Fleece and an almost wordless Wednesday…

I’ve tried to do wordless Wednesday posts before, but I don’t seem to be able to shut up. Strange that. But despite the weather (hailstorms and thunder at the weekend; not that much better since) shearing time is almost come upon us, and this is a sort-of-wordless post celebrating the fact that I do love fleece:

This originally belonged to a Texel cross from a nearby farm – and I do love fleece but…

Normally I get absurdly excited, though not quite to the point of suggesting that shearing feasts be reinstated. But this year I’m a bit flat, partly due to the ongoing health problems (good news: neurologist reckons it’s nothing neurologically serious and that the nerve fibres are not badly damaged; bad news: am still waiting for MRI scan without which we can do nothing and have to come off the painkillers in the meanwhile, ouch, my head), and partly due to the fact that I’m just not that good at fleece wrangling.

(A BFL cross from the same farm.)

Part of me enjoys it, and I certainly manage to make a terrible mess especially when Next Door’s Cat is also involved, which is always. But part of me – the rational part that is not soaking wet and reeking of wet wool – knows that I’m not much cop at it.

I can start with a beautiful fleece, albeit one which is liberally surrounded by a sheep-shitty skirt and decorated with raddle, and manage to reduce it to something that is not entirely – er – useable. Maybe 75% of it is, eventually, on a good day; maybe 50%, maybe less. Not good, though a much more experienced spinner than me once confessed that as she got older and more experienced she threw more and more of a fleece away. That’s because she’s discriminating, not because she’s rubbush at dealing with raw fleece, though.

(More Texel cross)

My new negativity (aka realism) is a shame, because I love the whole idea of controlling the means of production and having absurdly low wool miles to my knitting. But the steaming mounds of wet fleece everywhere, the buckets of mankyness consigned to the compost, the chaos for a whole day, the whole business of carding, etc, without adding lots of unintentional noils by over-processing? Nah. You can buy some lovely roving, quite reasonably, and without becoming over-acquainted with how well gorse spines can hide when the fleece’s original owner has been raised on the hill, foraging under bushes.

Plus, of course, I have got five washed fleeces ready for processing, plus one already processed… and that does make giving into sentiment much less likely. And the money I save on wool I can spend on plants. Though I do have one coloured fleece reserved since last year. It’s been growing up… oh dear.

And a postscript: my reserved fleece (oh, OK, its owner) was unfortunately one of the winter casualties. Sad – he was a ram lamb and had a lovely coloured fleece which he would have passed on when he worked his way up to being the Big Man – but also not so sad: it gets me off the hook. After all, I do HAVE ENOUGH FLEECE…

On not going to Wonderwool

Last weekend was Wonderwool Wales and this year, after much internal (and external – sorry, everyone) debate, I didn’t go. Probably just as well, as I wasn’t too well, but – sigh… I’ve been a lot, and I do love WW:

with one exception, which was last year. Ergh. Yes, I love it – when it’s good, when I don’t freeze despite wearing 85 wooly layers and when I can get an espresso when I need one, which means frequently. And of course memory is selective, which is why I spent some time deliberately reminding myself of the downside to WW.

The Saturday was the bad day for us Wonderwool refusniks, though – as one of my otherwise-occupied friends pointed out – we were saving a lot of money by not being there. But I was feeling OKish, the weather was glorious and the financial advantages of WW avoidance didn’t seem quite so important. In fact, it was just perfect for sitting outside the halls, going through purchases with friends while nibbling lightly on one of Love Patisserie’s delicious treacle tarts. And I was missing out on the best Scotch eggs in the world, let alone all that fibre.

So I took myself off for a consoling walk – along the seafront at Barmouth, which I don’t usually visit for walking, just for shopping – and realised it wasn’t quite warm enough. Brrr. Coooold wind. That made me feel a little less nostaligic (is that the right word?) for what I imagined was happening down at Builth Wells.

I thought I would capitalise on that feeling and got out my stash when I came home, spreading fluff out,

(which gave me the opportunity of updating the mothball situation), sorting through the containers and even delving to the bottom of the Laundry Basket of Doom, which is below the bottom basket:

I really do not need to add anything whatsoever to the stash, nor to the library, nor to the collection of woolly miscellanea: no need for more needles, more stitch holders, more bits and pieces. No need, really, for anything.

