Green and growing things

A while back one of my colleagues was thinning out her chili seedlings and offered them around to all the rest of us. I claimed one, brought it home without breaking the stem, and got it safely installed in a spare terracotta pot on the windowsill.
Fast forward a couple of months, and it's got fruit! Eight so far, and we hope to get at least one more crop off before the end of the growing season. For anyone growing peppers indoors, stray ends of yarn trimmed off projects make great fertilizing tools. Soft enough not to hurt the plant, rough enough that the pollen sticks well.

Mmmmm, sheepy

My flat smells like a sheep. Fortunately hubs and I both like the smell of lanolin, as do most of our friends. I've been washing it bit by bit, done three bags from approximately 20. I've rigged up an empty freestanding tapestry frame into an impromptu drying rack which seems to be working well. Of course, I'd somehow managed to forget that washing fleece drastically increases its volume, as does carding. It's just going to keep getting bigger until I get it spun up!


In knitting news, the first Christmas gift of the year is finished and drying out after its bath and blocking session. No pics, of course - you'll just have to take me at my word. I'm still hopeful that I'll get all of it done, although there is a shedload to be done. Including squillions of squares and all their ends. I sewed ends in last night after I finished the knitting on Gift One.

An introduction

My beloved grandmother seems to have taken on the role of my spinning patroness. I was sent on a shopping mission for tools and supplies, and am partway there. So, allow me to present Fifi.



Fifi is a chocolate brown Jacob/Suffolk/Texel cross. The fleece weighs 2.35kg, skirted but unwashed. It's currently in a bag in my living room. :D

I've started the process of scouring the fleece. Batch one turned the water a spectacular bright orange colour, so heavy was the coating of lanolin. The fleece is of course a Christmas present, as are the other bits purchased along with it, but I live in London. If I wait until December to start scouring, the washed fleece will never dry. So, I'm taking advantage of the hot August sunshine to wash it. Once it's thoroughly dry, I'll pack it away to play with in the new year.

(That's a pint glass in the photo, by the way. This thing is enormous!)

The great post of numbers

225 - the number of squares I need to make the blanket I'm working on

72 - the number of multicoloured squares

153 - the number of plain white squares

15 - the number of squares in a single strip

15 - the number of strips

108 - the number of squares I've finished

738 - the number of ends resulting from making the all the squares

change of plans

Christmas knitting. All the time. That's pretty much all I'm doing right now. I sat down and worked out exactly what I need to do to get it all done, and there's a lot. I will try to have interesting things up as and when I can, but quite a few of the recipients read the blog and we can't have spoiled surprises!

We have a winner!

And it's me! Unbeknownst to me, the group with which I was participating in WIPs Wrestling decided to have a prize draw at the end of July. Every completed project got you one entry into the draw. And I won! My prize was a skein of hand-dyed yarn from Sheepy Time Knits, in my choice of base yarns. I picked laceweight (surprise, surprise!), and am really looking forward to seeing what it looks like.

Note to Self

Projects involving lots of multi-coloured motifs invariably require much sewing-in of ends and much finishing. Neither of these tasks are particularly enjoyable. Quit deciding to make projects that you won't enjoy finishing.