Happy, Joyeux, Llawen…

Happy Christmas, Joyeux Noel, Nadolig Llawen (my favourite comment on the latter came from Gavin and Stacey, with Gavin’s mum convinced the Welsh was Nadolig Clarins)…

But every Christmas I end up channelling the distantly Provencal side of my ancestry and dig out my collection of santons, the terracotta figures representing all the people of a Provencal village. They, together with the more conventionally religious figures like the Holy Family and the Magi, make up a Christmas creche. The figures can be large – about 25cm is not uncommon – but mine are much smaller, about 7cm for the standing ones (and the creches can be enormous). My own collection, my father’s having gone astray over the years, started with sheep (sigh), and a shepherd:

to which I soon added a knitter and spinner.

The detail is lovely, with even facial expressions (love the smiley sheep) and details of clothing carefully rendered.

Take a closer look at the knitter, for instance, with her shawl in a traditional Provencal pattern, her stripy sock (which she is only knitting on two needles, a woman after my own heart, has clearly read Knit Your Socks On Straight). She is only 5cm tall, and what isn’t clear here is the beautiful detail of the stone wall on which she sits – there’s even lichen.

Until about ten years ago, most of my santons were male. I’m not quite sure how that happened, but it did, and so I began consciously adding some women to my small personal outpost of Provence. There is a female water carrier, an elderly wood collector and several marchandes, vendors, sellers of things like lavender or ribbons. 

The knitter’s needles are metal, and many of my santons have additions such as a bundle of logs or a fishing rod. But the delicacy of the ribbon seller’s basket is particularly fine. The cord holding it around her neck is threaded through two tiny little metal loops on the ends of her basket, and it is carefully and minutely tied at the back.  I have an ex-neighbour who is in his mid-80s, and who is a ship modeller (though he also built my spinning wheel); I’ve only ever seen such minute and perfect work on his models. And they are hardly mass-produced, which santons almost are; they’re not unique productions and can even be bought in Parisian department stores in the run-up to Christmas.

It is possible to buy unpainted ones and decorate them yourself if you wish; I prefer the traditional decoration – plus, I’m not at all confident I could get anywhere near the level of detail required to transform a 7cm-tall figure of a letter carrier / postman into a passable version of the older Gérard Depardieu (or maybe it’s just me, or maybe just the moustache). And I’m not sure he’s exactly seasonal, but then neither are the blacksmith, the poacher (easily recognisable as Mond des Papillons from Marcel Pagnol’s wonderful memoirs of his childhood, La gloire de mon père and  Le château de ma mère), or the man wandering about with a giant pumpkin on his shoulder.

The most recent additions are a band of ‘gypsy’ musicians, which I love:

Let’s assume they are seasonal, and are playing something festive, like ‘Il est né, le devin enfant‘. Or maybe, since I am ‘tout à fait laïque‘, completely unreligious, like my entire family, it should be a jolly bouncy dance tune to cheer up the darkest time of the year. I’ll go for that!

Have a lovely holiday, if you’re having one that is – and fair play to anyone who is working or volunteering through it. Especially those at our local homeless shelter – and the nearby food banks which, according to Ian Duncan Smith, are completely uneccessary and have a political agenda. Maybe he should think on another person, not entirely unconnected with Christmas, who could also be described as having had a political agenda. According to the Romans. OK, rant over. And seasons greetings!

Bury me in sheepskin

Ah yes – being buried in fleece is something which could all too easily happen to me if my stash were to fall over, but I’m not talking about me specifically here… I’m talking about something much older.  Someone much older. Ages older.

In late 2011 archaeologists excavated an undisturbed Bronze Age burial in Spinningdale, south-east Sutherland. Over 4000 years earlier a woman had been buried there, close to the water of the Dornoch Firth. She’d been placed in a metre-long stone cist (a bit like a large box made of stone slabs), lying on her side, her knees bent up, facing the south east and the open sea. A pot and a stone were put in the cist, probably before she was lifted into it herself, and were positioned so they lay behind her head. The top stone was put on and the pit in which it lay was filled in (parts had already been filled in, to support the sides of the cist). Then, four millennia later, and in a completely different world, a team of archaeologists arrived. Their results have just been published.

But it’s not only the fact that I knew the area – oh, and trained as an archaeologist – which interested me (Spinningdale was usually where my brother and I would first try to kill each other on car journeys to Inverness – my mother’s rule was only to interfere if there was blood; nature red in tooth and claw and the back seat of an old Ford Cortina). There’s a rather fine woolly element, too, and not just because of the textiley element in the place name.

As with many archaeological discoveries, the burial was found by accident – in this case, during the installation of a new septic tank – but the whole area has plenty of archaeological remains; just because it is comparatively unpopulated now doesn’t mean it always was. Initially, they found the cist in its big pit, but lifting the top stone revealed the skeletal remains of a person. The radiocarbon dates put the burial in the Early Bronze Age, some time between 2150 and 1910 BCE (2051-1911 BCE from the bone; others are from wood which may be older), so she – for it proved to be a woman – is over 4000 years old. She was also amazingly well preserved, and as a result we know a lot more about her than you might think.