That made me feel a bit better too, and then I remembered that this weekend there was a plant fair at Crug Farm Plants, and I could always indulge myself there if I wanted a little specialist retail therapy (Barmouth Co-op doesn’t qualify) – and I can still garden, a bit, even if I can’t look down for long enough to knit and follow a pattern. I’ve been improvising with a music stand, but I still have to look at my knitting from time to time; I can’t do it all by touch. On the other hand, I can look down for long enough to read a plant label, trowel a hole and pop something in to a flowerbed.

And then my friends returned, singing the praises of staying overnight and doing both days (avoids, apparently, the last-minute panic that makes you buy a cone of something which, though lovely, is nonetheless in a colour which makes you look like a corpse). They brought me goodies: some buttons shaped like sheep and some like balls of wool, a porcupine quill for carefully detaching fluff from a carder. I really wish I’d gone.

Or do I?

This was the result of the plant fair. They’re not all mine, I swear it, but if I’d Wonderwooled, I’d have felt guilty. And, as I say, I can at least garden… wonder what all the other WW avoiders did? Mope, like me, for a day? Or cheer up and spend packets on plants?

Ten guilty pleasures, part the second

Still waiting for specialist’s appointment, so time to fit in a few more guilty pleasures between painkillers and bouts of feeling dizzy. What do we want? Neck transplants! When do we want them? Now!

Of course, feeling like crap warmed up doesn’t stop me indulging in pleasure number 6. It should, but it doesn’t. It has stopped me going to Wonderwool Wales next weekend – though in fairness, other factors have been involved there. So why shouldn’t I go for GP6? Hm?

6. Buying yet more yarn.

I know, I can’t knit much. I know, I’ve got plenty in my stash. I know that I shouldn’t. But – and I’m not making excuses here, honestly – I needed another ball or two of silk/mohair to make a scarf from my latest pattern book purchase. I was given a multicoloured ball, partly unwound, and added the orange; the blue and red come from the stash. So I am using stash as well. Or I would be if I wasn’t emitting so much static at the moment that actually using a yarn as flighty and floaty as Kidsilk Haze is almost impossible. So why am I justifying myself? Well, possibly because of this:

Noro Kureyon Sock. Bought to knit another shawl from the recent purchase because I was emitting so much static etc, etc, etc…

I decided I wanted to move out of my colour comfort zone a bit. Blues, jades, purples: not my usual choices. But very cheerful to those awaiting neck transplants and/or results of MRI scans so they can safely get on with flipping physiotherapy / osteopathy and stop the room whirling or their heads exploding.

Enough already. I think I need another pleasure. Ah, yes.

7. Sweets.

I know I’m not alone in this. Books have been written confessing to a passion for sweets; programmes have been devoted to them, on both TV and radio. Traditional local sweets have been tracked down and saved from oblivion. The Scottish boiled sweet tradition (Hawick balls, anyone?) has been celebrated. But my current weakness is Fruitella:

Nostalgia is a major factor. From milk bottles (never liked those) to soor plums, from cherry lips to Black Jacks which turned your tongue deep purple, from flying saucers to sherbet fountains – you could blow sherbet at your friends through the liquorice stick – the sweets bought on the way home from school have a special resonance for years. Haribo sours? Yum. But you do have to be careful. It’s not just a question of what you like, or it isn’t for me. Many of the chewy, fruity sweets for which I have such a weakness involve gelatine. And I don’t particularly want to be eating pork or beef gelatine in my gummy bears. And yes, I do limit myself!

8. The Wicked Lady.

Not the dire Michael Winner (ye gods!) remake, but the 1945 original with James Mason and Margaret Lockwood (I keep confusing her with Margaret Rutherford for some reason, which conjures up a whole different vision, eek). I love this movie, possibly because James Mason is fantastic as the splendid highwayman Captain Jerry Jackson, or maybe because I seem to have developed a bit of a problem with actors named James: see point 5 of the previous post. There isn’t a wrong note in this bravura 1940s tale of Restoration Britain and of bold, bad Lady Barbara who inveigles her way into marriage with a rural nobleman and then takes to highway robbery and James Mason to assuage her boredom.

