New, new, new Year is comming

Soon we will be in 2012, I just only the other day managed to write "11" at the end of the year on dates and it is changing again.
There are some great new possibilities open for me next year as my favourite fibre seller added some more sheep fibres into their shop and also I was very lucky and met Liz, a weaver from UK with whom I hope to cooperate a wee in making some items, me spinning some yarn for her and her making those amazing  shawls and scarfs she does.
The package with 7,5kg of Shetland got lost somewhere which is very sad for me as I was so exited about spinning up some of that superfine for some nice victorian lace shawl.
I have had a chance however to do more work on my only so far planned project and spun another half kilo of Icelanding sheep to hopefully become one day an original afgan throw.
And as if I didn´t have had enough with my last patchwork blanket, I started to plan a new one. Fabric- check, threads- check, design-uncertain but with hopes.
I also made some further designs for future dog toys for the charity auctions. I just might get them right for all those pupz out there.
I do love peacefull Christmas when The only thing which needs to be done really is to eat a bit more chocolate, to walk the puppies to places we usually do not get to and to spin some yarn while watching fairytales and all those old black and white Czech movies...

I hope and wish that you all have Great Year 2012, that some of those dreamy projects and all those hopes will finally come true. But most, most of all! Stay safe, healthy and never alone.

Eva

Puppies and Christmas...

Puppies do love Christmas. It is easy to see, since opening hills of treats is something what they see as their due at any time of the year! Now they have to wait all the way to Birthday and how unfair is that?
Therefore, it is most important to make as much mess as possible!

Christmas make crafter busy...

haven´t been about my blog for ages. I know. I was busy you see? This Christmas last minute finishing of everything is my every year problem. It always seem in September that I have so much time left, I ignore October for some reason and in the middle of November I start to run about like headless chicken and panic.
This year however, in the nick of time I managed to finally finish an all important blanket for Dag´s mum.
It is made of 8976 pieces all together. Didn´t believe it when I did the calculation in the end, so I counted it again and again, then asked Dag to do so too... Well, that is correct number :-O!
And here it is, size 205x205cm

Beads... beads...

I was in my homeland. For very swift visit. To sort some paperwork and visit a doctor. To meet a lawyer. And to get some BEADS!
I order beads from Czech bead shop here and they do offer not only to send it to me all the way to Germany, but also an option to pick the treasure at one of their shops in Prague. I did choose the latter and pre-ordered a hill of seed beads. So, if you are one of my customers of Longnosed Yarn, you will soon see bead yarn back. To ensure I have enough of everything, I have fibre on the way as well, so I am hopping to spend a weekend in blissful dyeing of fibre.

Why doesn´t Eva spin 100% angora...

I got a question via my Etsy shop yesterday. Lady in question was asking me if I do just angora, since I do spin angora with silk a lot. Now for those of you who are not experienced with Angora as fibre or yarn, here is the answer.
Angora rabbit, which is the "giver" of this super light and fluffy fibre is an amazing animal. The hair is harvested by just brushing out or by shaving. Now this is important for the bunny, since the poor animal could suffocate on its own hair as well as get intestinal blockage by it. So by shaving it and brushing it, it has safe life. The hair this special bunny has is amazing. It can be a wee ticklish when used by itself, but it sheds even when spun into yarn- it is just so fine!. Therefore other fibres are added to keep it in place. The mix with silk is a classic. Angora hair is and always was considered a luxury fibre.

So, next time you are buying angora yarn in shop, you might buy just those 200g needed for sweater if it is 100% angora, but you will be covered in the hair all the time. You could however get a 70/30 or 50/50 mix in which case you will follow the yardage for the sweater you want to make in needle size recommended and be fluff free.
So, there. My reason for spinning angora mixes.

Angora/angora/angora...
There are angora cats.
Angora rabbits...
and angora goats...
There are people out there who spin angora cat hair and make it into clothing, bags, accesories etc.
Angora rabbit produces Angora fibre.
Angora goat produces Mohair fibre.

Many Thanks to Betty who fixed a mistake I made in this post originally, regarding goats and their fibre!

