A second post in one day - I think I'm prevaricating. I still haven't made up my mind, even though I've had a long hot bath, made lasagne for tonight, some hummus from the leftover chickpeas that went in lasagne, and been for a long walk in the woods.

The pupz have been having somewhat brisk walks this week as I seem to have been constantly running out of time, but this afternoon they decided to roust me out about 3.30. Naturally it was cold and dark and pouring with rain, so I put a sweater and a coat and a hat on. By the time I got to the door it was brilliant sunshine on all the water outside, so I scampered upstairs for the camera. Sadly, it didn't occur to me to take the sweater off.



The sun was brilliant and strong and shone through the new beech leaves.



I was trying to get the lovely green of the new leaves here, but Bil decided there was something in last year's dead leaves that he had to investigate.



We sat down and just watched the woods a few times as we walked round; this was by the wet patch, where I added to the little dam that held back a small stream to create a tiny wetland in the woods. Lunil has missed the sun, I think.



I managed to catch the sun shining straight into Bil's brown eyes:


Everything was so wet from the rain that it was glinting brilliantly in the sun. Shadows and edges were so clear cut.



I made this little coronet from dead birch twigs during the Buck Woods walk/talk a few weeks ago, when there were hardly any leaves around. I hung it over a branch and no-one's moved it since.


I went to reach it down, but the little bud that I hung it over had grown through with leaves, so I left it.



I'd say the tree had claimed it back, but the twigs came from a neighbouring birch to the rowan I hung it on.



I wonder if anyone else has actually noticed it? It's actually in the middle of the prehistoric village remains.


I love lilac. I took a few sprigs home; the scent is so beautiful.

I have so many things that I am inspired to knit at the moment that I thought a little blog post to get them in order might help a little. I only have one thing on the go that's current (there are a few things in abeyance at the moment, that I have no great desire to pick up again just yet). Actually, this is one of Ravelry's great features, as far as I'm concerned - you can see at a glance what you've got going, and what hasn't been picked up for so long that it's dropped out of mind. Then I can remember where I left it!

I have the recently washed Manx fleece that I think I want to spin up and knit into something like Brea pattern from the Rowan Lima book. I rather like the way this looks like an old English smock, which I think would be emphasized by making it up as a cardigan, using interesting old-type metal buttons, and the colour of the fleece would be reminiscent of an unbleached rustic linen. I may even use the knitting machine for the large areas of plain stockingstitch before I start on the cabling-that-acts-as-smocking.

There's Liz Lovick's recently published shawl pattern, Sea-going Shawl, which I copped for a free copy of because I suggested the name. I'm torn between using some of my Estonian shetland-type yarn with the really long colour gradations in this, or the antique green 4-ply that came to me as a half-made cardigan too damaged and too long unfinished to be completed, but has yielded a lovely big skein of surprisingly nice yarn. Not having a shawl on the go at the moment is quite strange!

I need to set on a pair of socks, or several. I have ideas for Turkish-style socks, colourwork, using some of the last few skeins I have of my own dyed Falkland merino sock yarn (that I'm not selling). Or I have some lovely natural dyed alpaca sock yarn that came home with me from Wonderwool from the Mulberry Dyer.

I want to start either Kate Davies' Betty Mouatt or the Betty Mouatt Cowl. I didn't like this when the latest issues of Textisles came out, and I think this was because of the colour - red, sky-blue and another blue so pale it reads as white. However, I realised today (duh!) that I actually have some of the yarn in question (Albayarn's 4ply, which Mark bought me as a delayed birthday present up at Ganseyfest) and the colours I have would be much more appealing. So do I want to cast on a lovely little fitted sweater, or a long sweeping cowl?

And there's Mark's promised Gansey in the background. I have three cones of Frangipani gansey yarn in olive green (again, from Ganseyfest) and I'm still wondering whether to wait for Penelope Hemingway's soon-to-be-published book on inland waterway ganseys or design my own. The only problem with a canal/river gansey is that they were never, but never, knitted in green yarn - the superstition again green was really strong in these communities. I could just not think about it and trawl out either an Alice Starmore pattern or one of the Cornish ones - the minstrel gansey appeals. This really needs to be on the needles before the summer starts, because it's a biggie; Mark's chest and shoulders now are huge! I could start looking through the books while knitting on the shrug today.

