Boring, but a little news!

Heck, it has been nearly two weeks since my last post! Where has the time gone? I have been busy but with nothing really interesting. I even checked my camera and there aren't really any interesting photos on - not for on here, anyway!


We now have the new pellet fire installed. Hmm...not as warm as I would have liked for this house. Because of how we got it (a trade-off with a new business in the area) we had no say in the model. The business, understandably, had a budget and were offering the lowest-cost option not the best-for-your-house we were lead to believe it would be. The living areas are still warm (or are when we manage to set the thing right) but it isn't warm enough to open the door to take the chill off the rest of the house like our old wood burner was.


Perhaps if we were to run it a lot higher it would be warmer but at $8.50 a 20kg bag of pellets we are wary of it costing too much. We used to be able to get the wood for free, just paying for fuel and upkeep on the chainsaw and transportation of the wood to home. But D's back is a lot worse this year than it ever has (and it hasn't been good for 20+ years!) and I'm not sure how much longer he would have been able to carry on cutting the firewood. So this seemed like it would be a good idea. Next time I have a good idea, someone shoot me. Please. (Well, not really, but you know what I mean!)


I also feel very let down in that I thought the trade-off was to reduce pollution in the area. I thought that we would be doing our little bit for the environment. Now I find that the business will actually be burning coal! The pollution they are trying to offset is from this, not from the production of their product. I feel cheated. Very cheated.

Apart from that there has been a little fibery goodness going on in chez Rose-Lea! I have almost finished a WIP I started, and abandoned, almost 2 years ago. Just a little thing. There may be pictures when it is properly completed. The socks have made a little progress, too. Almost to the toes. I'm not sure why I am not enjoying this pair. I much more enjoyed working on the plain-vanilla ones! Perhaps because I could knit on them while I was on the computer. Patterns are just that much more difficult to work on in tiny increments.


I have also done a little spinning this week - one and a half bobbins (why can I never type bobbins successfully on the first go?) of some multi-coloured sliver I bought a couple of years ago. Quite pretty in blues, greens and mauves. They are two space-dyed slivers (500gm each), one darker than the other, which I will ply together. (Aha, I remembered I had photographed the lighter one a while back with my new spindle, so you can see one of them!) Two bobbins down and ?? to go.



Ok, yes I know it was a pitiful post but some things are better left unsaid and others will have to wait for the right time to say them!

I did it! I did it!

Yes! I finished the Oslo-Cairo hat in time for the Open Day! I am quite pleased with it even though it is a little smaller than an adult-size. I wasn't surprised, though, as I had spun the yarn fairly fine. Not intentionally, but it just seems to be the way I spin these days. Somethink I must work on as I need to be able to spin to task not have to alter the task to suit the spinning!

But isn't it pretty? Not a very good photo of it but I don't have a head I can put it on. The two colours (not quite the red my monitor shows but more of a dark, dull orange) look quite good together, I think. I don't recall ever having knitted with two colours on a set of five dpns before, so that was a first. Hopefully a last too! I much prefer two circs but I didn't have any the right size and I was too stingy to go out and buy some!

At left you can see the crown of the hat with the four decrease points. Looks rather effective, I think. I have never made a hat like this before. I have only decreased evenly around the whole crown on other hats I have made, so this was another first. One that I will definitely repeat sometime in the future.

On the right you should be able to see the two stylised animals (alpaca? deer?) facing away from each other with a tree between them.

The Spinners and Weavers Open Day went quite well, too. We had two speakers - Stuart Albrey on his journey into fibre and Pauline Jones on making pergamano cards. They were both well received. Stuart brought along several examples of of fibre including a beautiful roll of carded and gilled moorit 16 micron merino. This was worth $600 per kilo! Lovely stuff he called the "Rolls Royce" of spinning fibre. And no, I didn't buy any!

The table with the articles our members have made from the Dartmoor dyed fleece attracted a lot of interest. The photo shows just a few of the items on display. We have some very creative and talented ladies in the group!

Shirley Goodwin was also at the Open Day demonstrating handpainting yarns with the Tillia Dyes (Prochem) which she sells. This was a very popular table which was always surrounded by interested ladies. The colours of these dyes were really rather nice and when I need some new dyes I do believe I will buy some from Shirley.

This week looks like it will be no less busy for me as the builder will be here at 8am tomorrow to finish preparing for the new pellet fire, which is due to go in on Wednesday morning. Having taken out the old log burner this morning, the next couple of nights may be rather cooler than we have been used to recently. I am hoping that our recent reasonably warm (for this time of year) temperatures carry on a little longer!