First, she was about 5 feet 6 inches in height and somewhere between 35 and 50 years old, possibly nearer to 45 to 50. There’s no visible cause of death (that would be asking a bit much, this isn’t CSI) but she did have ‘some degenerative changes’ to her lower spine – signs of osteoarthritis – and hints of a possibly genetic spinal condition, and very good teeth. She might not have been at the older end of the age range (and that would have been a respectable age in the time she lived, anyway); she could just have had a life full of hard work. And she probably looked after her teeth, or had a diet low in sugars. But it wasn’t just the bones that were well preserved.

When they were being lifted, traces of something else were spotted. Some of this proved to be the remains of her soft tissue, but some wasn’t – it was wool. There were two possible explanations for the wool, which were associated with traces of some more soft tissue: either she’d been wearing a wool garment or – and this has emerged as the favourite explanation – she’d been buried with a sheepskin. Out of the 35 fibres (average 21 microns) which were examined, some showed signs of pigmentation but most did not. Soays are highly likely to be the direct descendants of Bronze Age sheep and many have a brown body but a white underneath, and that white underfluff generally has some dark fibres in it, plus the micron size is similar. So, Soay then. Or similar.

Even though such a huge amount of time separates us from the Early Bronze Age, other burials have survived in which the body is wrapped in something. There’s one instance of a wool textile in the UK (Rylston in West Yorkshire), and a brown cattle hide was wrapped around another Sutherland burial, from Strath Oykel; there are others with hides. This, if it is a sheepskin, is the first. Sheepskin garments have been found in later Iron Age burials in Denmark, but never in the UK and not so early. Findings of fur or hide in graves tend to be linked to ‘rich’ burials, and are rare in Britain anyway. Of course, we just don’t know how much evidence has been destroyed or how much remains to be uncovered, but for now this is extremely unusual. So, mind you, is the size of the pit which was dug for the burial. It was large  (2.36m by 1.68m and more than a metre deep) and would have taken a considerable investment in time and energy to dig, especially with Bronze Age tools, so the woman buried there must have been respected by her community.

One other thing – it’s been suggested that she was placed to face the February and November sunrise, which would match the alignment of some other monuments in the area. For me – well, we just don’t know and we probably never will exactly what went on. But I do know one thing: I certainly wouldn’t mind being buried at Spinningdale myself, wrapped in a Soay sheepskin (er, or cloth) and facing the sea…

The photograph of Spinningdale is by Bill Fernie and comes from Caithness.org; the one of the burial is from GUARD archaeology. There’s a brief account of the dig in the November/December issue of British Archaeology, and the full report can be found at Archaeology Reports Online.

Wovember: working with wool

Now for what is probably my favourite of the five Wovember subjects, and probably the last one I’m going to write about this year – working with wool. Not ‘wool still walking round the fields and bleating wool’ or ‘wool fresh off the sheep’s back wool’ this time, but the wool well and truly off it, and – phew – washed.

Nice and clean, without any extra bracken, daggy bits, dried poo, semi-dried mud, huge thorns, strange unidentifiable lumps (ergh) or traces of reddle,

like this delicious Teeswater. Too beautiful to use, though maybe it would make a good prop in a fantasy / historical drama, for someone called Jason to steal. Golden it most certainly is. Working with wool like this is wonderful, but as I’ve been going through all my photos, I’ve realised something else. Something really obvious, when you think about it. And that’s the fact that working with woolly people is even more wonderful.

One of the things I appreciate most about the Woolly World is just how collaborative it is, and not only virtually, on sites like Ravelry. Take knitters. They, I decided some time ago, are just naturally sociable. Here’s our knit and natter group, scrutinising each others’ patterns (note Colours of Shetland and one of Jamieson’s US pattern books; don’t know about the source of the orange baby but I think it’s either a) stuffed, b) seriously drugged or c) a doll):

It has been going for some time now; we meet in a local pub and are just following a fine old Welsh tradition, the noswaith weu. We used to clear the bar, with the darts team retreating to the snug in fear and trembling, but they’ve got used to us and our potentially dangerous implements. In fact we’ve been challenged to a match – darts not dpns, though learning to use them is allegedly the penalty they pay if they lose – a challenge which was made at the village’s Beer Festival last year and which has yet to be played out. Elegant, refayned, ‘ladylike’ knitters, we’re not. Mind you, that photo’s not so much working with wool as being prepared to work with wool. As are we, after we’ve had our first drink and a chat.

It’s not just knitters who gather together in groups, of course – spinners, I think, are even more sociable (and again there’s local tradition to back us up – communal spinning of an evening around the fire was common in many farmsteads). But when it comes to really getting down to it and actually working with wool, the Sunday Market Spinners are much more disciplined than the Every Other Monday Knitters.

