FLEECE ORBIT.

Our M25 Fleece Orbit, has made it to the shop floor. Our mission was to collect all the unwanted sheep fleeces from with in the London Orbital, process them, removing the access oils, bits of poo and grass, and spin them into designer yarns, good enough for the Queen.
London fleece tends to be very good quality, as the sheep are treated like pets, fed well, so their hair shines. We have Oxford Down from Mudchute and grey and black Romney from Essex. The staples are long, so it's great for spinning or felting.
We made some sacks to keep the fleece in, and you can buy smaller 100g bags for £3.

SHE'LL CALL YOU BACK.

When Louise doesn't answer her phone, it's not because the music in the club is too loud.
The wool from which she made her mobile phone case, is so thick, that she can't hear it ringing.
But the phone is safe.
Swaledale Ropey £10 a skein...

TANGLED.

I don't want you to imagine any great mystery to what we do here.
If we show you how to do it then you can DIY.
Do as I say don't do as I do.The production of our new upholstery yarn range 'Pebbley Ropey', was going well until I thought I could get away with felting the latest batch in a hot wash with my underwear. It took us the best part of the morning to free the mess, and my bras and pants have been unbearably itchy this week, with the fine coating of kelp fluff.

ANNA'S TIME LINE.

Congratulations to Anna Maltz, who has finished making a Time Line for the school where she is artist in resident. Anna asked the sixth form art class to knit pieces, which she then stitched together with quilting to show the history of the school. Pupils and past pupils can then attach labels with thoughts, historical facts etc.
Anna quilted with Liberty fabrics, which colour match the knitting. I'm sure wherever they hang it in the school it will look fantastic.

NEW UMBRELLA SCREW.

We couldn't live without the yarn umbrella. We use it for winding skeins.
If the yarn is heavy, it groans as it turns, making a squeaky wood sound, like you might hear on a tall ship. It is also painted with glow in the dark paint, although this isn't apparent from the photo.
At the bottom, there's a wooden screw, which moves up and down to adjust the width, and tightens to secure. Alarmingly, one day, the screw snapped off, and the entire contraption was deemed useless. Dad said he'd fix it. My Dad, like some other Dad's has a large pile of things that need fixing. He kindly made a new screw, and then alarmingly, it snapped off again. It seems that some of our yarns are too heavy for a light wood screw. Dad had another go, and made this indestructable red wood screw with metal re- inforcement. We can not work out how he's done it and we are much relieved. And because he likes to go the extra mile, there's a matching knob for the top, which makes the umbrella tall.

MOMENTS MEYHEM FOR MALCOLM.

Please come and join us tomorrow at 12 noon, for one minute of meyhem as a tribute to Malcolm, and perhaps consider donating to Humanade by buying this memorial t-shirt, which for our shop, says it all.

MRS. MINIVER'S PROBLEM AND OTHER STORIES BY INGRID MU

With the spring came Ingrid Murnane, who has done a fantastic display in our window. If you've shopped at Prick Your Finger you'll know that we cherish the traditional, but love the unexpected. Ingrid has a new approach to writing patterns, which we find most inspiring.
I first got to know Ingrid when she made a piece through the UFO Project Administration Service. In case you'd forgotten...


Ingrid applied for 'The Petulant Sock", half knitted for a man, it had a cuff, heal, a few dropped stitches and a sigh for a failed relationship.
Inny thought about how two people can become very interdependent on each other, and what we bring to a relationship whether it is a romantic, business relationship or a friendship.She read about a geometry problem called Mrs. Miniver's Problem, about overlapping circles....
"Mrs. Miniver saw every relationship as a pair of intersecting circles. It would seem at first glance that the more they overlapped, the better the relationship; but this is not so. beyond a certain point the law of diminishing returns sets in., and there are not enough private resources left on either side to enrich the life that is shared. Probably perfection is reached when the area of the two outer crescents, added together, is exactly equal to that of the leaf shaped piece in the middle. On paper there must be some neat mathematical formula for arriving at this; in life none."
She found the basic sock pattern lent itself to the concept rather well, and using a contrasting colour, interpreted the idea of circles into knitting by making the circles 3D, turning them on their sides and making staggered transitions rather than Mrs. Miniver's venn diagrams.On the continuing theme of relationships, Inny was reading P.G.Wodehouse and spotted the line... "He started to put out my things, and there was an awkward sort of silence. 'Not those socks Jeeves,' i said, gulping a bit but having a dash at the careless, off-hand tone. 'Give me the purple ones.'
'I beg your pardon , sir?'
'Those jolly purple ones.'
'Very good sir.'
He lugged them out of the drawer as if he were a vegetarian fishing a caterpillar out of the salad. You could see he was feeling it deeply."
Ingrid celebrated this passage with the 'No Darning' Wondersock, with replaceable heal and toe.
Ingrid loves a twitter and a knit. Combining her two favourite pass times, with her international art group, she founded 'Plateaknit', the world's first twitter knitting pattern, which produced this lovely scarf type thing, a matching bonnet and wrist warmers. The pattern is a joy to read. It's a knitter nattering of friends, munching hoola hoops, bothered by Tony Blair's poor performance at the Chilcott enquiry, and being irritated by celebrity culture on Twitter.
There's also a Sherlock Holmes sock, knitted with clues, and the final and most touching part of the show, is a series of socks made by Ingrid and her friend Katy.Katy and Ingrid have been friends for just over a year. Having both moved to a new area, they met on Ravelry and immediately became very good friends. Katy has to move back to the USA next year and they won't be able to hang out any more, trading craft skills and making cookies. They are going to miss each other, so they hatched a plan - to concurrently knit socks, swapping them over at their knitting group, taking over where the other one left off. They didn't follow the same design or use the same yarn, but knitted in a way that was typically 'them' and independently showed they way they like to knit. They helped each other when they needed and didn't worry if they didn't knit for a couple of weeks either. That's the nature of their friendship, thus reflected in the socks.
Thanks to Ingrid for a beautifully made show, knitted from the depths of a good heart, and spanding a cosmos of free thought and endless possibilities.