Loose Lattice Lace Scarf

Loose Lattice Lace Scarf
Originally uploaded by Alpagalaine.

The stitch pattern comes from Volume Two of the Harmony Stitch Guides. I've been looking for a stitch that would be lacy but with a cushy, cozy feel which I think this has. The yarn, the blue alpaca, is going a very long way, but probably not enough for a sweater, I thought I would use some of it to make some Mrs Beeton's as well with some contrasting yarn for one of the ruffles.

Web rings and stuff

I was browsing the list of members in Angel Yarns knitting forum along with usernames any websites members have are mentioned. And, as you do,I do, spent over 2 hours wandering from one to another, then on a tangent to others and so on. There were some good ones, weird ones, there seemed to be several (+3) selling shaped cloth nappies???! Many blogs have buttons for web-rings and I keep coming across the "Spinning Wheel" list, and "UK Knitters", I've been thinking of joining the spinning wheel one, there are aparently 40 or so waiting. In UK knitters there are 221 'active members' in the ring, and 447 waiting to join! What the - no point in adding to the mess. Now I'm feeling quilty for saying that, maybe the owner isn't well. Maybe there is a limit?

One blog I read was written by a retired women born in the year of the Rat - so about my age! She had been on a trip to the southwest of England and said she had been keeping an eye out for Alpaca as 'they look so strange'!! I was going to send her a link to some pictures, but I lost the page and now can't find it again - as I'm writing this I remembered the 'history' panel and guess what - I found the blog here!

I'm also, sort of, thinking of starting a new blog in Wordpress just related to moving back to the UK, but, that would be silly wouldn't it? I have enough trouble with Blogger I don't need more. I did play around with my old site yesterday though, the navigation isn't intuitive to me but you can save your post as you go along WITHOUT BEING SENT BACK TO THE MAIN POST PAGE EACH TIME!!! I have learnt to my cost to save regularly with Bummer but it does my head in to have to open the post up again to continue where I left off. I know it's only a few seconds and a couple of clicks but I don't want it! The main irritation I had with Wordpress was how dreadfully slow the site was, and it sometimes froze altogther but it was fine yesterday.

My only reluctance to join a web-ring is I'll feel I ought to post more about spinning or knitting or I might get booted off! I don't want to just talk about the latest pair of socks I've knitted - tell me just how many times you read a blog and there's YET another pair of stripy socks LOL!

Yard Work

The first to arrive was a JCB (digger)at 08.00 who began very noisily scraping the surface to level it.



Around 08.30 more Frenchmen and their equipment arrived and one rolled the exposed surface while the digger put the rubbish in a pile. When the first lorryload of stone arrived and was dumped it took the unwanted material away.


As the stone arrived it was spread by the JCB and rolled, it took 5 lorry loads for the yard alone.





A small plate compactor was used for the edges. It took 2 full days to do the yard and drive and, it still needs to have a layer of grey gravel put on top but now it's the weekend they've disappeared, I hope they haven't forgotten.

I can't get used to this great expanse of greyness outside, I will definitely have to have several planters with flowers along the edge to soften it. We kept the chickens shut in while the work was on, they don't seem at all impressed, one of their favourite foraging areas has gone. They wouldn't even walk on it when they first came out but flew right across!

We are getting our yard and drive re-surfaced today!

Outside of our house is a large yard and our drive to the road about 200 yards, both are just stone and gravel. I suppose due to the lorries that have delivered our sand, cement, blocks; the oil tanker etc etc the surface is full of dips and bumps. It is also muddy, and weedy even though I pull them up and sometimes spray they always come back. We got a devis (quote) back in the autumn for having it done, fell over when we read it and shelved the idea. However, during this very wet winter we have become very fed up with it and think the whole place would look more cared for, and therefore a little easier to sell, if the yard and drive were re-surfaced. So, we visited the bank manager and got a loan! We were told that work would start around mid-february but got a call yesterday and they will be here this morning. There a little snow lying around and maybe the firm have been delayed on one of their larger jobs and thought they would just fit us in, it should be just 2 days work. Woopee! Photo's to follow!