Er, once we’ve had coffee, possibly a bacon sarny (we meet in a cafe, in their upper floor gallery), been to the farmers’ market and loaded up with eggs, honey, wild mushrooms, cracked black pepper sausages, goat’s cheese – oh, yes, and chocolate. But when we start, we do get a lot done. Really. And it’s very encouraging, as well as inspiring, to see what other people are up to. The SMSes are an informal group, but some of us belong to branches of the Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers as well (good for workshops and wonders like Winghams’ sampling days). Whatever the setting, whatever the circumstances, we learn a lot from other wool addicts, whether that’s mastering flick carding,

(here working on a very crimpy BFL cross) or helping a new spinner who has inherited her mother’s wheel, but who had never used it.

An essential part of spinning groups, whatever type they are and at least as far as I am concerned, is spreading the word. Whether that means convincing gobsmacked coffee-shop customers that an ancient craft is still going strong, or bolstering the ‘British wool is best’ message of an open-farm day,

(spot the matching wheels), doing our thing in public is vital. Spinning doesn’t just belong in a Disney-cartoon, Rumplestiltskin, fairytale world, or in the past. It belongs right now, and nobody has to wear national dress while doing it. Unless that’s their thing, of course: spinners are also, generally, remarkably tolerant of people doing whatever works for them (in my case, that would be dodgy technique and absolutely not a stovepipe hat).

But it’s not just fibre production. Dyeing wool, for instance, is something I enjoy doing with other people. I love seeing what everyone else does, what the effect of dyes is on different yarns – overdying a coloured fleece, for instance. Yes, it’s interesting doing it by yourself, but it’s great fun to share the experience. Again, the sharing might be through an organised event, like our Guild’s annual dyeing picnic which gives us an opportunity to play with many different possibilities, even dye baths which look like, well, boiled-up boots:

Or it could be a more impromptu gathering of three or four friends over a primus stove on a summer’s day. There is something about deliberately changing the colour of wool which I find even more satisfying if it’s been shared, and other people’s preferences are so interesting, and can affect what you yourself do (or not, ahem). Take one day a couple of summers ago; there were three of us. One, a very experienced indie dyer, was taking the chance to experiment with some unusual space dyeing combinations. Another was dyeing enough for garments, being systematic and having a clear aim in view.

And me? Well, I was – completely unconsciously, honest – channelling my inner Goth:

apart from the skeins of indigo dyed wool, which (nterestingly and possibly not surprisingly) are still awaiting a use. Soooo predictable. I even managed to produce a good black, though it has bleached out somewhat in the washing. Not so much Dracula’s black as Victorian pauper trying to do their best with third-hand mourning from the shonky shop black. Oh well.

But when it comes down to it, whatever you do, and however many people you do it with, it’s getting the stuff on the needles that provides the ultimate satisfaction:

A cold evening outside; inside, closed blinds, a good DVD, a happy wood stove and a happy knitter. Here working with some hand dyed handspun, making up a long wrap-it-right-round-and-strangle-yourself cowl which she’s just finished. Right in time for what the Daily Express assures us is ‘killer snow’. Bet it doesn’t happen, but if it does, I’m ready. Thanks, sheepies!

Wovember – harvesting wool

As someone who doesn’t have any actual sheep (apart, that is, from Sion), my thoughts about ‘harvesting’, the second Wovember subject, were getting a little stretched. And then I realised that even though my last experience of actual harvesting on a formal scale was leaning on a gate with the other teenaged girls watching muscular New Zealanders working away in vests (sorry, must go and get a glass of water), I could still make a bit of a comment. Because when you live in a sheep-farming area, it’s all about you.

Of course, I could indulge myself in a little really informal harvesting, and no need for a vest either:

but generally wool gleaned like this can be pretty – er, let’s leave it at ‘indifferent’. A woolly friend of mine knows someone who always collects wool for her on his walks; you can tell if he’s been in for tea because her kitchen acquires a certain aroma. Into the compost bin with it.

Then there’s Open Farm Sunday and similar events, where I often end up demonstrating spinning with other like-minded people. Sometimes you can lay your hands on a fleece straight off its original owner,

and I mean ‘straight off’ as you can tell, and this year a couple of my friends got some lovely Romney fleeces this way. I managed to resist, but only because my fleece store has got silly (they’ve spread into the loft, but not as Thermafleece Insulation, just as fleece). It is ridiculous; I haven’t been spinning for that long really. Once the word gets out that you spin and are also interested in fleece – it’s not a given – offers come in. Sometimes you accept them out of politeness  while wondering how much fleece one compost bin can process, sometimes you know you’re dealing with someone who is as enthusiastic as you are, and sometimes you pay a relatively high price for a really good fleece. But it’s word of mouth. That’s how it has to be now, because one of our other options is no longer available.

