New Bags made by Calana Crafts, woven by me.

A lovely surprise when Joan from Calana Crafts (http://www.calanacrafts.blogspot.com/) called to say she had finished some bags for me.

So yesterday, on our way back from Stornoway I called in to see. They are gorgeous! Linsey Woolsey - linen warp and wool weft, some Harris Wool and the others our Hebridean wool from our black sheep. 6 x 6 herringbone and very nicely made. Magnetic popper at the top, co-ordinating lining and fully labelled with both the Scalpay Linen and Masters of Linen Min. 50% linen sew-in labels. I probably won't ever weave exactly this fabric again, so now is a good time to snap up a bargain for Christmas..... £40 each with free postage anywhere.

At some point these will end up on Etsy - but for now, if anyone is interested, just wack off an e-mail to me and we can complete by Paypal.

Purple Fuschia and red Harris wool weft with linen warp. 6 x 6 herringbone. Flat bag with magnetic popper closing and loop handles.

Grey and Brown Hebridean weft with white and natural linen warp. 6 X 6 Herringbone with the point in the centre of the colour. Magnetic popper closing. Flat bag with loop handles.

Yellow and red Harris Wool weft over a white linen warp. Flat bag, magnetic popper closing and loop handles.

Grey and Brown Hebridean wool spun from local fleeces together with a white and natural striped warp. You won't find this anywhere else! The point of the herringbone pattern is in the centre of the colour stripe which adds to its appeal. Magnetic popper closing, box bottom and loop handles.

Purple Fuschia and red Harris Wool weft with white linen warp. Matching purple fuschia lining. Box bottom, magnetic popper closing and loop handles.

Not great colour reproduction here - it's a lemon yellow and red Harris wool weft over a white linen warp. Box bottom and magnetic popper closing. The overall effect reminds me of macaroni cheese (with added tomatoes of course!). Yum yum.

A bit of a Grizzle

I try not to moan about things - especially about things that are outwith our control, but today I am going to have a bit of a grizzle about our local electricity supplier - Scottish and Southern Electric, also incorporating Hydro-Electric.

We have been having a lot of refurbishment done on our light poles on the island - a great idea as it can be inconvenient when the lines fall down or break in the bad weather and we are without power. However, the SSE do think they have a divine right to go on our common grazings with diggers and an assortment of tracked vehicles - get stuck, dig themselves out, make large holes which fill with water, cut great swathes of devastation amongst our heather mooorland and, worst of all, knock down our gorgeous hand-built dry-stone dyke which has stood for generations dividing the moorland from the lighthouse precincts. Several years ago they took a digger through it and, under protest, piled the stones back up again in a very rough way. Now we see, they are at it again......





This used to be a track which could be followed through a small gate in the wall and onwards to the lighthouse......

Now, as you can see above, it looks like a pile of rubble. (Bramble the dog is standing beside the wall to show you that it is about five feet high).

And here, above, is the remains of our peat bank, where many generations of Fergusons laboriously dug their fuel for winter warmth. Next year we will be stocking it with fish and looking for a new peat bank!

Thank goodness the sheep are off grazings for the winter and aren't in danger of drowning in the ruts and new soft bits that have been created.

OK - rant over.

Today I've been stocking up the Etsy shop with lots more wool and also my new linen. Why not take a look and see......

http://www.scalpaylinen.etsy.com

Linsey-Woolsey #2

After a couple of dreary days, it only rained a few times today. The croft is starting to dry out a bit thanks goodness.

Spent most of the day in the loomshed beaming, tyeing in, pulling through and starting off the new cloth.

This is the blue and white 10 lea linen warp going onto the beam. Looks like a football scarf!

And here is the warp tied onto the loom and with some weft added. Same as the last linsey-woolsey (2 shots Grey and 2 shots Brown Hebridean wool). Looks very distinctive. We like the white stripe and think we may stick to using white as the alternate stripe in the rest of the range. We still have the red, the purple and the lime green linen to use. At nearly 8kg of weft in each cloth, I'm hoping I'll have enough Hebridean wool to last out the whole caboodle!

Tomorrow we are going to the Shawbost Mill - Harris Tweed Hebrides - to pick up the last linen they finished for us and drop off Linsey Woolsey #1. Carloway Mill are having carder problems so we are still with our fingers crossed that the Hebridean/Cheviot fibre will become a yarn for us.

