June

I've now had nearly a full month of using the new studio, and the old caravan feels like a distant memory. It's so much better for stock storage and organisation, and dyeing has been an absolute dream. As I now have an internet connection over there I've started to experiment with doing some dyeing live-streaming, with a view to test out the different platforms, work out camera angles, and hopefully start doing some online dyeing workshops or set up a self-paced course on fibre dyeing. We'll see... for now I am busy enjoying summer and my hopefully my first solo holiday since 2019.

This was a livestream of the June Seasonal Changes pack, I originally streamed this via the Fellowship of Yarn, and then had to to upload it to You Tube to fix the fact that everything was sideways...

This was the July colour choices, which didn't have the best of straits, when the video I scheduled wouldn't start and I had to set up another one quickly.... skip the first 5 minutes unless you enjoy watching me look increasingly puzzled and then have moments of dawning realisation. 

For the July colours, they're still not right, so I will be re-dyeing a couple of them before the end of the week... if I feel brave I might set up another livestream and see if I can be slightly more technologically competent. 
Anyway, the reason for doing all this messing around is so I can get all the teething problems out of the way before anyone is paying anything for any content, once I'm happy with everything there will be studio related teaching stuff happening...

The Tour de Fleece starts on Friday, and I have got all the daily posts ready and waiting. These give you a bit of flavour of the areas the race is in each day, bits of culture, architecture, and food. This year there is a recipe for every single day!
You are of course very welcome to come and join us, no matter how much you're able to spin, or what you are spinning.

Earlier in the month I took Nellie to try out Agility, which she loved, though did get a little too excited at one point and we had to go to the naughty corner to calm down... we go back tonight for an 8 week block of classes, which hopefully will go better than the trick classes I tried to do with her over the winter, which mostly consisted of me sitting on the floor and a stubborn collie dog determinedly sitting with her back to me!

I also caved and decided to hatch some eggs again this year. Juniper has been laying clutches all over the garden, which I have been discovering as soon as she went broody, and in the end I felt so sorry for her that I thought I'd let her hatch them out. Except the eggs needed moving to a safe spot, in to a house that could be locked at night... at which point Juniper decided she no longer wanted to be a parent. Mummy Indigo to the rescue, and she now has 6 chicks, who are no longer as fluffy looking as this, but are busy rampaging through the garden. I will be in need of name inspirations for these, at least 2 are almost certainly boys, and I have a horrible feeling I am going to end up with several very black feathered chickens that are hard to tell apart at a glance... which is how I ended up with 2 cockerels with called Monty Don. 

Mum and I also went to Claire Austin Hardy Plants Open Garden via the National Gardens Scheme, in particular to enjoy the national collection of Bearded Irises and Hybrid Peonies. These had just been moved to a new spot so weren't quite as stunning as last year, but we still came away with a wish list as long as our arms and a desire to win the lottery...

I've also been sewing things... a wool pinafore dress, in a move that was designed to make sure we had a beautifully long hot summer! And these pair of trousers. The pattern popped up on my Instagram feed and I thought they looked interesting, and then when I read further I saw that they were a zero waste pattern. Every single pattern piece is designed to fit together to result in no wasted odd shaped pieces. This size (F with increases in the front and back darts, and at the side seams to reduce the waist measurement) took just 2m of 112cm wide fabric! 
It was my first proper zipped fly, and the pattern made the process so painless that at the end of it I literally went "oh, is that all there is to it!"
The pattern is Jones Trousers, next up, a pair in fabric I actually like... I have no idea why I have pink denim in my stash, but it will do for work trousers!