Just before I started spinning, some of us – I was dragged along, I wasn’t interested, I wasn’t going to learn to spin, no way, no time – went to what was then the Wool Board’s grading depot in Porthmadog. Of course, I knew what the building was (damn great sign outside somewhat giving the game away, ho ho), but I’d not been in. I’d seen trailers around Port, laden with bulging wool sacks; I’d even glimpsed inside. But that was it. I bought my wool from wool shops. Sheep lived in fields. So what if I’d grown up surrounded by sheep? That was then.

It was a last-chance visit for the spinners, because the grading depot was about to become a collection point – I’m sure I’m remembering this correctly – and they would no longer be able to go there and buy a fleece. I still can’t quite believe that popping into Port for the supermarket and picking up a fleece or two on the way back was ever an option, but it was. Well, with an appointment it was.

Looking back at that fine afternoon four years ago, I realise that this was the moment at which my resistance to spinning began to slip away. I think it was the smell, so redolent of the sheer sheepyness of much of my childhood. It could have been the textures and colours (look at the locks on this),

and it might just have been – well, I don’t know, maybe I was channelling Betty, my spinning neighbour whose wheel I was eventually to use after her death. Something certainly made me stick my camera in my bag; I wasn’t even blogging at the time.

At this point Porthmadog had the only grading depot in North Wales, and it took in the clip from a huge area; in 2005 it had gone over the two-million kilo mark. We were very lucky indeed to be shown around when there was still a lot of accessible fleece to fondle.

The whole process of grading was explained – up to eighty different grades, sorted by specialist graders who took five years to train – and different fleeces were spread out for us, so we could see and feel for ourselves. We were shown the huge difference between first clip fleeces and older ones, the immense difference in breeds, the more delicate differences between ostensibly similar fleeces from a single breed and a single farm. We were also shown – well, some of us knew already but I didn’t – how to tell a good fleece (among other things, to listen for the ping when you pull a lock taut and pluck it with a finger). I found I gravitated to the bins of coloured fleeces, predominantly Jacobs and Black Welsh Mountains, and I couldn’t resist having a good old scroggle, getting thoroughly lanolined in the process.

And then we came to the point – choosing. Our guide was very helpful; he knew what we would be good for a newbie spinner (not me, I still wasn’t going to spin, right?) and selected a lovely Llyn fleece from a woolly mountain of similar ones.

And a few months later I mystically ended up with half of it. My very first fleece, and one of the last that could be bought from the Porthmadog depot. I still see those heavily laden trailers dropping wool off, and I do wonder what delights (or not) are hidden within. And wool-board quality too – not too much skirting or muck. From my point of view, as a spinner with the willpower of a particularly weak-minded maggot, it’s probably just as well that you can’t stop by and buy one. From all sorts of other points of view, maybe it isn’t.

Wovember – growing wool…

It’s Wovember time again, a celebration of all things really and truly woolly (and it’s in no way to be compared with MOvember, in aid of which some of my male friends are currently growing moustaches). Not, note, of things that appear to be woolly but which turn out, on investigation, to be simply masquerading as woolly. Things which are wholly or partly fake and are simply riding on the back of the word ‘wool’ being shorthand for quality and warmth. Hrrumpf. Each year, Wovember set some themes for exploration, and I thought I’d do my own thing, largely photographically, based on these ideas throughout the month.

It starts off with, perhaps not surprisingly, ‘growing wool’. So here’s my (somewhat local) reaction to that, and I’m issuing a cuteness warning in advance, because inevitably the first stage of growing wool – well, almost the first stage – is lambs.

Though pregnant sheep really come first…

Here, brought down from the hill a couple of years ago in response to an accurate weather forecast. Or maybe first should really be rams in their bondage gear harnesses, all reddled up to do the business. Don’t have any shots of that, possibly because I’m generally too busy giggling. Childish, I know, but – depending on what type of harness is being used – they do look as though they’re modelling fetish wear.

Then, of course, you get a sudden increase in noise level. Normally our ambient noise here, on the coast of Snowdonia, is the sea – the sort of almost-white noise which might have been recorded as a relaxation aid in the 1970s, along with whale song. From March for about eight weeks, maybe longer, it’s sheep, and relaxing it isn’t. High-pitched lambs yelling ‘muuuum!’, ‘muuuuuum!’; deeper-voiced ewes replying ‘laaaaaammmb’, ‘laaaaammmbbbb,’… And the volume of the former is out of all proportion to their size; boy, are they loud. When it’s just light enough to see the tempting far end of the field they bounce down there and then can’t find their mums when they turn round because they’ve bounced downhill. Cue racket. And earplugs for some of my friends who would like to sleep beyond 4.00 a.m (wimps, hee hee).

Who doesn’t love lambs? (Those who have to sleep, perhaps.) They are so impossibly cute, their bouncing lifts the heart, and the lamb gangs that form up and then charge off in a particular direction for no apparent reason are endlessly entertaining. Yes, it’s hard work, lambing, of course, but even the most curmudgeonly farmer must lighten up a little when watching the ‘I’m king of the castle / no, I am / no, me, geroff’ antics of the average lamb gang.

