latitude59

I went out to do the mucking out yesterday and got distracted by the insistent cheeping of a new-born chick wanting its Mum. It was coming from the hay byre, so off I went in search. I pinned down the area where it was (at the bottom of a 15 foot high stack of hay), but couldn’t see it, so I went back into the house for the torch. Back out again, and it was a simple task to find chick with the light. Picked up Chick – wondered where Mum was and why she wasn’t answering – clambered up the hay from the far side (the only way up) with chick in one hand. No sign of Mum and no sounds. After a bit of thought I took the chick into the house and rang a hen-savvy friend. She suggested I put the chick in a box in a warm place and go and have a proper look for the hen.

Back out to byre. Now, in the 15′ high wall of hay there’s a rather nice hole, and I had my suspicions! I climbed on the Land Rover and shone the torch in, and sure enough there’s Hen, with at least one more chick.

I got a big ladder out and climbed up to check more closely. Having made sure she was there I went back into the house, retrieved the chick from its box and took it into the byre and put it with the hen. It burrowed underneath her in a reassuring fashion. I put some food and water out for Henny and left them to it, wondering how I was going to extract them in the morning.

However, this morning, there’s Hen and three chicks on the floor of the byre, so they obviously got out somehow. Now she’s just got to keep the cats away from them.

Tags: Chicks, Hens

Tuesday is the new Spinning Day, as we now hold it in the Community room at the school. Janet made some very nice cake which went down well with the nine spinners in attendance and a new member joined the group.

Norma had been on one of our spinning courses a few years ago, but had never been able to come spinning before, when it was held on a Wednesday. She’s very pleased that we’ve changed to Tuesday as she’s now free to come.

Norma on the spinning course.

Needless to say it rained today and suddenly became quite gloomy at 3pm, which meant I got the horses in a little early. They were ready to come in though.

Now it’s time to think about cooking the dinner – and get on with some more sock!

Tags: horses, Spinning, weather

I try and keep concurrent projects to a minimum as I find that things get finished quicker that way.

I’m currently knitting two items – with two more hibernating. The first I started last summer, just before I headed south for a relative’s 80th birthday. It’s a cotton thing. Here’s the pattern: Mommes Lysedug It had been suggested that, for an initial excursion into cotton knitting (let alone cotton lace knitting!) I choose a small doily – well… I liked the look of the Mommes Lysedug and like the fact that it doesn’t have a crochet cast off.

It’s going quite well actually. Although the round is now about 400 sts, I’m still knitting it using the Magic loop method as that gives me a half way point as an incentive. Also, on the pattern rows, it’s broken down into (at the moment) 20 repeats. I’m on row  86 of 111.

As it was in October.

As it is today

Detail of the lace

The other active thing I’m knitting is the toe-up sock for the Sanday Spinners Sock Serenity project. As I’ve said before, this is the first toe-up sock I’ve attempted and I’m very pleased with it so far. The contrast between the 400 sts of the doiley and the (currently) 48 sts of the sock is making the sock gallup along.

You will find more details of how the sock progresses on the Sanday Spinners site.

Hopefully, sometime soon, the sky is going to run out of water! After a beautiful sunrise this morning – which should have told me something I suppose – the rain started around lunch time and it’s been raining ever since. At least there’s not a lot of wind.

This has given me the opportunity to stay inside, catch up with some volunteer work on a web site and get on with designing and knitting my socks. After discussions with Beth, we decided that I would knit Toe-up socks using the Magic loop method.  So, my first pair of toe-up socks has been started. I used Judy’s Magic cast on (there’s a lot of magic in these socks – I hope they live up to it) and am reverse-engineering the toe from my usual round toe decreasing pattern. It’ll be featuring in the Sanday Spinners Sock Serenity series of articles.

Tags: Knitting, weather

A neighbour rang last night and encouraged me to go and look at the moon. ‘There’s a huge ring around it tonight – I know you like looking out for these things!’ She was right, there was a large ring around the moon. Measuring it with my big torch (if you can do such things), its diameter was two torches wide. It was a very bright moon as well.

This morning the weather is back to 40mph gusting winds and showers. I put the horses out as it’s not too cold and got everything ready for them to come back in later, as I’ll be nipping home to do that during an afternoon of website updating and development. Part of that has been knitting a tension square (gasp) in preparation for knitting some handspun socks.  As you’ve probably gathered I like to avoid tension squares – I always used to  think they used up some of the precious wool.

Anyway last night I started a sock cuff on 3mm needles with my 2-ply Jacob yarn and rapidly decided that a) it would happily fit a Clydesdale’s leg and b) that the tension was too loose. So I ripped that out (I’d only done about 3 rounds) and cast on for a tension square.  I started with the 3mm needles just to confirm my loose tension theory, then after about an inch changed to 2.75mm needles. It makes a much better fabric, and it’s so soft, I can’t wait to get these socks on to my cold feet.

Delilah the Clydesdale at the 2004 Sanday Show

Tags: horses, Knitting, weather

I went outside first thing this morning to find that the wind had almost completely gone and there was no rain! I was able to put the horses out – they’d been kept in yesterday due to the horrible weather -  and I was then able to give the cross-byre a good mucking out.

I gave Beth a lift to the shops as their car is u/s at the moment and their Land Rover is ‘a work in progress’ and got this pair of beautiful socks in return.

The rain returned this afternoon, but the wind isn’t as strong as it has been the last few days (not yet anyway) and we’ve not had as bad weather as others further south than us.

Well, it’s been a long time since I wrote anything. I’d like to try and write something at least a few times a week. We’ll see how I get on.

The New Year has started wet and windy – much as the Old Year left us.  I did manage to get out for a ride on Barnaby on New Year’s Day – over to Jean for some first-footing. It was at least a dry day, but very cold in the strong winds.  Jean then rode over with me to first foot us!

Careta and Barnaby at Hillside

Spinning started again this morning – we’re now meeting in the Community room at the school, with someone volunteering every week to do the cake. This week Beth made a ‘whatever’s in the cupboard’ cake – very nice spread with butter.

Tags: horses, Ride, Spinning

Well, it’s the first day of the Fiddle Club summer school and we’ve spent the evening sight-reading several pieces of music, including Elgar and Vivaldi.
It’s not sounded too bad for a first run through – but it’ll hopefully be a lot better by the time we get to the concert on Friday!

Well, the Sanday Show has been and gone. We won some classes with the sheep, and Shanty won her in-hand class.

I didn’t win anything in the Industrial Show this year, but that’s not the point of entering. There was a great variety of beautiful craftwork on show, from Beth’s Trophy-winning Shetland shawl, to Jim’s amazing spinning wheel.  Beth won the ‘pair of skeins from raw wool’ class as well, and ended up with several other red and blue cards with her name on them.

The evening prize giving and dance was really good fun. I had a hilarious time trying to teach my niece Hannah and her friend how to dance the St Bernard’s Waltz. Hannah and I also took part in the Strip the Willow dance – otherwise known as an endurance test!

This weekend was also a Sanday Soulka weekend and the Sanday Spinners were holding an open studio as usual.

With so much else going on this weekend, there were only a few visitors, all of whom were very appreciative. The most interesting group turned up about 10 minutes before we shut up shop on the Sunday. A local lady and her two sisters-in-law, one of whom turned out to be this year’s knitting judge from the Show! Beth and I  had a lovely chat with them and got some useful pointers as to what judges are looking for when judging show entries.

I’ve been trying my hand at wood-turning. It’s not finished yet, but here’s the work in progress.