The acting is great if verging towards high camp at times; the sets are wonderful – the frost fair defined my conception of Restoration London for years – and the costumes are frequently amazing. In fact, extensive reshooting was required for the US release as there was trouble with the censors over the decolletages. They are accurate to the period, and even understated if you check out the portraits of the ladies of Charles II’s court, but were far too low for 1945 America. I’m just amazed that Margaret Lockwood stayed in her bodices. Glue. Sellotape?

The Wicked Lady was also quite bold in other ways – Barbara’s venality and cynicism, her ennui, her quite obvious use of sexuality and power, her (shock, horror) extra-marital affair with Jackson, depicted without real moral judgement – quite dreadful. And it was the most popular film with British cinema audiences in 1946.

Plus, of course, it has James Mason in it as a highwayman. I mean, purleease. That voice. The Alan Rickman of his time.

9. Lippy.

I suppose this ought to come here, because one of the most remarkable things for me about the portrayal of seventeenth-century Britain in The Wicked Lady is the perfect 1940s Hollywood makeup of Barbara the Bad (maybe it’s one of the ways you can tell she is bad – her lipstick).

In the 1990s, Philippe Delerm published a little book which everyone in France was reading – La  premiere gorgée de biere et autres plaisirs miniscules – about the small pleasures of his life: reading on the beach, Sunday evenings, the ‘trottoir roulant’ at Montparnasse station. Well, lippy is one of mine. It’s a specifically guilty pleasure because I’ve spent far too long searching for the perfect red. You know, the one that’s just right, that makes you look and feel great.

Then I found it.

Then Lancome discontinued it.

And if anyone out there has Lancome’s Rouge Cubiste sitting around, unused but useable, do let me know. In the meantime, I’m still hunting. Your skin tone doesn’t stay the same for ever, and there’s no guarantee it would still suit me…

10. Magazines.

It’s Saturday, I’m in town early, I’ve done some shopping and I fancy a coffee.

So I buy a magazine to read with my drink. I’m careful; I like to scan them first just to make sure there’s something I find interesting (I have managed to wean myself off the glossies and the home style mags, except in France where I buy the house beautiful ones like no tomorrow). Then I take my mag to the coffee shop, settle down – and discover that, oh, about 75% is devoted to ads. The worst offender is Garden Bloody Illustrated but I still can’t resist it when I flick through, and the best is British Archaeology, though that’s off the hook because it’s specialist. But I don’t seem to be able to stop buying GBI. They could help me, though – they could wrap it in plastic, because I don’t – er, by and large – buy anything I have to rip my way into before I discover it’s full of ads.

So that’s my ten guilty pleasures. I’m sure I can come up with many more, but possibly after my neck transplant…

Ten guilty pleasures – well, the first five…

I have a sore head. I have damaged my cervical spine (well, did it 18 months ago or maybe even longer ago than that, but it was masked by other things and has chosen now to manifest itself, thanks a bunch, vertebrae) and am beset with headaches and drugs that either don’t work or don’t suit me. Waiting for specialist’s appointment or possibly Dr House. Can’t bend my head. Need something to cheer me up. This got me thinking…

Now, we all have things we love which are either silly, stupid or downright embarrassing and, no, I am not confessing to a deep love of Maggie Thatcher, boy bands or Vesta curry with sultanas in it. But they are also things which comfort us, which make us feel better when we need to snuggle up on the sofa with a blankie and a cup of tea. Things which are, basically, life-enhancing, and boy do I need my life enhancing at the moment. So I’m confessing. It’s good for the soul (allegedly). And a couple of them are even woolly, but there are more than enough for two posts. So here are my first five.

1. Buying more knitting patterns and/or books than anyone could reasonably need or, indeed, fit on their bookcase.

This is my latest addition, and it’s excellent. Yes, there are patterns that I would need a head transplant to contemplate (possibly on the cards at the moment), but there are also some which are yummy and have gone straight on the to-do list. The list which is 85,743,000 miles long, OK? My WIPS (works in progress, for anyone unfamiliar with knitting-addict jargon) are still in single figures, so I may cast something on. When I can bend my head, that is.