There's the single cone of Falmouth navy Frangipani yarn that I bought for me at Ganseyfest. That was intended to be a short fitted skirt in traditional gansey patterns, but it would also be rather nice (and extremely practical) for Liz's shawl as above.

I want to do Peabey the Polar bear soon - I even spun up the yarn specially for that, Cheviot with a little angora. And the pattern was given to me back before Christmas.

And I've just been to look both in my library on Ravelry and there's some lovely patterns on there I've either bought or had given, in .pdf form, that I really want to do too.  Harmonia's Rings, the Juneberry Triangle....

Of course, the other night these thoughts provoked me to go and have a trawl through the yarn stash. This isn't as big as you might imagine! (That's the fleece stash - there were over twenty in there, though a few have been dyed up for the shows and more will follow). I found a few things I'd more or less forgotten, a few cones of stuff that I really need to skein up and dye and get sold, and had a bit of an organise. Scary. Actually, that's just the bags behind the door in the bedroom. I also have a plastic box of 'special' yarn that lives in the sitting room - that's mostly skeins of handspun. Every now and them I have a dive in this and get ideas. The larger Ikea box/table thing behind that is mostly sock yarn. There's stuff in this that really I could get sold now, I probably won't use it. And it would make sense to put the nice handspun in the nice wooden container and pack the rest upstairs/sell it.

This afternoon I might actually get some time to myself. I'm actually not out at the gym this evening, Mark's at work, and apart from a pup walk (in the rain again, no doubt) and having to assemble a lasagne (not a big job, I made the ragu yesterday), and I'll be home around 2.30 after diverting to Baa Ram Ewe on the way home to replace a broken needle tip. So, do I knit more on the Soul-warming Shrug, the only project that's actually 'live' at the moment, start spinning the Manx, or cast on some socks or another shawl?

Really, this entry doesn't make much sense unless you have access to my Ravelry page. But anyone who feels the need to tell me what to do probably already has...

Very quiet bank holiday - I'm just getting over a horrible chesty cough thing that I've had for a fortnight, Mark's in the throes of the same thing, and he's dead on his feet after going to work the night he drove us back from Wonderwool and working nights straight through til Saturday morning. It's a wonder he's not iller!

I'd done a bit of dyeing earlier in the week (I had an order for 200g of Flora on oatmeal BFL from Wonderwool, so stuffed the oven full of various BFLs in the same colourway) and while I had the spinner out I washed one of the two fleeces I brought back from Wales (having had every good intention not to buy any). Actually, the second one doesn't count as it's only a half fleece - one of Olwen's lovely Corriedales, a cafe-au-lait ewe's fleece.

This caught my eye on the Manx breeders' stall, because of the lovely colour, unusually pale for a Manx:

It's a shearling, so it's slightly longer than normal, and very soft too. There was remarkably little wastage as I stuffed it through the drumcarder (carefully and methodically, naturally).



I did think about keeping the colours separate, but the paler wool was finer and longer than the darker and I thought I'd have more use for lots of the same yarn rather than different shades. I let the carder pull out the really short fibres by itself as I wanted to keep as much of the darker cinnamon as possible.

I made 22 batts, each originally taking two passes, as I tried to put the colours through together evenly. Those 22 were then re-blended, four at a time, and I think it is fairly well averaged out. There may be some streaking in the finished yarn/garment, but for what I have in mind I think it will be rather nice.

Look at the pretty colours:


Anyone else thinking of tribbles?

It was such a lovely morning on Sunday that I did this outside, in the space between our van and our neighbour's car, and the pupz observing closely when they weren't wandering off over the pub's lawn and rolling in the dew. The only problem is carting everything downstairs, and then back up.

Haven't even weighed the processed fleece yet.

We don't seem to be getting much sunshine at the moment. Grey and miserable and wet most of the time - getting a bit fed up of it now.

At least all our reservoirs are getting topped up.

I keep an eye on this blog - such wonderful, creative things - and in this post we have been given a quick schematic for the Flotsam Dress. 

