finally have my own workroom/studio.  Up until now I've had to squeeze everything into a small cupboard that would normally just be big enough for maybe the vacuum cleaner, ironing board and associated bits and pieces,  Needless to say, my fleece and wool, etc. spilled out into almost every room in the house, and whenever I needed something that I knew was in that cupboard it was a nightmare to try and find it.  Well no more!

The beam you can see running across the room is actually not as low as it looks, I can just scrape underneath it without hitting my head - hubby at 6 foot 3 inches has a bit of a problem though!  The space at the back is a little attic which I can use for storing bags of fleece and things I don't use very often.

We put in a sofa bed because this room may occasionally be used for guests if the spare room is already occupied.  It's also very handy for just sitting and admiring the view . . .

and has it's own balcony which is very handy for loading spinning wheels and boxes without having to carry them through the house and up a flight of rather steep stairs (the balcony isn't very high and I can reach up from ground-level).

A view from the outside :-

We will eventually re-install the handrail at the front of the balcony (don't want guests falling off!), but I think we'll leave that until I've moved everything up.

Furniture and bits and pieces are gradually moving up there, including this cabinet we managed to acquire for just 70 euros.  In fact, this is only half of what we bought for that price; the rest is in our dining room - bargain!

And this one has just been moved up from our living/sitting area (I think it looks much better up here!).

I still have a lot of sorting out to do before I can say this is finished, and I may have to buy more cupboards, but it is usable now, and is a very pleasant space as it gets the sun for most of the day.

I'm looking forward to many happy hours pottering about in my new room . . . when I get time, of course, which is the next problem!

Absent

You may have noticed I've not been around for a while!  No excuses, BUT . . . over the last three months we have been rather busy - not too busy to blog, just too busy to do anything to blog about!  We finished odd bits and pieces in our new kitchen, the old kitchen was completely knocked out (all the units and cupboards were concrete block), had the old kitchen/sitting room replastered, painted the whole lot, stained all wood, put in a new floor in the new dining area (old kitchen), cleaned and polished the old tiled floor in the sitting area, put a new shower into the guest's toilet room, removed an old shower from the guest bedroom, and made two complete new bedrooms (new floors, paint, etc). You get the picture?  Well, all this had to be finished by 2nd May, and was - just!

So, what happened on 2nd May?  Eric and I had a huge party to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary (which was actually 5th May, but that was a Tuesday, and who wants a party on a Tuesday?).  We had guests coming out of our ears!  Three of Eric's sons arrived with wives/partners - unfortunately Matthew and Rona couldn't come with Brody (grandson) - a friend arrived from Germany (he had to sleep in the camper van as there was no room in the house), my sister slept in the lounge, another friend that we hadn't seen for 23 years came from Holland (he was farmed out to our neighbours), as were Eric's brother and sister-in-law, his nephew and girlfriend.  More friends filled the local b + b.  On the day of the party we had over 70 people, and a friend came and made a huge paella. Fabulous day.  I've included a few photos for you to see - note the size of the paella pan!

Tents being erected in the garden

Paella man arrives

Patrick and his Paella

Easier exit from bedroom than stairs!

Little inserted note : you see that room with the balcony - that's going to be my new craft room!  Can't wait to get that up and running!

Of course there was music :-

and kilts :-

The girls :-

and, of course, there's always one who has one too many!

So, that's probably the biggest party we'll have until our 40th (if we live that long!) - good job too, we were completely exhausted at the end of it.

Now we're having a bit of time off from working, which means more time for hobbies! Spinning wheels await!

Spinning Again

The length of time between posts seems to be getting longer just lately, mainly because we've been busy trying to get my new kitchen to the stage where we can put in the cupboards, cooker, sink etc.  All the electrics are now in, the plaster-board is finished and painted, and the woodwork is almost all stained.  Next - floor!  We bought some oak flooring for in here and should start fitting that within a day or two.

So, spinning . . .

I've been gradually working through a dustbin liner of baby alpaca (from Jorrocks) and now only have about a plastic carrier bag left.  He's a really nice colour, rose-grey with white and paler grey bits, and the wool has turned out super-soft.  But the other day, right in the middle of spinning this, I felt like some easy spinning.  Something someone else had done the preparation and dyeing work for.  I pulled this out of the bag and spent a few days spinning :-

This has been sitting around since last July when I bought it at Le Lot et La Laine festival.  I have no idea what this is - it was prepared by Katikolor and she couldn't remember which fibres she'd used.  I didn't care really because I loved the colours and the feel of it.

At the same time, I realised my bobbins were getting full again and I really need to empty some in time for the Tour de Fleece which starts on 5th July.  I had half a bobbin of some blue and white merino that I spun ages ago, and then I had lots of bobbins with just a small amount on each.  I didn't really have anything that I could ply with the blue and white merino, so I made the single thread into a centre-pull ball and plied from each end, i.e. the end from the middle of the ball and the outside bit.  I was surprised and happy at how easy it was to do this as I'd envisioned getting into a real tangle with it.

Most of the random bits were then plied together onto a bobbin - amazingly, I ended up with 70g of yarn.  Haven't a clue what this will become, but it looked quite good in the skein.

Happy Skeins!

The one on the right is the unknown mix by Katikolor - 289 yards/267 metros, 130g; centre is the blue and white merino - 165 yards/152m, 50g; and the one on the left is the odds and ends of bobbins.  I haven't worked out the yardage for this one as I'm not sure if it will be used in it's entirety for a project, or just bits and pieces here and there as accents in other projects.

The two small balls of yarn at the front were separated out because the green and white had already been plied and just went into the skein for ease of washing, and the darker one is Ouessant that I dyed for last year's TdF and have a larger ball that this can join. For this one I used the centre-pull ball method of plying again - brilliant because it uses up every scrap of yarn.

Now for the really exciting news.  Yesterday I collected a little package from my friend Sarah of La Maison des Chameaux :-

There are approximately100 silkworm eggs here!!  Sarah was ordering some for herself so just added another 100 to the order for me.  Thanks Sarah!!

I put the eggs on top of some kitchen roll inside a cardboard box.  The bowl at the right hand side is a small foil dish with a wet piece of kitchen paper inside.  This is to give the eggs a bit of humidity so they don't dry out too much.  I've put the whole lot into the greenhouse and will be watching avidly for signs of life over the next week.  They can take about 10 days to hatch, but they've been in the post for probably about 4 days so maybe not long to wait.

You do realise I'll be boring you all for the next 6-8 weeks with photos of my "babies"!! Time to switch off now if you don't want to see!

Elephants, Elephants, Elephants . . .

Sorry to bore you all again, but this is the only project I've been working on lately so I hope you'll bear with me.

This is how far I've got with the blanket and have run out of white yarn again :-

I estimate I'm going to need another one and a quarter balls to finish this and am part way through ball no. 4.  At this rate it's going to take me another week at least to finish.  Wish me luck!

On another subject, my new kitchen is slowly moving on.  This is the new (old!) lintel going in for the new entrance.  When the sink is moved away we'll be putting glass doors in here (the sink is just out of view, this side of the wall).

This piece of wood weighed at least 200 lbs and took two strong men to manoeuvre it into place.  Eric has since sealed all around it with mortar so it looks a lot neater now.

More news later on today on something completely different.  We had a very special delivery yesterday evening . . . I'll just leave you to guess until I've been able to take pictures in the daylight.