2. Comic books.

I love them. This is possibly genetic; they’re an art form in France and there are festivals devoted to bandes dessinées all over the Francophone world. I grew up with Asterix – Breton, freedom fighter, what’s not to like? – but was not allowed Tintin. Dodgy political attitudes, both in the books (Tintin au Congo – eek) and in the author’s past. But who needs boy reporters when you’ve got a whole village-full of stroppy Celts,

some of whom live on your kitchen windowsill?

I have an equal addiction to some of the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ masters and mistresses of the genre too. Comic strips aren’t that far removed, and I love Peanuts. Posy Simmonds’ work is closer to the froggie tradition and her Tamara Drewe, Gemma Bovary and, for kids as well, the wonderful Fred are masterpieces. I used to be into more conventional comic books but they have fallen by the wayside now. Why, I’m not sure, but give me Gemma Bovary and Asterix any day over Watchmen and superheroes, however dark.

3. Oh, this is really embarrassing. 1950s war films.

Preferably featuring John Mills, possibly in a vest. For anyone who doesn’t know the work of John Mills, this is nothing like Bruce Willis in a vest; apart from the vest, which will be dirty, they could not be further apart. But I am discriminating in this choice; there are a lot of terrible 50s war films which do not bear rewatching, and there are the 1960 and 70s variants which are often in colour (no thank you), are much less nuanced, and make no concessions to the fact that they are supposed to be set in the 1940s. I’m thinking Susanna Yorke in Battle of Britain, for example, or Ian McShane – nooooo – in the same film. Wrong. Just wrong.

No, lips have to be stiff, the acting might be even stiffer, women are largely absent or silent, and Kenneth More is somewhere in there, possibly in naval uniform. If anyone puts their sherry down on a mantelpiece half-drunk you know they’re not coming back. Similarly, show your mate a shot of your sweetheart and you will be the next one to get it. Own a labrador? Give it away before you take off; it will save time and trouble for the people who have to sort out your effects. And never, ever, send your uniform off for cleaning, because that is completely fatal.

4. Sigh. Nail Varnish.

Paradoxically, I don’t often paint my nails – except in summer, that is, when I do my toenails. When we have summer, that is. But I inherited from my mother a deep love of nail varnish. She, however, was satisfied with always wearing almost the same colour, or clear. I am not.

What I do have, irritatingly, is an ability to buy the same shade and not realise I already have it. To which end I did, at one stage, take to carrying around a little card with coloured splodges on it. It didn’t make much difference; I still bought 37 variations on a theme of brown. Brownish. I have now put a ban  on all further purchases and, above all, there is to be no revisiting of the almost-black shades of red. Not even if they are by Chanel.

5. Ah, yes. James Spader in Boston Legal.

To anyone (female) who has seen this series, this choice will not seem unusual. Guilty, possibly; unusual, noooo. To any woman who has not seen it, get it. To any blokes, just leave the room, OK? Particularly during the extraordinary closing speeches. Amazing.

A male friend of mine just didn’t get it. ‘He’s fat,’ he objected, ‘and he looks sort of seedy…’. Indeed. That’s kind of the point, dur. Seedy, sexy in a bad way (interpret that as you will), brilliant, intellectual, principled, and did I mention sexy? But Boston Legal isn’t just about James Spader. It’s also got William Shatner and Candice Bergen and more great acting than you can shake a stick at, and more wonderful actors too. It plays with the genre; it’s bright, ironic, sharp, funny, moving, sassy… Yes, parts are dated or were all-too obviously separated by ad breaks in the original. But the whole is far greater than the sum of its parts. Just perfect for a sore neck.

So, before I embarrass myself further in part 2, what are your guilty pleasures?

Find the Easter criminal…

I knew I couldn’t keep sheep out of this for long. You can’t keep them out of anywhere for very long.