This would be interesting in so many ways.  It would need to be drapey, not stiff at all, and given the original square, might be a good way of using up all those old embroidered tablecloths and table linen that is around, too stained to use but too lovely to throw away.

Quick (!) trip up to the Rheged Centre near Penrith on Sunday, to see friends and wander around the stalls and exhibition.  It was a cold day, and I really didn't have enough clothes on to walk the pupz on the way hom (ssh, that was deliberate!)



So we saw lots of friends, and I bought two skeins of sock yarn, some beads, was gifted fabulous fibre that was a throwout of one of the dyers' but I think it has potential, and lots of tea.

But back to the dyeing - it's Wonderwool next weekend and I'm still grindstoning.

Last week I knitted this tea cosy for a competition being run by Baa Ram Ewe - not my design, I was one of the people asked to knit up cosies from shortlisted drawings.



If you're on Facebook, go here and vote!!

Saturday was a fun day, when we stuffed the van with fibre and yarn and wheel and shop-stuffz, not to mention the pupz and Mark, and drove off to Trawden in the wilds of East Lancashire. Actually, this is a very familiar area to us - we used to live in Earby, and Wycoller (even nearer to where we were) was one of our favourite dog walks).

The community centre was easy to spot:


and even the trees were decorated:


And there were sheep in the car park:


There were a few people there we knew, and I also bumped into a couple of my old quilting chums. I didn't think it'd been that long since we'd left the area, but the youngest daughter of my friend, who's taller than me, was taller than my friend, and we'd last seen her in a carrycot!

We were packed out all day, the local community really having got involved with the whole idea:


I wasn't quite sure how much I'd sell, as I thought we'd probably have more knitters than spinners, but I did fairly well and will reinvest in fibre for Wonderwool which is now less than six weeks away.

I'd been asked to bring spinning to demonstrate, so brought the Little Gem, handcards, and a pillowcase full of black Ryeland, and had nearly lost my voice by the end of the day. People were fascinated. And I managed to have a bobbinfull by the end of the day too.

There was an open grassy slope at the back with a duck-infested stream; Bil gently pushed the ducks into the water with great concentration!

Friday morning was spent at a speed awareness course in Bradford, because I'd been zapped not slowing quickly enough in a 30 zone back in January. I was seriously impressed how good this course was - lots of information presented clearly and orderly, and the leaders were often deliberately a step or two behind us, to make us think about what we were saying. Of course, some people there were really not happy at all, and didn't really participate, but I was really interested. In fact, I think I managed to avoid mincing a big dog fox on my drive to work yesterday morning because I was more observant.

And Sunday night we toddled off to see the Peatbog Faeries in Saltaire. Excellent band, Scottish folk/punk, massively loud, but very boppable. The opener was the Broken Hearts Club Band, the double bass player of which is Mark's tattooist, so it was all very friendly.

However, I probably overdid it. I'm still not what I'd call 100%, getting tired far too easily, and my shoulders still aren't right. I swam on Sunday morning, 30 lengths/600m, which seemed easy at the time but with hindsight was probably too much. Oh well, getting there.

Years ago, Mark and I used to have days when we'd just set out with a vague plan in mind and explore. We have fallen out of the habit, but what with me not rowing at the moment and really not having the energy for any sort of energetic activity at all, we seized the opportunity of a sunny day and set off by 8am yesterday morning.

Thick mist and mizzle as we went over and through Ingleton, but it was clearing by the time we stopped for tea and bacon butties at Devils Bridge in Kirby Lonsdale, and by the time we left the motorway (best bit of motorway in Britain, as the M6 winds between the Howgills) to get to Shap it was brilliantly blue and sunny.

Though we've driven through and by Shap many times, I've never visited the ruined abbey before. It's an old one too, one of the first to be founded in England (pre-Norman) and the last to be dissolved. It's in a very out of the way spot, tucked away in a fold in the hills, and you can't see it until you're nearly upon it.



There is an old farm built behind the tower, on the lines and presumably the foundations of some of the abbey's buildings, and there were chickens all over the ruins. The pupz herded them away in a civilised fashion, then proceeded to charged about having great fun and ignoring the signs that asked them not to climb on the ruins.