SWT autumn auction

Sighthound Welfare Trust is doing another auction! Staring today (29th. September) and running on for a week (till 6th.October).
So, make sure to have a look about to get a bargain, buy something special and help raise some pennies for amazing GRWE, so they can keep on helping all those hounds.


I have donated a pair of fingerless gloves

and a doggie companion (he preffers that over calling him just "toy") called HUGO.




I do send internationaly for free to any winner. The membership on SWT is free ;-)

Oh dyes...

I am a proud owner of a hill of dyes. The colours and shades I did not have before were given to me for my BDay by my Norwegian family. One can not help but love them!

 

At the same time I got huge package from WoW full of delicious fibre. There are some of my old favourites such as baby camel and angora, which I love to spin. 

However... there was also some secret weapon to use in long project I am planning to spend perhaps next two years on doing. I will update on that when I start on it.

Spinning, spinning, spinning...

I haven´t stop spinning from the end of TdF. I was in such a for I couldn´t!
Now, it might have seen I have been lazy and was not updating my blog, which I wasn´t, but at least my new shop on Etsy is not empty, even though nobody is buying :-(.

However, I did not advertise yet, so I am hoping that next month during time my add will be flying all over ravelry, something might change. Somebody might want to buy my yarn again... Maybe I even throw in some fibre for spinners... I do have plenty of that ;-)

Le Tour

We are half way in dear friends.
Half way in what? Tour de Fleece of course!
During Tour de France, the cycling event, you know the one, right? The one where people can actually die participating. There were quite a few scary crashes so far and even some winners of stages were unexpected!
And yet, while I do not care who will win the yellow jersey or the green one, I am a HUGE polka dot watcher. For those of you who do not follow... Polka dot jersey is given to best climbers, i.e. people who do not get heart attack after 200km of riding their bike up the steep hill. I will, of course make sure you get to see what I have been up to during Le Tour, but I want to leave this till it is over. But the hill of spun yarn is getting slowly bigger even though my hand decided to take few days off. Well, at least I got some ironing done with the other hand LOL
So, if you are spinners, you can still join in on www.ravelry.com
I can be found in 3 teams on regular basis:
Team Hopelessly Overcommited (of the same named knitting forum)
Team Bacon Waffle (full of infamous members of The Very Longest Ferdinand)
Team Bring Me a Shrubbery (well, you guessed it, right? Knitters who say "Ni")

week in Shropshire and Herefordshire

We spend absolutelly amazing week mainly in Shropshire following our camping in Norfolk.
If you are in Shropshire, there are hundrets of walks for you and your doggies, you can find them at Shropshire walking web. Try some circular, or linear ones (there are plenty buses to take to get home wherever you are staying ;-)).
It would not be a visit to Shropshire if we did not visit two important places...
One is Acton Scott working farm where during 1 year a TV series Victorian Farm was shot. 3 people lived the old victorian way there and since I am huge fan of the series I could not miss that! Now, doggies are not allowed as the farm animals walk freely about, however there are 3 great walks in area- mind the hills! and on some of the walks you will be passing parts of farm itself. We did it the lazy way. Dag and boys did climb the hills on walks and I visited the farm.

Acton Scott working farm

The other place is of course biggest walk- in museum. Also working, no doubt about that. Blists Hill is World famous and the streets and its shops DO ALLOW DOGS in! We saw Japanese tourists, Americans and I have hear some Dutch walking there.
The village itself is amazing, staff super friendly and there is a walk behind the village for some quiet moment for your pack if you decide to take dogs with you.
I do recommend that if you are not going to visit any of the museums itself in BH, that you arrive in the afternoon. Why? Because schools are bound to be about most mornings and if you have shy and nervous dogs, afternoons are much more easy on them. Dogs are not charged for entry ;-)
If you are dogless on your trip. Come as early as possible! There is so much to see and if you have children, so much to do!

Do not miss Blists Hill, it has so much to offer.

camping in Norfolk

We did have horrid weather for our camping this year.

