March 29, 2025

I’ve just got back from holidays, having had a lot of chill time, a little bit of knitting and lots of planning and thinking. My mittens are done, and I had enough spare yarn to make a headband to go with it. It’s not my best project; the second mitten is a bit smaller than the first for some reason, maybe the tension was too tight, and I’m not the biggest fan of the headband edging. I had to give it some kind of border to help it stay flat, but it makes it a bit bulkier. 

Overall, I feel like the colourwork i.e. using two different colours, makes the final fabric a bit less stretchy, which means less room for error on size. Although, the white yarn is cotton, which is inherently non-stretchy, so maybe I just used the wrong yarn. It was a stash busting project though; I used what I had left over, so I can’t complain too much. It is wearable though, so I am happy. I also loved doing colourwork for the first time, but it does mean you have to look at the pattern for every single stitch that you do, which can be annoying.

During the week I’ve been ruminating about looms, so I can learn to weave. It’s been on the list for a while, and I may be getting closer to purchasing one. The main blocker is its size; they tend to be quite big. I’m considering it a bit more now for the near future.

Otherwise, I’m pretty much out of my yarn stash. So… I bought a raw fleece, a Bowmont Merino species that is a uniquely British breed and has super fine wool (i.e. low micron count). I wanted a fleece to hand spin that had a next-to-skin quality. I might experiment with some natural dyes and things like that. That should be arriving next week, which will hopefully keep my evenings busy! I’d like to build up my handspun yarn stash to knit or weave with in the future. 

I’ll be visiting the field this week, of course, so excited to check the trees and see what’s growing. I’m hoping the trees will be starting to bud now. I bought another shipment of plants (berry bushes mostly), but of different sorts that I don’t yet have… Kiwis, pineapple guava, pink blueberries, framberries, rhubarb etc. I want as much variety as possible. That should arrive sometime this week as well.

I’ve been researching better techniques to split wood, so I’ll be retrying that, following my previous fail. My tree man has delivered another load of woodchips and logs, so I have plenty to work with to finish off mulching all the trees. My to-do list for my next visit:

• Mulch remaining trees
• Split pathway logs lengthways
• Weave in extra thick bramble canes
• Sweep up brash - pile into burlap, fold over and stamp to break into pieces for mulch
• Put burlap double layer and or cardboard as weed suppression for veg patch

I’d like to create a vegetable patch on the field as well to grow things like artichokes, beans and potatoes. So I’m going to try to choke out the grass with cardboard and burlap for a few weeks or months and see if that works. If not plastic is the other option, but if it can be avoided… 

See you next time.

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