Learning to spin

I've been spinning. Not on a bike in a sweaty gym, not as in whirling dervish, but with a drop spindle and a couple of hundred grams of New Zealand Haunui and Blue Faced Leicester, and with a bit of instruction from Craftsy and Drucilla Pettibone (good name). And it's brilliant! In a week I've gone from a lumpy, bumpy, two-ply super bulky yarn, through a wobbly two-ply worsted, to a much more consistent navajo three-ply double knit. I'm starting to work out how to be in control of the fibre drafting, how thin I can spin a single before it breaks and the spindle clatters to the floor (that's where it gets its name...) and I have to twizzle the split ends back together yet again, and how much twist I need to put in when plying to get a nice relaxed yarn. All you need is a stick with a hook on it - simple but effective! And a lot more practice to get really good...

Toddler photos

It's just like monkeys and Shakespeare. If you give a two year old a digital camera, you'll eventually get some great portrait shots. And an awful lot of pictures of his feet.
All photos (c) Evan Ó Dochartaigh.

Woolfest stash

A few weeks ago I did something I've never done before. I went on a day trip, on a coach, with a gang of other woman, to a wool festival. Actually, that's many things I'd never done before. And in spite of really not seeing myself as a coach trip kind of person, I had a really fun day. Woolfest, held in a livestock auction house on the outskirts of Cockermouth in Cumbria, was, not surprisingly, a candy shop for wool botherers; a temple of fibre delights: aisle upon aisle of stalls selling yarn of all colours and all textures; tops and rovings and hanks of wool from Jacobs and Bluefaced Leicester and Gotlands and Herdwicks, from alpaca and even from camel; bats of gorgeous silks; buttons and fastenings galore; spinning wheels and spindles and looms. And so many inspirational beautiful works of craft and art: knits and felts and carved woods and ceramics. And pens of actual sheep and goats, resplendently horned; and demonstrations of shearing and weaving and spinning and - well, you get the picture!

I was very restrained on the yarn front, only coming home with three skeins - two of softest alpaca, both destined for socks - one mustard yellow and one soft brown - and one glorious pure silk in the brightest golden copper sunshine, which I think is going to be a shawl when it grows up. But I did buy an awful lot of raw wool - carded and prepared Black Welsh and Bluefaced Leicester and New Zealand Haunui; broken Merino tops; a bit of unwashed Shetland roo'd fleece; and a couple of little Ryeland rovings - and a handful of mixed silks. Oh, and a drop spindle. All part of my latest mission to learn how to spin, although I hope there'll be some needlefelt pictures coming out of all this as well. 

But that's all on hold, because it's way too warm at the moment for much in the way of woolly activity, and because I seem to be spending most of my spare time at the beach, making the most of the fantastic summer that's come upon us. Oh, ok, I have got a pair of lacy alpaca socks on the go: too small to cause any overheating, perfect for hot summer knitting!

Artisan bread

Artisan bread is, apparently, bread with big holes in it. Those holes in the middle of the loaf, which are formed by the irregular fermentation and rising which happens when dough is kneaded and stretched by hand. The right kind of holes are the mark of good bread. Or so my bread baking teacher says. I've been learning more about bread making from an online course on Craftsy, which was an inspired birthday present from Lorna. (If you're craftily inclined, by the way, Craftsy has online classes on everything from hand painting cakes to couture sewing techniques to rigid heddle weaving - guess you'd have to do the course to find out about that one...)

I've been trying to make better bread for about a year and a half now. I started off, ambitiously, with sourdough, which I realise now is way harder than yeasted bread to make well. My sourdough is nice toasted, but nowhere near perfect. Now I have a really good standby recipe for a no-knead yeasted bread, which Jess in Canada passed on, that produces a pretty decent loaf full of tasty seeds and nuts, and most importantly is easy make on an office day, as you can mix the dough in the morning, leave it to rise all day, and bake it after work. 