The downside, if there is one, is that the lamb gang in action is almost impossible to photograph. They blur, even if they are so used to people that they don’t scatter immediately. You need a full OB unit and possibly the Springwatch team. I sometimes go for a walk with a friend who licks her lips when she sees lambs, anticipating mint-sauce-related events, but I look at them in terms of wool. These are Welsh Mountains; don’t write their fleeces off as too harsh, because a good shearling WM can be fine. For outerwear, ahem – you wouldn’t want it next to your skin, particularly. Unless you were going to be joining the rams in the strange fetish department.

Another of my friends laments the change in lambs, from feisty bundles of bounciness to placid, stolid sheep whose main aim in life is to eat grass. She doesn’t know sheep, is my reaction. They can have lots of personality. Like one named Paxo – this farm reached Ps for naming a year ago – because he stuffed himself and ate everything in sight, including the stock book, and would sneak quietly about, knowing just when to walk really silently so you wouldn’t spot him on his endless food quest; another – Martha, this time – who was the biggest sheep in the world (all fleece) and who liked to follow tourists walking along the lanes near her farm because she’d learned they often had sandwiches; Eely, my pet lamb who thought she was a sheepdog; one lead sheep who mastered mountaineering and could get into places even deer could not penetrate, bringing the flock with her; another lead sheep who worked out how to roll over a cattle grid so the crofters had to put a gate on the communal lane as well and everyone in the lower village thought we were mad…

When I think about sheep, I find it hard to divorce them from their specific environment. (I disliked the lamb sales not just because most lambs were being bought by the meat people – that was my mother’s position – but because they were so out of place. Brought off the hills and penned: to me, as a child, it was all wrong.) I was once driving along a remote glen when I noticed movement up on the hill and stopped. A river of sheep was cresting the ridge in a spectacular ‘reveal’, worthy of any blockbuster movie. Behind them came the shepherd and his dogs, and the landscape was somehow more complete than it had been a few minutes earlier. I know, I know, woolly maggots and all that; I’m not exonerating the Clearances, far from it. But I like to see a working landscape, not a picture postcard. And sheep are part of that landscape for me. Plus, of course, there’s all that fleece…

And cuteness. Completely mastered by this Shetland lamb on Trondra, happily growing what will doubtless be a lovely fleece for some spinner…

Like vampires working in a blood bank…

Hee, hee – well, it is Halloween, after all.

Earlier this week a friend and I helped another friend. Like you do. Nothing wrong with that; friend in need of help has horrible bad back. All well and good.

Maybe I should mention a salient fact here. She also has a wool shop, stocking all sorts of goodies from Rowan, Designer Yarns (oh the Noro, the Noro!), Colinette, Woolcraft, Jarol, Sirdar, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera (whimper) and some local handspun of a very high standard. It is closed on Mondays, and so this is the day when things get done. Like radical rearrangements of the shop.

You see, the winter yarns needed to go out. The summer yarns, those brightly coloured cottons and linens and bamboos, needed shifting – or at least the ones that are no longer moving did (some, amazingly given the weather, are still selling) and replacing with woollier, warmer ones. All in all, not the best time to put your back out. A friend in need is a friend who needs an invasion, and we invaded. Under close instruction, of course. And supervision. Of course.

Boxes were found, plastic bags mustered,

and wool-shop-owning friend was overpowered when she tried lifting things or bending down. It’s not a large space to rearrange – or rather it’s perfect, provided that you are organised, and you have to be organised. WSOF is organised. Helpers? One; yes, she’s organised. Me? Meh… The difficulty is that you have to fondle yarns, you just have to. You need to know how they’d feel on the needles. Honest. You can’t just slap them straight in a plastic bag and put them to one side like the recycling. Oh, no. They need care and attention, a bit like puppies except they don’t widdle on the carpet,

even the ones that aren’t going into boxes.

Ahem. I may have become slightly light-headed. (No, really?)

But we did get stuck in eventually. Of course, as this was happening in the UK, the day had to be broken up by cups of tea (I remember the very first series of Big Brother; there was an international comparison after it ended, and whereas the Dutch – I think it was – had sex, the Brits just had lots of tea). But we needed to pause and assess. Oh yes, we did.

See? Pausing and assessing. (Cake was also involved.)

The chunky and super-chunky yarns had to swap position with the aran-weight ones which needed more space, and new and exciting lovelinesses were waiting for space on the shelves. Er, if they didn’t get bought first. I adore Rowan’s Kid Classic, and the new colours are just to die for. Particularly Grasshopper (the green one).

