Friday, July 31, 2009

Handspun ahoy!

Twist of Lime



Its one ply of spiral dyed merino, one of solid purple merino and one of solid black merino.
There’s 157g, total yardage of 256yds…roughly aran weight, and it will self stripe :)
JellyBelly



It's one ply of LimegreenJelly's Cashmerino, one of some space~dyed merino I got from PoppyFlowerFibers, and then a solid black Falkland ply.
There’s 159g, total yardage of 245yds…roughly aran weight, and it will subtly sef stripe :)

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Went shopping for Wild Flower seeds......


.............and came back with the best idea for a studio!!!
It could live beside the house, and I could work in it......doesn't need any foundations, just a 4 inch thick bed of concrete.
Still an idea in progress, but I am getting there!
The sooner I can get out of my kitchen and into my own space, the more productive I will be!
And that's gotta be good for everyone, right.....?

Friday, July 24, 2009

Pearl Jam's new single.......whoa!!!

My Husbeast, the voice of reason!!!

Taken from the NIACE official blog (husbeast is "the colleague" ***grins***)

Number of visitors to flu website exaggerated?

A colleague of mine made some observations today, which I found too interesting to keep to myself:

“If you’ve watched the news this morning then you would have heard that ‘2600’ people tried to get onto the new flu website every second – that’s 9,300,000 people every hour.

Every news anchor was using the word people in the headline but then changing to the word hits in the story (cunning - but misleading).

This is a classic case of spinning the data to make the resource (in this case the flu website) appear more popular than it really is.

Here are the facts:

The home page of the flu website is made up of at least 7 items (the page itself, 5 pictures and a style sheet). This means that before the page can be displayed in your browser, 7 things need to be retrieved (downloaded) from the server. Each time something is retrieved from a server it counts as a hit, so this means that for every person looking at the page there will be (at least) 7 ‘hits’ to the server.

Simple maths reveals that 2600 divided by 7 equals 371, so in reality, 371 people per second were accessing the website (not 2600).

And…

9,300,000 divided by 7 equals 1,328,571, so in reality, 1,328,571 people per hour were accessing the website (not 9,300,000)

As you can see, there is a massive difference between the figures the media is quoting and figures about actual unique visits from real people. Don’t get me wrong, these are still very impressive figures in their own right - so it begs the question why don’t they use them? (clue: 9,000,000 is more headline grabbing).

This is why we, in the IT team, are always going on about the importance of using the correct terminology - visits are not the same thing as hits.”

Monday, July 20, 2009

Tour de fleece 2009, my third yarn finished :)



Here we have my latest TDF yarn, all fibres are from Southern Cross Fibres :)

Its one ply of the June Fibre club “Sunrise”, one of “Fields of Gold” Polwarth and a third consisting of 3 of the May Fibre Club merisilk batts :)

There’s 2 skeins, 158g in total, roughly aran weight, with 112yds/103m per skein :)

It also self~stripes because of the space~dyed Polwarth…..

I love it…..so subtle and creamy :)

Ahem…..yes, I said subtle and I love it in the same sentence…….I think it’s a first ;)

Friday, July 10, 2009

A Very Fine Friend :)

Today I was completely blown away......
I got a parcel in the post, that I wasn't expecting....and I opened it in puzzlement.
But when I opened it, I just burst into tears......didn't stop crying for quite a while actually...including during a phone conversation to the Husbeast!!!
Claire went to see Thunder on Wednesday night, and got me a tour tee~shirt and signed CD of the ACTUAL gig..... OMG!!! She also included a signed backstage/meet and greet pass in the package.....
This is the very last tour that they are ever doing.....so it was a super special thing that she did for me, especially sharing some of her precious time with them after the gig, telling them about mine and Husbeast's experience seeing them at Dowload.
Thankyou Claire..thankyou so much..........!!!
I am still quite stunned... and this tee~shirt and CD will be treasured.....


