The Yarnscape Blog!

Hi! And welcome to Yarnscape!

This is me, just starting out with making my hand-dyed yarns and fibres available to the public. And hand-carded batts, too. I love playing with colour almost as much as I love playing with fibre, and though I can spin faster than I can knit, I can dye even faster than I can spin! So I’m looking forwards to sharing my overabundant creativity with the rest of the world, and hopefully spreading a little joy as I go.

To start with, I will be trading on Etsy and Folksy, though I hope to have my own shop set up here in the near future. There’s nothing to buy yet, because I find taking good photographs to be the hardest part of the whole business (the one of the ‘chocolate cherries’ roving up there is courtesy of my lovely and long-suffering other half), but I hope that there will be listings up soon!

I will be introducing my yarns over the next few weeks, and listing as I go. Please come back often to find out more about my products, or even better, follow me here or on twitter, or subscribe to my rss feed!

Oh, and comments are always, always welcome. Please, come and talk to me!

99) Quiet

It's quiet on the blogs today; it has been all week.  I think it probably has something to do with Thanksgiving, at least for the North American part of my blogroll.  Folks out there are packing, or travelling, or cooking, or socialising.  I'm looking forwards to Christmas, so I can do the same, but I'm quietly thankful (hah!  Yes, thankful) that I don't get two large holidays so close to each other.  Happy Thanksgiving, you guys!

It's quiet in the house, too, apart from when the post arrives or my canine companions spot a cat (real or imaginary) in the garden.  I'm working from home because of the breathing thing (which is 'probably a virus or something' and 'will get better on its own', apparently.  Thanks, doc!), and although I enjoy the sociable nature of my current workplace, it's nice to have an uninterrupted flow of quiet time to really get stuck into the job at hand, too.

Generally speaking, I like quiet.  I don't need to have music on all the time, and nor do I turn the telly on for 'background noise'.  Music is for dancing to, or playing; I rarely just listen to it, though I do have quite a lot of chilled, ambient stuff that I play whilst working, generally to deaden the 'background noise' of other people.  And the telly has to be paid attention to; I might mostly watch the telly 'with my ears' whilst spinning, knitting or weaving, but I *do* pay attention to it.

Quiet:  it gives the thoughts in my head room to move.

Elderberry wine (recipe in progress)

Strip the berries from their stems using a fork.  Eject spiders, earwigs and other wrigglers from the fruit bowl.
Chop sultanas roughly (I used a food processor)
Add to bucket with acid, sugar and sultanas.
Add boiling water and mash.  I used a potato masher
Crush and add Campden tablet, cover, and leave to cool.

Dandelion wine (recipe in progress)

Wash flowers, and pull petals, leaving behind as much of the green calyx as possible.  All the stem must go!
Chop sultanas roughly (I used a food processor)
Add to bucket with acids, sugar and sultanas.
Add boiling water and stir well.
Crush and add Campden tablet, cover, and leave for 24 hours.

Start yeast in a cupful of the must, and add to body of must

Ferment till activity stops, and rack into second demijohn.  (NB not all activity had stopped for me; I came back to the demijohn a month or two later, and it was somewhat pressurised.  I let the pressure off…)

¹citric:malic:tartaric acid, 1:2:3

12a) Ooook!

No, I don't really feel this deserves an entry all of its own…

Brewing log

Brupak’s “Almondbury Old” ale, 40 pint kit
Additional ingredients: 1kg Ritchie’s glucose powder
Start date: 18/01/2009
Time to pitch: c. 2 hours
Pitch temperature: 20 degrees C
Starting gravity:      1.044
Gravity, 21/01/09:  1.016
Gravity, 23/01/09:  1.012
Gravity, 24/01/09:  1.011, as far as I can tell
Gravity, 26/01/09:  1.010
Gravity, 27/01/09:  1.010
Bottling date:  28/01/09
Total volume:  40 pints

Samson’s “Newkie Brown” beer, 40 pint kit
Additional ingredients: 1kg Ritchie’s glucose powder
Start date: 18/01/2009
Time to pitch: c. 2 hours
Pitch temperature: 20 degrees C
Starting gravity:      1.044
Gravity, 21/01/09:  1.016
Gravity, 23/01/09:  1.012
Gravity, 24/01/09:  1.011, as far as I can tell
Gravity, 26/01/09:  1.010
Gravity, 27/01/09:  1.010
Bottling date:  28/01/09
Total volume:  40 pints

Sheraton’s “Rich red” wine, 1 gallon kit
Additional ingredients: 800g sugar
Start date: 01/02/2009
Time to pitch: < 2 hours
Pitch temperature: 22 degrees C
Starting gravity:          1.090
Final gravity (15/02):  0.994
Bottling date:  25/02/09, I think.  Into a wine box!
Total volume: not measured
First taste: 14/03/09. Light, fruity and very sweet. Acidic smell, pale colour. No off flavours or contaminated notes; generally pleasant though not to all tastes due to the sweetness!

