On New Toys, And The Odd Read Too

Meshell and I made a supreme sacrifice recently - we decided NOT to go to the huge Craft Show that comes to town each year. Why would we do this I hear you ask, shaking your head with amazement. Well, the reason is this - we decided we'd like to spend our pennies on a new toy instead - A Yarn Ball Winder! How exciting is THAT!


You have no idea how good this is. In our current yarn/roving/fleece/spinning mode, the house is draped with skeins of yarn every which where, and the thought of winding them all into balls was a daunting one. So we bought our toy, and set it up yesterday. One of us doing the arms wide thing, holding the skein, the other winding it. And it makes these wonderful, centre-pull yarn cakes.


We wound about 20 cakes of yarn, mostly Meshell's beautiful multicoloured spinnings - I'm sure she'll do one of her usual gorgeously colourful blog posts very soon to show you.

I finally sat down with my handspun fleece yarn and had a trembling attempt at doing a cable swatch. I've never before done anything more complicated than knit one purl one, so lots of deep concentration trying not to lose my place in the pattern. I was undeniably gobsmacked to actually see a PATTERN emerge! Yay, I did cable, I did cable happy dance


I've been in a reading mood lately too, what with the cold weather and all. I've recently finished Five Quarters Of An Orange by Joanne Harris (who wrote Chocolat). What a great book, I'm off to hunt down her newest one, called "The Lollipop Shoes".


This is one I'm reading now, seems to have a similar vein to the one above. Sort of culinary based, full of European traditions, just about people pottering through life. So far it's very enjoyable.


I also read this one last week - Crow Lake by Mary Lawson. Again, another good one