Conkers and Moths

One of the high points of Autumn for any child is collecting conkers. My boys loved them when they were younger although they never played conkers as much as I did when I was at school.

They don't go out looking for them anymore but I still do.

I will keep these in the bowl for a few days just to enjoy them and then when I am sure they are quite dry they will be put amongst woollen jumpers to repel moths. I've been doing this for years but haven't been able to find any scientific reason why it should work. Maybe it doesn't work and I've just been lucky to avoid moths.


In a few days I will be replacing last years conkers with the new ones and cleaning out the chests of drawers. Apparently moth infestation is happening more frequently these days mainly because a greater proportion of our clothing is made from natural fibres than a few years ago.

I've always used conkers but lavender and Cedar oil are also thought to help. I have some dried lavender so perhaps I'll add that as well to be sure.

Autumn, start of the cold season.

Two meanings for cold here, the temperature is definitely dropping and I have packed away my summer clothes and replaced them with wool jumpers. The change seems to have happened really quickly after the warm sunshine last week.

Perhaps the abrupt change of weather is responsible for the second type of cold, horrible, sniffly, sore throat like sandpaper, shaky, shivery, achy cold. My oldest son succumbed first and then in the way families share things he passed it on to me. I very rarely get colds but this one has totally wiped me out, I've slept for the best part of three days just managing to pull myself together for the school run and to get something resembling a meal on the table.

I'm feeling a bit less sleepy today so perhaps I can fit in a bit of gentle knitting between my naps.

Woolly Stuff

With the arrival of the darker cooler evenings I will doing more spinning and knitting. Its not that I stop in the summer its just that there always seems to be something I should be doing in the garden instead.

In a comment on my last post Tash at Vintage Pretty asked where I get my wool from, so I thought I would get together a short list of some of my favourite woolly places.

I have bought fleece from Garthenor Organic based in Wales. I have only bought bags of washed fleece but they have an impressive range of organic yarns. The website is also has a list of rare breed sheep with great photos. The third jumper down in the photo was made from a yarn blended from three colours of shetland fleece.




Another favourite, for other organic goodies as well, is Greenfibres. I been buying here for years. Its not always the cheapest organic option but the quality is good and I've bought bedlinen, T-shirts, underwear and thick winter tights, towelling bathrobes as well as wool. The wool I bought from here was chunky weight "Castlemilk Moorit". This breed of sheep is very rare and almost disappeared altogether some years ago which is a pity as it has a rich chocolate coloured fleece. Its the bottom cardigan in my picture but the colour is actually a lot richer than that.



I always like to support local sustainable business and came across John Arbon Textiles, "The Alpaca shop" when we spent a weekend at a Youth Hostel in Lynton, Exmoor. Here I bought some double knitting Alpaca. Its the second jumper down in the photo, naturally coloured alpaca. Alpaca knits up very softly though I have found it matts slightly after a while, even with very careful hand washing.




Most of my knitting is with natural uncoloured wool but when I do want some colour my first stop is one of the two Shetland wool firms Jamiesons of Shetland or Smith and Jamieson. I have received excellent mail order service from both companies. Shetland is one of my all time favourite places. We have spent three brilliant holidays exploring the islands from Fair Isle in the south to Unst in the North and I am sure this has influenced my liking for this wool. The wool from Jamiesons is actually spun on the island and I looked around the factory at Sandness on one of our holidays.



I think that covers most of the sources of my wool and fleece over the last few years. It has taken me ages to write this post because I keep getting sidetracked and start remembering the places we went on holiday and also looking at all the yarns and fibres available.






I must keep repeating ....



I will not buy any wool until I've used up some of my stash.... I will not buy any wool..... I will not buy.....

Finished

At last, just in time for the cooler autumn evenings, I've finally finished my shawl. It is knitted from handspun shetland. I have already knitted a cardigan from this fleece and wanted a project that would make use of some finer spun yarn. This weekend I finally got round to sewing in all the ends and blocking it.

The pattern (Birch from Rowan Magazine 34) used Kidsilk Haze and 5mm needles. I used smaller needles and spun the yarn thicker than Kidsilk so that I ended up with a less lacy shawl.

I am really pleased with the result. Handspun pure shetland yarn is always very soft and light. The flock that the fleece came from was not registered organic but the sheep were kept under organic conditions, I washed the fleece in Ecover washing liquid and obviously spun and knitted it by hand so I think that its environmental impact was pretty small. Added to that, as it took just under a quarter of the original fleece which including postage I paid £12 for, then the shawl has cost me just under £3 - a bargain!

Quiet

The morning started very quietly today, there was very little wind and everything seemed still.

This is the first full week of the autumn term and so we are all settling back into our school-time routines. The quietness of the morning seemed to emphasise the return to a more structured time-table.

I took a detour on the way home from dropping off at school to pick a few blackberries. Just half a mile outside the village there was little sound, apart from the cawing of some birds pecking for grain amongst the stubble of the harvested fields and in the distance, across the fields, the sound of the children at the primary school that my children used to go to, playing outside before the start of school.

It was misty and slightly damp, it seemed as if I could almost feel the countryside beginning to slow down in preparation for winter.

I like quiet. When I am driving or when I am in the house by myself, I rarely listen to music or to the radio preferring to lose myself in my thoughts in silence.

As we have become more aware of our energy use and have not replaced appliances as they have worn out, I find that there are more moments when there is complete quiet in the house. No longer any whirring of a dishwasher or breadmaker, often the only thing switched on in the house is the fridge.

Until recently this must have been the level of noise in most homes. A couple of generations ago there may not have been a fridge.

Electricity came to our village in 1936. According to a local history booklet,

"The Wessex Electricity Company installed three lights and one 15 amp 3 pin plug free for each new customer."

-not much scope for a lot of electrical appliances then.

I wonder if the continual background noise we are subjected to, aircraft, traffic, etc, apart from the noise we generate ourselves, contributes to the general level of busy-ness and stress that many complain of today.

Perhaps in the future as we are forced to cut back on our energy use, amongst the many disadvantages will be the benefit of a quieter,calmer environment.

The photographs were taken during my blackberry picking walk this morning.