Some friends of mine were away for a few days, down in the exciting metropolis of Cardiff. When they got back, the gate was open and they had a marked lack of crocuses where there had once been crocuses. However, the culprits had left clues behind them:

No sign of the owner of the fluff in the rest of the garden. No hoofprints either, but they’re a little redundant when you’ve left traces of your, er, clothing everywhere. No culprits along the lane, or just off it.

I suppose they could have nipped in, noshed the crocuses and nipped out a couple of days earlier, but the clues were quite fresh – and, for any spinners out there, the one in the photo above was really soft but with a suspiciously short staple length. It was also quite close to the ground, meaning its owner was probably quite small, but being trained in bad habits by the taller one. So we went hunting.

Some suspects simply hoofed it,

while others relied on being unbearably cute and seasonal and radiating innocence:

though I’m not entirely convinced by the slightly sly look of the lamb at the back; I have a feeling it knows more than it’s letting on. Like how to open gates, perhaps? (Though the gate in question could probably be opened by being leant on and – in all fairness – it’s a little like the Siegfried Line and the Nazis: you can just go round it if you want.)

Some were showing early promise in the wall-climbing and escapology stakes,

but that is not enough to convict.

This, on the other hand, probably is:

There’s a gate that clearly needs a fencepost hanging from the bottom.

This post is something of an antidote to all the footage of the appalling conditions and dire consequences facing hill farmers elsewhere in Wales (and other parts of Britain) as we have one of the coldest springs in years. We’re lucky here, close to the western coast; crocuses or no crocuses, the lambs are, by and large, fine, as are their mums. The in-lamb ewes are fine, too; no snowdrifts with us. Unfortunately it’s not the same elsewhere.

And thanks to everyone whose comments after my last post encouraged me to go for it…

Wither Woolwinding?

Bear with me, if you don’t mind…

I’ve been thinking a lot about Woolwinding; it feels a little as though it’s lost its focus – or perhaps it’s me that’s lost my focus, or maybe I’m out of kilter with the focus the blog has developed all by itself. Maybe it’s got the two-year twitch. When I started Woolwinding, I didn’t want it to be another knitting blog (among many) packed with projects – for one thing, I couldn’t knit very much due to injury. I wanted to explore some of my specific interests such as colour, history, archaeology – and all though the filter of textiles. I wanted to celebrate working with fibre, and I still do.

But now I want to do a bit more than that. Yes, I want to claw it back from the ‘look what I’ve knitted’ territory it sometimes seems to be straining towards, but I also want to broaden it in other ways. Due to formative journalistic training – don’t use the first person too much, and preferably not at all – and the sometime presence of a cyberstalker, I am not inclined to add too much more of my private life. And, above all, I do not want it to become what a blogging friend calls a ‘perfect life’ blog. You know the sort of thing: perfect husband (emphatically not partner), perfect house, perfect children, perfect garden, perfect baking on perfect tablecloth, perfect bunting and perfect pictures that could come from Country Living. The sun always shines but not so much as to mess up the photos with awkward contrast; snow is picturesque and not slushy; even the writer’s adolescents are delightful and never answer back, have smelly feet or smoke dope. I know just what my friend means. There are loads of them out there, and I always suspect that they’re slightly fake, on ‘methinks the lady doth protest too much’ grounds.

Enough already.

Then there’s the essence of blogging: it’s immediate. As a trainee I once messed up a funeral report but was comforted by the sub who reminded me that it would be round someone’s cod and scraps by the following lunchtime, and everyone would forget that I’d matched the wrong wife to the wrong man – he was actually unmarried but widely suspected of having an affair with the woman in question (oops). Obviously the chip-wrapper analogy is not exactly true these days, with online archives and search tools, but I’d like to be able, for instance, to find the post I wrote on retired pirates and the dye trade without riffling through various tags or trying to remember when I wrote it. The immediacy is great, but I’d like some of my posts to have a longer life, for my own convenience (and to respect the research involved) if not for anyone else’s interest.

