Stokesly & Saltburn

Yesterday we were at Stokesly Agricultural show, in the Craft Tent, this is the first time we have done this show, we've attended as a visitor for many years, but his year decided to have a table in the Craft Tent. I took along my spinning wheel, as requested, and when we found our table in the marquee I was surprised at how small the table was, 6' x 2' and no room at the side of the table to set my spinning wheel up. So I put out my hand dyed wool and pot yarn holders on the table and set my wheel up, behind the table and started to spin. I'd packed 200gms of alpaca to spin, thinking that would last me all day. But it didn't, but mid afternoon it was all spun and plyed. Tim kept having a wonder around, as did I, and in fairness we did have some good sales, enough that we will book another table next year.
Halfway through the day we were joined by our friends Freylyn and Mark, plus their dogs Lunil and Bil. Whilst Tim, Mark and dogs went off round the show, Freylyn stayed with me in the Craft tent, with her spinning wheel. She did comment that whilst we were spinning she felt like a goldfish, with so much interest in what we were doing, but wouldn't mind doing the same again at next year's event. At 4.30 we packed up and headed off for home and a much needed glass of wine and an Indian takeaway.
Today, after the customary breakfast of Tim's special sausages, tomatoes, bacon, eggs, mushrooms and toast, a quick walk through Fairy Dell, then off to Saltburn for the dogs to have a good run on the beech, but also to see the gorilla knitting on Saltburn pier.
Here are some to the photos I took of the knitting:-

 But it would appear that the image of Prince Harry has been removed.
After a bracing walk along the beech, with the dogs running and playing, followed by a much needed cup of hot chocolate (coffee for Mark and Tim), we took the trip back up to the top of the cliffs on the funicular railway, and then a walk along the main street looking at the many different shops, back to the cars, and then home.
We will hopefully see Freylyn, Mark, Lunil and Bil at Masham next weekend.

Worming lambs and Spinning

Yesterday I took my new Schacht sidekick spinning wheel and my poorly Lendrum wheel to Tynedale SW&D Guild in Stocksfield, as my friends Joan & Clive, from The Woodland Turnery were giving a talk and running a spinning wheel workshop. And now thanks to Clive, my Lendrun is much better and running as it should be. But it was also good to be able to sit and spin on my new wheel. I wasn't the only one there with a Schacht wheel, two other ladies did. so I was able to pick their brains and gain a greater understanding of my new wheel. I'll be back to this guild in October as I've been recruited to their tea and coffee rota for their Spinners Day, but also they made me and Tim feel so welcome, I will be joining this guild in November.
Today we went over to my friend's smallholding to help worm one of our 3 fat lambs that are merrily eating her grass. As always when you only have a small number of sheep to move, they become very uncooperative, especially the Masham ram lamb. He has attitude, despite being slightly smaller than the other 2!! Thankfully the lamb we wanted to worm is bucket trained  so all we had to do was rattle the food bucket and he came running. We used a wormer that has a short meat withdrawal period as, hopefully, these 3 will be going into our freezer at the end of October.
Next Saturday, I will be in the Craft Tent at Stocksley Show, hopefully with my spinning wheel, fibre and hand dyed knitting wool. as well as Freylyn, Mark, Lunil and Bil coming to visit for the weekend. Should be good fun.

Back at Saltburn Frmers Market & Big Knit Workshop

On Saturday I was back at Saltburn Farmers Market after a break for the summer. It was good to see my stallholder friends again, as well as my regular customers, and with the weather being warm and sunny, it was a day of lots of sales and lots of catching up with gossip!
Today I've been to MIMA in Middlesbrough attending a Big Knit workshop run by Ingrid Wagner. The knitting is done on very fat knitting needles (25mm circumference) using weaving waste, and cutting up old clothes, material and many stands of knitting wool. A row of knitting is an 1" deep, which makes your project grow very quickly.
It was good fun, sat out on the grass at MIMA, but I'm not sure where I will go with what I've learnt today. I did find the knitting needles too big for my hands, though I might try smaller big knitting needles to see what I can create, especially using my stash of  hand spun wool.
But now I've got to dye some more knitting wool and fibre in readiness for Christmas, as well as design some more knitting kits.
When did I have the time to work!

