Episode 13 - The one with all the progress

Hi everyone,

Here are the shownotes for episode 13:

Edinburgh Yarn Festival - Sat 16th March 10am - 5pm

Featured designer - OwlPrintPanda

Ravelry patterns

Ravelry Group

Etsy shop

Blog

Discount code: knitspincake25 to get 25% off all OPP patterns except for the mittens

Eden cottage yarns

Oxfam yarn!

The infamous gingerbread house...

Thanks for listening, as always you can find me on Twitter @knitspincake, on Ravelry I am Auntieaipee and you can email me knitspincake@gmail.com

Happy New Year!

Hello everyone,

How are things?

There will be a podcast soon, I promise but not at the moment as I have a cold and no one needs to listen to me sniffling!

Hope you have all had a lovely festive period, we have and are very much enjoying the break from work. We celebrated Christmas in the south of England with Mr M's family and then again upon our return to the North East, all in all it has been very lovely.

Part of my Christmas treat was a new camera so I am hoping to get a lot more photographs on to the blog in the New Year. I may try and get to a photo a day but if this is the case I may set up a new blog and link to this one so you do not all get bombarded by photographs of rabbits and degus!

Today we have had a lazy day but decided we needed some fresh air so went for a walk in the woods by the river...

The woods are at their most beautiful in autumn, the weather has taken its toll as part of the river bank has collapsed into the river.

We have had a lot of rain so the river was looking very angry...

It also appears that I got dressed in the dark...

In all fairness the bottom half matches and the top half matches but they do not match each other!

We feel quite lucky to live in such a beautiful place, even on a dull winters day like today.

I hope you all have a wonderful New Year's Eve whatever you choose to do, we are having a cosy night in with this little one...yes she is licking the cupboard.

Speak to you all next year!

x

Episode 12 - Now that is a whole lot of unravelling

Hi everyone,

Here are the shownotes for Episode 12:

This episode I discuss Masham sheep fair, Yorkshire Wool week including the workshops I went on, there is a book review, a giveaway, some podcast recommendations and a Dr Who special at the end...it is a bumper episode.

Baa Ram Ewe

Novel Knits 

Ann Kingstone designs 

Earth2motherknits

Shinybees 

To enter the giveaway for

Animal hats please complete the following sentence:

If I were an animal I would be a ....., because.....

For 12 knits of Christmas please complete the following sentence:

The thing I love most about christmas is.....

Please email your answer to knitspincake@gmail.com and the winners will be announced on the next podcast, lets say closing date of the 1st December 

Good luck!

Episode 11 - New Beginnings

Hi everyone,

Here are the shownotes for episode 11:

Baa Ram Ewe

Ethical cookies


Glücksburg Cowl

Aran baby coat

Baby booties

Dusky tunic

Aran bobble hat

A day at the farm

Alpacas sporting some trendy hair dos

Wool weekend

Jacobs

Beautiful shetlands

Is that food? For us?

A shearing demonstration

Music provided by Ollie Powell aka Dancing on the Doctor

A slight delay

Hi everyone,

As many of you may know we have recently moved house but will be without the internet until the end of August due to the Olympics *grumble grumble*.

In the meantime i will try and keep the blog updated with what is going on, it will all be brief as i have to do it in my lunch hour or sitting in the car outside of our apartment! Oh yeah we have no phone signal either...what did people do before all this technology?

I am partaking in the ravellenic games and am knitting lots of socks so i will post update photos when possible :-)

In the meantime here is a wind farm i visited last week!

Tour de Fleece

Hi everyone,

As many of you may be aware the Tour de Fleece has commenced and spinners everywhere are digging out their fibre and fluff and deciding what their goals will be for this tour.

It is the first year I have taken part and I have not yet discussed it on the podcast as I am trying to keep it a bit low key due to moving house etc...however I have taken part in the past 2 days and I have to say I m enjoying it immensely. I will discuss it in the next podcast and for ease (and solidarity to all podcasters) I joined Team Sasquatch.

Day 1 was a busy day, knitting group, catching up with friends and packing up the house so I decided the best way to spin was on my drop spindle, I am not sure how much I got spun up but I did get some done which is all that matters plus I got to watch Harry Potter whilst doing so! Here is what I have so far:

This is a hand dyed shetland braid which has tones of oranges, yellows, browns and peaches. It is spinning up to look like an almost tweedy/marled yarn and I am really happy with how it is looking.

Day 2 has been a little more sedate, except for the car boot sale this morning, so I managed to get my wheel out and work on some of the fleece I still have to spin for my Sheep Heid hat. This is what I had left to spin:

Clockwise from the top we have oatmeal bluefaced leicester, Black Welsh Mountain, Masham and Moorit Shetland. At the moment I am trying to spin up just enough to make the hat (I am too impatient) and I am keeping the rest to spin and make the blanket at a later date.

Today I managed to spin up the Masham so now I only have 3 different breeds left to spin before I can cast on the hat :)

I spun 22g and plied the singles into a 2ply yarn which had a yardage of around 64m, just enough and the perfect weight I need for the hat. Masham is nice to spin with, it feels nice in the skein and I think will work well with the rest of the yarns I have spun up.

Here it is:

As I am ever the optimist I also hope to get some of this lot spun up too:

There is a mix of Polwarth, Polwarth/Seacell and Merino/silk in that colourful bunch and it is calling me but not until I finish the natural fluff!

I will put a thread on the Ravelry group for anyone interested in sharing their progress on the tour and I better leave it at that as there is a mischievous looking bunny hopping around my feet.

Episode 10 - The one about change

Hi everyone,

Here are the shownotes for episode 10:

Hambley Etsy shop - stunning hand dyed yarns

@hambley01 on twitter

Peggys Yarns Etsy shop

Peggys Yarns Blog

@peggysyarns on twitter


The beautiful hand dyed yarn went from this

via this contraption

to this

Now what to do with it? Hmm...

Cakes!