Fortunately we had to work – possibly too much time spent on tea and cake? – and so they managed to get on the shelf without making a sidewards move. But I’ve got this shade mentally filed for future use; since I started spinning, I’ve become more abstemious about commercial yarn, but I couldn’t come near to reproducing Kid Classic. And then of course there’s Rowan’s Felted Tweed, another favourite – it didn’t need moving but it did need a friendly pat every so often. I have to resist that, too. (Nobody else I know seems to be doing too well resisting it, so I may have to join in at some point, just to be friendly.) I was also very tempted by a Sublime yarn. Sublime by name and sublime by nature – it’s called ‘luxurious aran tweed’ and is a delicious mix of 40% wool, 40% cotton – yup, cotton – and 20% llama. No – spinner though I am, I’m no handspun purist, me. Evidently.

Which was how this happened:

I had a terrible attack of the Noros. You start to twitch slightly, your hand goes out almost unconsciously and you find yourself squeezing a doughnut of yarn, and the next thing you know you have your purse in your hand. I’m sure it’s not just me.

It’s Silk Garden Lite (ergh), in colourway 2065, and it’s going to become one of Sandra McIver’s beautiful jackets from Knit Swirl!; I’m sure I’ll get my head around the unusual construction, which will be interesting in itself. If I don’t go bonkers casting on over 500 stitches and then trying not to twist them when I join to knit in the round.

Willpower? Moi???

(The shop, by the way, is Knit One in Dolgellau, 01341 422194, and it is well worth a visit if you’re in the area. But hands off the Kid Classic in Grasshopper. It’s stuck to the shelf with double-sided tape anyway.)

Book review: Lace One-Skein Wonders…

A few years ago, one of our knitting group brought a book along to the pub where we meet and we were all taken with it: the first in the One-Skein Wonders series, edited by Judith Durant. I really liked the idea, but I didn’t care for many of the patterns. Then another one appeared and I preferred that, but the best so far is undoubtedly – well, according to me, anyway – the Luxury Yarn volume. They’re a nifty idea – every single pattern uses just one skein, and like many other people I find luscious single skeins quite hard to resist. And then I also create my own, though they’re often a little light on the luxury element and a little heavier on the noils and bumps than is usual. The other thing I really like about the series as a whole is that the patterns – always generous in number – come from a variety of designers, so if you don’t care for X’s design approach, there’s always Y’s distinctive style.

But I’ve got a new candidate for favourite in the series. This one, Lace One-Skein Wonders. It follows the same format, in essence: a shedload of patterns, all using a single skein, from a number of different designers.

They cover all sorts of things – hats, socks, mittens, baby wear (little fingers in fine lace? Mind you, I suppose the stickiness factor would prevent too much damage), headbands, even a couple of belts, and a whole range of shawls and scarves. These particularly appeal to me (I’m soooo predictable).

As it happens, I was looking for a pattern which would suit some BFL/silk I’ve just spun. It’s very soft and won’t wear amazingly well, so a cowl would be ideal. I’d been through all my magazines (and, believe me, I’ve a LOT of magazines) but I couldn’t find one I both liked and which didn’t require more yardage than I had available. And then, flicking through, I found it – the purple one:

That will do very well indeed.

I took the book along to the Knitting Natterers, several of whom are also One-Skein fans. It took ages to go round (always a good sign), and there was some debate about favourite patterns. This peacock-tail-like shawl won out on points,

though there were some who came down strongly in favour of this brown crochet number:

I really am going to have to learn, aren’t I?

I always like taking anything I’m sent to review to the group; getting other views is always useful, even when you know that something is going to go down so well that people will hit Amazon on their return home (and at least two of them have; another has told her partner that she needs it for Christmas).

Sometimes reactions completely surprise me… and that was the case with another title, Knit Christmas Stockings, edited by Gwen Steege. This isn’t my thing, really; I’m too much of a Frog, perhaps, or perhaps not; maybe it’s just too American for the UK market, or so I thought. But one of the group really liked it. For myself, I feel that my Christmas panic knitting is more likely to be composed of real socks – knitted on two needles – or items for the big local craft fair, where the more utilitarian items sell best. But at least one household near here will have a beautifully knitted stocking hanging from a mantlepiece this year. I am personally going to adopt my usual stance re Christmas: pretend it isn’t happening until it’s much closer, and then have a frantic, insane panic.

Opening the mystery parcel…

I went out yesterday, and when I got back there was a big box sitting on the floor. I approached it with caution and a pocket knife, trying not to squeal in anticipation.

Is it a (wooden) bird?

Is it a (strange sort of) plane?

Is it an excellent way of putting off doing my tax return?

Oh, YES!

When I started spinning about three years ago, a friend and I bought a second-hand Ashford drum carder from a nearby farmer’s wife, and coincidentally the purveyor of fine BFL-cross fleeces to the discriminating local spinner. It had been used, well used. But it worked and was great. But then I was unfaithful. I used a Classic Carder belonging to a friend.

I was led away from the path of abstemious righteousness and was tempted by sleek lines, good looks, and downright efficiency. (It’s a pattern – or that should be was a pattern – though a) not always applied to drum carders, in fact never before, generally to men; and b) the efficiency thing has tended to be somewhat optional when applied to blokes.)