But I know that to make really good bread you have to put a lot more work in. So I spent a morning trying out the first class of my Craftsy class: basic French bread. The teacher is very enthusiastic and sometimes annoyingly American, but full of useful information. I mixed to the right proportions (68% moisture), kneaded and stretched at 20 minute intervals, shaped loaves and left them to prove in satisfyingly traditional looking bowls and linens, made a mess of transferring them to the baking tray (a bread peel is clearly an invaluable tool, although a quickly washed piece of wooden shelf board is a reasonable substitute), and finally baked them in a hot oven with the requisite amount of steam. And the results? Well, they're definitely not perfect - not enough holes. But the crust was pretty good and the crumb wasn't too bad at all, and it tasted fantastic still warm with a thick spread of butter (but then what bread doesn't!). I think I just need more practice...

la rhubarbe and other allotment news

I finally got down to the allotment today after three weeks of having no time to attend to it - two weekends away, in London and the Lakes, and lots of things to do on weekday evenings. It looked surprisingly good, not too many weeds in the beds at all - only thigh-high grass and comfrey bordering most of the plot, which is a necessary evil given how little time I spend down there. I don't really mind the grass - although I do feel bad about the way it's choking off the fruit bushes - and the comfrey isn't a weed at all, making itself useful as a mulch (comfrey tea smells so bad I don't bother anymore). Every so often I make a token effort at ripping the grass up, but it's much more industrious than me and just keeps coming back.

That aside, the plot actually looks fairly presentable - which is also thanks to Orsi's hard work weeding and stocking it with Hungarian plants! Most things have been saved from the slugs and snails - although quite a few French beans, red cabbages and cavolo nero have been munched. I made myself busy between the rain showers weeding, putting in pea sticks and tying in the broad beans. And at last starting to collect the first of the early summer harvest! Tonight's tea included green onions, fennel stalks, and broad bean tops - a seasonal delicacy. And the last of the rhubarb, which went to top up the pickled rhubarb I made a few weeks ago, because it's utterly delicious. The recipe is from Diana Henry's 'Salt, Sugar, Smoke', my go to book for preserves this year. But why is it that 'pickled rhubarb' sounds so much better in French?

Wild swimming

I've always loved swimming in the sea, although because most of my life I've lived close to the coast of Scotland, Ireland or Wales, I don't do it very often. One of my favourite holiday things in the world has been swimming in Greece, diving in off a smooth, sun warmed rock, or a yacht, and cutting through clear blue cool waters, welcome in the heat of the day.

But I've decided that you can't live your life longing for perfection and something that comes along every five or ten years, and so a couple of weeks ago I bought a sleek, snug, swimming wetsuit. Yes, it's Scotland. Yes, it's the North Sea. But give a girl a few millimetres of neoprene and the ocean is my oyster. I tried it out first at a reservoir in the Pentlands, with 120 mostly keen triathletes - fun, but a bit serious. And then I found the Wild Ones, a relaxed and welcoming bunch of people who swim every Sunday, and after work on summer evenings, at Edinburgh's own beach, Portobello, just for the enjoyment of being in the water. And most of them without wetsuits! I was impressed.

Someone from the Wild Ones posted this wonderful video of a Faroese lady - the swimming granny. Forget wearing purple, I think this is what I aspire to in my old age. Crazy in many people's eyes, but happy!

Shetland things

I just spent a wonderful week in Shetland. It's been on my 'To Go' list for years - maybe ever since Mum told me she found out she was pregnant with me while she and Dad were there touring around on his old motorbike - when apparently it cost just £1.50 a night to rent a cottage for two. I stayed with a friend with her friends on Bressay, a 10 minute ferry commute from Lerwick harbour, where no one locks their houses, strangers pull over to offer you lifts, I spotted a porpoise from the living room window, and got to bolster the numbers of the Bressay community choir - five women (including me...) with an old piano.

So many things about Shetland to like. Knockout archaeology - Jarlshof and Mousa and Scatness and countless other sites. Brochs and Norse longhouses all over the place. World beating wildlife - bonxies swooping overhead, thousands of gannets diving and calling, busy bobbing puffins, watching a nesting guillemot colony get decimated by a rabbit, seeing otters feeding metres away. Mind-bending geology, sheer cliffs, soft turf, broad green straths, beautiful beaches, white sands, turquoise bays, freezing waters, ponies, crazy bus shelters, cold winds, and warm cafes. Sheep and wool and spinning and knitting inspiration everywhere! Ferries and islands and friendly people and music and late nights and whisky. Going back one day, I hope.