I had thought, fleetingly, about merging Woolwinding with Beangenie, my gardening blog. But that won’t work – for one thing, Beangenie has a tight focus and an equally focused readership. Many of them (I know) are also interested in textiles and quite a few are knitters or spinners, but garden blogs are garden blogs, and wittering about plant choices, speculating about soil conditions or seed selection doesn’t always transfer over, and vice-versa. And I know, too, that the woolly element would soon be submerged beneath a tide of trowelling, tomatoes and the type of trivia which interests only gardeners. So that’s not an answer.

But what do I want to do?

Well, I want to introduce a bit more variety. I’m not just inspired by wool, I’m inspired by the landscape around me, by the people I know and love and respect, by the country in which I live, by fact that when I’m stuck in a traffic jam behind an idiot driver who failed to understand the meaning of a large sign reading ‘unsuitable for caravans’, I can gaze out of the window and watch a heron flying down to land. I want to include more images, photographs of things other than wool. I want to make it easier to write a post when I’ve lost my woolly mojo, something that happens to all of us (OK, most of us), from time to time. At times I have done this, perhaps bringing in a winter walk or a stay in Shetland, and it’s gone down well – but I’ve always felt that I’ve not stuck to the brief, as it were. My inner editor is breathing down my neck again.

So I’m going to give my inner editor a sabbatical, I think. Probably about time. She can go and carp about colons somewhere else.

I’m going to try and broaden the focus, bring in more Wales, more colour, more images, more history, more – well, more generality. I’m also going to create some specific pages referencing particular topics and linking to relevant posts. There’ll be one, for instance, for vintage: vintage patterns, vintage buttons, vintage garments like snoods (is a snood a garment?). There’ll be one for history and archaeology, everything from spinning prostitutes in Ancient Greece and maids spinning in eighteenth-century Wales to the iniquities of the truck system in Shetland. There’ll be a page where I can link to my posts on colour. And there’ll still be a lot of knitting and spinning, a lot of fibre, a lot of wool and quite a few sheep (try keeping them out). It’ll take a bit of time but I’ll get there.

At least that’s what I think at the moment. What do you think?

I’ll end with a quick and completely unwoolly shot. Happy Easter, everyone!

Book review: Crochet One-Skein Wonders

This is soooo embarrassing, because the sound you hear is me eating my words. I don’t crochet, I can’t crochet, attempts have been made to teach me to crochet, and I still can’t crochet. So there. Only I was sent this book to review, edited by Judith Durant and Edie Eckman and featuring designs from lots of people, and I am clearly going to have to learn.

Despite not being a crochet queen, I can still review it to the extent of saying that it has patterns in it which I would like to use. This, for me, is a real plus, and something of a first.

For me crochet has traditionally lurked in Golden Hands territory, all nasty colours, acrylic yarn, 1970s waistcoats and toilet-roll covers. However, I have clearly not moved on. Here there are patterns for eminently covetable necklaces, fingerless gloves, headbands, bags, cushions, kids’ toys (love Louis the lobster, and particularly Sam the big-bottomed bunny)… In fact, the toys are absolutely gorgeous, but we don’t all have kids of a suitable age to make them for, though I wouldn’t mind Sam or sweet kitty for myself.

But I’m transferring my affection to the jewellery, especially the beaded pieces.

See what I mean? Not a hint of a 1970s loo-roll cover. And there are 99 other patterns to choose from, too.

Like all the other One-Skein books, this is usefully divided by yarn weights, is well illustrated and has clear instructions, but whereas the others had a few crochet patterns, this one is entirely devoted to hooking yarn. Now because I don’t / can’t / won’t crochet, I asked my knitting group to have a look at it and give some much better-qualified feedback which I could pass on, and they were as positive as I am. There was even a scramble for the book and a brief argument about who was going to use it first.

One person, for instance, pounced on it because she had always wondered how you got a crochet edging on things made of fabric, and hadn’t been able to find any clear instructions. She’d squinted at pieces of work and thought she might have worked it out, but found clear confirmation and instructions here (you blanket stitch around the fabric and attach the crochet to the blanket stitch). Another person spoke highly of the instructions for Tunisian crochet. But everyone felt like I did, and just loved the patterns. I have a distinct feeling that Niles the Crocodile (hee hee)

will be first off the hook, when my crocodile-loving friend has prised the book out of the hands of the fabric-edger…