Ordered some more fine lurex thread off e-bay today for twisting up with the handspuns. Got a cone of iridescent lurex the other week and its gorgeous - not too in your face - gives a lovely sheen to the yarn rather than an explicit sparkle. Anyway, decided to get some chocolate brown and bronze to jazz up the Hebridean wool and some black just for fun!

I can thoroughly recommend: http://stores.shop.ebay.co.uk/Corkwood-knitting-and-crafts they have a range of lurex threads plus machine knitting yarns, wool dyes and lots of other nice things. Well worth having a browse.

Spinning tonight I think! Going to try spinning 2 of the Katre's Norwegian pre-spun together and then twisting it with something glittery again. Am going to try a tighter twist than usual so it will be good for socks.

More on Etsy

There are now 7 of my Christmas Sparkles Handspun Falkland Wool hanks on Etsy - http://www.scalpaylinen.etsy.com/ . Still have four more to measure and hank and another five to dye after the weekend.

They are great to knit with - very soft and bouncy. I shall be putting them in my loomshed for sale next week, so now is a good time to purchase.....

Weather is good today though rather hazy. Hoping to get some autumn gardening done this afternoon - pruning, weeding and tidying. Hope it doesn't rain!

Dyeing Monday

Yesterday I was dyeing in the morning - Monday is a good day for dyeing as I can keep an eye on the washing in the washing machine and drier and do something else at the same time!

Here is some of the yarn I have ready for measuring, weighing and Etsying....

Two more are on Etsy today, and hopefully more will follow.

Today the weather is awful - gloomy and rainy - real November weather even though it's only the end of October. Even the hens are looking dismal, whilst no-name turkey is looking very spiky round the nether regions. This is the sort of weather that makes me want to stay in by the fire and get on with the spinning whilst watching an episode of CSI Season 1 which arrived from Amazon via the postie this lunchtime. However, this afternoon is the first session of "After School Club - Arts and Crafts" at the local school so I will have to pull myself together before then!

Potatoes and my Etsy Shop is now Open again!

At our craft fair and flea market yesterday in Tarbert, someone brought along a box of potatoes that had been grown by the pupils at Seilebost School in South Harris. I couldn't resist them and this is what I brought back with me. Seilebost is on the machair (a light sandy soil which is flat and is populated by hosts of beautiful wild flowers in the summer) and because it such a light soil the potatoes grow very evenly and don't have knobbly lumps sticking out of them like those we grow in a rocky soil. You can even see the sand still clinging onto the potatoes. The pink ones are "Rooster" variety, and the others are "Golden Wonder". We had some roosters for lunch today and they were beautiful. Thank you Seilebost School!


This afternoon I decided to open up my Etsy shop again - after having it closed since before I went to Japan in March! So to celebrate, I've put on two hanks of Christmas Sparkles handspun, hand-dyed Falkland wool. Hopefully this is just a start. There are 5 more hanks ready for measuring and weighing, and four more ready for dyeing.

See the details on http://www.scalpaylinen.etsy.com/

And finally, remember the 2 shades of green, yellow and natural linen I collected from the mill a couple of weeks ago? Well, at last here is a picture of it. Rather natty if a little optically challenging! There are 43 meters on the roll, so I'm busy sending out swatches to my regular customers. I will have it on Etsy at some point, but meantime, if you are interested in any, just drop me a line: scalpaylinen@hebrides.net

Hebridean Tweed

Although I love almost every thing about my work, one of the most enjoyable things about designing and weaving cloth and hand-spinning yarns is that sometimes I get to see what it being made from them.

Today I had a lovely surprise to receive this picture of a cushion made from my Hebridean Tweed. The Gaelic saying embroidered into it is translated as: "whoever burns his bottom must sit on it".

The maker is Deirdre Nelson - www.deirdre-nelson.com . Deirdre completed a residency at Taigh Chearsabhaigh in North Uist a couple of years ago which culminated in an auction of fish which had been knitted during her time on the island. She has some great ideas and is always up to something exciting. I'm pleased to say that Deirdre has worked with both my linen and now with the Hebridean Tweed. She has an interesting blog at http://dstitch.blogspot.com which I'm going to add to my followings.

Weather good today - plenty of sun and no wind. Long may it last! Sorry to the folks on the East Coast who have not had it so good.