Spinning my yarns!

It has been a long while since I was in in here in the blog. I took up Facebook and it took over, I think.
I went back to work last May after the surgery in April, and all is very well now. I had no complications. I started Slimming World also in May and so far I have lost 2 stone, that is about 13 kilos. I am very happy with that. Onwards and upwards (or downwards, hopefully, the weight anyway).
We have 2 daughters in college now. Both are going to University of Limerick, which is about 20 mins drive from here. They stay in town, near the University, so they can live the student life and so I do not have to buy and pay for a car for them. Parking is a problem in the University, so it is just as easy to have the girls within walking distance of the University.
I am back at school again. My husband just got a new job.
I am still very interested in spinning and learning to weave, and knitting and all fiber things. I may allow this blog to go into hibernation, as I just want to follow the Spinning wherever it takes me.

I hope all of you out there are well and I am looking forward to reading your blogs after this post.
 In the meantime, if you are on Facebook, you can find my FB page if you search for Spin Me A Yarn Ireland. The photo should be a purple and yellow skein of wool.
That's all for now folks!

Photos of some crafting I do

I bought a loom last year and set it up over Easter. It is a Glimåkra Victoria 4 shaft table loom. Here is a photo of setting up the loom for the first project I am weaving on it.

I started knitting shawls almost 2 years ago. Here is the first triangular shawl I knitted. The yarn is soft and I can wear it next to my skin so I tend to wear this one a lot. It is acrylic so it washes easily. Perfect for everyday use really. Even if I have since decided I don't really want to knit with acrylic much anymore. 

This third photo below is a photo of a larger triangular shawl I knitted in 2015. It uses a Noro yarn, but I cannot remember the exact name. I enjoyed knitting this and seeing the different colours appear out of the skein. The border is knitted sideways, involving short rows. It was time consuming but adds a lot to the shawl so I am delighted with the whole shawl. 

Finally for now,  I did a bit of yarn dyeing using Kool Aid sachets and some good old Goodall's food colouring. I used KA Black Cherry to get the coral red colour on bottom of pic below, Goodall's blue to get 1 skein of blue, KA Grape to get the 2 skeins of soft purple and the last 2 skeins at top of photo are a mix of these 3 colours. The yarn is commercial yarn, Bergere de France Naturelle in white. It is like a handspun thick and thin yarn, 2 ply. It is a mix of wool and alpaca. I am waiting to see what it might want to be.... A shawl probably...

Recovering...

I am recovering, slowly but surely. It is hard to be patient with pain, when the sun is shining outside and when all I want is to get up and go, at my usual pace. But, but.....

This too will pass. I am reading new books and rereading some old favourites. I am getting some knitting done. I hope to do some weaving or spinning next week when I am stronger.
I am glad to be home and glad to have people to look after me!

out of (blog) hibernation, for a little while anyway

Well, how is everyone out there in the blogosphere?
I see a lot of you have continued blogging and I am delighted to have your blog posts to read, and see what is new in people's lives. There is sadness and happiness, as I guess Life itself is a mixture of sadness and happiness.
I am going to be off work from tomorrow for a couple of weeks, nothing sinister, just a small operation, so I got thinking of what I did the last time I had an operation - I started blogging! So here I am back again on the blog.
All is well here, I am working, the husband is not working, (he is my house-husband, you could say,  which is a good thing,) my children are growing up slowly but surely. Yesterday was the 10th birthday of our son, the youngest of the family. The eldest girl is in 2nd year in University of Limerick.
The other thing I started doing back in Dec 2009/beginning of 2010, was to join Ravelry and start back knitting again.
Well, things have moved on rapidly from the first pair of brown acrylic legwarmers which I knitted back then. I got interested in spinning (again, I had done a weekend course in Spinning Wool back in 1994, but then promptly gave it up to have children and work, etc)
So I bought myself a spinning wheel in Summer 2010, and I now own several spinning wheels, all of which I love, and the latest of which was given to me, so I have now become the lady who spins and who people might even give a spinning wheel to....
I learned how to spin using a drop spindle, and joined a small group of women who do Viking Re-enactments, the craft and cooking and clothing side of it, (no weapons here, sorry) and I have done demonstrations of spindling with them in Waterford, Wexford and Dublin, as well as regular spinning wheel demos in Limerick, Dublin and anywhere else that will have me.
I can crochet, I own more than one knitting machine, and a lot  of wool, I read about the History of Textiles and Textile Production avidly, I own lots of books on these themes and I follow like minded people on FB and on blogs. I am practising Nålbindning and Tablet-weaving.
And I bought a secondhand 4-shaft Glimåkra table loom and have set it up and started weaving on it ( I was lucky enough to have about 4 months of weekly weaving lessons last year with a Master Weaver).
So I guess if I need something textile-related to tide me over my recovery period, well there is plenty to choose from here at home already.
Maybe I will be able to blog a bit when I am at home recovering.