Hi all,

Still alive. Actually, I'm doing well compared to last time we chatted.

Thanks to everyone who sent their well wishes my way lately. Dad just installed the internet in my room. It's a really long cable that goes all the way from the router, through the walls, under the floor and up into my room. This may or may not lead to regular blogging. I'm not going to put that pressure on myself just yet. I have the most ridiculous amount of catching up to do with paperwork and such like that.

(yes, I copy/pasted that from my other blog. It just means that I thought it important enough to say twice)

I have a favour to ask. I have a friend coming to stay with us for Christmas. She's lovely and from Japan. I want to make it a very Western Christmas, but I have two problems which you can help me solve. First. I've never had an ideal Christmas. Holidays are just not something we do in our house. Sure, we have feasts and get together and exchange presents. We don't need much excuse for that. But we don't decorate or stuff like that. Second. Well, there are financial limitations which mean that I cannot go in for the kind of holidays that the TV adds tell me I should. I want to have a home made Christmas. I need advice as to how to do this. I'm knitting stockings for us all and have a grand fir marked out for cutting down on Christmas eve. I've ordered the ham. I've made mincemeat that I can eat (and it's so yummy!), but I haven't found a plumb pudding recipe that I can modify successfully yet.

What I would like to know is what else can I do for Christmas? How can I decorate the tree without buying anything comercial? I was going to string popcorn. What else can I do with the tree? For that matter, how do I stop the tree from drying out and dropping all the needles? I want to keep it up for the twelve nights. What do you do for Christmas/winter holidays?

Hi all,

Still alive. Actually, I'm doing well compared to last time we chatted.

Thanks to everyone who sent their well wishes my way lately. Dad just installed the internet in my room. It's a really long cable that goes all the way from the router, through the walls, under the floor and up into my room. This may or may not lead to regular blogging. I'm not going to put that pressure on myself just yet. I have the most ridiculous amount of catching up to do with paperwork and such like that.

Tour de yarn

The Tour de France is in it's last 30km as I speak. I woke up early to watch it live.

As for my tour de fleece challenge, yes, I managed to spin every day of the tour.

I spun two skeins of cat fir blended with silk,

a whole bunch of Suffolk wool,

and about half of a secret project I'm spinning lace weight for a gift.

Considering I'm hand carding these as I go along and I don't have all that much experience spinning strange new fibres like cat, I think I did more than I could have hoped. Some days I only managed ten minutes of spinning, other days, an hour or two.

do chickens climb apple trees?

Yes they do.

This is the chicken known as Other Speckled Fool. Do you see him?

He's about ten feet up the apple tree.

Isn't he photogenic?

Le tour

The first few days of the Tour de Fleece I have woken up as early as I could to watch the race live. It often ended up being earlier than I had planed as the chickens wake up at or around 4am. This involves a great amount of cock-a-doodle-doo and cock-cock-a-do. 'Though for some reason they let me sleep in this morning.

My challenge for the Tour de Fleece is to spin up some cat fir. A friend dropped off about half a pound of cat fir (bag one of four) for me to spin. To spin this soft fibre I first have to tease it apart, then charge the carders with Bombyx silk and fir. Even being very careful at this stage, there are still all sorts of slubs but they even out fairly well when I ply. I have to spin this very slowly else it all gets away from me. My hope is that by the end of the race I'll be able to spin this up almost as well as I can spin wool.

So I've been spinning and carding, and carding and spinning the last few mornings while I watch the tail end of Le Tour de France. Finally yesterday I finished my first skein.

It makes me happy.

Perhaps

Goodness me, I posted on my blog. Does this mean I'm back? Perhaps.

I've been bumming around Raverly the last few weeks as it's been too hot out during the day. I've joined the Tour de Fleece again this year. Let's hope it's with better results than last year. During the Tour de France, we set ourselves a spinning goal. Mine is to spin up some cat fir that I've been commissioned to spin. It's quite the challenge. We spin every day that the Tour rides, a challenge in and of itself for most spinners, and if we are successful there are possible prizes. I'm part of Team Van Isle which is for people who live on the west coast of BC, in and around Vancouver island, and/or really like the place.

In other yarn news, I'm not certain I like the way that my yarn relaxed and looked so uneven when dyed; as you can see from yesterday's photo. I counted treadles and thought I had gotten the twist quite even, but obviously not. I wonder how I can improve.

Dye

I've been haveing fun with yarn:

This is from madder useing different mordants and assists on some hand spun suffolk wool. From left to right; Rhubarb, Copper, Alum and iron, and Alum.

M.I.A.

I know I haven't been around the blog much. I'm just going through a rather rough patch just now, what with my health and everything, and I don't really want to talk about it.

I feel confident that I'll be back to blogging once things settle down in a few months.

So long 'till then,
Truly Trampled