A surprisingly good British Wool Weekend

I know this happened last weekend, but I've been wrestling with my phone to try and get it to upload the photos I took, but to no avail!!!
Anyway, last Friday Tim and I arrived at Hall 2 at The Great Yorkshire Showground, looked for my stall and I was a little concerned at how small my pitch was. A "massive" 2m x 2m, but thankfully on the end of a run so I had 2 open sides, which made my stall area much bigger. I was very pleased that I'd bitten the bullet a bought a spiral trouser rack from which to hang all of my dyed wool.
I have to say it looked very colourful with all the wool hung from it. I had borrowed a table from my friend Jayne, and this just fitted along the back wall of my stall, and I had decided to only take the fibre that I'd managed to repack and relabel with our new address.
I didn't stay over in Harrogate, but travelled both days as we are now only 50 miles from Harrogate and there was no one staying over that I knew.
Saturday was a manic day, I gave up putting the bags away that held my spare knitting wool as I was having to continually refill the carousel, and at one point 2 customers were busy rifling through the bags looking for some wool!!!!!
On Sunday, Tim was also with me, and the day started very quietly, but it did pickup by lunchtime. With Tim being here I was able to have a wonder around and I bought myself a new spinning wheel, a Schacht side kick, which is a lovely small travelling wheel. (I've still got my Lendrum, but she's about 20 years old and is starting to show her age), which arrived on Thursday and has been well tested.
Overall the weekend for me was a success and I will do this event again, next year, if it happens. Though I do know for one or two stallholders, it was not so profitable.

British Wool Weekend

happens this weekend at the Great Yorkshire Showground, and so over the last couple of weeks I've been busy dying wool and fibre, and to this end when the Hobbits were here a couple of weeks ago they helped me dye 3 kilos of knitting wool.

This is the result of their work, drying in the sun, on one of the few dry days we've had in August.
I've also dyed 1 1/5kgs of alpaca, again a request from one of my regular customers for some rainbow dyed alpaca, and some Teeswater fleece.
I've also been re-bagging my fibre with our new address, it's not all done but I hope to get it finished by the start of next year's fibre events, and I've also sent a booking form off for Stockton Sparkle, an event that is 4 days long at the beginning of December.
Once this weekend is over I'm hoping to spend the rest of September working on the garden, I really want to get my chickens here and start to get the veg area of my garden dug over, but the soil is so hard, like concrete, despite all the rain we've had, I know it is going to be a long, slow process getting the veg garden ready. But it will happen!!!!

Mogfest

This event was arranged in secret by Amber Moggy, for her husband, Mr Mog, to celebrate his 60th birthday, and I was one of the few stallholders asked to attend with specific instructions to bring my rainbow dyed alpaca tops, which, thanks to the house move, I'd not had time to dye some more, so I set about and dyed a couple of kilos last week in readiness for Sunday.
It was an early start in order to get to Ulveston in time to set up before Mr Mog arrived at 10am. He'd been told he was going to a craft fair, but when he parked his car in the car park, he recognised a couple of dogs in a car, and wondered why they were there and when he saw the Mogfest banner outside the hall, suspected something was up. He was pretty stunned when walked in and saw us all there, and I don't think he stopped smiling all day. His very own Fibre Festival with all his favourite stallholders.
Sometimes life is good.

And here is Mr Mog's birthday cake.
Happy Birthday Mr Mog and many more of them.

The Garden

Last weekend friends and family came to look at the house and garden, and as it rained we were able to fit all 21 people in our lounge! It was good to see everyone and now they have been, we can start and make the house and garden our own. We have discovered that the whole house needs rewiring, we knew the wiring wanted looking at but it is a bigger job than we thought. We await the electrician's quotes.We can now start working on the garden, which is approx 60ft wide and 80ft long .

Looking from the bottom of the garden back to the house and showing one of the circular boarders who's centre piece is a large magnolia. The boarder against the fence also has several large specimen shrubs, which we are not sure what we are going to do with them.

This part of the boarder is to be cleared of it's flowers and transformed into my veg plot. Against the trellis I'm hoping to plant a couple of espalier fruit trees.

The opposite boarder is to be cleared and this is where, hopefully, my hens will live

These large conifers are to be removed as they take up so much space and you can plant nothing near them.

There are, for some reason, 4 conifers, that have been cut small and square, just at the back of the house. These have now been cleared of their branches, we just have to dig out the roots and once that is done, these little boarders will be ideal for small herb gardens, being outsidethe kitchen door.

This is another view of the boarder where, once cleared my chickens will live, and it gives you an idea of how long the garden is. As you can see there is plenty of work to keep us out of mischief.

I have to get on with some dying next week as I'm off to a fibre event on Sunday. Hopefully more about this next week