You should always give in to temptation:

And that reminds me, I’m supposed to be doing my tax return. Yeah right…

Slate and wool – and spinning

I’ve a slightly patchy history when it comes to spinning in public day (which was last weekend, Saturday 21st, whaddya mean, you didn’t know?). The first year I spun in a local park with two friends, attracted a teeny bit of attention, felt like a twit and went and got coffee and buns instead. The second year some of our Guild spun at Caernarfon Castle in a freezing gale, having sidestepped a request that we wear national dress. (NO. Just NO.) Last year we ended up in the lobby of a garden centre, getting in between ladies of a certain age and a cream tea. Not good.

But this year we got it bang on. The National Slate Museum, Llanberis. A wonderful venue, and one which blew me away. And it was so sunny we had to move into the shade, and we were made incredibly welcome, and the visitors seemed to enjoy seeing what we were doing, and we got in nobody’s way en route to food, and, and, and, the cafe served lemon meringue pie.

We were stationed outside a line of four slate worker’s cottages that were moved onto the site from Tanygrisiau. Three of them are fitted out in the styles of three significant times in the slate industry – 1861, the height of the quarries really; 1901, the big strike; 1969, when Dinorwic was closed (and when Prince Chuck had been ‘invested’ on a slab of Dinorwic slate just a month earlier, hrumpf, they must have known). The whole setting was perfect for us spinners; visitors were already interested in social history, and many of them emerged from the cottages really intrigued. There isn’t a spinning wheel in the 1861 interior, but there could well be…

(I’d taken some appropriately coloured BFL cross to spin up.)

As usual, the mechanism of spinning interested people, as did the technology of the wheels – it’s so basic, you can easily understand what’s going on – this moves that, and that moves this thing, and that means the wool twists… Later, when I was going around the museum with my camera I overheard one dad explaining to his son how a belt made some wheels turn and they made another wheel turn and the boy said ‘Like those spinning things outside, isn’t it?’ YO!

It made me realise how much we like to understand just how things work, and how much we like to see them working. You can’t actually see your iPad doing its thing, even if you do understand roughly how it works (it’s the little pixies, they hide). I certainly do, though I may have been contaminated by a dear friend who was an engineer. I took a trip around the museum, ostensibly to take a couple of shots for the Guild blog, but found myself mesmerised by the shapes, the colours, the light. So here’s a montage; just click on one for a slideshow. And if you are in the area, do visit the National Slate Museum. So many lives over so many years were affected by the slate industry. It’s a wonderful way to honour that.

National Slate Museum

Pattern loft

Pattern loft

Pattern loft

Pattern store

Pattern store

Pattern loft

Pattern store

Pattern loft

Pattern loft

Forge

Workshop

Pattern loft

The colours of slate

National Slate Museum

Get down, Shep!

We’re in the quiet(ish) season on our local farms, which gives some people a chance to enjoy themselves and still mess about with sheep (enough with the sheep jokes, already). The hills are alive with the sound of ‘come by’ – it’s the sheepdog trial season. We’ve just had our very local ones and the national ones were a couple of weeks ago, and the big International Trials are happening this very weekend at Stoneleigh Park. But they’ve been happening, on and off, for a few months around here. It’s been a good summer, largely dry, and I’ve been to a couple. I’m just overawed by them, by the skill of the shepherds and, above all, by the dogs…

(And I particularly like the sheep, especially when they get bolshie, often towards the end of the day – though some just start out awkward. This particular trial came to a temporary halt at one stage when a stroppy sheep decided to climb a six-foot wall, stand on the top and sneer at the dog and his handler before disappearing into the distance; the others ran away.)

When I was growing up, our crofting neighbour was the most amazing shepherd. At the time I didn’t realise how good he was; I just assumed it was normal to be able to walk a couple of hundred sheep down to the sales in the lower valley with only one sheepdog for added control. His dog was amazing, too, of course. Generally dogs either lead or drive; Rex seemed to be able to do both. Tragically he disappeared, and the next year trailers had to be used instead – the sheep were having none of that mechanised rubbish and made a collective, and successful if temporary, bid for freedom. (Photo from Hartley and Ingelby’s Life in the Moorlands of North East Yorkshire, 1972, captioned ‘Mr J W Mackley, Low Horcum, gathering sheep near Saltersgate in the early morning, 1930s’.)