Lovely stonework; you can tell how clean the air is up here from all the lichen.



In most such buildings, towers are nearly always at the East end. In this case, the river bends around the east end of the church and when the tower was started here, it started to fall into the stream. So Shap Abbey has a west tower.



You can still see the marks where the priory roof fitted in.

AFter Shap, we travelled to the far side of Penrith to visit Long Meg and her Daughters. Again, somewhere I've been close to many times but not yet managed to visit.



First thing we did was walk round - it's a big circle, one of the biggest in the UK - and felt the stones. Some were much warmer than others, and it didn't seem to depend upon whether they were in the sun or not, or what rock they were, and there were several kinds of rock. The Eden valley is one of the main routes the ice took from the North, so many of these stones are erratics, smoothed and scraped in strange ways from their long journey within the glaciers.



We were a little bit more towards the Pennines here, and the sky wasn't as clear.



We added to the offerings under Long Meg herself, then back down the road to the Watermill at Little Salkeld, where we used to visit regularly to buy flour when we still holidayed up in the Lakes. We were delighted to see it was still open, and popped in for tea and cake. And a large bag each of spelt and rye flour, and two skeins of local Suffolk yarn. (I couldn't have a day out without buying yarn!!)

There were chickens by the leat at the back:


The sun came out again as we drove West, and by the time we'd parked at the Mill Inn in Mungrisdale it was blue and brilliant again. This hillside, rising up to Blencathra straight behind the pub, made me really regret not being able to charge up it straightaway.



It's not even the middle of March and we ate lunch sitting outside, not even wearing our sweaters. The pupz were much admired as they mooched around us, and there was an adorable little red labrador we all said hello to before we left.

We say this pattern of cloud all around us, low silver shining banks being pushed over the hills from the West and evaporating as it fell down the other side.



And then to Castlerigg Stone Circle, where we were rather horrified to find the road past choked with cars, people swarming everywhere, and even an ice-cream van! Not what I anticipated at all, although when we've visited here before it's been mid-week and grey, cold and wet (usual for the Lake District). On a sunny Sunday not long before Easter, I don't know why we didn't expect otherwise!



Castlerigg's just to the right of this photo. We didn't really want to spend long here, it was too busy, too many people.



But it is in such a perfect position, and oddly feels much higher than it really is, cradled by hills all around. A small, early circle, with the odd little 'sanctuary' marked out to the eastern side.



This stone is an outlier to the main circle, standing by the stile on the west field wall, and looks as if it ought to belong to the whole arrangement. Apparently not, though, and those ogham-like markings are sadly just ploughmarks when it was in the ground. It's generally thought to be a much later field marker, though I'm inclined to think it has been moved from its original place in the dance.

And then we took the long way back, back along the A66, down past the farm where I used to go ponytrekking to Ullswater, back west up and over the Kirkstone pass, and then dropping down the other side through Troutbeck and to Windermere. Just down from the summit we managed to slow down going past these two:



Long day - I wasn't fit for much when we got back. Luckily there was Friday night's liver casserole to heat up, and the apricot crumble too.

Bake or boil two medium-sized beetroots, cool, peel and puree or mince.

Melt 100g of decent chocolate (cooking chocolate will do, but it must be good quality and at least 70% cocoa) with 50g of butter.

Mix together 100g plain flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 50g ground almonds (except I used chopped nuts because that was what I had), 4 tbsp cocoa powder, 100g golden caster or light muscovado sugar, and 3 tbsp of whatever seeds you have to hand - I had pumpkin and sesame.

Separate 4 eggs (I used 3 duck), mix the yolks with the cooled chocolate/butter and mix with the beetroot, and beat the whites in another bowl.

Mix the egg/chocolate/butter/beetroot with the dry ingredients, fold in the egg whites, tip into a tin (I used an 9" square) and bake at about 175C/340F/Gas 4 for half an hour to three quarters.

When cool, mix icing sugar with lemon juice and spread over.

It's the chopped nuts that make this particular cake I've made look quite so much like black pudding!