Getting Healthy

I need to lose a few pounds. Nineteen to be exact - (crikey, in my mind it was a stone and a bit...) I was reading Crazy Aunt Pearl and she wrote a long post about losing weight, the pressure to be thin, men, using being fat as an excuse etc etc. It obviously resonated with lots and lots of people judging by all of the comments she received, 300 and counting. Buried amongst the comments was a link to Real Age and I'm two years younger! You get a personalised health plan based on the answers you give to some quite extensive questionnaires. If I follow my plan I will be 4 and half years younger in 3 months! How long before I hit 21 again LOL!

But to be fair to the site, it doesn't make false promises, the improvement tails off dramatically - 5 and half years younger in 3. Generally everything was based on the latest, researched evidence - and it's free!

So, although I am reasonably active most of the year, I tend to do little during the winter, hence a 8 lb rise since October. I'm going to lose this flab once and for all this year! My biggest problem is self-sabotage. I get to within a few lbs of goal and suddenly start eating for England. Go figure.

The plan: Move more, eat sensibly, cut out booze almost completely, do a 20 minute strength and flexibility workout EVERY DAY. I will now go off and produce a graph to monitor my progress in Excel.

Do not play with fibre when it’s wet, do not play with fibre when it’s

Sandie's fibre, dyed sea green.
Originally uploaded by Alpagalaine.

I don’t learn not to leave fibre/yarn alone when it’s wet. I was dying my 800+ yards of Sandies fibre which has taken me hours to process and spin up; I’d soaked the 3 skeins in glaubers salt solution overnight in preparation for dying it this morning. I began thinking I would use a pale shade of turquoise and perhaps some very small amounts of yellow and maybe darker blue – perhaps scatter dye powder on the wet skeins and steam? In the end I chickened out and went for one shade. I used a very small amount of my stock solution of turquoise – probably no more than 30 mls for the 750 odd grms of yarn. Brought it up to simmer over 2 hours, I was very careful to keep it just at the point a few bubbles were breaking the surface, and after about 30 minutes all the dye had discharged, I just loved the colour – the dye had taken very evenly! I was so pleased! I had taken so much care and it had paid off.

I was going to leave the skeins in the pot until it had cooled right down but became impatient and took them out and spun them dry. Then realised I hadn’t rinsed them! The skeins were fine at that stage, yarn separating easily. I washed them in the sink with some wool wash, there was a lot of lather….I SQUISHED THEM TOO MUCH!! All I noticed was they felt a little harder after I’d finally rinsed the suds away, ‘umm, I thought, dying not agreeing with this’, spun them again, when I took them out of the machine the second time aaaarrrggggghhhhhhhh! All the yarn was stuck together. I started to pull it apart, and it did separate, slowly and with much tearing of tiny fibres and pulling the ply’s apart. I worked and worked around all 3 skeins, one was particularly bad, must have got most of the squishing..

I thought I’d better separate all the strands before it dried in case they became totally impossible to separate, so I wound each one from the swift into a ball winder, then wound it back onto the swift. So now I have some lovely fuzzy yarn! Not once did it break, alpaca is so strong.

I’m still not sure what to do with it, I fancy “Symmetry in Silk” from The Best of Knitters’ Magazines ‘Shawls and Scarves’. I also think it would weave up very well, but I am reluctant to do it until I’ve had more practice warping. And, perhaps, it would work better if the yarn was fuzzed up after I’d woven it and not before!

Hedgehog!

E found this little chap/chapess wandering around the cellar as he was having a tidy-up down there. It's been very mild (but very wet) this winter so far and this one obviously has come out of hibernation.

This was his nest, he has been made a new one in a cardboard box stuffed with hay and tucked away in the corner of the barn away from the dog. They are so sweet!

Better news

Betty goat seems to have recovered thank God. She's acting normally again, appears to be able to see and is generally almost her old self. I've absolutely no idea what might have caused the strange behaviour - perhaps a 'blinding' sinus headache?!

The photo was taken a few weeks ago when it hadn't been raining solidly for a month - well, that's what it feels like. I tried to post this last week but Blogger was acting up, it seems to be fixed for the second.

I have been preparing some of Sandie's fleece. She is classed a fawn but looks white, when you spin her fleece though it looks very off white, almost grey. I'm going to rainbow dye it when it's all plyed, not totally multi coloured, I love cornflower blue, maybe with other touches of yellow and green. It's likely to be very much down to luck what it actually turns out like. I don't have any sort of structure or plan when it comes to dying. So I am trying to be a bit more focused and I have some water colours which should help me with the colour and shade selection. A lot of my dying has been done using full strength solutions and I didn't appreciate that weaker ones can produce some really pretty colours. That's the plan anyway.