But that’s by the by – or should that be ‘bye the bye’? I started thinking about sheepdogs, particularly collies, though the breed doesn’t necessarily follow; Old English Sheepdogs were traditionally used in the South Downs, for instance, and Huntaways are very popular in New Zealand. But, for me and many others, the archetypal sheepdog is a Border Collie, and the wonderful engraver Thomas Bewick evidently thought so too. Now, I know some people who wouldn’t contemplate having a collie – ‘I don’t want a dog that’s brighter than I am,’ said one person I know, and there are always the dog-breed lightbulb jokes to put you off: ‘How many dogs does it take to change a lightbulb?’ Border Collie: ‘Just me. [Sigh] Wiring not up to standard. Might as well rewire the house while I’m at it.’ (Labrador: ‘Me, me, me, me, please, me, me, me, me, please, me, me, me…’ Cat: ‘Don’t be silly, humans change light bulbs. Just do it and bring me my supper.’) In Isabel Grant’s Highland Folk Ways there’s a lovely anecdote about a Gaelic-speaking shepherd in the far west who was asked why he commanded his dog in English. ‘Och, he’d be far too wise altogether if he had the understanding of the Gaelic,’ came the reply.

You do occasionally come across an – let’s say – intellectually challenged collie, and we had X, anonymity preserving some dignity. I still maintain, however, that X wasn’t dim; after all, he was one of Rex’s descendants. He was actually very bright indeed and simply preferred not to charge about the hills working sheep; he preferred organising humans, such as those queueing up at a chip van on a campsite near Dornoch. (Incidentally, it is also quite common to hear dogs being worked in English rather than Welsh around me, even when Welsh is the normal, everyday working language. X didn’t appear to understand any language at all when you wanted him to do something he didn’t want, but he could hear ‘biscuit’ when spoken almost without sound, and from three fields away. And we had to spell d-o-g t-r-e-a-t-s, though he picked that up pretty damn fast. Also v-e-t and b-a-t-h, but that’s not an uncommon skill. Not when compared with herding about twenty reluctant tourists into a tight group.) Oh, I digress…

Thinking about X has got me onto the whole question of names. Traditionally working collies have one-syllable names; as one shepherd put it, ‘…call them by a long name and they’ve covered another fifty yards before they hear you’. (There is an alternative point of view, that the one-syllable name sounds too like a command. In my experience, they know the difference; they’re Border Collies, for heaven’s sake.) The other tradition is that they are often given ‘real’ names – the names of people. Dribble-chops here is Mali, belying the one-syllable thing, but then she’s not an officially working dog. Unless you count running after a ball as work (and I’m sure, being a Welsh Collie, that she does). So when my great-aunt defied the Enid Blyton ban and gave me a book by her about a working dog called Shadow the Sheepdog (it became my favourite and could not be removed by the reading police, being a gift), she was demonstrating Blyton’s lack of real research.

I’ve been collecting names in a desultory way. There are some regional variations, of course – Mali, Eira, Gwyn, Del and Cai, for example, are Welsh; Moss, for some reason, is particularly popular in North Yorkshire. Among the human names I’ve met are a Glen, Jack, Meg (several), Jess (ditto), Bob (ditto), Roy, Tom/Twm, Ted, Lyn, Tess, Bess, Gwen, Nell (and a Nel in Wales), Finn, Sam, Ben, Mac, Dot and Jimmy (see you…). Then there were Nip and Tip, Jet (who was), Lady (who wasn’t), Sweep (but no Sooty), Fan, Gem, Chip, Spot, Cap, Jet, Fly, Floss and Dash.

But a friend of mine – and coincidentally Mali’s joint ‘owner’; her partner is much more sensible and he had a Jack – beats the lot. She had Mr Togo Jones when she was little. This is what happens when you let a child name an animal (though nothing is as bad as a cat I knew, originally called Luke Skywalker; my informant had to explain that cats don’t have surnames to get out of that one). Mr Togo Jones was a bit of an accident, half collie and half corgi – how is that possible? steps? – and was originally to be called a simple (!) Mr Jones. This was also vetoed by an adult, who simply pointed out that calling ‘Mr Jones!’ anywhere in Wales would get lots of responses, mostly not from dogs. Mr TJ was apparently adept at rounding up Japanese tourists in Chester, which beats customers at a chipper on a Scottish campsite in both scope and difficulty. Much missed, both Mr TJ and X, though perhaps any Victorian sentimentality about either would be inappropriate…

Landseer’s The Old Shepherd’s Chief Mourner, 1837, courtesy of the V&A Museum

X would have seized the opportunity to get up on the coffin and make a dog bed in the winding sheets when no-one was looking. Or he’d have eaten the leaves and then coughed them back up (lovely). I’m not sure what Mr TJ would have done – could have been anything, given his genetic background.

‘The Colley’ from The Dogs of Great Britain, 1879

Perhaps I should explain the title of this post for anyone who doesn’t know – there was a very popular kids’ TV programme/indoctrination vehicle called Blue Peter. Of course there still is, but it’s not the same – for one thing, the presenters all appear to have lost their minds. In my childhood one of the presenters, an ostensibly sane one, was John Noakes, and he looked after one of the show’s pets, a collie called Shep. They rapidly became an extraordinary double act, with Shep’s trademark wild jumping up and John Noakes’ world-weary cries of ‘Get down, Shep!’ And that’s another name…