Technobabe

Well, not only am I learning new knitting skills. Becoming a blogger has finally motivated me to learn how to use and upload pictures from our digital camera. I'm joining the 21st century at last!!

I have been musing since my first blog on my journey as a spinner and knitter. I learnt knitting as a child from my Mum (pause for fond appreciative moments thinking of her loveliness). Very good thing too as she is, like me (or rather; I am, like her...) lefthanded. So I knit in the opposite direction to most other people. Then I learnt spinning in my late teens at Barnhowe in Elterwater (some readers may remember it). In the years since (approximately twenty of them) until very recently I have felt myself to be very much a lone practitioner of dying and unfashionable arts shared only with far older and old ladies. Yet now I find I am actually part of a worldwide community of trendy yarn and fibre addicts, many of them now in fact much younger than I (this year has seen me officially enter middle age). And I am so glad. I have finally joined my local spinning guild, and I read spinning and knitting blogs (love them). I feel like I have come in from the cold. So thank you, spinny and knitty friends, for being there, young, or young at heart, wanting too to share your passion with others.

I especially love looking at photos of other textile crafters' works (whether in progress or finished). So I guess others might like to see mine. First of all let me introduce my most prized possession - my Timbertops Thurmaston 18 Spinning Wheel, purchased recently from e-bay (sold as an 'Antique Welsh Wheel'!!!). The bobbins are two of laceweight singles 'Marianne' (blue faced leicester) from http://www.lazykate.net/ and Bonkers handmade originals Merino and Tencel blend in the Emerald Forest colourway (purchased from Carol and Pete Leonard at Woolfest). I'm waiting for some blended merino and silk in black to ply with the Bonkers (great name!) and I'll ply the two blue-faced leicester laceweights together. The Bonkers yarn is to become a vest, and the laceweight Marianne is destined to become a Shetland Shawl - a project I have dreamed of for years.

If anyone reading this knows how to make the photos appear where I want them in the blog (and not just at the beginning) please tell me.