Getting several inflammations in my ankles did not help, but we tried to make most of it ;-)
We did have a dear Millie Moo cow for an afternoon which was great since Millie and Bess were not camping with us this year and we missed the flirt Millie and the shy Bess.
I managed some shopping in craft store with Roo (Babs) and ended up with some jelly rolls for quilting (YAY!), silk for painting and some other bits and pieces.

Rob and Ann kindly made us a dinner, which we really enjoyed. As always we were neighbouring with Birdie Towers and finally met the norty Teddy. Who is super cute and just simply crazy.
We had nice walk on beach and great time walking on dog walk surrounding the campsite.

So, if you want to camp in Norfolk, I highly recommend:
http://www.campingandcaravanningclub.co.uk/siteseeker/aspx/details.aspx?id=7250&returnPage=search.aspx

and if you want to spend a lot of money on quilting fabric and goods, yarn or art goods, make sure to pop by:
sew simple
Dog friendly restaurant which serves dinners even for dogs (as well as take aways for the four legged):
Orange Tree

...and more yarn

 As we are leaving Saturday morning for holiday, to meet with our dear UK friends for a week of camping just to leave them to go on a week of roaming Shropshire countryside and for me to finally see for myself Victorian town and farm, I better post before I lose the track of "havetodos".
I still hope to be able to post a shawl I am knitting from baby camel (my own spun yarn), but I can not make any promises. I do hope however that I will finish this giant piece of heavy warmth while on holiday.
That is unless Katie MacAlyster´s books will let me do anything else.














P.S. Note the olive green one colour yarn. I added hundreds of TOHO olive triangular (sp?) beads into it and I just adore it. It is made of real British Shetland sheep- the queen of all knitted lace ;-). 

I am back!!!!

I   haven´t posted for a while. I know... You think me lazy, but I do have an excuse! (YAY!)

I had a whole week (last week) inflammation in my right knee. I was moody and horrid and in pain, so I did nothing except feeling sorry for myself.

I do still have quite a stiffness in my knee and of course my left knee hurts from having to carry all the weight by itself, so still not much to celebrate about, but except for wanting to kill inventor of stairs, I am OK.

I did take some pictures in past few days of what I make with all that fibre I seem to dye all the time, so here is a little something for all of you who do like colours

THANK YOU!

Just really want to brag here. I have many great online friends who I never met in my life, but who are just so special to me. I love you guys!

Now, this is a special THANK YOU from me, Dag and mainly Fenix and Chekhov to a specific one.

Jackie....

We got our package from USA (yep! All the way from USA travelled a package which was to put huge grins on our faces, make our carpet covered in saliva from our two K9s and makes us all feel undeserving- well not that Fenix and Chekhov complained...).

Picture is worth more than thousand words they say, so do not share this with any puppies, unless you want them to drool over your computer and lick your screen ;-).

I am sure that the print which we got will look great on the wall in our hall.

Thank you Jackie, I do not know how we deserved this

Love ya ;-)

Eva, Dag, Chekhov and Fenix

Business card pouch

I made this in size for my business card to fit, so measure yours to ensure there is enough space to fit the card  in and take it out easily.

I used following:

paper

scrapbooking paper

punch(er)

scissors

paper glue

eyelets

eyelet tool

ribbon

Cut the shape out of heavier paper and another one in slightly bigger size from scrapbooking paper or paper in other colour(+1 mm in my case).

Punch in the middle a shape of your choice (that is optional of course). Glue two cut shapes together and ensure you marked spots where you need to make a bend.

Mark the lines with a blunt object for easier and precise bend (I use scissor to do this LOL).

Glue the bottom part to make it hold all together. You might need to cut a tip from one side  in order to bend this comfortably.

Punch a hole into top of the pouch, so you can pull a thread or ribbon through and place eyelets.

I did the same at the bottom of the pouch as I really like eyelets LOL

Last, glue on a ribbon about the top part of pouch. This one is 6mm. I got a lot of them from ebay very cheap ages ago and I still have a lot left.

Make a bow.

 Stick the business card in and attach it with ribbon or thread pulled through the top eyelet onto your goods ;-)