Purple Gekko, 2ply Handspun......



All finished!! This is my second "Tour de Fleece" yarn, “Purple Gekko”
This 2 ply averages between 5 and 8 WPI….so nice and slubby and chunky :D
137yds/125m…96g
One ply of Southern Cross Fibres Polwarth "Gecko" and the other a spiral dyed merino ply...both spun on my new Easy Spin wheel :D
One of my personal challenges for the Tour was to try and rekindle a love for 2ply, and it's worked as I love it, it's sooooo squooshy :)

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Tour de fleece 2009, my first yarn finished :)

The Tour de Fleece is a Ravelry wide spin~a~long during the Tour de France....you can set yourself personal challenges to achieve during your time on the Tour, have your own team etc
The basic goals are to get people spinning on a daily basis....within a friendly community support network.
Here is my first offering....




A Falkland 3 ply, two plies of space~dyed fibre, one ply of solid black…..
180g in total (split between 2 skeins) roughly 252yds/230m….about 11 WPI.
I am very pleased with it indeed!!

Friday, July 03, 2009

Expansion WIN!!!

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Woolfest 2009 ~ pic heavy!!!

We set off from Leicester at about 10am....after I'd nearly paced a hole in my floor through sheer excitement! This was gonna be my third visit to the mighty 'Fest....and it was gonna be bigger and better this year due to the Ravelry phenomenom.....
Our only stop on the journey was at the 'Shroom services at Lancaster....what used to be Forton services...In all my years of going north, to my parents in Cumbria and Woolfest, I have bever stopped here...*small hint* wait until the services at Burton (the next ones up) if you want a decent cup of coffee..... ;)

We got to the 'Fest at about 3pm.....and it was a whirlwind of peeps saying hello.... I finally met two ladies I been wanting to meet for ages, Jaqcui (the lady I bought my Lola wheel from) and Claire but it for likee 5 minutes, as they were both rushing off.....bah..next year!!! Pictured is Lottie in my Jester after about..ahem....a lot of pear cider ;)

Now...for the FluffyKittySlippers.....hahaha.....as you'll see in the next picture, Jak doesn't look (if you didn't know her very well) like a person who would wear fluffykittyslippers and eeyore pyjamas does she?? Hehehe....Norty Nanas!! Scatter ;)
Yup....she's 'memberin' and maybe regretting??? Hehehe....


Here's some gratuitous animal shots for you, an Alpaca ans an Angora goat, who rather liked me talking to him/her...he/she was transfixed for ages!!

Ahh....the Woolly Mafia.......and look at Phil beavering away in the corner with his knitting.....that is so full of WIN :D Go Phil!!


Livvy and Nic

We went for a meal at a vegetarian restaurant in Cockermouth called the Quince and Medlar on Saturday night, and it was lovelyLovely food....Lottie did miss her MEAAAT, but hey.... ;)
id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353584872439987666"The ladies powder room had the most delighful washbasin!!! Except for the anachronism that is the taps....the tiles were beautiful....I'm not a lover of pink, but I'd have that in my bathroom. Well, after the dirty herberts have moved out that is ;)
These are my goodies wot I boughted....2 skeins of Fyberspates Sparkle sock, and Jen also gave me some plying thread to play with :) The nekkid skein is some cash sock I purchased from Andy at Bluefaced

I liked the look of this merino~silk solid from Winghams, and also needed some olive green solid merino for a project I have in mind.....

This is from Mrs JellyLegs , its Cashmerino fibre....NOM

And this chunk of lovely is over~dyed grey merino from Daniela at FeltStudioUk

We had such a blast, marred slightly by the campsite owner charging FULL price for all the children, even the under 5's, it was awful. He also pushed us all to pay cash, so mebbes there is a little financial troubles looming for them? Well we certainly won't be going back there again.....which is a real shame as we've had no problems before....
Next 'Fest???
See you at IKnit.............. ;)