Munton’s “Pilsner” beer, 40 pint kit
Additional ingredients: None
Start date: 01/03/2009
Time to pitch: c. 2 hours
Pitch temperature: 24 degrees C
Starting gravity:      1.044
Racked into secondary fermenter:  08/03/2009
Gravity, 08/03/09:  1.020 (I think!)
Gravity, 12/03/09:  1.015
Gravity, 24/03/09:  1.013
Bottling date:  25/04/09
Total volume: 39 pints

Beaverdale “Cabernet Sauvignon” wine, 1 gallon kit
Additional ingredients: None
Start date: 04/03/2009
Pitch temperature: 22 degrees C
Starting gravity:      1.080
Gravity, 27/03/09:  0.995  – Stabilised
Bottling date:  18/04/09
Total volume: 6 bottles

Sheraton’s “Best Bitter”, 40 pint kit
Additional ingredients: Beer enhancer
Start date: 25/04/2009
Pitch temperature: 24 degrees C
Starting gravity:      1.044
Gravity, 25/04/2009:  1.018
Gravity, 02/05/2009:  1.015
Gravity, 07/05/2009:  1.014
Gravity, 17/05/2009:  1.013
Bottling date:
Total volume:

Dandelion wine
recipe here.
Start date: 25/04/2009
Into demijohn: 25/04/2009
Demijohn gravity:     1.100  
Gravity 
Bottling date: 
Total volume: 

Burton Bridge “Summer Ale”, 40 pint kit
Additional ingredients: Spraymalt, I think
Start date: c.15/06/2009
Starting gravity:      1.039
Bottling gravity:       1.014
Total volume:           39 pints

Brewferm “Abdij”, 19 pint kit
Additional ingredients: Dark spraymalt
Start date: c.15/06/2009
Starting gravity:      1.072
Bottling gravity:       1.030 (keg)
                               1.014 (bottles)
Total volume:  18.5 pints

Brupaks “Scammonden dark”, 40 pint kit
Additional ingredients: Spraymalt, I think
Start date: 23/08/2009
Pitch temperature: 24 degrees C
Starting gravity:         1.039
Gravity, 08/09/2009:  1.014
Bottling gravity:          1.014
Total volume:    39 pints

Elderberry wine
recipe here.
Start date: 31/08/04/2009
Yeast pitched: c.04/09/2009
Into demijohn: 13/09/09
Demijohn gravity: Not recorded
First racking: 04/10/09
Gravity:  0.997
Bottling date: 
Total volume: 

So very behind…

I can’t believe it’s so long since I updated here.  My TypePad trial period is now up, and I still haven’t decided whether I’m staying here or not.  On the whole, I think there are more facilities over here, but I haven’t managed to make use of them yet, so I’m not 100% sure they’re worth my money!
I’ve not been as productive as I might have liked in February, though my ‘Making Waves’ socks are finished and the Lorna’s Laces socks are awaiting one, final, toe.  No work has been done whatsoever on fixing Minnie, or on procuring or attaching fasteners for my two fastenerless sweaters.
I’m even behind on my blog reading; last time I checked, my Bloglines backlog was over 200, which is pretty darn unusual for me.
Still, I’ve broken the ice with this post, so there should be more ‘real’ ones to follow.  Fingers crossed!

There and back again…

…a sock’s tale.

These socks were started on the way ‘over there’ to Canada, and worked on for most of the way ‘back again’.

I designated these as my travel project, on brand new Brittany Birch 2.5mm DPNs, which I thought A) would evade the X-ray machines at the airports, and B) would stand a chance of getting past anyone who did ask ("No, officer, they’re not knitting needles; they’re toothpicks!").  They did get past the check-in staff, and no-one asked about them, so I didn’t get to test hypothesis B.  However, one did break, just into the second sock, which has produced a significant hiatus in their progress.

I finally sucked it up, though, and bought a new set, and progress is now being made:

But these little beasts haven’t played their last trick yet; I got well past the documented point on Saturday, only to discover that I’d done the gusset decreases differently on each sock.  I don’t mean I’d used a different technique – ohh, no, I’m not that picky! – but that I’d decreased at a different rate.

I discovered ages ago that decreasing on every round can improve the fit on my rather skinny ankles, and so did just that, automatically, on the second sock.  It was only later, when comparing the would-be pair, that I noticed the difference.  Given that I know the first sock fits, and that cabled fabric knit on small needles is less ‘give-y’ than lace, I ripped.

Sigh.  I might yet finish these this month, I suppose…

No coats please, we’re dogs

Kita says:

A muddy nose is a happy nose

Progress on ‘Lily’

The big green blob:

Body edging: half done
Cuff edging: all done – but will it stay??

The cuffs on this cardi are interesting; two slightly-less-than-half-width cuff sections are knit, then joined together with about 5 stitches between them.  This results in a U-shaped indentation in the cuff.  When I crocheted the edging, I wasn’t sure whether the edging was supposed to go across the bottom of the ‘U’ or not – so I put it there.  In retrospect, I would have been better leaving it off, then adding it in later if I decided I wanted it.

Aaaaand….  I didn’t read the cuff instructions properly.  The cuff edging is only supposed to have one row of loops.  I’m not sure I like the double row; it makes the cuff flare loads because it’s so bulky, especially with the split cuff:

I think I will probably pull it out and do it again properly.