I will have less than 600 mtrs of fine 2 ply, shall I make a Clapotis? Will I wear it? It might not be enough. I really ought to get out another bag, sort, wash, card, spin, and ply that. BUT I WANT SOMETHING TO DO NOW!!!! When you have bags and bags of alpaca fleece you really can't go and buy yarn, sob.

Enough already!

Okay, 3rd visit to the vets with Betty (and George, I'll come to that later). On Sunday Betty was acting strangely, she would stare into the distance, and stand still for some time, this is not normal for a goat! She would walk the perimeter fence of the enclosure with her head slightly turned to the left. She would eat hay and treats, but her left horn felt very warm, the same side as her bad eye. The eye is almost healed, but the pupil slightly enlarged. I didn't think this warrented a call out unless things deteriorated which they didn't so off to the vet yesterday. He wasn't sure what was going on, her temperature was barely above normal and confirmed the ulcer on the eye was healing well. He explained there is a sinus immediately below the horn and perhaps there was a slight infection there? He did give her antibiotic and anti-inflamatory injections. We didn't ask a direct question, about her eyesight, but I think she has. But, in a way that doesn't explain the weird staring and pacing the fence and standing in a corner because at the begining when her eye was at it's worse it was almost completely clouded over - she wouldn't have been able to see out of it, and she behaved quite normally. It's a "wait and see" situation. She is still very interested in tit-bits and hay, but, I think her general browsing and grazing is much less. I've kept her and some companions restricted to the veg garden (nothing in it this time of the year, well, nothing now) which is next to the goat house as it makes it easier to catch regularly for treatment, but this morning I think I will let her into the proper enclosure and see if she is more inclined to eat then. We need some warm sunny days, goats hate this wet, cold weather.

We also took George to the vet as he has had a runny nose for ages and his left eye also shows a slight infection, he was given a long acting antibiotic injection and that was it, no drops, hooray!

I'm feeling very stressed, very short tempered and irritable, and this is the second night I've woken at 02.47, and not gone back to sleep. I dream of lying by a pool in the sun, and no housework!

Computer Crash

Had serious problem with windows yesterday and had to reformat the hard drive so the next few days will be spent re-loading programes. I suppose I can just sit here, knit, and hit 'restart' all day! It all started when I did a system restore and then lost the help/support function and everything was going wobbly, not visually, but odd stuff was happening so the tech support just said 'wipe', so I did. It's just such a time waster.

Goat's eyes are so so. I can still see a very small lesion on Betty's, and George's were mucky so he's having ointment. We have to Betty back to the vets for them to check it on Tuesday and we will take George as well has he seems to have a continuously runny nose - like for months. It's clear but makes his nostrils a bit crusty. I think they need a supplement but I'm not sure what to give them. I've read of a seaweed based one being good, and there are others I can get from the UK.

I spoke to soon

Betty goat's eye still isn't better a week after the new ointment so we took her back to the vets and we now have some drops to be instilled at least 4 times a day. I wanted to post a picture but blogger is mucking about and won't let me.

First proper week of 2007

One week of 2007 completed! It's the dull, damp, slog of mid-winter to get through until spring. The weather has been mild (5c- 10c) recently which of course means rain, mist and mud, yesterday it actually reached 11c! Last winter we had snow mid November and the temperature didn't get above 5c for 16 weeks, I know, I counted. I know lots of people in the northern hemisphere have temperatures much colder than this, but because in some climes it's unusual, our houses, clothes etc are not set up for it, so we, no, I am uncomfortable. We have central heating and double glazed windows, but we keep the CH on for background heat and run two woodburning stoves during the day, but they are difficult to control and won't stay in overnight. In France they don't know how to make decent woodburning stoves, they are very inefficient compared to Scandinavian ones and even some British makes. The other thing that's not helping me is - hormones. I don't take HRT and recently I've found my hot/damp sensations are increasing, they don't really 'affect my quality of life' so I will put up with them, I'd rather not take anything. Maybe I should look for some herbal remedies?

Update on goat's eyes. Betty's eye just wouldn't completely recover so we took her to the vet's again on Wednesday and had a different ointment for her and this seems to be doing the trick, finger's crossed.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all! May 2007 be your best year yet, and you and your loved ones keep safe, happy and healthy.

(((((hugs))))